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Rick Bonnell tells us the Charlotte Bobcats had the worst shooting percentage in the NBA, at 71.4%, and missed 605 free throws last year.

Emeka Okafor missed 161 all on his own, and also got hit hard again and again while trying to score, because no one was too scared of sending him to the foul line.

Hypotheticals are ridiculous, and I try not dwell in such things.

But somehow I just got stuck on that 605 number.

If they shot halfway decently, they might have hit 100 more free throws. Or even 150!

100 points, all by its lonesome, can be plenty to win you a basketball game without any field goals.

Meanwhile, the Bobcats lost all kinds of games by tiny margins. One point, two points, three points ... 

Can you imagine how their season would have been different if you could have given the Bobcats an extra 100 points to spread around their season? They would have won games that they lost. Several of them. They would have felt confident and proud. They would have likely been fouled less, and gotten cleaner looks.

I bet this is the kind of thing Sam Vincent thinks about sometimes.

UPDATE: Less than an hour after the original post, John Hollinger e-mails with actual facts and figures that are all very relevant:

Had they shot the league average 75.5% from the line, they would have scored 86 more points last season; of course, that presumes they never rebounded their misses, which is almost certainly untrue, so the real number is probably more like 75 or 80. At any rate, sprinkle those points over the course of a season and, on average, they will add three victories to a team's bottom line. So it was somewhat costly, but it wasn't what kept them out of the playoffs. 

This exposes two key weaknesses at ESPN.com.

Clearly, first of all, I should not muck around like I did with multi-factorial statistics like that, especially when there are actual experts out there.

Secondly, Hollinger either has a ton of work and is procrastinating (I do that!) or he needs more to do.

UPDATE: Tom Ziller at FanHouse got from my saying "they would have likely been fouled less" that I thought the Bobcats would be better off shooting fewer free throws. Even if you shoot very poorly like Emeka Okafor, Ziller points out, the vast majority of players -- even Okafor -- are more efficient scoring from the line than from the field. Getting fouled is pretty much all good (unless you're ice-cold Shaquille O'Neal and it's crunch time).

100% right. Where do I sign up?

But let me explain a bit more what I meant with that sloppy line.

Being the kid on the team with the low free throw percentage is like having a "kick me" sign around your neck. And that hurts your team in immeasurable ways.

If you play basketball, think about how you play defense. You get to know your opponent, and then you start looking for weaknesses to exploit. If the guy can't go left, you stay glued to the right. If he can't dribble, you get him to put it on the floor. 

And if he can't shoot free throws, you get to pretty much tackle him every time he has the ball.

All those things keep your opponent from doing what he would most like to do -- get easy buckets.

If you're guarding a guy that you're happy to have on the line, you can smother him with your body even before the catch. You can shove him out of good post position, reach in, and grab handfuls of his jersey, or his arms, as he attempts his go-to move.

Sometimes this kind of defense will keep him from getting the ball at all, forcing the team to to plan B. Sometimes he'll get fouled without ever even coming close to attempting a shot, or getting an and-one.

But if I don't want to foul him, he does all those things with an extra bit of room, and then has a much better chance of getting a dunk or a layup or some other high-percentage finish. He might get an and-one, instead of a loose ball foul. He might get to actually complete the things he and his teammates have practiced, instead of just being manhandled.

And all the while, as you beat him up, sometimes the referees will call a foul, but often they won't. Yet every time he won't be playing the beautiful game. His passing, his rebounding, his shooting ... it's all stuck in the mud of defenders who are only a little worried about the referees.

Not to mention, if you happen to be the oft-injured Emeka Okafor, you could also end up getting hurt by all that contact.

It's kind of like the Jordan Rules that the Pistons employed, where the Bad Boy Pistons basically beat the crap out of Michael Jordan in the years when his Bulls were starting to get really good. All the free throws that Jordan shot, they sure hurt the Pistons, but the total approach was famously successful, at least for a while.

I can't say for sure that Emeka Okafor or the Bobcats would shoot more or less free throws if they shot a better percentage. It might be less, it might also be more, as he'd be in a better position to force the action with the ball.

But I can bet that defenders would be less interested in fouling him, and that could have numerous benefits that are tough to measure but very real.

Either way, I'm sure Larry Brown would love for Emeka Okafor to improve his free throw shooting.