The Thunder didn’t need a second-quarter free throw from second-year guard Andre Roberson last night. OKC stomped the Magic by 28 after dropping 79 on them in the first half, but Roberson’s air ball from the charity stripe was the second time it’s happened this season, and his struggles from the line are not a bad sign for the second-year guard moving forward.
Here’s Roberson’s air ball from last night:
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And here’s his air ball against the Lakers earlier this season in a much tighter game:
Roberson sports the highest net rating of any Thunder player who has played over 500 minutes this season and is not named Russell Westbrook or Kevin Durant, but that figure is unfairly tied to Russ and KD’s production sharing the court with Roberson.
The 6-7 shooting guard out of Colorado is connecting on a dreadful 16.3 percent from beyond the arc and less than half (47.6 percent) of his free throw attempts.
With KD and Russ drawing so much attention from the defense, OKC’s second guard has to be able to hit that weak-side three when the ball swings to them on the perimeter. So far, Roberson hasn’t — though his defense is the reason he’s started 31 of 32 games he’s appeared in this season.
The free throw issues are even more ghastly for a guard, and it’s unlikely he’ll be getting a lot of late-game minutes after the addition of Dion Waiters. He only played eight minutes in a loss to Houston on Thursday, but got 24 minutes as a starter in Orlando on Sunday.
As a reminder, here are both of his air balls from the stripe:
(video via NBA Highlights)
What do you think?
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