Shaquille O'Neal takes a lot of ribbing for his poor free throw shooting.  In the loss to the host Nuggets on Feb. 28, fans sitting behind the backboard mocked O'Neal's poor free-shooting by wearing hard hat's. O'Neal, a 44 percent throw shooter, went 7 for 15. USA Today reports that Ed Palubinskas, O'Neal most recent free throw shooting coach, won a foul-shooting competition and the $20,000 prize at the Havenport Basketball Skills Championships in Winnipeg recently. Palubinskas converted 75 of 75 attempts. Including  warmups, Palubinskas converted 115-of-116.  The Lakers are less than enthused about the prospect of playing in Japan in October.  The Long Beach Press-Telegram reports the league has not made a formal announcement yet, but it appears the Lakers will be the one of the teams playing exhibition games in Tokyo. "the best thing about it is that if it does happen, it will happen in the exhibition season rather than the regular season, "Coach Phil Jackson said "there's a lot of positives about it. There's some drawbacks....And if this works out and we do go there, it will be a good occasion for us, culturally and hopefully exchange-wise."

Aussie advisor Shaqs up with O'neal
By Tim Morrissey
Sunday Telegraph

The Runnin' Rebels basketball gym at the University of Nevada, Los Vegas, was full of hoop hustlers, street ballers and playground stars shooting for money.

In walks Ed Palubinskas, the former and mostly forgotten Australian Boomers star from the 70s.

No one would have given the 50-year-old hoopster a second look, let alone known who he was.

But they do now after Palubinskas effortlessly made 75 percent consecutive free throws to pocket $50,000 at the Havenport Basketball Skills Championships this year.

"I've missed three free throws in competition over the last 15 years."

Through his career, from his college days at Louisiana State University through to the '72 and '78 Olympics, Palubinskas had a reputation as a pure shooter.

But scratch the surface and you'll find a mix between Paul Newman's character "Fast Eddie" Felson in the movie The Hustler and cockney used car salesman and entrepreneur Arthur Daley.

He could sell sand to the Arabs...well, not quite, but he did once sell himself to Saudia Arabia as their National Handball Coach. That was shortly after Palubinskas, the leading scorer at 1976 Montreal Olympics, disappeared from the Australian scene.

His latest venture is the toughest job in sport.

Palubinskas is teaching Los Angeles Lakers star centre Shaquille O'Neal, the highest player in basketball at $80 million per year, to shoot free throws.

Anyone who's seen the most feared man in the NBA step to the line knows turning Shaq's monstrously ugly, brick-laying action from the foul line into work of art is about as hard as it gets.

Many have tried and failed to take this foul-line Frankenstein and recreate a Da Vinci masterpiece-but Palubinskas believes he can help Shaq and told him so.

You can imagine Palubinskas having a quite word in Shaq's ear. "Don't you worry ol' son, I'll take care of everything."

Well, maybe not quite in these words, but Palubinskas did talk his way into the job.

"I was sick and tired of listening to people all over the country laugh and criticize Shaq's free throwing" Palubinskas said.  "Everyone is bitchin' and moaning but no one had a real solution.

"I got so fed up with all this rubbish, so I wrote to his agent Leonard Armato who I scored 32 points against in college. I killed him in that game.

"That was our connection, so I wrote him a nice letter saying that I'm the solution to Shaq's problem"

Palubinskas knows Shaq will take care of him if he can cure his free throw ills.

However, Fast Eddie could grow old before he gets a chance to cash in on his creation: a new and improved Shaq.

Last season at the Mira Costa High School gym where Palubinskas and Shaq regularly work out, all but one player on the girls team had a better free throw shooting percentage than O'Neal's 44.8 percent.

This year has been a slow and onerous task with the big fellow shooting a cold 46.3 percent from the free line this season.

But over the past three months Shaq's percentage has been climbing from 47.9 percent in January to 54.3 percent in February to 57.9 percent in March.

"I swear, we're shooting about 84 percent in practice," said Palubinskas whose goal is to get Shaq shooting 70 percent by season end..

Shaq better at line, thanks to shot 'surgeon'

Ed Palubinskas does not play for the Los Angeles Lakers. He's never scored a point for them. But he might be one the most important factors in how far the lakers go this season.

 He's Shaquille O'Neal's free throw coach, his self proclaimed "right-hand man."  his goal is to eradicate the "Hack-a-Shaq" defenses opposing coaches employ at the end of tight games that often send O'Neal to the bench at crunch time.

So far, so good. O'Neal is hitting nearly 57% of his free throws since the All-Star break, up from his low of 37.2% in December, including 0-for-11 in a dec. 8 loss to Seattle.  Entering Wednesday, the Lakers 40-19) were 9-3 since the break.

"He's completely reinvented his shot," says Palubinskas, who calls himself a "shooting surgeon".

Hack at own risk: Shaquille O'Neal has hit 56.8% of his foul shots since Feb. 7.

He calls O'Neal, who isn't talking about free throw shooting, an "anatomical anomaly, with dysfunctional bone structure" due to an old wrist injury, which is why his elbows flare when he shoots.

"We've made his shot more mechanical," he says. "We're taking it away from him and giving it to science. We've realigned all the angles, speeded up his release and taken the ball out the palm of his fingertips. "He's finally getting a grip on it, pardon the pun."

Palubinskas, 50. an All-SEC guard at LSU in the 1970s, first worked with O'neal when the 7-1 center played there in the early 90s.  Palubinskas has made an exact science of free throws, sinking 1,572 of 1,575 in 15 years of shooting contests.  He got tired of hearing how O'Neal couldn't shoot free throws and offered his help.

He says O'Neal shoots 300 to 500 free throws a day in practice and makes 84-87% of them.  He says Shaq can even make 50% of them blindfolded.  "Since I started with him in November, he's up almost 10% a month," Palubinskas says, "My realistic goal for him is between 65-70%.

"I told Shaq his shooting wouldn't really take off until he started dreaming about me. Three or Four weeks later, he said, “Ed I'm finally dreaming about you.”

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