In basketball, a free throw is an unopposed shot at the basket. Players must stand 4.6 meters (fifteen feet) away from the basket and take a shot. Four people from the defensive team and two people from the attacking team must line up along the sides of the shooting area and the rest must stand behind the three point line. The shooter has 10 seconds to release the ball and every shot is worth one point. 15% of all points scored in a basketball game come from free throws, so you would think that a team would try to maximise their accuracy right?

On March 2, 1962, the Philadelphia Warriors went up against the New York Knicks in one of the most spectacular games of all time. The Philadelphia Warriors star, Wilt Chamberlain, scored 100 points that game, more than Kobe Bryant’s highest score ever, 81 points, 40 years later! In that game, Chamberlain scored 28 out of 32 free throws, a 87.5% accuracy. That’s a lot coming from someone whose whole career had a free throw accuracy of around 50%. Obviously, there’s was trick. The trick was in the way he shoots. Most NBA stars shot overhand, flicking their wrists and having the ball roll off the fingertips. In that fateful match, Chamberlain shot underhand, swinging his whole arm from legs up, a style often referred to as the “granny style.” You would think, a strategy that rose the accuracy of one of the greatest players of all time by 37.5% would be used quite commonly, right? Nope! Chamberlain switched right back to the overhand style and his poor accuracy the very next game (NBA & ABA Career Leaders And Records For Free Throw Pct | Basketball-Reference.Com).

In psychology, the term “threshold” can be defined as: how many people need to do something before the person in question does that same thing. Say Brad wanted to eat ice cream, but all of his friends wanted cookies. If Brad caved in and agreed to the cookies, then he has a high threshold; Brad needs all of his friends to eat ice cream before he himself will eat the ice cream. If Brad holds out and eats ice cream even though most of his friends want cookies, then he has a low threshold; Brad needs very few people to eat ice cream before he eats ice cream.

Rick Barry, a fellow NBA player, chose to keep the style. Rick Barry is another Basketball Hall of Famer; at the time of his retirement, he was number one in free throw accuracy, with over 90% accuracy! To put that into perspective, Lebron James, the best basketball player of our generation, has a 70% accuracy, that’s a 20% percent increase! Now, why would someone turn down a perfectly good and obvious improvement to their play? Because they have a high threshold. I mentioned earlier that it is called the “granny style.” This doesn't make it exactly appealing to try out this tactic. People like Lebron James or Wilt Chamberlain need lots of people to be using this style before they will. People like Rick Barry, on the other hand, are not afraid to try it out (NBA & ABA Career Leaders And Records For Free Throw Pct | Basketball-Reference).

The political situation in America is a complex and intricate mess. With a, perplexing president to say the least, people have started to take sides and there seems to be no in-between. In this time of crisis, the President has even managed to split his own party. Ted Cruz is a Republican Senator from Texas: he ran against President Trump in the 2016 elections as the Republican nominee. Over the race, Cruz took a very aggressive stance towards President Trump, even going so far as to call him a “Pathological Liar.” Since Cruz has lost the race, and Trump has become President, Cruz, along with many other Republicans that had formerly opposed Trump, have turned around and begun following him and many decisions he makes. Phil Scott on the other hand, the Republican Governor from Vermont, has kept to his heart. Even though he is a Republican, he has followed what he believes to be right and not what other people are doing (Parker).

Senator Ted Cruz has a low threshold, he is the Wilt Chamberlain of U.S. politics. He was too afraid of what other people might think of the way he is doing things and he needs other people to start so that he can follow. Phil Scott is the opposite: he is the Rick Barry. He was not afraid of the way that people would look at him, he just did what he thought was right. In a world being torn further and further apart by people and their tribes, we need more people in power who can ignore the peer pressure to conform and instead make decisions that they feel are right, not decisions that their tribe tells them are right.