Look, we’ve all seen some cursed free-throw forms over the years. Shaq’s granny shots. Dwight Howard’s hitch. Charles Barkley looking like he was fighting an invisible man. But South Florida junior Kendall Puryear just dropped a free-throw routine so unhinged that Twitter collectively lost its mind and started calling her a walking 2K glitch.
In her first game with the Bulls, a comfortable 80-54 win over Furman, Puryear did real work. Twelve points, nine boards, four assists, three steals. Physical, active, productive. Then she stepped to the line, and the internet found its new obsession.
She brings the ball up and basically parks it against the side of her neck, right under her jaw, with her elbow flared out like she’s about to wing a 4-kilo iron ball 40 feet. Then she launches. It is not a push shot. It is not a hitch. It is not even a weird one-motion heave. It is a full shot-put release wearing a basketball jersey. She missed both of them.
The wildest part? It makes complete sense once you check her bio. Before she was a Purdue transfer and now a USF Bull, Puryear was a legitimate high school thrower at Blue Springs South in Lee’s Summit, Missouri. Ranked the No. 1 shot putter in the state at one point. She spent years drilling the exact same starting position and release that every track coach teaches. Muscle memory is a hell of a drug, and hers is still screaming “THROW IT” every time she steps to the stripe.
Career free-throw percentage sits in the high-50s. Not great, not catastrophic. Enough that coaches have apparently looked at the form, shrugged, and said, “If it ain’t broke enough to ruin the game, leave it.” Monday night it was broke. Zero for two, and the clips spread immediately. One account just posted the video with “WHAT THE F**K” and called it a day. The replies did the rest.
Is it the worst form you’ve ever seen? Probably. Is it somehow repeatable enough that she’s made over half of them in her career? Also yes. The real question is whether USF’s staff decides to mess with it or just lets the 6-foot-3 former shot put champion keep chucking it the only way her body knows how. Either way, every time she steps to the line for the rest of the season, somebody’s going to be recording.
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