This is a great new piece on how shooting free throws really is a simple matter of luck, by and large.

The piece basically states that free throw shooting is a matter of muscle memory, and that you can work to improve your muscle memory, since humans are necessarily fallible and cannot make 100 percent of their free throw attempts, the best thing they can do is perfect a shooting stroke and then limit their deviation from that shot.  Since those things will necessarily, naturally deviate from the mean, most free throw misses are simply luck.  I think you could make a similar argument about lots of other shooting that occurs in games, especially three-point attempts.

I recommend clicking through and reading the whole thing.