What is a Brick In Basketball? Everything You Want To Know

First, what is a brick in basketball? When a player shoots the ball in basketball and it misses the basket by bouncing off the rim or the backboard.

Basketball can be a stunning game when played well. The athleticism and shot-making prowess of some of the best players in the world, combined with the sport’s choreography, make the game practically nightly spectacle. Fans tend to notice when the game isn’t pretty because of all the beauty that goes into it. Particularly if the player is on their favorite team and jeopardizing the chances of that team’s success, they will write a player off fairly quickly.

Please continue reading as I explain the specific information.

What Does A Brick Mean In Basketball?

A missed shot is simply meant when someone refers to it as a “brick” during a basketball game. A brick, however, is not your typical ordinary missed shot. A brick is unattractive, loud, and embarrassing for the player who shot it.

What are the telltale signs of a real brick? One, when the ball strikes the backboard or the rim, there is typically a loud clanging sound. If there is such a thing as a pretty missed shot, it is not a pretty miss.

A shot that never touches the rim and hits the backboard is another well-known illustration of a brick. Due to the shot’s extreme inaccuracy, the basket was never in reach.

A brick should not be confused with an “airball.” Another slang term for a missed shot in basketball is an “airball,” which differs from a “brick.” The backboard or rim are not touched by the ball during an airball. Tony Parker, a former star for the San Antonio Spurs, provides a perfect illustration of an airball.

Where Did The Term Originate?

The phrase “brick” was first used during a basketball game, but no one can pinpoint when or where that happened. Although “brick” hasn’t exactly been traced back in basketball history, fans have been using it for a long time.

When Is A Brick A Brick?

As we previously stated, a brick differs from a typical miss, but how? One way is when the shot is so badly off-target that it makes a “clank” noise as it hits the rim louder than usual. A shot that completely misses the rim and clanks off the backboard is another telltale sign of a brick.

Bricks aren’t always bricks just because of the severity of one miss; sometimes they’re bricks because of how frequently a player keeps missing, as we saw in the Steph Curry video earlier. Although Curry is arguably the best three-point shooter in the history of the sport, he is still only a human, and when he has a game where he shoots 1-11, he has entered bricklayer territory.

Another intriguing aspect of this trend is that while many players have excellent field goal percentages overall, some of them can score buckets at the foul line or three-point line. This anomaly is well illustrated by Shaquille O’Neal. Shaq’s career field goal percentage is almost 59%, which is excellent for someone who averaged 16 shots per game over his career. However, his career foul shot percentage of 52.7% places him close to the top of the list of worst foul shooters ever.

The term “brick” may not have a clear origin, but anyone who has played basketball for a sufficient amount of time will understand exactly what is meant when it is used to describe a shot. See more about What Is Top Of The Key Basketball

What Is A Bricklayer?

On a basketball court, nobody ever wants to be known as a bricklayer. Bricklayers consistently miss their targets by a wide margin. The phrase can be used to describe a bad shooter in general or even a good shooter who is having a bad night.

For instance, big men like Shaquille O’Neal and Ben Wallace were known for being bricklayers from the foul line. Shaq’s struggles at the free-throw line were well known because he only converted 52.7% of his attempts.

Wallace was even worse because during his NBA career, he only made 41.4% of his free throw attempts. Throughout his 16-year playing career, the 2004 NBA champion won the Defensive Player of the Year award four times. This only serves to demonstrate that basketball is about more than just offense.

However, as we previously stated, even the best shooters can be referred to as bricklayers if they have a string of losing games under their belt. Steph Curry, who is arguably the best three-point shooter in the league right now and has six times led the league in three-point field goals, is a prime example of this.

Curry only connected on two of his 15 attempts at three-point field goals during a 2015 playoff game against the Cavaliers. This only serves to demonstrate how, in some strange circumstances, even the best NBA players can be compared to bricklayers. See more about Air Ball In Basketball

Fame Bricklayers 

Even though anyone can shoot bricks, there have been some players in the league’s history who have excelled above the rest. Here are some of the worst (or should we say best?) bricklayers ever. Enjoy!

Chris Dudley

Due to his size, tenacity, and hustle, Dudley, an old-school NBA player from the 1980s and 1990s, managed to survive. That’s pretty much it, then. When people inquire about the worst shooter in NBA history, they frequently mention him, and with good reason.

His 46% career free throw rate was appalling. You probably wonder why his percentage wasn’t worse after viewing this video of his shooting form. He occasionally shot around 35% from the charity stripe during his time in the league, with his worst shooting season coming in at a pitiful 30%. You can see why he never received any individual awards from his poor performance at the assembly line.

Shaquille O’neal

With a resume that includes fourteen All-NBA teams, fifteen All-Stars, four NBA championships, and an NBA MVP award, Shaq Diesel was among the most dominant players in NBA history. After delving into Shaq’s statistics, I’m left wondering what kind of numbers he might have attained had he not had a career foul shooting percentage of only 52%.

Throughout his entire career, O’Neal attempted nearly ten free throws per game, making just over half of them. Over the course of his career, he would have scored over 1200 more points if his percentage had even just been increased to the point where he was making an additional free throw per game.

Russell Westbrook

On the court, Westbrook is a force to be reckoned with. When you see him in person, it is difficult to imagine any guard in the league who can stop him from getting by them for an easy basket because of how fast and physically dominant he is during games. Given how awful he is from behind the arc, it is extremely puzzling why he would keep taking three-point shots.

Even though Westbrook’s career three-point shooting percentage is just above 30%, or.304% to be exact, he still makes them in crucial situations. Even though he is shooting just 25% of his threes this season, he still averages four per game. The comparison between his dreadful free throw percentage, which is a respectable 80%, and his abhorrent three-point numbers is interesting.

Ben Wallace

Wallace raised the bar for bricklaying for the player who holds the title of NBA history’s worst statistical free throw shooter. Wallace is intriguing because the rest of his game was very successful. On his way to winning the NBA championship in 2004 he won Defensive Player of the Year four times, was named to five All-NBA teams, and won two titles for rebounding.

Now for the ugly: He is known as the “worst ever” because of his 41.4% free-throw shooting percentage. Most professional basketball players would be licking their chops to get a shot that easy if they could shoot a 15-footer in a controlled environment with no one guarding them. Not Wallace, as you can see in this image from one of his less desirable moments in his career.

FAQs

The Bottom Line

The humble brick has been put to many uses in The evolution of English. The word came to our language from the Middle Dutch bricke, and has retained its original meaning (a block of clay that has been shaped into a rectangle, and is used for building purposes) for more than 500 years now.

But along the way, it has acquired a bewildering array of new meanings, such as (but not limited to) “a toy block,” “a good fellow,” “brick cheese,” and “gaffe.” The basketball sense of brick is one of the more recent ones, with written evidence dating from the beginning of the 1970s.

Last but not least, I want to thank you for reading.