Hhmm. I was assuming the purpose of such a visualization was to understand the offense, which can't be done without including free throws. Perhaps it serves some other purpose, like employing "front-end developers".
Visualizing the ratio points from the line vs the rest of the floor could be interesting, but it doesn't say much about how they run their offense.
As others noted, free throws occur at the same place every time and would seriously skew the chart - especially for lowpost/longrange players like James Harden.
Maybe a step closer would be showing where a player was fouled that led to shots from the line.
I was assuming the purpose of such a visualization was to understand the offense, which can't be done without including free throws.
This is an accurate assertion -- teams like the Heat live and die by their free throw attempts -- but the article isn't looking at offense. It examines how well players shoot around the court (as the title states).
Realistically, heatmaps with free throws will just have orange-to-dark red circles at the free throw line. That's boring.
