The art of the floater
How Raptors guard Quickley mastered an NBA shot born from survival
It’s one thing for NBA players to know their strengths and play to them. It’s just as important that they know their limitations and find ways to mitigate them.
Too short to handle all those big guys near the rim? Not physical enough for the inevitable contact trying to get to the rim? Bored with a playground game of H-O-R-S-E and looking for something new? The floater’s your shot.
Now a ubiquitous offensive weapon used by NBA players up and down almost every roster, it’s a shot manufactured to handle physical limitations. Employed primarily by shorter players in a giant’s game, it’s a high-arcing soft shot that gives them a better chance to elude longarmed defenders and score close to the basket.
“Being younger, having to shoot the ball over bigger players my whole life, that was a way I could score,” Raptors point guard Immanuel Quickley said last month on a road trip in Houston.
“Getting all the way to the rim? Sometimes I can’t, so I have to shoot the floater.”
Quickley — a slightly built, sixfoot-three guard acquired from the New York Knicks in late December — is among the most proficient and frequent floater shooters the Raptors have ever had. Other small guards such as T.J. Ford, Jarrett Jack, José Calderón and Mark Jackson had the ability to take the shot — and physical stature to need it. But it’s far more in vogue now that it was when they were wearing a Toronto uniform.
Across the league, all-stars such as Trae Young, Chris Paul and Steph Curry have helped popularize the shot.
According to NBA.com about one-third of Quickley’s field-goal attempts come at the rim or within 10 feet of the basket; he makes about 50 per cent of those. His bread and butter is a three-point field goal. He’s been 41.6 per cent effective with Toronto from the three, and takes about half his shots from beyond the arc.
But when he drives to the basket, he has the floater at his disposal. It’s a shot born out of necessity by small guards in among the trees. Sure, there’s no Bill Russell swatting every shot into the hands of Celtics teammates to start a lethal fast break, but basketball remains full of Monsters At The Rim.
How’s a guy to survive? “Those shots, when you’re coming to the rim and there’s a really, really good shot protector, when you have the Rudy Goberts of the world, when you have (Victor) Wembanyama now in the league, you’ve got to be creative with some of the finishes there,” Raptors coach Darko Rajakovic said.
“That’s how players in this league are constantly getting better. They’re constantly finding ways to score against different personnel.”
With the absence of Scottie Barnes and Jakob Poeltl for extended periods because of injuries, Quickley will be relied upon to create even more offence. He had a career-high 18 assists in a loss Thursday in Phoenix, and he’s going to have a heavier scoring load.
His floater opportunities might lessen, without the pick-and-roll action with Poeltl, limiting his drives in the paint. But he can’t forget it entirely because of who isn’t playing. It’s still a vital part of this game.
“Any time somebody (Barnes) that plays 40 minutes a game (is missing) everything changes (but) you try to keep it as much as you can,” Quickley said this past week.
Quickley is an accomplished three-point shooter, but he needs to have much more in his arsenal if he’s to become a bona fide starter on a good NBA team and he knows it.
“I think the best scorers in the world have it, so you have to have it: the in-between game, mid-range floaters — being able to score from all three levels, really,” he said in a recent interview. “The mid-range game and the floater is definitely something you have to have to be a great scorer.”
Big men understand what the shot does, and how it’s been weaponized over the years.
Jarrett Allen, the rim-protecting Cleveland Cavaliers centre, was aware of its implication years ago when he played for the Brooklyn Nets.
“It definitely does (change your mentality),” Allen once said. “Somebody hits a couple in a row, you definitely want to contest the next one. But … if I step up to try to contest a floater, they’re just gonna have a layup with the big man behind me.”
The “gotcha” moment for an offensive player.
“And you’re trying to get to the (free-throw) line as well,” Quickley said. “If you’re shooting like 90 per cent from the line, try to get there as much as possible.”
The shot has been around for years — one-time Raptor Jackson’s teardrop might be the first that fans of this NBA era can recall — and it’s not the sole domain of smaller guards any more.
Forwards, centres, just about anyone who plays the game has it in the arsenal. Watch seven-foot Poeltl flip in a shot from about six feet to understand how prevalent it is.
“(Denver Nuggets centre and twotime NBA most valuable player) Nikola Jokic, he has two older brothers that used to beat him up when they were playing and he had to find all those different angles and ways to score,” Rajakovic said.
There are some subtle differences that the cognoscenti may notice, but few others will.
A floater — jumping and flipping the ball over a defender — isn’t quite the same as a runner, which is launched off one stationary foot, sort of a reverse Dirk Nowitzki onefooted fadeaway.
The result, though, is the same. Smaller players get a big advantage.
“It evens things out,” Quickley said.
The shot is not a weapon in isolation, however. It’s a setup.
“I think that the floater allows some other things to open up,” Rajakovic said. “When he’s shooting the floater, a lot of times the big (defender) is the one that’s coming to contest shots, which is opening up a lane for a roller to roll to the rim, maybe for a late drop-off (pass). Also, it helps with offensive rebounding (by creating space at the rim).”
With Quickley, expanding his game remains the priority. He’s got a reputation for its effectiveness, but if he’s going to be a good NBA starter there must be more.
“It’s definitely something we talk about for the next layer of him in player development is ability to get all the way to the rim and be able to score, being able to play through a lot of contact and being able to finish,” Rajakovic said.
Rajakovic, who has been around the game for about three decades, understands the floater isn’t new. But he also knows it speaks to the creativity of the modern player as the game continues to evolve.
Quickley talked about using it to offset his size. Rajakovic added some historical context.
“In Europe, the first guy that started using that shot was (Spanish star and former Memphis Grizzlies guard) Juan Carlos Navarro and they called his shot La Bamba, and it’s really funny how he came up with that shot,” the Raptors coach said.
“It was not a coach that showed him that. He had two older brothers, and when he was playing against them he just needed to find a way to get the ball to the rim. He started using those shots. It came out of necessity, you know.
“A lot of times coaches, we want to take credit for some of those things, but at the end of the day it’s players that find solutions.”
By playing to strengths and overcoming limitations.