Trae Young gets a double screen high up, so he curls and accelerates towards the basket. Nice roll by Capella, and you can see Embiid trying to protect against the lob, so he is retreating. Trae just goes 1-2 into a silky smooth 1 handed floater that swishes. In a shocking game 1 win on the road against the number 1 seeded Philadelphia 76ers Young did this a few more times. And the defense couldn’t stop it. Thing is, his colleagues from other teams are doing it as well, and are extremely successful at it. Let me show you why the floater is becoming the go-to move in this new era of the NBA. What up everybody, my name is Stefan and this is Heat Check. Let’s get into it. In the past, there were so few players proficient with this shot that we could pinpoint them exactly. Guys like Tony Parker, Mike Conley immediately come to mind as guys who consistently relied on it. And Derrick Rose is another big one, even tho his early explosiveness and dunking ability were the main attraction and shifted the focus away from his proficiency with the tear drop. Today however we have a whole wave, a new generation of players who see the floater as a legitimate weapon in their arsenal, and one that they go-to even with the game on the line. Trae Young used it to literally win a game against the Knicks in round 1 of the playoffs. Tie game, he gets a full head of steam, runs past his defender, and flips it up for the game winner. And Ja Morant, took his team to the playoffs with 2 consecutive floaters against the Golden State Warriors, to ice the game of the play-in tournament. He’s been criticized for his shooting but nobody can stop these flip shots. Check out the drive inside the paint, the beautiful spin and the 1 hander straight through the net. And of course, you see the excitement immediately after. It all becomes clear when we take a look at the top floatmen in the NBA this season. They are all 22 years or younger, and they’re all guards. Leader of the pack is Trae Young with 4 floaters per game which I was even surprised by that amount. Ja Morant of course is on here as well. And we also have the SexLand duo from the Cavs Colin Sexton and Darius Garland who started off pretty hot, but then fell off in the standings. Still the future is bright for these guys. And if you watched the Mavs vs Clippers series, you know exactly why Luka is high on this list. From the pick and roll, he puts his defender on his hip, and it’s checkmate, as it’s either this shot, or the lob for the dunk. Rounding things off is Emanuel Quickley from the New York Knicks, who if you follow this channel closely, you know that I have a video made on this exact topic earlier in the season. You notice that these are all quick guards who can get past their defender and attack the paint. So once the help defender comes, usually a big man protecting the basket, they just put it up so high that it cannot be blocked. Tony Parker explained how he became so comfortable with the floater and how it helped his game tremendously: TONY PARKER INTERVIEW There is a major shift in the way guards finish in today’s era as opposed to the previous generation. If guys like CP3 for example, went to the mid range pull up once they beat their defender, today it’s either the 3 point shot from almost anywhere, the limitless range that we’re witnessing, which forces the defense to cover way outside, and automatically that opens up a lot of room for these shifty guards to run past the primary man, and go to the paint, and from there you already know, the floater and the swish. As new wave of players enters the league, new superstars are born, and with that, we get a new style of play. We can see it changing right before our eyes. I personally love this shot as a weapon in a player’s bag. Let me know what you think down in the comments. That’s it for now, subscribe and talk to you in the next one. Peace out.