Put the floaties on: Jae Crowder keeps adding to his game with Suns

PHOENIX — “I think that puts players in a box when you label a guy like that. It puts a cap on them. I don’t think I’m a basketball player with a cap. I play basketball. I’m a basketball player. I just make plays and that’s what it comes down to.”

A wing in the NBA who shoots 3s and plays defense at an adequate level while not averaging at least 20 points per game will, more often than not, be labeled a 3-and-D guy.

Phoenix Suns forward Jae Crowder has heard that for the majority of his career.

Players don’t like it, and when you think about it, of course they don’t!

“We hoopers man. We work on our games every day,” Suns wing Mikal Bridges said Friday, a guy who gets that 3-and-D tag all the time.

Crowder is an ultra-skilled basketball player. So is Bridges. It’s just easy to forget this when they are compared to others at the absolute highest level.

Case in point, Crowder’s floater, a push shot that was barely used. But this season, Crowder is making it a part of his game.

Before we get to that, it’s important to rewind a couple of years for the context of Crowder’s off-the-bounce game prior to Phoenix. He’s been doing this a while.

“Still labeled a 3-and-D guy,” he said as I was midway through a question on the upcoming numbers.

Crowder attempted at least 25% of his total shots at the rim in each of his first seven seasons, per Cleaning the Glass. While that’s still a fairly below average mark, it made up for a solid amount of his offensive production before it dropped to 11% last season.

The 32-year-old has never been an explosive slasher, but Crowder’s first step earlier in his career was deceptively quick, enough of a headstart to get to the basket, where he obviously is fearless taking on contact.

In his later years with the Boston Celtics, Crowder was an active body in transition and on cuts, similar to a current-day Bridges when it comes to where he was getting a lot of his points from.

Looking at Crowder’s outings in the 2015-16 season when he was scoring 20+ points, it wasn’t just because of some hot shooting from deep. He was finding ways to get buckets inside.

Crowder’s not getting his head above the rim by any means here, but he shows in these snippets why he shot 68% and 73% at the rim in his last two Celtics seasons, respectively. If defenders were giving him space or not taking the threat of a move off the dribble seriously, he took advantage.

Six years later, there’s a little less giddy-up in his legs now. Getting to the rim isn’t as consistent of an option anymore, but Crowder is still getting that same amount of space.

“Obviously, I’m not trying to challenge guys at the rim like I was a few years ago but I still can get downhill on guys, I still [feel when I got] a step on a defender,” Crowder said Friday. “And I know the game. I just read the game very well. I think that helps me at times too.”

So, how about just a bit further out, floater territory?

That’s the addition to Crowder’s game this year.

Through 52 games, he’s taken just over one shot per game from 4-14 feet. The 54 attempts already double the 27 he had last season and the 26 the year prior.

He is 28-of-54 on those looks, a career-best 52%. It makes up for 14% of his shots, also a career high.

Back in December, Crowder described it as a “playoff-type shot” that he still works on every day. He noted that good defenses aren’t going to allow you to get a clean lane to the rim, so it’s about finding that pocket of space and capitalizing on it.

“I’m trying to think ahead, I’m trying to play ahead,” he said at the time.

Sometimes teams are pushing Crowder off the line to force him to make a play off the dribble. That’s where the floater comes in handy.

He can also get the occasional bucket in a pick-and-roll. The opposing defense will likely mark it as a “we’ll take that” shot, but it has now become a comfortable shot for Crowder.

On the types of possessions he’d find in Boston as a cutter or slip-screening diver, he’s getting to the floater there too.

This one is a Crowder favorite, baiting in the overzealous closeout on his drive to draw contact for free throws.

Early in the season, head coach Monty Williams had a conversation with Crowder that led to his player going to that shot more consistently.

“He’s been doing it in spots all year long,” Williams said Thursday of Crowder attacking. “We had one conversation earlier in the year, and I hope it was a benefit to him. I see Jae having more in his game than he’s able to display or needs to display. Whatever the case may be, I was like, ‘Just do it’. He makes winning decisions. He’s gotten so much more comfortable shooting that floater.

“I think it helps us to have guys like Jae and Cam (Johnson) and Mikal, primary rotation guys that can play in different dimensions and I think he’s done a really good job of mixing in the catch shot, the pump-fake side-step shot and now the attacking to make a play.”

As you can imagine, that did a lot for Crowder’s confidence.

“When you hear it from your leader like that, it gives you a good sense of what you supposed to do and what you can do within his way of playing the game,” the forward said Friday. “Within Suns basketball, I just want to play free and play open and play a free-flowing type game and he definitely opened doors for me to be that.”

Bridges noted how Crowder having that weapon in that area of the floor is something that “makes it even more dangerous” when the ball is humming around and Crowder is given opportunities to dribble by closeouts.

You may have picked up on this already, but if you haven’t, go back to watch some of those floaters again. After makes, you’ll see Crowder looks like he’s putting on imaginary sleeves of sorts.

Those aren’t sleeves. They are floaties, a.k.a the flotation devices you’ll see children wear on their upper arms to float in the water.

Mikal with the float show. pic.twitter.com/8UHEMSRoOP

— Phoenix Suns (@Suns) November 22, 2021

Get it? The Suns are a funny bunch.

As for the origin story, Crowder said Bridges started it.

“Nooooo. No, no, no, no, no, no, no,” Bridges said. “Jae started it. Nine-nine started it. I just joined it. I remember when he did it, and I saw him, a person like me, I’m like a kid with that. I saw somebody do it, ‘That’s a nice celebration! I might add on!'”

He added on.

Keep an eye on when either of them hits a floater and you’ll see it. You know who else sees it?

Williams!

“Every once and a while I’ll do it in practice but I have no idea what it means so I probably shouldn’t do it,” the head coach said. “I see it and I just laugh. I always say do whatever you want as long as you’re getting back on defense. I don’t care. I’ve seen the guys do it. I think it’s funny.

“When we were in practice the other day and Jae shot a floater and I was at halfcourt and I started doing it, everybody thought I was having a back spasm or something.”

Crowder appreciated that.

“Yeah! He surprised us with that last week!” he said. “He sees everything. He just letting us know he sees all of us, all our little celebrations and stuff like that.”

To go back to the idea of Crowder expanding his game with the floater, that’s something veterans across the league do all the time.

“I think it’s important,” Williams said. “One, it allows for you to bring value to your own career but I think as you get older and things start to change, you don’t have the bounce that you once had. You better learn how to use what you got and I think that’s the key to staying in the league.”

Williams referenced the viral video clips of a young Chris Paul flying around the court with ludicrous speed and agility, something the 36-year-old no longer has in his arsenal, but he’s still just as lethal. Just in different ways.

“He’s just figured it out,” Williams said of Paul.

So when a 25-year-old like Bridges in his fourth season sees how Crowder in Year 10 and Paul in Year 17 are still evolving, that matters.

“That’s why I love having these vets, man,” Bridges said. “My whole thing is to just try to be the best player I can be when it’s all said and done. … So seeing Jae and everybody else doing that at the age they’re at is just dope. Because I see myself at that point, at 29, 30, to keep trying to expand as much as I can. It just shows a lot in more ways than they know, to the young guys.”

The Suns are Crowder’s seventh team. He’s bounced around a fair bit, in a role that some teams might have viewed as replaceable enough. But he’s been a winner most places he’s been, and at this stage of his career, he’s playing a part in shaping the next generation of them too.

“Being around Jae, man, and learning so much from him,” Bridges said. “It’s not easy sometimes, you’re not getting as many shots up but also doing all the other little things. … I know teams let him go sometimes or think he’s not worth it but he’s worth every single penny.

“I’m just happy we have him and we’re not taking him for granted because I definitely sure ain’t.”

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