Ty Jerome is shooting floaters…

Ty Jerome opened Memphis’s season with 45 points against Utah, the most by a Memphis player in a season opener and 12 more than he had ever scored in an NBA game. After that first week he was named the Western Conference Player of the Week, the first weekly award of his career.

Eight games in, he is averaging 26.6 points. His latest was a 128-97 loss to Oklahoma City on Nov. 6, when he scored 21 on 14 shots.

Four years ago he was on a two-way contract with Golden State. Three years ago he played two games for Cleveland before an ankle injury and surgery ended his season. What carried him from there to here is the floater, a shot he has leaned on since his rookie year and is taking more often, and making more often, than ever.

Around the league, about one shot in 11 is a floater, and 45.3% of them go in. For Jerome, floaters are 38.1% of his shots, close to two in five. He has made 34 of 56, or 60.7%.

At the league’s rate a floater is worth about 0.91 points, less than the average three (1.05 points a try). Jerome’s have been worth 1.21.

Almost all of them come on the way to the rim. All but two of his 56 were driving floaters, and seven went off the glass. Most come from between 8 and 16 feet, past the restricted area and short of the free throw line.

The touch took years. Jerome has said his trainer in college had him practice floaters the way other players practice threes, and that he saw the shot as a way to set himself apart in the NBA. As a rookie in Phoenix he made 41.4% of his floaters, below the league’s 43.4%. He has been above the league every season since, and in his last season in Cleveland he made 56.9% of 218, the most floaters he has taken in a season. This season it’s 60.7%.

Most of the jump from last season’s 19.7 points is playing time. He’s averaging 30.4 minutes, up from 22.6 last season and 6.5 more than his previous high, 23.9 in Oklahoma City in 2020-21. Per minute, he’s shooting about as often as he did a year ago.

What changed is how he gets his points.

He has cut back on the step-back three, which he made 38.5% of the time last season, from 12.1% of his shots to 6.1%. The floater and the free throw line took its place. He’s getting 0.35 free throws for every shot, up from 0.26, and at Sacramento on Oct. 25 he made all 14 of his, five more than he had ever made in a game.

In Cleveland, a fifth of his shots were threes that weren’t pull-ups or step-backs, and 53 of the 56 he made came off a teammate’s pass. In Memphis he makes his own. This season 74.3% of his baskets came without an assist, and he is averaging more than five assists himself. “The confidence that he’s playing with is incredible,” Memphis coach Tuomas Iisalo said after the win at Sacramento on Oct. 25.

Memphis has put the ball in his hands at the end of close games too. In the last five minutes with the score within five, he has taken 17 shots this season and made 11. In his previous two seasons combined, 85 games, he took 11. Against New Orleans on Nov. 2, his 10-foot floater with 4.6 seconds left tied the game at 124 and forced overtime. With 18.8 seconds left in overtime, his layup and free throw put Memphis ahead 134-133, before New Orleans won it 135-134 at the line. At Utah on Oct. 26, his two free throws with 11.6 seconds left put away a 110-105 win.

Teams have slowed him before. The clearest example came in the 2025 East semifinals, when he was coming off Cleveland’s bench against Indiana. Over five games he shot 15 of 50, made 7 of 23 floaters and attempted seven free throws. His minutes fell from 29 in Game 1 to 11 in Game 5. In Game 2, Aaron Nesmith and Andrew Nembhard guarded him for 29 possessions between them, and he didn’t score on either. He finished 1 of 14. A round earlier, against Miami, he had averaged 16.3 points.

Indiana went back to the same two on Nov. 4. Nembhard guarded him for 19 possessions and gave up 3 points, Nesmith 15 possessions and 6. Half of his 20 shots were threes, and he attempted two free throws, his fewest of the season. He still made all five of his floaters and scored 23, and Memphis was 11 points better than Indiana with him on the floor in a 107-103 loss.

His worst nights tend to look alike. Of his 23 Memphis games with 10 or more shots, these are the best seven and the worst seven by true shooting.

In his best games he got to the rim twice as often, drew about twice as many free throws for every shot and rarely took a step-back three. In his worst, the step-back threes went from 6% of his shots to 15%, and he made 3 of 16.

Jerome was the 24th pick in 2019, and his draft rights changed hands twice before he played a game. He spent his rookie season in Phoenix, went to Oklahoma City in the Chris Paul trade, was traded to Houston and waived the next day in 2022, and signed a two-way contract with Golden State. Cleveland signed him in 2023. In 2024-25 he finished third in Sixth Man of the Year voting and made 43.9% of his threes. That summer Memphis signed him to a deal worth $28 million over three years.

He has had to come back from injuries along the way. He had hip surgery as a high school senior, a sports hernia procedure with Oklahoma City in March 2022 and right ankle surgery with Cleveland in January 2024. A high grade right calf strain in his first Memphis preseason kept him out until late January, and he played 15 games last season. The 30.4 minutes he plays now are the most of his career.

The site’s Player development page measures each season on its own: points per 100 possessions compared with an average player, from lineup results. By that measure Jerome was below average in each of his first four seasons. He went from −1.2 at 25 to +3.0 at 27. Of the 192 players who played 1,000 or more possessions at 25 and again at 27 since 2016-17, five rose more: Grant Williams, Ivica Zubac, Austin Reaves, Jalen Brunson and Payton Pritchard. He held it in Memphis the next season, +2.9 over 733 possessions.

The quickest way to read a Jerome night is to count the floaters and the free throws. In his seven best Memphis games he made 29 of 40 floaters and got 0.37 free throws for every shot. In his seven worst he got half as many free throws and half as many layups, and took more than twice as many step-back threes.

Four years after a two-way contract, Memphis runs its offense through him.

Put Jerome on the court with any of his teammates and see what that group has done together this season.

Build a lineup

TJJerome

1 of 5

With Ty Jerome on the floor: 215 minutes, +16.2 per 100 possessions, likely +3.8.

With Ty Jerome on the floor

215minutes+16.2net per 100121.7offense105.5defense+3.8likely per 100+1.9team without him

CBBoozer–JWWells–TJJeromeOnCCCoward–JGGrant–CSSpencer–ZEEdey–ISStewart–GJJackson–QPPost–SPPippen Jr.–KMMurray–JSSmall–OPProsper–THHendricks–

Beside each player: this group with him added, per 100 possessions.ClearOpen