It’s March 6, 2023. The Best in the West are about to take a nosedive, with every blogger and their grandma about to weigh in on the race relations component of the MVP race. Nikola Jokic, then in the lead for his third consecutive MVP award, does not play impressive defense, as he is outscored by Jakob Poeltl. The Nuggets win, but go on to lose four straight afterwards (including a loss to Toronto in the fourth game). In many ways, Poeltl’s ability to humiliate Jokic around the rim — forcing the Nuggets’ star into the air before casually waltzing around him — sets the tone for the MVP race as Joel Embiid shortly takes the lead in the polls behind his defensive acumen.
For a brief moment, Poeltl offered the impact of the NBA’s biggest stars at the center position. In only his third game as a Raptor, he put up 30 points, nine rebounds, and six blocks in a win. In his next game, 21 points and 18 rebounds. A few nights later, 23 points, 13 rebounds, and 3 blocks. (He was stacking up assists and steals in those games, too.) His numbers have largely come back down to earth as opponents have adjusted to Toronto’s new offensive approach, but he remains near the top of the league in one category: efficiency. Purely on the basis of field-goal percentage, Poeltl is in the top 20 in the league. Since he joined the Raptors, he’s been in fourth.
It’s not easy to point to the exact skill that allows Poeltl to be one of the most efficient finishers in the NBA. Except for on the rare yet impactful occasion when he is roused to vengeful anger, he doesn’t jump over opponents; in fact, he’s tied for 145th in the NBA in total dunks with 24. Starting centres rarely have so few dunks; players in that range are usually guards or intermittent rotation players. in fact, among centres with at least 1500 minutes this season, Poeltl has the third-fewest dunks, ahead of only Al Horford and Nikola Jokic. So, no, Poeltl is rarely skying over opponents (on the offensive end).
Neither does Poeltl have crafty finishes with English off the backboard. He’s a good finisher, no doubt. But he manages to put the ball in the net from close range without any of the usual accoutrements that accompany the league’s best. And, at least statistically, he is one of the league’s better finishers.
So to find the source of Poeltl’s source of success, one must look lower. It’s not in the air. It’s not on the rim. In fact, it’s all the way at the ground — Poeltl’s feet are his secret weapon.
“First off all, he’s done really good on his rolls, catching those in the mid-paint area, going downhill. He’s kind of faking up early and kinda sneaking past ‘em or underneath ‘em or using the rim to get all the way to the rim,” explained Nick Nurse.
Being able to “fake up early” and “kinda sneak past ‘em or underneath ‘em” is not easy. In fact, it’s so difficult that other players don’t have this ability. Poeltl didn’t even have it last time around as a Raptor.
“I think it’s a little unique,” said Nurse. “I don’t remember him doing that or even when we played against him doing that that much, so it’s kinda become a little unique for him to make that little fake and draw that guy up and get past him.”
The footwork is complex. Poeltl integrates an up-fake into his gather as he strides towards the rim. He usually does it on the catch as a roller, slightly shifting his momentum east-west during his pump fake (and gather) to wrong-foot his defender and finish with a simple layup. Arguably, the reason why Poeltl’s up-fake is unique is because it’s such difficult footwork to master.
And Poeltl is enormously efficient with the gather. I tracked all of his shots as a Raptor, and he attempted 25 shots (13.6 percent of his total shots as a Raptor) using his up-fake-and-gather, making 21. That’s good for 84-percent accuracy, a fair amount higher than his total percentage.
The reason why it’s so successful it’s because Poeltl is faking his second-most efficient shot: a floater. By my count, he’s made 18 of his 27 floater attempts as a Raptor, good for 66.7 percent from the field. (That is, by the way, the second-best mark on floaters league-wide over the same time period.) This time, showing just the makes — missed floaters are much less interesting than missed shots with unique footwork.
Interestingly, Poeltl is far less efficient when pump faking outside of his gather, or gathering for a layup without pump faking. His superpower is two-fold: pretending to shoot a floater while gathering, or shooting a floater. At seemingly every other component of finishing, he is merely solid. He can pump fake himself out of open shots and into contested ones, and if he doesn’t trick rim protectors into mistiming their contests, he’s not the most efficient when challenging them in midair.
Yet his two abilities are all he needs to be exceptional.
He attempts approximately two-thirds of his shots from 0-to-5 feet away from the net, and most of the remainder of his attempts from 5-to-8 feet. He is elite from within five feet, connecting on 71.3 percent. While he’s not as efficient in the short midrange, he’s still shooting an excellent 57.4 percent there. (Which is actually better compared to the rest of the league — he’s a very good finisher at the rim compared to his peers but one of the absolute best from the short midrange.) Those numbers tell the same story as the tape: He is excellent at floaters from 5-to-8 feet — so good that when defenders bite on the fake to contest a would-be floater, he creates a layup at which he is even more efficient.
There are many different kinds of finishers on the roll. There are the vertical spacers — think Tyson Chandler, circa 2010 — who rise up and thrash lobbed passes through the net. There are poppers, who hit triples. There are short rollers (like Poeltl or Thad Young circa 2020) who pause and dissect the defense before spraying passes through weak points to open up high-value triples. What Poeltl does most often, though, is even more valuable specifically for the Raptors. He catches the ball in the midrange on the roll and turns those touches into layups or layup-quality floaters. For the Raptors — who lack players who create layups for themselves, and aren’t the best 3-point shooting team — that is the best possible result the team could imagine.
Furthermore, the Raptors have pick-and-roll ballhandlers who aren’t elite at creating uncontested layups for teammates. For all his improvement as a playmaker, VanVleet is more comfortable putting bounce passes into the pocket of short rollers than he is creating layups with deep penetration. Pascal Siakam and Scottie Barnes haven’t consistently turned the corner at all in the pick and roll. Poeltl ameliorates Toronto’s pick-and-roll weaknesses and converts them into layups anyway. (Talk about alchemy.)
In many ways — despite not being a 3-point shooter — Poeltl is the perfect fit on the Raptors. (On both ends of the court.) Like so many of Toronto’s players, Poeltl simply finds his success in a way counterintuitive to the way the league is evolving. For him, it’s with floaters as the setup and footwork as the knockout.
