NBA shooters explain how Devin Vassell made the 2026 NBA playoffs’ most absurd shot

This 2026 NBA postseason’s wildest made shot belongs to Devin Vassell. In Wednesday’s Game 2 blowout romp over the Minnesota Timberwolves, the San Antonio guard made a corner 3-pointer that’s hard to even name.

A basketball-less jumper? A jump-and-catch-and-shoot 3? A 3-point alley-oop? Watch Vassell shoot this; let me know if you have any better ideas.

We’ve occasionally seen shots like this one, like this one from Blake Griffin back in 2015 or a similar make from Derrick White last season, but what’s most impressive about Vassell’s is how little it feels like some trick shot or irreplicable moment. This shot wasn’t so different from the average no-dip jumper, another shooting technique that’s become increasingly common for the league’s best shooters when circumstances call for quicker releases.

To shoot those no-dip 3s, “You have to start the shooting motion before you catch the ball,” Clippers forward Nicolas Batum told me earlier this season. That doesn’t typically include the jump of the jump shot, too, like Vassell did on Wednesday.

But in some sense, this shot was the final evolution of a skill that seems completely incomprehensible to me: That NBA players have become so skilled they can accurate fling the basketball into the basket even when it never dips below their head. And when this post exploded for nearly one million views, it proved to me I’m not the only one who feels that way, which led me to ask several shooters, like Batum, how the hell they did it.

Batum is the league’s most prolific no-dip shooter, it’s safe to say. This past season, Batum took just 10 shots inside the 3-point line while launching 228 shots from distance. (His 96 percent 3-point rate was the highest mark in the NBA this past regular season.) All but 15 of those 3-point attempts were categorized as catch-and-shoot attempts, many of which Batum shot using no-dip mechanics.

“I’ve been doing that for 20 years,” Batum told me. “I don’t remember (how I learned it). Some people ask me, but I don’t know, it’s just my thing.”

Batum refers to the no-dip 3 as a we-never-know shot; others in the league have called it the catch-high-keep-high jumper. When asked how he replaces the power that’s generated from the ‘dip’, the down-and-back-up motion that generates momentum for the basketball before it’s flicked to its target 25 feet away, he can’t even explain it.

“It’s not how I think about it,” he said. “It’s just about the body motion. Twenty percent of shooting is in your arms, 80 percent you got to find from your legs, core, and the arms will do the rest. You gotta do the 80 percent before you catch the ball (on no-dip jumpers). That’s why the timing has to be perfect. It’s not an easy shot for sure.”

Shooters disagreed about how different the no-dip mechanics feel from their natural mechanics. At this point in Batum’s career, it’s the technique he prefers. “I never really drop (the ball) under my chest,” he said. Sacramento’s Doug McDermott agreed shooting 3s with no dip felt like an extension of his jump shot, not a separate skill.

Batum and McDermott, who are 37 and 34 years old, respectively, have been doing this for a long time. Younger shooters, however, were more willing to refer to this as skill with some separation from their typical shot. “It’s a lot different,” Dallas’ Max Christie said. Memphis’ Cam Spencer described it as a “completely different rhythm,” and Batum’s teammate Kobe Sanders said, “It’s basically another whole jump shot, so it does take work.”

“Guys get their rhythm and power (from the dip),” Spencer explained. “When I don’t dip, I have to use my legs. I preload the shot (before the ball arrives) and go up with in one motion upwards. It just takes a lot of practice because it’s so different from every shot you usually take.”

That’s how Vassell made that 3-point alley oop: While this technique was forced upon him due to an expiring shot clock, the same mechanics he’d have used for a more traditional catch-and-shoot jumper were used when he rose up into the air. Like the no-dip 3, his body’s own momentum was transferred to the ball and its successful arc despite its late arrival to the process.

Players like Batum, whose technique has evolved to encompass these mechanics, are rare. Most players only shoot these no-dip 3s when faster shot releases are situationally required of them. “The normal dip shot is a lot more comfortable and effective,” Christie said. Christie practices shooting from different pockets, and “there are times where you got to shoot from them”, he said, but an open 3 with his most practiced mechanics is always preferred.

Due to the shot’s increasing usage, the NBA has also seen more moments, like this example from Marcus Smart below, that illustrate how difficult this shot can be and how bad it can look when it goes wrong.

The no-dip jumper is situational beyond the opposing defense or late clock situations, too: It can’t happen if the pass can’t be caught high. There are also players who never get the hang of it no matter how much they practice it. “You need that one-motion movement,” said Batum, a reference to the shooting mechanics that players like Stephen Curry uses. Retired 15-year veteran Devin Harris, inspired by his former teammate Anthony Morrow’s success with the shot, always warmed up with them and still never felt he mastered the technique despite his effort.

We can’t know when we’ll next see another shot like Vassell’s. Due to the 3-point revolution and the shared characteristics with the increasingly common no-dip shot, it’s quite possible shots are made in this manner with more frequency in the coming years. Perhaps never as an intention choice, but one that players are increasingly more adept at when required to shoot it like this.

Batum expressed only one concern with the shot’s rising popularity, an anxiety he has about one of Vassell’s teammates.

“I just hope (Victor) Wembanyama doesn’t learn it (the no-dip 3),” Batum said. “If Wemby starts doing it, it’s over.”

Tim Cato is ALLCITY’s national NBA writer currently based in Dallas. He can be reached at tcato@alldlls.com or on X at @tim_cato.