Lob Cities: Who's throwing (and catching) alley-oops?

A dive into basketball's most exciting play

The alley-oop is the most exciting play in basketball. That brief moment where a ballhandler puts the rock up in the air, and you wonder, Is that a floater or a pass? Then, some rocket-propelled giant blasts up and slams it home, answering the question with a rim-shaking finality.

There is just something about the alley-oop that’s mesmerizing. The mind-meld between passer and finisher, the joy that comes from a combined effort. “Assists make two people happy, points just make one people happy,” the sage Nikola Jokic once pointed out. I’d argue that alley-oops make everyone happy.

Watching Stephon Castle lofting lob after lob during the NBA Cup championship had me wondering who the most prolific oopers have been this season, so I dug into some play-by-play data to find out!

I’ve looked at this in the past (during the Luka Doncic and the Lobgoblins’ run to the Finals — sorry, Mavs fans), but never at the leaguewide, individual level. I expected the list to be peppered with flashy passers like Doncic and LaMelo Ball, but there were also some unexpected names.

Through the first third of the season (data is through Thursday night’s games), we’ve had 19 passers connect on at least 10 alley-oops. Here are your most prolific highlight machines:

Doncic, predictably, has thrown the most alley-oops overall, even tossing three last night alone. He has been the premier lob-tosser in the league for a long time, and he’s made hay with the spring-heeled Jaxson Hayes and new teammate Deandre Ayton. He’s assisting on an alley-oop every 20.8 minutes.

There’s a reason that Ayton is suddenly dunking on a career-high 21% of his field goal attempts, obliterating his previous mark. He isn’t asked to self-create anymore; he simply needs to wait, and the ball will find him eventually. This isn’t the most exciting alley-oop you’ll ever see, but it is effective:

(Ayton has often been criticized for a lack of aggressiveness around the rim, so it’s kind of funny that he leads the league in alley-oop layups, with nine. We’ll talk more about the alley-oop finishers below.)

I was pleasantly surprised to see my instincts about Stephon Castle were correct: He actually leads this group in alley-oop frequency, throwing one every 20.2 minutes.

Castle, of course, has developed ESP with Wembanyama this year, as we highlighted in our NBA Cup championship coverage. He isn’t just a one-Wemby pony, however, as he’s almost as likely to pass it up to Luke Kornet (as we’ll see below the break). Few players in the league take advantage of a court’s third dimension quite like Castle.

You’d expect point guards like Cade Cunningham, Davion Mitchell (the Kel’el Ware effect), and Ball to be on here. Ball had back-to-back alley-oops just last night! Ja Morant hasn’t played much this year, but he’s still the fourth-most-prolific thrower on a per-minute basis.

Point-forwards Deni Avdija, Franz Wagner, and Jalen Johnson are surrounded by bouncy athletes and have access to passing angles that their shorter counterpoints don’t. Smaller players toss with arc to teammates who tower over them; these guys throw frozen ropes to peers:

Two names on here surprised me more than the rest. The first player who raised my eyebrow was Payton Pritchard, but perhaps it should have stayed where it was, given Pritchard’s advancements as a playmaker this season. He’s averaging a career-high five assists per game after never sniffing four before (a trend that holds on a per-possession basis, too), and the addition of the always-eager Neemias Queta to the lineup has created some volcanic chemistry. They’ve developed perfect timing together:

The second unexpected name: Derik Queen! The Pelican rookie is one of just two true big men on the list (the other being Alperen Şengün), and he’s quickly shown himself to be one of the sweetest-slingin’ bigs around. We’ve talked about Queen’s touch on passes before, but he’s only grown more confident and in control since then.

In case you’re wondering, Nikola Jokic just missed the cutoff, with nine oops tossed. The injury to Aaron Gordon really hurt him in the alley-oop department.

So that’s the passing side of things. Naturally, you’ll want to know who is finishing all these pretty dimes. Well, here you go: