Max Floyd carries on family name as Lavaca basketball player

With the name of one of his relatives on his school’s gymnasium, it was perhaps destiny Max Floyd was going to play basketball for Lavaca.

Floyd’s great grandfather, Davis Floyd, was a former coach for the Golden Arrows and he shares the name of their home gym with another legendary Lavaca coach, Wendell Hardgrave.

“Yes, it was (destiny),” said Max Floyd, a junior 6-foot-2 guard/forward. “I will always play basketball. I absolutely love basketball, and in fact, I have a mini hoop in my living room right now that I was playing on earlier. (One thing I love about basketball is) the speed of the game. I love being able to run, just constantly moving. It’s not like other sports where it’s stop and go; you’re working together as a team and you’re moving and you’re talking to just let your other teammates know where you’re going and what you’re doing.”

This season, Floyd is definitely making the family name in town proud. After averaging about five points as a sophomore, Floyd is averaging 19.8 points along with 2.5 assists per game in his first season as a regular starter.

One thing Floyd did in the offseason to work on increasing his point production was spend an extensive amount of time in the gym that bears his great grandfather’s name. Though Floyd has become a prolific scorer for the Golden Arrows, he admits he isn’t really a consistent outside shooter, preferring to get higher percentage shots inside.

“I don’t really shoot 3’s because I can use my speed to get in the lane and take a higher percentage shot,” Floyd said. “I can drive in for a pull up (jumper), and that’s would probably be my strongest shot, a mid-range jump shot because I can elevate so high, I can get above everybody.”

Floyd can use his jumping ability for another asset, being able to grab rebounds, a stat he also averages in double figures along with points. This season, he’s had three double-doubles, including a season-high 29 points along with 11 rebounds in a game against Cedarville.

His extended production was only part of the expectations the Golden Arrows’ Coach Renner Reed had for Floyd.

“At the beginning of the year, he gave me a little note card and he said, these are the things you worked on and I expect you to be a leader this year on this team,” Floyd said. “And so, even on the court, I’ve tried to be loud, I’ve tried to bring energy to my team as we’re playing. And I just try to be a leader even in the locker room before games.”

Floyd has helped a still relatively young Golden Arrow squad win at least 15 ballgames entering the final week of January.

“Our season has actually gone really good; we won our Golden Arrow Classic and we did really good,” he said. “We went on an eight-game win streak at the beginning of this season and we were going hot and then we felt like we got a little bit of ahead of ourselves because we are a very young team.”

But basketball isn’t Floyd’s lone passion.

“I love being outside,” he said. “Hunting is one of the things that I just love to do. And going to the lake in the summer; I am at the lake every single weekend. … I’m a pretty good wakeboarder on the lake, too.”