Blog Youth Basketball Motion Offenses
November 23rd, 2007In Issue #47 of the Hard2Guard Player Development Newsletter, I wrote about teaching skills through a motion offense. While I do not have video of the drills or sets I use, I found an article and a short youtube clip that offer some more insight into the philosophy behind the Blitz Basketball offense.
The Memphis attack in the video has many similarities, though the Memphis players tend to dribble more than I woul like. When they move the ball, they are fun to watch and tough to guard. However, it seems like they get stuck too often playing 1v1. The Blitz offense is based on a lot of 1v1 action, but within a team concept where the ball is moving, either with a dribble or the pass. The best I have seen the philosophy played was by some teenagers who attended a camp I directed in Macedonia. The ball never seemed to stop and the players never seemed to get in each other’s way. There was always great spacing and they scored lay-ups or had wide open threes without ever having to set a screen.
The article is written by Sergio Scariolo of Unicaja Malaga in Spain. Scariolo’s goals in his offense are similar to mine:
My goals were three:
1. Widen distances for the defensive rotations.
2. Clear space for the penetrations of 1 and 3, and increase post-up plays.
3. Make dish-off passes easier for the penetrator, and having three targets that are more visible on the perimeter instead of two.
A key point that he makes, which is often overlooked, is:
Movement without the ball: Every ball move requires a re-adjustment of the correct spacing into the court. It is necessary to keep the same distance between the four perimeter players.
Regardless of the specifics of the offense, my point in the newsletter was to use the motion offense to build skills: a coach should be able to breakdown the offense into smaller parts and teach the offensive motion and concepts while developing or training technical skills like ball handling and shooting. That is my goal in Blitz Basketball. Sure, it is a tactical system which allows an undersized team to compete. But, more importantly, to me, it is a system that lends itself to technical skill development while teaching the offense, which eliminates the need to do a lot of 5v0 work. With youth teams where time is limited, the ability to teach the offense while developing skills is important.
December 18th, 2007 at 12:11 pm
The crux of the matter, then, is this: how to go about and teach spacing. Is this an oversimplification?
December 18th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
No, it’s not. I watch a highly rated, very good DII team play a lot and cringe at their spacing. They manage to score, but they set poor screens and have poor spacing.
Many coaches use the X’s on the floor to teach players where to go. I use it right now to teach my players where to attack against a zone.
However, more important is the concepts. So, with my team, I want my wings to cut backdoor and fill to the baseline corner if they don’t get it. That’s a concept. They can understand where to go. They either cut to the basket or fill to the corners.
I watched a team that would run dribble hand-offs, but the players did not always know what to do. They did not know whether to go behind for the hand-off or flare to create space. And, a high post flash always took away any opportunity for a backdoor cut and pass. By not knowing what to do, the spacing was poor.
When I run a dribble hand-off. We want to clear that side of the floor for a 2-man game. As the dribbler dribbles toward his teammate, the off-ball player reads his defender. He can choose to use the hand-off or go backdoor. If he goes backdoor, he clears the area. If he uses it, he has penetration or the pass back to the roller. But, because there is a clear concept, the spacing and execution improves. The post sees the drible-hand-off developing and cuts away from the ball, not to the area.
Most important is making sure players understand what you are trying to accomplish. As coaches, we get stuck in the small details and sometimes forget to start with the big picture, the goals and objectives of the offense, what we want to create and what shots we want to take.