Saturday, November 21, 2015

Developing a Simple Two Guard Front Offense

Most coaches have a well-defined offensive philosophy. If you have five players who can put the ball on the floor, pass, and shoot you would want to play "dribble drive" with penetrate and pass options. Most of us won't be so lucky.

If you have limited practice time, you can spend it teaching players fundamentals and how to play (2-on-2 or 3-on-3 actions).

But times arise where you want simple actions from simple sets. I call this the "Hinkle" series after former Butler great Tony Hinkle. We are small and reasonably quick and I want players to execute 'simple' basketball actions.

When there is post entry, simple options are blind pig (wing back cut), running 1 off the 5, 5 isolation, or weak side screening action. In this 2 has floor balance responsibility.

With wing entry, 1 has a UCLA cut and goes through, 3 can isolate or get a ball screen and there is weak side screening action.

Alternatively, 3 has a clean isolation and/or wait for screens away.

5 can set lower and get 'split action' (conventionally the passer goes through first) to create pass and cut or a perimeter shot or a handoff pick-and-roll with 5. Here 2 screens and 4 pops or you might want a different alignment with 4 high to get the screen and roll action. It's easy to imagine how you can modify this into "Triangle Offense" but the more you do, the less well you do it.

It's always more about the ability to execute and finish than the complexity of the actions developed.