Creative choices build off vision, decision, and execution. Coaches put players in position to succeed by prioritizing actions advantaging their skills. The video shows Sabrina Ionescu's ball screen reads.
Creative choices appear in a myriad of situations - offense, defense, tempo, ATOs and special situations.
Offense. "Be good at what you do a lot" and "run actions that are hard to defend." Combine them to run a lot of what is hard to defend. Here's my short list:
Pick-and-roll
I like actions that create multiple options. This Tom Thibodeau "Bulls" set starts with a high ball screen and creates two other viable choices, an elbow jumper for 4 and a corner 3 if x3 helps.
Back door cuts
Here are my favorite two back door actions.
Staggered screens.
This Iverson cut launched a run to the state finals, generating 5 points on two fourth quarter possessions.
Screen mismatches (small screens big) and get "mouse in the house"
Pistons 15
Defense: Defense has many options to create confusion. Here are just a few:
- Changing defenses
- Showing one defense, running another (show 2-3 and run man from it)
- Choice of how much to extend the defense (quarter to full court)
- Whether to trap out of the base defense
- "Man within zone" - Some players "confuse" zone with passivity. For a couple of possessions, we've run Man 2 from our 51 defense, which is 'simplified' triangle and 2 to "force" stronger coverage of 3 point shooters.
50 series defense (board game die 5 looks like a 2-1-2 zone)
Tempo. Many coaches like to change both defenses and tempo out of timeouts. If we show zone for a possession and the opponent takes a timeout. We often will show zone and play man for a couple of possessions. If we had multiple zone defenses, that might be a better option.
ATOs. ATOs often lend themselves to using actions that have either worked earlier in a game or that we haven't used at all. We invest fifteen minutes of our ninety minute (twice-weekly) practice on ATOs/Special Situations and it's time well-used.
Lagniappe: The "Hesi"
"Basketball is a game of separation." Hesitation moves have the advantage of not having to change hands, while lulling defenders into a second of indecision.