Teaching Your Offense

As the calendar changes, its time to start planning and preparing for you season. My offensive system is where I begin. It is the fun side of basketball.Let's face it. If your first day of off-season practice is two hours of shell drill, your kids are not going to be as ready to return the next day when their first game is two months away. {Side note: In Arkansas, we are blessed to only have a two week dead period. We can practice as a team year round except those two weeks.} If your first practice is two weeks before your first game, then your priorities are going to be different but like in war, offensive weapons always develop first. Here are 3 keys I use when teaching Offense.

#1 Be Creative
Make your offense your offense. No two teams or players are ever the exact same. Just because you love a certain college coach doesn't mean his offense will work for you. He's in a poker game where he got to select his first two hands; yours is dictated by distance from your building. Use his ideas, but keep in mind you can't mimic what he is doing. Don't be afraid to adjust systems like DDM or R&R. Make them your own.

#2 Position Breakdowns
Take your offense and break it down for all five positions. analyse what every player does in every situation. Be able to teach what every player does and the importance of each movement. If your offense is a back-door cut, explain why its so important for the other three players to move and "sell" the play. After you have broken down the offense, it is time to...

#3 Find Drills that Fit Your Needs
We are all a product of what we do. If we want a player to be a better shooter, we tell him to get up more shots. Repetition. We all have a library of drills that we grew up on and still use because they have benefits but how beneficial is a 3 man weave if that is what you use for a transition drill? I wonder the number of coaches who have in a game actually made a player pass ahead and then follow behind the pass? I have found success in developing drills made for our team. Take your offense. What actions are happening? Make drills for those actions. You'll see that your offense runs smoother if you will do the drills then teach skeleton offense. Most of us learned to drive in the driveway before the highway. It's the same concept. Start with simple actions, add options, then bring it all together.

I hope this helps or makes your think about how you teach your offense. That's another 3 from the Corner.