Making Ball Reversals Work for You

Spacing is a critical part of successful offense, and clean ball reversals are important to put pressure on the defense as they transition from help position to ballside defense. Sometimes watching the NCAA Tournament helps me spot trends in play since there is such a heavy concentration of games, and this weekend I started to pay attention to how teams reversed the ball.

There are really only a few ways to effectively and safely reverse the ball, and they are dependent on how you space your offense. One of the surest signs of a team lacking offensive confidence and rhythym is long or weak ball reversals, especially those that travel from wing to wing.

I generally prefer to reverse the ball through a player at the point. If the defense is trying to keep the ball out of lane - and they should be - then I want to pressure the defender to stop that ballhandler at the point from attacking the rim in either direction. The point reversal also allows for safe passing distances when passing to either wing. One of the things I love to have my teams do against the zone is to do fake a ball reversal and pass back to the origin, which is safer and more effective with a pass that goes through the top of the key. Lastly, a disciplined defensive team will be forced to adjust positioning twice during a ball reversal like this, which can wear them down faster and open up opportunities for mistakes. An undisciplined or tired defense may try to adjust to the ball reversal ahead of the pass, which opens up opportunities to drive, hit cutters, or create passing lanes to post players.

All this isn't to say that a offensive formation with two wing players and an open point can't be effective. It just takes an awareness of the defensive help positions and a focus on clean, sharp passes. One of the ways you can force the helpside defense to back off from the ball reversal passing lane is to attack the key off the dribble regularly. In fact, a dribble attack to the middle with a kickout is a very effective ball reversal with multiple scoring options for the pass receiver.

There are few things more frustrating than a backwards pass or a weak reversal getting stolen in stride for a layup. Get your spacing right, force the defense to defend the paint and respect your dribble attack, and ball reversals can help your offense hum.

Fast Break Friday: Training Perimeter Reactions

This is the first Fast Break Friday where we will cover offensive concepts. Every Friday there will be a new post covering concepts, player development, and specific practice drill or techniques. One of the coaching skills that was the focus of my attention recently is building drills that train and teach skills or reactions on the court. Before we get into the specific topic of today - training perimeter decisions, we should discuss the concepts of translating something we want to see on the court into a practice drill that effectively helps the player learn. Going online to write down some drills is fine, but building your own drills is rewarding and usually more effective if you are trying to teach a specific skill.

All offensive reactions can be broken into 'If A, the B' situations. For example, if in shooting range, then shoot. Now, you can add as many qualifiers to the first part, but the fewer there are the more quickly your players will learn. This is the basic foundation to any drill (excluding hustle drills). The method behind this madness is another simple tenet - if you want creative, thoughtful players, you need to free their minds from the simple decisions and turn them into automatic reactions.

So what do we want our players to do when they receive the ball along the perimeter? Training decisions requires at least that the player can receive the pass cleanly and quickly face up to the basketball as a threat. After that, it is time to train reactions.

First, the defense attempts a steal and misses. When this happens I train my players to attack. When starting out, we might just have a single power dribble jump shot or a basket drive. Over time we train the whole attack, practicing our reaction to different help defenders, like a corner kick out or an interior dish.

Second the defense performs a closeout, high and hard. This is another simple read, and the player reaction is the same as our first situation - we attack the basket. Teach whatever footwork you want, but players must attack the rim when defenders close out hard and high

Thirdly the defense performs a closeout, low and slow. If the offensive player is in shooting range this is a shot read.

These habits are easy to train in two or three player groups where the players rotate through offense, defense, and passer.

I'm leaving passing out of this for the time being because you don't want to cloud the primary skill intended for training with too many things at once. Remember, quicker reactions free our players from thinking about everything, there just are not enough seconds in the span of a possession for deep thoughts.

When planning on teaching skills like this I also suggest you don't teach them all in the same day. If you want to create habits, you must continue to provide the read over and over and over again. Once you are satisfied that the reaction is reliable, you can layer decision making situations behind I outlined earlier.

If you are interested in reading more about habit formation I suggest The Power of Habit. It is an excellent book and many of my ideas about drill creation for skills development are a combination of my experience with the Read and React Offense and what I learned about habit formation from the book.

Read and React Review

The season ended on Friday with a bit of a whimper, along with the very strange experience of being ejected from my first and only game in 12 years (without a warning, or any time between the first and second technical foul - and no, there was no profanity involved - it was...inexplicable). We faced the top seed in our playoff bracket, a team we had lost two games earlier in the season by an average of 36.5 points, and were down 24-17 halfway through the 3rd quarter when it happened. So while I'm pleased with the way the team had played, it certainly didn't end the way I wanted. C'est la vie.

The real reason for this post is to review my first season with the Read and React offense. Hit the jump to read more about our offensive transformation.

Installing the Read and React Offense

Where to start. My formative years in basketball were in high school, when I finally (like most boys) learned to harness my athletic skills into a more productive set of abilities. The varsity and junior varsity coaches at my school had the most to do with that. Our philosophy was simple. We ran motion offenses (multiple versions, including flex) against man defense, and flood type offenses against zone defenses. And this was the way I taught offense since I started coaching right after I graduated.

I scrapped that this week after a loss on Friday, but my dissatisfaction with my offensive philosophy is a long time coming. I consider myself a strong coach in terms of teaching and strategy, especially concerning defense. My teams generally improve their defensive scoring average in my first year. Last years team reduced defensive scoring average by 5 points on the season, and this year we gave up 43 points in our first game. But my teams also seem to struggle scoring, averaging between 40-46 ppg year in and year out. I attributed this (and somewhat rightfully so) to the disease of AAU/Summer League ball taking the place of practice and skill development. We got great shots - but we just didn't make them. Recently though, I've been thinking that this problem wasn't fully to blame.