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Offensive Transition

Sacred Cow “Run the Wings”

Observe: When you hear this sacred cow, it is imploring the ball handler to therefore bring the ball up the middle.

Problem: This sacred cow presumes a fast break scenario. It also usually requires the bigger players to detour around the ball handler, running a further distance. This might be fine if it was limited to fast breaks, however it tends to appeal to every situation. Over the course of a game, season and career that is many extra kilometres that big players have run not only from basket to basket, but taking the longer route, making the court effectively even longer. The speedy ballhandlers meanwhile have shortened their distance, running the ball from 3 point line to 3 point line, thereby shortening their experience of the court length.

Origin: It was often the case that the original coaches in our game, also coached Ice Hockey. Imploring similar fast break principles that usually saw only three offensive players participating in the fast break. The speed of ice hockey also lent to the usual scenario of one pass one shot.

The Solution

However in basketball, running further grinds our players bodies much more than a little further distance on skates. We also do not have to rush to take a shot, we can wait for latter stages of transition or even in parity situations use much more of the shot clock.

Our aims for an Offensive Transition system should be prioritised to look like this:

Shorten the distance run by our bigger players.
Lengthen the distance run by our shorter players.
Reduce the number of passes required to reverse the ball (move the ball from one sideline to the other).
Optimise our decision making for all stages of transition, including parity situations.
Redundancy through creating balance on both sides of floor to share pressure.

Shortening the distance run by our bigger players. Skill is important in basketball and can overcome many disadvantages. While lack of height can be masked, over a career you still need a certain amount of size on your teams in order to win. Therefore preserving the joy of basketball in your big players and making them central in your planning should be paramount. Too many coaches neglect their bigs, appealing to their flashy guards who are a dime a dozen, reducing their greatest asset 'the bigs' to mere servitude. There are many high skilled teams who are eternally trying to recruit a big. Therefore in transition and noting that your bigs already have the furthest distance to run from basket to basket, we make this the shortest distance possible by giving them the central corridor (split line) to run. Our smalls who already have a headstart from the perimeter, we give the responsibility for running the 'wings'. However, I prefer the term 'sidelines'. I want my ball handlers to use the sideline as their friend, keeping their back to the sideline, in order to open the aperture of their shoulders and eyeballs to the rest of the court. Too many players who run the 'wings' remain blind to what is behind them. They are blind to both their teammates who are about to arrive, and even worse are blind to defence that is sneaking up on them. This is also another reason, not to have the ballhandler in the middle of the floor, as it reduces vision and provides opportunity for defence to harass from behind. The temptation is invariably to rush the fast break, when if afforded the space and time to make a better decision, may find that the latter stages of offensive transition are more potent. From the sideline quicker options often become apparent with a kick ahead pass to a player already up the floor, being much faster than dribbling the length of the fast break.

Lengthen the distance run by our shorter players. We have already noted that our smalls have a headstart in transition, we therefore want to use this to balance the distance by our whole team. The largest shape by surface area we can build inside a basketball court that forces the defence to extend themselves is a square. Therefore if basically we have two sideline players, and two bigs down middle, we want to use the spare to stretch the defence all the way into the corner. Which corner would we send our spare? If we sent them opposite to the ball, the defence would have the advantage of being able to help from split line, and disadvantage offence by increasing pressure under the basket. Instead, we always want to bring the spare to the same corner as the ball. This immediately overloads the court, drags the defence off of split line, opens up the middle for late stages of transition and readies us for the first reversal of the ball, whether this is still in transition, or whether in parity 5 v 5.

Reduce the number of passes required to reverse the ball. When the ball is in the middle of the floor, it takes three passes to safely reverse the ball. Middle to sideline, Sideline to middle, Middle to opposite sideline. However, when we run our transition with the ball handler already on the sideline, we reduce this to two passes. Sideline to middle, Middle to opposite sideline. We also give back to the big players an increased decision-making role. As they run the shorter distance down the middle of the floor, they now become included in this work of reversing the ball. They may reverse the ball above the three point line, as a guard might. We also gain the advantage of them moving to where they are immediately comfortable, this may be in the high post, or above the foul line.

Optimise our decision making for all stages of transition, including parity situations. We also have now built our fast break model to be less rushed, and able to adapt if a basket is not immediately achievable. A 2 v 1 situation, becomes 2 on 2, and with a fraction of patience grows into a 3 v 2, then 3 v 3, and with an extra pass our 4th player arrives, 4 v 3 until 4 on 4, then 5 v 4. If still no basket is achieved, we are now in a parity 5 v 5 situation and established in the front court. You will note that many teams often have a pregnant pause and need to reset their floor when the fast break has been denied, before reconfiguring and commencing their offence proper. The goal is to have all of these scenarios transition seamlessly, instead of being distinctly separate systems. Therefore this provides a clue to the configuration of what our parity offence should look like.

Redundancy through creating balance on both sides of floor to share pressure. We have addressesed fast break and parity situations, but full-court pressure is also a problem for Offensive Transition. The configuration above lends itself well to press-break systems, since it already has inculcated in players to work in parallel on each sideline. Inexperienced coaches who have only seen basic full court presses are afraid of the sideline, thinking keeping in the middle is the safest. However, there are presses configured to trap the ball in the middle of the floor as well. The problem with the sideline is only when you try and dribble outside the defence and into the next line of defence (i.e. the trap). Therefore, we use our sideline players intentionally, working in tandem, to attack the defence and before being trapped using their parallel sideline player for a relief pass. The bigs we use to advance the ball beyond the second and third line of pressure. We use the inbounder as the spare to run the length of the court, dragging that first option the defence must cover. Our bigs are meanwhile able to establish themself in the configuration we desire, ready for their task of moving across the second and third line of pressure to advance our passing options. In the same fashion that we do not want our speedy guards in the middle of the floor in transition, since it provides defence opportunity to sneak behind; we also do not want our bigs to be moving slowly toward ball along centre of the court. This is a slow way to catch the ball, and the result is often the defence intercepting a pass. Instead we want the big to be speeding up as they catch (not slowing down), we do this by having them move from sideline to sideline, angling up the floor. Since we have guards working in parallel, safely relieving the ball amongs themselves, there is no rush for the advance pass to occur. Since we have two bigs and a spare, we can establish them in a full court motion leading pattern that provides multiple opportunities to not only receive the advance pass, but then deliver the next pass up the floor for the basket. We also need not achieve an advance pass at all, the threat of this is enough to prevent the ball being trapped, enabling our first aim being to safely deliver the ball up the court and initiate offence.

The parting observation is that we have made the traditional point guard role obsolete, by instead distributing the role onto the team. And while I implore conscientiousness toward preserving the legs of your bigs, the traditional way of playing asks for even more from point guards, being solely responsible against all manner of pressure and settting up your fast breaks. We therefore have now built a system that is stronger collectively than relying on the fitness of our individual players. In short, our Offensive Transition is now robust against all manner of pressure and extends the endurance of your players.

Key Teaching Points

1. Design of Offensive Transition needs to be robust against all forms of pressure and pace, from press-breaks to fast-breaks, as well as synchronising with your parity system.

2. Equalise running distances so that the burden is shared by your players. Bigs get the middle, Smalls get the sidelines. Use your spare and fastest to stretch the defence into ballside corner.

3. Ready to attack at every stage of transition, 2v1, 3v2, 4v3, 5v4; and be already configured for parity 5 v 5 offence using the whole shot clock.

Offensive Transition

Sacred Cow “Run the Wings”

The Solution

Key Teaching Points

Video Tutorials

Further Reading