Game Plan Within Motion

One of the greatest things that I like about motion, is that it has an adaptability to anything that a defense is going to do.  Our mindset has always been that we wanted to find their weakest defender, their weakest interchange defense, etc, and try to exploit it.  Looking at many pattern offenses over my first couple of years, I hated how teams could adjust their defense to take something away, and then I was stuck having to do something that my kids weren't used to doing (if that makes sense).
With motion we were able to take any changes that the defense was throwing at us, and adjust on the fly without missing a beat.  You want to switch, fine our second cutters know to seal/slip/rescreen etc.  You want to hard hedge to take away the inside cut, second cutters are trained to adjust to that as well.  With that in mind, one of the first game plan strategies that we picked up from Coach Knight was back screen shooting.

**Imagine playing a team that has a big dominant post player who they need to stay around the rim.  With that in mind, we have noticed many times that this big, will not venture out of the lane too much.  One game plan thing that we will hit in practice that week, is we will drill our post players hard on making them back screen shooters.  During our guard post breakdown we emphasize 12-15 foot shooting, after setting back screens in our 2x2 relationship.  During drill work we will have the post start on the block, screen towards the wing by hitting a pad after a jump stop, and second cutting back to the ball, squaring in the air to shoot.  We tell them to create separation at about the 12-15 mark range from the screen and back to the ball.

If teams are switching this and allowing the guard to take the big, and the post defender stays inside we will give a hook call on the back screen. We will drill this in workouts by having the post (instead of being flat to the defenders back on the back screen) actually hook back up the floor to get on the baseline shoulder of the guard defender to give a flare screen type action.  At this point we will fade the guard to the corner and basically put them at a disadvantage. This is very good action if the guard is  a good perimeter shooter, and your post player can hit from 12-15.  In this scenario it makes the defense have to decide if they are going to send the big out (which is what we want if we are looking to get to the rim), or they have to give up a shooter to one of the two kids.


Figure 1: Simple backscreen shooting vs a pad.  Screener backscreens, and second cuts into an open area.

Hook screen vs switch and big stays inside. Hook baseline side flare to corner and get defense at disadv.