When I’m asked any question about Women’s basketball vs Men’s basketball, my usual reply is: “Huh?” I taught math for 20+ years and had the same curriculum for boys as I did for girls. Every year I’d make the same suggestion (as a joke) to split the math classes into Boys Math and Girls Math. And it always got the same laughs in the faculty meetings. My opinion about Women’s vs Mens’ basketball curriculum is the same – I don’t see a reason to make a difference.

Is there a difference in how you motivate women vs men? Is there a difference in team-building dynamics? I’m sure there are, but that’s not the basketball that I want to talk about. The problem I’m trying to solve has no gender quality to it.

THE PROBLEM

Any great offense will have the following three characteristics:

1. Spacing
2. Player Movement
3. Ball Movement

With that being the case, how do most coaches incorporate these aspects into their offense? Answer: Set Plays. With a Set Play a coach can demand and predict the spacing, player movement, and ball movement. So what’s the problem? The problem is that plays can be scouted. Even if they’re not scouted, defenders can sense when the most important action is about to occur, increase their intensity, and stop the play. Or even worse, if just one of the offensive players misses an assignment, the Set Play is busted. A Set Play is only as strong as it’s weakest link.

Hard fact #1 is that plays can be stopped and teams are forced to play offense by principle. And when they play by principle, it’s usually one-on-one or two-on-two. That means that player movement has stopped and ball movement has stopped. Even spacing may be compromised in a busted play.

Hard fact #2 was more difficult for me to come to grips with. When I charted my own team for an entire season, I found that 80% of our points came from unscripted, principled action. We only scored the way our plays were designed 20% of the time. Yet I was spending 80% of my practice time on Set Plays. Why should I spend 80% of my practice time on action that only produces 20% of our points? That’s not real smart and I had to stop fooling myself.

Hard fact #3 was I didn’t have TIME to teach every player on the team how to play offense by principle. More importantly, I didn’t know HOW to teach 5 players to coordinate their offensive attack from any formation, with any type of players, against both a man and a zone defense. My team changed every year. Sometimes we were strong inside and sometimes we were perimeter oriented. Some years we could live off fast breaks and some years we had to play “possession ball”. How could I have a principled offense and take all of those factors into consideration?

THE TRADITIONAL SOLUTIONS

Traditional Solution #1: Run Set Plays for your “first look” and then hope that you have enough experienced players that will know how to play by principle when it’s needed.

“Old School” players will tell you that they “learned how to play” by playing countless pick-up games in the off-season. That’s where they learned the principles of spacing, how to react to the ball, player movement, etc. But that’s a thing of the past – it truly is “Old School!” Kids nowadays don’t play in countless pick-up games in the off-season. In the off-season, they’re playing in another organized league-type system. And this means that they learn another set of plays for offense. Our kids can run plays, but they’re not learning HOW TO PLAY.

Traditional Solution #2: Teach a Motion Offense. Motion offenses cannot be scouted and are based 100% on principle. So why isn’t this the answer? Because of the TIME that it takes to build the basketball I.Q. of every player on the team. Have you ever seen a motion offense work with only 30% of it’s principles? Also, every player must have a grasp of the Big Picture in order to maintain the Big Three Qualities of good offense. If just one of the players on the floor has an incomplete I.Q., then coordination and teamwork is lost.

MY SOLUTION: THE READ & REACT OFFENSIVE SYSTEM

Use your imagination for a moment: What if you could stop time at any point during your offense and diagram what the four players without the ball will do for the next few seconds? Could you make each player without the ball react to what the ball is doing and position themselves in such a way that the chances for scoring are optimized? Well of course you could! That would be like designing a Set Play with every action of the ball, on a moment-by-moment basis. The players would move like a “school of fish” always maintaining (1) Spacing, (2) Player Movement, and (3) Ball Movement. We could even give ourselves a “Safety Valve” to bail us out of trouble if the defense countered our moves. There would never be a need to “set it up”, because we could stop time, determine how to take advantage of what the defense has given us, and then coordinate everyone’s movements from that point forward.

Does that sound like a fantasy? It might, but that’s the heart of my solution. I’ve broken every possible movement of the ball into seventeen teachable Layers. In each layer, the players without the ball are taught ONE AND ONLY ONE reaction to the movement of the ball. That allows me to coordinate all 5 players’ movement and spacing in such a way as to maximize the team’s chances to score. It also means that my players DO NOT have to grasp the Big Picture in order for our team to be coordinated. All a player must to do is learn ONE SIMPLE REACTION to a specific movement of the ball and team coordination will take care of itself.

As an added bonus, if the offense is built in this manner, it means that I can DRILL this one simple reaction into ANY TYPE OF PLAYER. Some will acquire the habit sooner than others. Some will begin to see the Big Picture, while others won’t. It doesn’t matter. It’s not a matter of IF all players will catch on; it’s a matter of WHEN. Any player, boy or girl, men or women, novice or pro will eventually acquire this habitual reaction if you drill it enough. This means that teaching the offense is simple: you just drill it, and drill it, and drill it! You don’t have to be an experienced coach to run a drill! Especially if I give you the drill! Intellectualizing the offense gives minimal return for your time. Drilling it until it’s a habit will maximize your return.

Using a layered approach means I was able to construct the offense in a “move, counter-move” fashion. The first layer addresses the initial reaction that should be taken based on what most defenders do. The next layer addresses the counter reaction if the defense stops the first reaction; so forth and so on. The layers begin with the elementary actions of any basketball game whether it’s youth league or the professionals. The layers progress to the point of handling anything that the defense can throw at you including a zone! When the Read & React Offense is completed, your team can play in any FORMATION, with any STYLE OF PLAY, and with any MIX OF PLAYERS. You could even run a traditional Set Play and if it doesn’t work, your players will continue to attack the defense with five coordinated players who will maintain (1) Spacing, (2) Ball Movement, and (3) Player Movement.

Will it work? Is it just theory? The first team I gave it to (a high school girls team) is in their fourth year of running it. The coach has even extended the Read & React into a full-court press breaker.

Is it sound, fundamental basketball? Will it teach my players HOW TO PLAY? In a neighboring country, the National Director of Coaching Development wants the entire country to adopt the Read & React from the youth levels to their pros. He’s studied it enough to conclude that he wants it to become their curriculum.

How can I find out more?

(1) You could go online and ask around. You might get someone who’s seen it or run it and can explain it in a few words. I doubt it. As simple as it is, it’s difficult to explain in a few sentences. On the other hand, you might get those who say, “Well, I haven’t seen it, but here’s my opinion…” CAUTION! How can you have an opinion, when you haven’t SEEN the offense? Where I went to school, in order to produce a book review, I had to ACTUALLY READ THE BOOK!!

(2) I could have approached one team at a time and spent a week with each team and hope that I cover every detail and nuance. Instead, I chose to take a year and half to put the offense on DVD in excruciating detail – right down to the drills to build each layer. In that manner, I could reach the maximum amount of coaches with the most material that would equip them to be successful. You can find the Read & React 6 DVD set at www.betterbasketball.com

As a community of coaches, we can take the teaching of the game and the playing of the game to a place it’s never been before! Come join me.