From: John Wiley

We love this offense and have put it into our entire school program - grades 6-12. For our varsity, we have found success with it on many fronts; some expected, some not. For example, we are a very small team this year and our posts are not traditional ‘back to the basket’ guys. We’ve found that utilizing movement after post entries – laker cuts, x cuts, and weak-side skips – has given our perimeter players many scoring opportunities.

The power dribble has enabled some of our slower guys to contribute on the perimeter as well by essentially running screen and roll any time they touch it. In 4 OUT or 5 OUT, we’ve created this rule for those slower players: if you can’t hit a cutter in layer 3, then you must power dribble – no choice. The nice thing about the power dribble leading into the screen & roll is the screen is foolproof.  You don’t have to worry about the usual missed screen where a ball handler doesn’t rub his man off on the post because that “rub” is forced by the handoff. In addition, I’ve found that the defense typically does not defend this exchange well, so often there is a wide open lane as soon as the guard takes the ball.

Other layers are helping as well. Though the circle movement is the hardest to teach due to the tendency for kids to watch rather than move, we’ve found that if we just keep it simple (penetrate and pitch) we get some good looks.

We are just now utilizing screens and our favorite is the easiest. We start in a 5 OUT and simply send the point through to the weak-side after he passes. He screens for the baseline weak-side player, either our undersized post or our 23 ppg scorer. That player goes to the mid-block, ball-side (now 4 OUT). Then, we enter the ball to him and run laker or x cuts off of the entry. This forces the defense to: 1) communicate the weak-side screen; 2) Deny the flash cut to the post; 3) Defend the post-up; and 4) Deny at least two cuts from the perimeter around the post. If we can’t get the x-cutting guards the ball (usually because the defender is directly behind the post with the ball), he can always shoot the turnaround or, even better, skip it to the weak-side wing who is open because his man is usually helping in the lane. This variation also turns out to be a great solution for the Box-and-1, which we’re going to see a lot more of as the season goes on. We simply send more screens to our scorer and get him the ball in the lane. 

The unexpected benefits we have found are as follows:
1. We have a great built-in delay game out of 4 OUT or 5 OUT (no shot clock in our state).
2. We go to the foul line a lot.
3. We also have the best shell game offense ever, which has made our defense much more aggressive in the passing lanes. The offense forces every player to make hard cuts and sometimes we’ll say you can only score out of strict give and go’s (passing & cut game). As the season goes on, we’ll introduce more variations into this shell game based on new layers.

We’ve learned that you can’t go too quickly putting in the parts. 

We started out with two close losses, but we’ve won four of our last five, including our only game in league. We got the game winner off a power dribble handoff to our best player from the top of the key – it was wide open. So only 4-3 (1-0 in league) so far but we should rack up a lot of in league wins coming up. We just brought home a trophy from a tournament in Oakland, CA last week. We were the smallest team there but won two out of three. We were pleased, especially with our offensive execution (we’ve cut our turnovers in half since the start of December).

Possibly the best thing is the fact that the habits we are using every day are beginning to become strengths for the team. Therefore, if we call a set play, it usually has a power dribble or a laker cut in it. By continuing to use these elements, we’re figuring out what our strengths are and by using these skills (habits,) we’re gaining more confidence as a team.

Thanks Rick for opening a whole world of basketball to a coach who thought he had read it or seen it all after 14 years as a varsity head coach.