Written by Rick Torbett on February 20, 2009 – 10:35 PM
Q: My question deals with an E-W speed dribble from the wing towards the corner. On this rule, circle movement indicates that the corner man should cut along the baseline to the other side. We are finding that this tends to be a wasted cut as the lane is often too congested due to help defense. I was wondering if a circle reverse option would be a better option following a wing to corner speed dribble. Can you comment?
A: If you are finding that the Speed Dribble from wing to corner is not a useful tool, then I suggest you either tell your players not to do it or drill it more. The main application of the Speed Dribble is a ball handler forcing a rear cut when the player without the ball is being overplayed and doesn’t recognize it. If this is the case in the corner, then the corner player should be getting the pass long before he gets into the lane where defensive help is waiting.
Let me say it in another way. There are 3 scenarios that could happen between a wing ball handler and a corner cutter. If the corner player is not overplayed, the ball handler on the wing should not Speed Dribble towards him; instead, he should simply pass to the corner and cut himself. If the corner player is overplayed, he should recognize it himself and cut immediately. If the corner player is overplayed, but does not recognize it himself AND the ball handler sees an opening, he should Speed Dribble to the corner to force the baseline cut. Since the ball handler has deliberately instigated this cut, he should be ready to pass the cutter the ball instantly – well before the cutter reaches the help defenders.
My problem with you changing the READ & REACTION in the corner is you now have players THINKING and CHOOSING their cuts based on position and defense and what the ball does. This is what happens with a motion offense and it’s usually not a good thing. Motion offenses have PLENTY of “if this, then this” decisions for players to make, and it looks good on the chalkboard, but you lose 5 player coordination when you actually put it into practice.
My suggestion is simple: if you don’t like the look of the speed dribble from wing to corner in the 5 OUT set, then don’t do it. I would not sacrifice a coordinated system of play for one particular cut that you don’t find useful.
We had two problems with the speed dribble. First, the ballhandlers were not taught to read the overplay before initiating a speed dribble, so it was used in a way that simply forced the corner to cut without a particular opportunity to get a successful back cut. As a result, the ballhandler kept dribbling because there was no pass to the cutter, (until the ballhandler found another pass or reversed direction to the wing…which now left a temporarily open corner).
Second, again because the ballhandler reading the overplay was insufficiently emphasized, the corner player often mistook a power dribble for a speed dribble and cut away from the ball. As a result, we almost never ran the power dribble successfully in a game situation (it worked well in practice a little more often, but only between certain players and only when it was the point of emphasis).
We boiled the dribble reads down to two options for the dribbler. Drive to the basket or drive at a player. On drives to a basket, regular circle motion. On drives at a player hand off/euro screen. There is still the rear cut read if a defender crosses the read line. The dribbler should try to get to the level of the defense on hand-offs, but if he doesn’t, that’s ok. The defense going under the hand-off provides spacing for the new ball handler or a three point shot. So in this case the ball handler cannot dictate a rear cut, only the defense can if it denies. It solved a lot of speed/power dribble errors. We also treated a drive to the basket where the ball handler gets stopped and picks up his dribble as a post player and made Laker cuts off him.
We use the speed dribble from wing to corner to initiate a post-up opportunity for the corner player and essentially a brief classic triangle set scenario. We run a 5 out set typically starting with the bigs in the corners. When the wing dribbles at the corner, the corner makes the basket cut which in reality is a dive at the low block and then immediately post up. The player filling the 1 spot rotates over to fill the open ball side wing and we have formed a standard triangle. Basic R and R habits can flow from that - feed the post and Laker cut, dribble penetration and post slide.
If nothing positive results, we typically create a reversal with a pin and skip back to the weak side with the weak side corner pinning and the weak side wing flowing to the open spot for skip pass.
How can I utilize the power dribble more; it’s just not happening. We play mostly 3 OUT and I don’t want to call out for certain things to happen.
Coach Kelly,
I’ve answered your question in a post titled “Incorporating the Power Dribble: Basics” in the “Post Play” and “Read & React Basics” categories.
Here’s the link: http://www.betterbasketball.com/read-and-react-offense/read-and-react-basics/incorporating-the-power-dribble-basics/
Let me know how it goes.