Offensive Keys: Playing off the Catch & Calls to Action

Some random offensive thoughts once again. Hope everyone enjoyed their Mother's Day Weekend!

Well it’s been awhile since I posted a newsletter like this…. Also the first time I think I have done one of these and it not go out on a Monday. As most of you know I spend a tremendous amount of time studying offense. In fact I posted something awhile back giving my personal opinionated list on what separates good and bad offenses. You can find the link to that below if you’d like to view in detail. However, these were the 5 general answers that I had.

1. Winning the Early & Late Offensive Battle within every possession

2. Your Drive & Kick Game - Capitalizing on rotations is a biproduct of how good your drive and kick game is. (The common saying we want to Create and Keep the advantage) Keeping and then capitalizing is a result of how well you drive and kick.

3. Putting a premium on passing daily

4. 2nd/3rd Sided Actions

5. Punishing Coverages

Today, I am going to jot some notes down about a few other things that can hinder your offense. With this one I will be looking in more of a micro rather than a macro type of lens. Talking about some keys that are important to offense that I often see when teams are struggling.

1. Improve & Increase Frequency of playing off the catch

• If you take a look at any synergy play type profile there is one area that reigns supreme is Spot Up’s. Which typically make up the largest percentage of a teams offensive possessions in the halfcourt. Let’s take a look at the 3 highest PPP offenses in both NBA and NCAA D1 and look where their spot up numbers stack up.

• Outside of UCONN being an outlier, you can see the common theme with these offenses at both levels. They are playing off the catch effectively and frequently.

• With this tiny piece of information in front of us, you can see the importance of playing off the catch, & what a pivotal piece it becomes to improving your offense.

• Now is this an absolute, by no means. I always operate within the motto that their are no absolutes within the game of basketball. However, by no means would improving your spot up efficiency hurt.

• In order to play off the catch, you must PASS the basketball. I will continue to harp on how passing and the willingness to pass is one of the most underutilized things in today’s basketball game.

• When I’m asked to speak to other coaches or on podcasts I speak about the individualistic and selfish society we are shifting towards as a whole and how it directly effects the team element of sport. Especially basketball.

• When you talk about what a modern basketball offense is built off of you were frequently here a ton of buzz words (include but not limited to)

Advantage Basketball

Quick Decision Making (.5)

Concepts

Closeouts

Play Together

Good for Great

Play Fast

Freedom

• When breaking each one of those things down in detail, one thing they will all have in common in order to foster those scenarios is you must be effective off the catch.

• Back in the Jay Wright Villanova days when every coach was in love with their offense similar to the influx of support Alabama received he had a quote, “You will never be more open than when you first catch the basketball.”

• Now I am not a soccer guy by any means, just a basketball guy through and through but one thing I have taken from the game of soccer is the importance of First Touch Decisions. In soccer they put an emphasis on when the ball touches your feet and say that it is the most important decision you make with the ball in your hands.

• I often reference this and speak on it within the game of basketball. The ability to make quality first touch decisions does many things some important ones but not limited to.

Keeps your offensive flow alive

Creates rotations

Allows you to Keep the Defense in rotation

Generates High Value Shot Attempts (Rim + Catch & Shoot)

Shifts the Defensive Shell

• Now that I have probably overstated the importance of playing off the catch, let’s think about why teams/players are poor off the catch & what we can do to fix/drill/train it.

Reasons why we struggle playing off catch

• Do see the value/understand importance

• Selfishness

• Offense is overly dictated/designed

• Don’t know what to do when the offense breaks down

What can we do to improve playing off catch?

• Verbal and communicate the importance with your players (I know crazy to believe but amazing what a casual conversation can do)

• No hold rules within halfcourt games or small sided games + point system to increase ball movement/reversals

• Incorporate closeout reads in your player development sessions

• Small group work (SSG) playing off both closeouts and reversals

The second thing I want to hit on today goes hand & hand with ball movement. A phrase that I took from business class which is Calls to Action. This is something that can be incorporated in a conceptual/motion offense or even just when running a traditional offense & working within your play after the play concepts/framework.

Calls to Action

• My offensive philosophy is built on a general 3 step principle: Space - Action - Advantage (Obviously can go into great detail on the 3 but that’s as general and easy to understand as it can get)

• There’s are labeled in chronological order, meaning in order to have 1 you must have the other first.

• One of the reasons I have been so drawn to NBA Basketball is because I believe they are at the forefront of what modern offense should look like. A few colleges but very few and far between. Obviously this is not consistent for every NBA team and can look different in many facets depending on your personnel and what you prefer.

• However, many NBA teams operate on an action to action approach (If you want me to go onto a tangent of the next action mindset give me a call when you have a couple hours to kill and nothing better to do but nerd out about basketball all night like myself).

• I was recently having a conversation with another coach who I was introduced through by this newsletter and it made me want to put these thoughts down online.

• So what are calls to action- Well it’s simple in a state of neutral or no advantage the ball dictates movement. However, you’d like to define that movement is completely up to you but the positioning of the ball determines your actions at that given point in a possession.

• Some issues that could potentially arise from doing this

1. Thinking consistent action-action-action with no ball movement in order to set up the next action

2. Limiting ball placement to just 1-2 calls to action where your concepts become too patterned (That’s also another phone conversation if you have hours to kill)

• Roadblock number 1- is where the importance of ball movement comes into play. Teaching your players to recognize that often times 1 action is not enough to take you out of a neutral state. Your offensive success will be determined by your ability to move the ball off the catch and layer your 2nd and 3rd sided action accordingly.

• Roadblock number 2- Don’t stunt growth or development of your offense by limiting freedom. Try to be general when giving the framework. Guide them but let your players paint the offensive picture. Operating in absolutes is the perfect way to hinder, stagnate, & allow your offense to become easily scoutable. In turn making it much easier to defend. Why you have seen a phase out in many basic continuity offenses or at the very least spicing the continuity offense up with options where it becomes a lot less vanilla.

In an effort to make this easy on the eyes. I’ll stop here for today. Again would like to preface, I am not saying this is correct or what you should be doing, it’s also no meant to bash anyone. There’s plenty of ways to operate. I just use these to state my ideas and thoughts, hopefully someone finds a point or two that they can take away or we can spark up a conversation.

As always, let’s have a conversation and talk some hoops. Love being able to share with the coaching community and hear new thoughts and ideas from others. Contact information will be below. Be on the lookout for another X’s & O’s Dump shortly. I’m also working on a big Spain P&R teaching project for the Summer.

Email: connor.harr@westliberty.edu

Cell: 330-787-1146