UTILIZING MOTION ENTRIES

One of the great advantages of motion offense is that it does not have to be “set up” or “reset” at any time during a possession. In fact, we can get directly into our motion offense from any of the following:

Jump ball
Side out of bounds
Inbounds plays
From opponent’s missed field goal
From opponent’s made field goal
From opponent’s missed free throw
From opponent’s made free throw
From a turnover
Coming out of a press offense
Coming from any part of your transition (primary or secondary)
From any dead ball situation

While we can move directly into our motion offense from these situations, we also feel there is merit in having a few entries. An ENTRY is where we give our players a predetermined spot to set up and then go into our motion from that set. The advantage is that we can make sure that we attack something particular at the very beginning of the possession before going into our motion principles.

Entries can be used to create the following:
Spacing
Isolate a certain player (off screens or with clearouts)
Attack a certain defender
Distort the defense
Create combination screening opportunities
Utilize patterns to initiate motion

A perfect example of utilizing a pattern to initiate motion comes from the beginning of my coaching stint at LSU under Sue Gunter. When we first talked of installing motion offense, there was a little hesitancy in Coach Gunter and rightfully so. They had been successful for many years running versions of the UCLA High Post Offense. Coach Gunter liked the floor balance as well as the post feeding options. We decided to keep the UCLA High Post as an entry. What we would do occasionally, either from a dead ball situation or coming out of a timeout is call “Blue,” which was the verbal for UCLA High Post. Diagram #1 shows the guard entering the ball to the forward following an L-cut. The passing guard would then rub off the screen by the high post. The high post would then step out for a pass keying the opposite post to duck-in for a possible feed while the passing wing screened in for the guard on the block. If we didn’t get anything at this point, we would look to pass the ball to the opposite guard and get directly into motion (Diagram #2). We would also tell our team that anytime the entry breaks down, we should move directly into motion. Perhaps the defense does a good job of denying the entry pass, then we would look to step the post up for a possible pass and get directly into motion (Diagram #3).