Friday, April 17, 2009

EARLY OFFENSE

One of the best basketball websites out there is Hoop Tactics hosted by Ernie Woods and Bob Kloppenburg. I promise you that once you get to the site you'll spend hours looking over all the great detailed information. Ernie and Bob are not only outstanding coaches but great guys that care about the game and about us who try to teach it. Below is a small sample of their thoughts on early offense:

The main reason for early offense, accompanied by flow action, is to force the defense to react rather than act! This simply put is to advance the ball quickly into the front court areas and attack before the defense is able to become organized into a disruptive force. As a defensive specialists over the many years of coaching, we have found that the most difficult teams to defend were the ones with offenses that pushed the ball into the front court, hash mark areas in the time span of 2 to 3 seconds. This early offense push creates quick medium jump shots, or penetration lay-ups, or kick out passes for scores to occur before the defense had a chance to set up and disrupt any organized set play. We have also found that when teams walked the ball up the court, they were much easier to defend because the defense was able to get its players back into positions near the basket were they could execute pressure denials, traps to disrupt the offensive flow and to force rushed shots as time on the clock became a factor.


For much more on early offense, click here: