Basketball Finishing

If your players are performing in 1-on-0 drills but then struggle in games, the drill design is the problem. In 1-on-0 drills, players encounter none of the information they find in the real game. Start with a small change: add one defender to all your finishing activities.

Here is one example of a small-sided game we use at Transforming Basketball to develop finishing solutions: repetitions at the rim against a defender, playing continuously off the rebound after a make or miss, with a different decision every time.

For many players, finishing opportunities come after situations such as drives, offensive rebounds, cuts or a roll to the rim. If a player has only practiced finishing in the Mikan drill, we've removed everything that made those finishes complex: the defense, the varied locations, the time and score, and where teammates are. This is called task decomposition: breaking the game into pieces and taking out the information players need to act.

When an offensive player is up in the air to finish, there is no time to think about technique or what they are going to do. They react to the defense. This is the process of self-organization; movement solutions emerge naturally rather than being chosen in advance. Something complex like an up and under emerges from the problem the defender poses. In games, players are never consciously thinking of what move they are about to use, because the game simply moves too quickly. Despite this, this is the approach taken by many coaches and trainers today in an attempt to supposedly teach "moves."

Furthermore, coaches would actually be frustrated if a player robotically executed a finishing sequence planned in advance that exposed the ball and was easily contested. However, this is exactly what the dominant approach encourages. The dominant approach is the traditional way of coaching, where technique comes first and games come later.

Smile 1-on-1 is essentially the Mikan drill with a defender, made better by using a constraints-led approach: change one constraint at a time and it can become 20 different activities. Our guide to the constraints-led approach has more on this. The table below shows what happens when you start to introduce constraints.

The idea of using constraints is that there is an intention behind each one; it isn't done just for variety's sake. An important question to ask yourself as a coach: what constraints may guide players towards different intentions?

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Most of us as coaches were taught the "correct" way to perform a layup: outside foot first, followed by the inside foot, then an overhand finish off the backboard at the perfect 45 degree angle. However, how many finishes in a game actually happen with this technique? Finishing is always different, because the constraints are always changing.

Contrary to the idea that there is one perfect layup technique, the layup often known as the "goofy" layup, with the opposite arm and opposite leg, is actually a more natural tendency for a beginner because it continues the running stride. Furthermore, a traditional 1-2 step layup may actually take longer and give the defender more time to alter or block the finish.

The real cost comes later. Many coaches teach advanced finishing moves 1-on-0, but how many of these could have emerged from the start if players were trained within a constraints-led approach?

If you watch some of the most creative finishers of all time, such as Kyrie Irving, Steph Curry, Maya Moore and Sabrina Ionescu, they are so successful because they are adaptive. The traditional approach to coaching views these as stored moves or muscle memory, but at Transforming Basketball we reject this term. Furthermore, with what we know about ecological dynamics, there's no such thing as storing movements in the brain and bringing them out on demand.

None of this means anything goes. The positioning of the defender has an enormous impact on the finish that emerges. Give a player a reason to finish off one foot, off two, with the inside hand or extended away from a shot blocker, and those solutions show up without anyone naming them.

This doesn't mean we're against specific terms for finishing solutions. Phrases such as "euro step", "Nash dribble" or "stride stop" work because they are specific enough to educate intention without overconstraining athletes into the minute details of how they should supposedly move. For instance, a euro step simply means evading a help defender. It doesn't say where the offensive player should move their feet or what type of euro step to use. We can then constrain this in a 1-on-1 game with a help defender coming from different locations, and the offense encouraged to evade the help defender in different ways. This naturally leads to varied euro steps emerging every time, instead of the same euro step repeated over and over again.

A defender with no constraints can be too challenging for a beginner. The answer is task simplification: make it easier for the offense while keeping representative information. Many coaches pull defenders out, practice 1-on-0, then go back to a small-sided game. We want to avoid this because it removes perception-action coupling, the link between what a player sees and what they do. When players inevitably struggle in a small-sided game, that's good: the coach can creatively apply a different constraint instead of reverting to on air practice.

Here are different ways you can constrain the defense if you're working on finishing in different small-sided games:

• One jump only
• Two steps only
• One hand only
• Live, but holding a bib or ball
• Can distract but not block or steal
• Can only force a miss with body position, which still changes the finish because where the defender stands matters
• A guided defender who holds their arms straight up, or a basketball or medicine ball above their head, instead of jumping or blocking (see George Vaz's article on guided defense for finishing)
• A help defender who starts from a different location each time

This 1-on-1 game puts the finisher under contact, which is where a constrained defender helps most.

Here's another example of how to use the CLA for finishing, from Transforming clinician Kerri Kuzbyt.

Around the Arc 1-on-1 is another solution, with a different start: the offense dribbles around the three point line before the drive.

The main challenge with 1-on-1 finishing games is that you may only have two baskets. How can you keep time on task high with two baskets and 20 or more players? The answer is games with very quick rotations, such as Jungle Finishing, where you can work on finishing with 10 players at a basket.

Our large group guide covers more ways to keep a full group of players occupied if you only have two baskets.

If you do want to keep running layup lines, which can be useful for pregame warm ups, here's one easy way to make them more CLA like: make the rebounder play as a guided defender. Instead of waiting outside the three point line and following in for the rebound, the rebounder goes earlier and walls up outside the smile, so the driving player has to find a functional solution.

The real value of a constraints-led approach comes when you design constraints around a particular player, in response to what they need. These needs are known as rate limiters: something very specific that's preventing a player from being more skillful as a finisher. One example could be a player who really struggles with contested finishes when a help defender enters their space. Here are some examples of how we may use constraints in response to common rate limiters players encounter when finishing:

Start the player with a drive or a cut instead of finishing from a static spot under the rim. Have them approach the basket from different angles and get the ball from different teammates. And finishing doesn't have to be the only outcome. Add a shot or a pass to the game and transfer is more likely, especially when the chance to finish becomes less predictable.

The video below has more ideas of constraint manipulations you can add to your finishing games.

Many younger players can't finish a layup with a full size adult ball on a 10 foot rim. This is where equipment scaling comes in.

Research on ball size shows why this matters for coaches. José Arias compared a 440 g ball, a regulation 485 g ball and a 540 g ball in youth games.

Younger players won't self-organize into functional finishing solutions with a ball that is too big for them, because they can't act on what the defender offers. A lighter ball and a lower rim give them a chance to find those solutions. George Vaz's article on teaching layups with live games and our youth basketball coaching guide have more for beginners.