Mastering Conceptual Offense in AAU Basketball

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Hello and welcome to another episode of the Transforming Basketball Podcast. In this episode, we're going to talk about mastering conceptual offense in AAU basketball. So having spoken to a lot of coaches, some of the challenges in AAU are the, obviously, the travel time, The inconsistent practice from the players.

Some players will be at practice, others won't, others will just play games. So it's really hard to maybe practice in a way where you get everyone's on the same page, right? So instead of having fixed plays or rules, you can have a set of guiding principles for your players in AAU basketball to maximize their strength on offense.

Okay, so let's start with transition.

Okay.

Maybe you wanna run, you wanna be a team that plays fast and runs and creates advantages in transition. So you could give your players principles, right? Instead of rules. So instead of saying, oh, when you rebound, I want you to outlet to the point guard, and then we're gonna dribble up and try and create an advantage in transition offense like that.

Instead, you could say, you have to land like a quarterback already looking at the basket we're trying to score in. Okay? So then automatically there's gonna be more ways for the players to create advantage in green. Because they're already gonna be in a position where if they land looking at the basket, they can bust out dribble.

Maybe that's when they can outlet, maybe a quick high outlet to create dominoes. And then you might give other principles like lag-free reaction. The players have to, as soon as we gain possession, they have to win their first 3 steps and bolt down the court like Usain Bolt, run as fast as they can to create an advantage and get behind the defense.

They have to stay wide. So we call it keeping the highway clear, right? So I saw a podcast episode. It was like the Mack truck lane.

Yeah.

When Miami used to play and it used to be the Big 3, and it would be the space between the free throw line to the free throw line. So that space right there, you have to keep that clear so that either the ball can go through and there's just no defense in the middle, right?

Maybe you want to create a 2-side on the weak side in transition. And then from here, you can hopefully try and create dominoes and play off dominoes with speed. If you can't, then you're already in space. You're either 5 out or 4 in or 4 out, 1 in.

And you can flow into the trigger that makes the most sense. And I think it's more important to have, again, the principles or triggers like a screen on the ball, a pick on the ball, a screen away, as opposed to having fixed plays.

Okay. And I'll go into why in just a minute. But it's super important that the players learn to read the defense to create and exploit advantages. Okay. And you get in transition, you arrive, we're in neutral, there's no advantage. It's next action thinking.

What can we do from here as quickly as possible to keep the offensive flow alive? So in practice, you could constrain this like you have 3 seconds to find the most attractive trigger in that situation. If you don't do it, it's a turnover.

So that could be a constraint that you use to— for your players to always keep the offensive flow alive. And I think being able for your players to play multiple positions enhances decision-making across all positions. So instead of telling your big man, You're going to rebound and outlet.

You could also— you're going to rebound, land like a quarterback, and you could bust out dribble. So now you're developing your big man into someone that can handle the ball. And who knows, he might be able to make plays on offense. So you might run a dribble handoff with him, right?

So maybe some of your actions could be a pick and roll with a pop. And then if there's no advantage created with the pop, you can flow straight into a get action. Okay? So these are things that your players will naturally do if you put them in those environments in practice and you challenge to find advantages versus running patterns that you may like because you like a horn set or you like the chin series.

So it's more about how can we exploit these advantages based on how the defense is guarding us. And that's something that is super important. In the game, we don't want to so much focus as to what we are doing on offense as opposed to how the defense is guarding us.

So if the defense is showing on the pick and roll, then what are the coverage solutions that we can use to exploit and punish this coverage? Right? So in your timeouts, you could talk to your players and even ask them, all right guys, they're in a show.

So you could guide their attention that the defense is in a show. What are some coverage solutions for us to really punish this coverage?

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And then if it's not working, in your next timeout, maybe you could say, guys, we're going to prevent this aggressive coverage and we're going to screen away before we get into our pick and roll action. Okay? So what this would do, it'll be a late start for the defense guarding the screener.

Or the picker. And then you're going to be automatically, you're going to prevent the coverage. So these are things that as coaches we can focus on. What defense, how's the defense guarding our triggers? Okay. And the great thing about like working on triggers and using triggers as opposed to running sets, and I like sets, I think they fit, they're good on dead balls.

I mean, you know, time and score as well. But I think the real benefit with running triggers is the reps that you get. So let's say you're, you know, this continuity pick and roll offense and you're getting that first drag screen in the middle.

And then the ball's going to the second side, and then the ball's going back to the third side. So you're getting basically 3 pick and roll reps if that happens like that, right? And these are very purposeful reps. Now, the trick and the challenge is to make sure that the players aren't just running the pick and roll and then swinging the ball to the second side and the third side.

The challenge is, can the players create an advantage? And can they do it consistently? And can they exploit the advantages, keeping dominoes going until they get a high-value shot, right? Rob shot, right? Yeah. Range, open, balance. And I think one of the really cool constraints that I like for this is the one opportunity constraint at practice.

So players, it could be any game— 2-on-2, 3-on-3, 4-on-4, 5-on-5— and they have one chance to create an advantage from the trigger. So it teaches them to be super intentional about not only reading the defense but finding the correct coverage solution that will cause dominoes.

Okay. And the great thing about this is that defensive concepts will also be practiced with the offensive strategy. So you could teach and reinforce how you want the show defense to look like. Maybe you're switching 1 through 4, but if the big man sets the screen, then you're in the drop.

How are you communicating that you're in the drop? Because the on-ball defender doesn't know if it's the 5-man screening or somebody else. So it's like all these things that you can think about. And that you're going to be getting so many more reps by just going to triggers.

So I think the last thing I want to say is think about what triggers will suit your team the best, suit the player's individual and collective strengths, because you may have a big man that's a great passer. So you may want to run some more delay action, right, where he gets the ball at the top of the key and then it's 2 screenaways on either side, right?

You may want to maybe If it's a pick and roll and there isn't an advantage, he can pop back out and run a get because you want the ball in his hands a bit more. Maybe you want your guard-heavy team, or you have a great scorer who doesn't handle the ball well, and you may want to run some more away screens, some screenaways for him to get him going and get him open.

And then you could design games of practice to, you know, if the defense goes over, you can curl to the basket. Maybe if the defense Goes, the chase is over and it's really aggressive, you can maybe still keep going and we can turn that, if it's in the delay series, we can turn it into a little zoom action there as well.

And then I think with all this, you can really teach spacing, how to relocate, and a lot of off-ball concepts that maybe get forgotten sometimes because we want to work on fixed plays, set plays. Okay. So the one question I'll leave with coaches is just think about What is the most effective triggers based on your team's individual strengths?

How can you start practicing in a way where you're getting intentional reps so your players are practicing these triggers so that when you get to the game, they'll keep— it's almost like another practice, right? It's like a very much more competitive, obviously, but it's also like a more intentional practice.

Can your players continue to create advantages with, let's say, pick and roll, with whatever trigger you decide to go with? Can they consistently create advantages by finding the correct coverage solutions? So I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope you got something out of it.

Until next time.

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