Alex Sarama discusses the problems with "pass and cut" motion offense in youth basketball, proposing an alternative approach.
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Alex Sarama discusses the problems with "pass and cut" motion offense in youth basketball, proposing an alternative approach. He argues that the pattern-based nature of the offense does not align with an ecological dynamics rationale. Instead, Alex suggests focusing on principles of play such as spacing and advantage creation. Alex also highlights many of the limitations behind automatic "pass and cut", such as reducing affordances for off-ball cuts and driving opportunities. He highlights the need for coaches to think differently rather than resorting to the same old methods that have been repeated over multiple decades.
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This transcript follows the original English audio.
This is the Transforming Basketball Podcast, and I'm your host, Alex Sarama. This is the podcast where we help coaches and practitioners change the way we think about basketball performance. Our goal is to create the ultimate resource to help make sense of how contemporary skill acquisition ideas can be applied within the basketball world.
Throughout the podcast, we'll unpack how an ecological dynamics framework alters our perspective of the game. If you're ready to join us in our quest to transform the basketball world, then this is the podcast for you. So in today's podcast, this is really, uh, an episode focused for youth coaches because something I've seen over the last several years is widespread popularity in passing cut offense.
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Which is done typically in every environment really I've seen all over the world at the kind of under-12, under-14 youth levels. And I really believe we need to ask the question as to whether or not this approach is conducive in developing skilled youth basketball players who are prepared for the scenarios that they will encounter when they are older, playing in more sophisticated forms of offense, which typically include other triggers such as pick and roll, off-ball screens, et cetera.
So let's just clarify what I mean by pass and cut. So what we typically see is this done in a very kind of scripted manner where teams come down the floor and regardless of whether it's a 3-on-3 or a 5-on-5, the players basically repeat this very regimented pattern of passing, cutting, getting out to space while another player fills.
And the whole essence of this is that supposedly players will keep passing, cutting, passing, cutting until some type of opening appears and they're able to break down the defense. So that's what I mean by pass and cut offense. So why may it be a problem?
Well, the first thing that we're going to look at is the fact that it's pattern-based. It's not affordance-based. Affordance, aka an invitation for action. So whenever an offense is based primarily on repeating a pattern, I don't believe that the design of those offensive principles aligns with an ecological dynamics approach where we look at affordances and natural kind of advantage-creating opportunities.
So For me, when players learn a model of the game and they just are taught to robotically reproduce a pattern, they're not learning how to play the game. So that's a very kind of distinguishing factor. So this is why I advocate for moving away from game models, regardless of whether it's something like a passing cut or a heavily regimented motion offense.
Or a very specific set play, which is kind of run through to the end of the set. I believe we need to move away from these, because instead we want players who can adapt and understand that the goal of offense is not to run a pattern.
So what is the goal of offense? And this is our second point as to why passing cut is an issue. Well, the goal of offense is to create an advantage. And when we look at the easiest ways to create an advantage, There's a reason why at older age groups of basketball, especially senior basketball, you would never ever see a pass and cut offense.
And the reason why is because it's not easy to create an advantage. It's very easy to contain. And at the end of the day, actions like pick and roll, gets, off-ball screens, if a player is going to be a somewhat reasonable basketball player, that is what they need to be exposed to at a younger age group.
So I'm not suggesting, you know, going in and running pick and roll at 12 years old, but instead looking at, okay, what are the offensive scenarios that we want to introduce players to early? And this is for me where it comes to general concepts such as spacing, dominoes, AKA advantage utilization, and then looking at how you start dominoes.
And that is what I'm gonna come to after when I outline the alternative to pass and cut. So the goal of offense is not to repeat a pattern, it's to score. So that means if players are constantly passing, cutting, what I see many times is players just become extremely passive.
And instead of becoming more skilled at what they need to become good at, they simply try and follow the coach's instructions, make them happy, and they pass and cut. And just in a FIBA 24-second shot clock, it is simply not conducive to waste 15 seconds of an offense, passing, cutting, and not being in a better position to score than when you started, when you had 21 or 22 seconds available in the half court or whatever it is.
Thirdly, just because there's motion and there's movement, we can't confuse that for good motion. So what do I mean by that? Well, one of the reasons I believe coaches teach passing cuts is because they think it develops the concept of moving in players and this whole idea of motion.
But for me, there's a big difference between moving with a specific intention in mind, such as an off-ball cut, versus moving because the coach said to do it as part of the rehearsal of a pre-programmed pattern. So we must be wary as coaches of confusing just a very scripted motion for thinking that that is good offense, because I actually argue it would be better for players just to pass and space.
And literally find their window outside the 3-point line. And that could involve taking 1 or 2 steps or several, as opposed to passing and cutting. Because what this also does is it removes affordances for other teammates. So let's look at something which I believe is very important and an affordance which players need to be attuned to at a young age to help prepare them for senior basketball.
And that's off-ball cutting. I call it a ghost cut, to borrow Mike McKay's terminology. Where, you know, a player on the, somewhere on the weak side, regardless of where it's the corner or the 45, will disappear and then appear somewhere scary for the defense, AKA under the basket.
So that's a ghost cut. Well, you never see off-ball cutting in the youth, all the youth teams all over the world that are running pass and cut. Why? Because it makes no sense to cut when the cut is being filled in a pre-programmed manner.
So why would players cut when if they cut, they're actually Making it harder to score because they're gonna have 2 defenders obviously right under the basket. So not only does pass and cut remove those really kind of advantage-creating off-ball cuts, which are typically devastating at higher levels, but also it removes affordances to drive one-on-one.
And the reason why is because the player who receives the pass from a teammate, instead of being able to drive immediately, they have to wait for the cutter to clear out, because if they go, they're probably going to go right into their, their teammate's defender.
And that is not realistic because the whole idea of modern basketball is we want to play and ideally use zero-second decisions. So for instance, if there's an advantage and we've created some type of an advantage and we're passing the ball, we want to use that advantage, and that means driving immediately.
So if we can't do that and we're just developing this terrible habit of players catching the ball, not looking to drive and be aggressive, and merely looking to pass it on and cut again. It's not conducive for developing basketball players who are gonna be adaptive problem solvers and be as effective as they could be.
And the analogy I want to use here is the example of the Harvard gorilla. And this was done by researchers in Harvard decades ago, and they were looking at attention. And, you know, the classic experiment goes, you're, you're shown a video of 2 teams and you have to count the number of passes that the team in white make while the team, another team wearing a different color, also moving in between in this big circle.
And you get so engrossed in counting the passes the first time you observe this clip, you fail to notice the presence of a costumed gorilla when it walks through the screen. And this is exactly tantamount to what I believe passing cart offense does.
We are not developing attunement to specifying information and the affordance landscape that will be presented to players when they become older in their games, but we are merely exposing them to a very artificial environment and one that really has no relevance to development in basketball and playing at older levels.
You know, even when players get to under-16s, The pass and cut is typically scrapped for other forms of offense. And therefore, I would argue that we need to spend every minute based on developing players in the situations they need to become adept in, in order to be good players when they're older.
And this is why I think it's so important as a basketball community, we challenge how things have always been done and we think differently because you might be thinking differently just after this podcast. You might not. That's totally okay. But we should not continue to do the same old things that have always been performed in one manner just because of tradition.
Because if we're doing that, we are not providing the best opportunities that we could be for the people who are most important. And as that is the players. So what's the alternative? I don't want to be one to suggest the problem without presenting a potential plausible alternative.
For me, it's simple principles of play. And even with under-12s teams, we can do this. So instead of these fake motions in a passing cut, let's just focus on great spacing. So the principle of play, let's not allow one defender to guard 2 offensive players.
So how we stand to do that doesn't matter, but we gotta escape the lava, which is the mid-range area. So that could mean we're in a 5-out. It could mean we're in a 4-out, 1-in using some type of dunker spacing. So principles, not absolutes.
Now, okay, that's our spacing. So the idea is, if the goal of offense is to create an advantage, well, we gotta make sure our players are very skilled at converting an advantage. So this naturally comes into the idea of dominoes and developing activities where players have to work on great shot selection to conclude an advantage before the defense recovers back to neutral.
So this could be 3-on-2s, 2-on-1s, or even a 3-on-3 with an advantage where the offense have to try and score before, before the defense gets to neutral. Otherwise, perhaps it's a turnover. I, I call that the one opportunity constraint. So let's say we've done that and we've developed some good spacing habits, and we've got players who are now a little bit aware of an offensive advantage.
So where is the easiest place to find an advantage? Well, it's naturally transition. So we have to encourage playing fast, and the faster we play, the more possessions. So for youth basketball, that obviously has severe implications when we want to have players develop equally and get more touches.
Obviously, that's an important consideration. So we then focus on transition and extreme pace, et cetera. So those are our core principles of play. So what that leaves is what to do in a half court, in the half court, if we don't have an advantage.
So Instead of pass and cut, the simplest solution that I advocate for is simply playing static 1-on-1. Because if we do that at under-12s and under-14s, the affordances to create off the dribble are amplified. And we need that because if players are confident handling the ball and they can express dexterity while dribbling, AKA they can dribble in lots of different ways, different solutions, and find problems, that is gonna be really useful when they're older.
Maybe they're handling the ball in a pick and roll, or they're dribbling against some type of intense pressure. So one-on-one with different players playing the one-on-one. So we don't just want the same players creating dominoes every time, but trying to find a way where we can spread the load.
And we might even start to become more tactical, introducing concepts such as hunting matchup advantages and trying to get teams at the youth age groups really good just creating one-on-one. And then converting dominoes, and that's it. If we do that, we will start to develop players who are far better than the robotic players that grow up in pass and cut environments.
And it's really funny because in environments all over the world I've done, I always do different things because I'm always trying to learn, grow, and manipulate constraints differently. But typically when I do some type of advantage game such as a 3-on-2, a lot of times I see players start by doing pass and cut.
And even one time I was coaching somewhere and the coaches started yelling to the players, pass and cut, pass and cut. And I was like, well, that's actually not what we want them to do because they have an advantage. We want them to use the advantage.
And this is just how entrenched this whole idea has become. And this is what happens as a basketball community where we don't question and we don't just reflect, is there a better way? So that's my whole principle. And if you have players who can do that well, then Let's move them on.
There's no need to wait until they're 16 years old till we teach pick and roll. Basketball is not linear. So let's say they're really good with these principles. Then maybe we add some more dynamic one-on-one where they come off blast cuts, AKA they cut from a double gap to a single gap and they try and create an advantage there.
Then maybe we introduce gets, and then we could get to pick and roll. So if we are doing these things in the manner which is developing skilled players, There is no reason a skilled 13-year-old player cannot start to develop functionality in pick and roll just because they're 13 and they supposedly have to wait till they're 15 on the club's curriculum till we start developing pick and roll.
So we've got to be adaptive as coaches to the groups we have and what is going on in front of us. So I've outlined the alternative here, and I think it's just very important that when, when it comes to principles of play, we have a clear intention as a coach as to what they are and what constraints we can use to manipulate them.
So one practical takeaway from this episode is to write your principles of play for offense and defense on a one-page sheet of paper, just handwritten. Once you have done that and you've identified your principles, see if you can think of any creative analogies to bring them to life.
For instance, dominoes, which accounts for your advantage concepts. Something like Fast and Furious is something I've used in the past for transition. And then on the other side of your sheet of paper, start to identify the small-sided games and the constraint manipulations which may lead to some of these things emerging.
And that is, you know, a really good starting point to start to adopt a contemporary approach to coaching basketball based on modern skill acquisition ideas. So I do also just want to make it very clear that when I say pass and cut, I'm not referring to things such as a backdoor cut or a ghost cut off the ball.
Those are things which I think are very effective in youth basketball and things players need to become good at. So a pass and cut for me is when it's very scripted and when players just obviously every time they pass, like 70% of the time they go cut, right?
That is what I mean by a pass and cut. Maybe a player's moving towards the ball and they backdoor cut. Great solution. Maybe there's a player on the weak side corner who cuts. Great solution. So just very important that we distinguish those differences.
And, you know, when it comes to these principles of play, I would say check out the previous episodes of the podcast, specifically episodes 2 and 5, where I spoke about how we can develop principles of play through a constraint-led approach and the 5 design principles of a nonlinear pedagogy.
So practically, I want to leave you with a few things. One thing I've had to do in environments working with new players for the first time It's basically almost heavily constrained them by banning pass and cut. And I just make pass and cut a turnover.
And the reason I do that is because I want to really significantly alter their intention and completely change their intention from being one of a passive performer who merely passes, cuts, and passes the scoring opportunity onto another teammate versus being a player who looks to create an advantage in every situation.
So I just now in any environment, I just say pass and cut is a turnover. Now, of course, some players, pass and cut is a good solution. Typically, picture Steph Curry. He has enormous gravity. He's a great shooter. So sometimes what happens is when he picks his dribble up, defenders will smother him, and that creates an affordance to— if he can get the ball to a teammate, it creates a cutting opportunity because they're often at an angle or side-on trying to contest what they thought was Curry about to shoot a 3.
So that is an instance where pass and cut could be good. Right. But it's especially at the youth level, it's very different to what we see being done right now in current global basketball. Encourage players to find other solutions to score, even if that only means spacing.
So even just passing and making sure you're keeping great spacing and not allowing one defender to guard 2 is a great solution. And ultimately, just spend more time on the MITs. Those are the most important things that players will see if they ever progress to higher levels of basketball.
And I wanna finish this with a research paper, The Role of Ecological Dynamics in Analyzing Performance in Team Sports. This comes from Luis Vila Duarte Araujo, Keith Davids, and Chris Button. It begins with this: opportunities to act may appear and disappear quickly, leading to fluctuations in the organizational states of games.
When these fluctuations are powerful enough to break the existing balance between performers, i.e., if the equilibrium between attacking and defending players is successfully destabilized, a symmetry-breaking process occurs. That is, a previously stable state of the game transits to a new dynamic state of organization.
For example, an attacker dribbles past the first defender, inducing a second defender to cover, leading to a change in the structure of the defending team. So that is exactly what we see in team sports such as basketball. These organizational states are continuously changing.
And the attackers, aka the offense, are constantly trying to break down the defense. So if we're running patterns, we are simply not being aggressive enough in trying to do that. And the game is so quickly changing. What I often see is players, like I said, may have an advantage after a closeout, or maybe even it's a 5 against 4 from transition.
And instead of players being attuned to that and trying to just keep breaking down the defense until they get a great shot, They start running pass and cut. And to me, that is a very damning indictment on our role as coaches if players are doing that, because that is not a natural behavior.
Yet that is what is happening in youth practices all over the world. So let's really think about moving beyond pass and cut. It's an extremely limited paradigm, and it's not conducive to developing players in any shape. Manner or format. So instead, I outline the basics of conceptual offense at the youth level in this podcast.
And of course, if you have questions on this, feel free to just message us directly and we'd love to help. So hopefully you can implement these ideas immediately in your practice. It's gonna take time. If you start saying passing cut is a turnover, it might take a few practices till your players get it.
But trust me, you are gonna see amazing changes in their ability to become adaptive players. Thanks for listening. Thanks for tuning into this episode of the Transforming Basketball Podcast. If you would like to learn more about the work we do, head to www.transformingbball.com to access our free resources and help spread these ideas throughout the basketball world.
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