Strategy- Press Break with Movement

Years ago, Dan Sullivan, Mike Jaskoski, and I worked the Bill Walton Big Man Camp for 3 days. Pro basketball coach Don Casey was across the hall from us. Every night we met with Coach Casey. He told us to bring beer, a posey board, and questions. 

At the time, my team’s were struggling. Because we struggled, everyone pressed us. A lot of my questions were about problems vs presses and ideas for press breaks. After about my 4th question about press breaks, Casey said,”My guess is that you need to do a lot of work on passing, cutting and catching. You team is struggling not because of their press break but probably because of their skills.” Rule #1- There is no magic press break.

This year, I saw a team run the press break that I am going to describe. I was impressed, it created movement, it had cutting, and produced clear outs. It is a very good press break, but it will not be good until players have run it over and over and over- so the movement is not robotic. Rule #2- For a press break to be effective, the movements need to natural- without thought. 

Enter The Ball- The team I watched did not have a post enter the ball but you could. They seemed to always try to enter the ball to their left- my guess is that most teams enter to the right so they were making the defense do something just a little differently. And they were entering away from their point guard who became the cutter in the middle. 

Reverse the Ball- If they could not hit the cutter, they reversed to #3 who looked for #5 coming up the sideline.

Repeat Action- They repeated the action on the reversal by having the weakside guard cut thru the middle. They could keep reversing it if they wanted. I saw them only reverse it three times only a few times. Each time they reversed the ball, the moved up the floor.

Reverse and Go- Often on the second or third reversal, #3 (their best player) would just take off on the dribble. #2 would be ready to cut up the side for a reverse pass but when they saw #3 going on the dribble, they would reverse direction.