Developing A Killer Offensive Basketball Formation

by FAISAL KHETANI

So you wanna develop a killer offense?

Well, before you start wearing out your chalk, take some time to critically evaluate your team. Sit down with yourself and honestly, truthfully evaluate your team. What are their strengths; what are their weaknesses?

This is the first step to concocting your unstoppable offense. Without this evaluation process, you’ll be completely lost when it comes to optimizing and maximizing your team’s offensive production.

Let’s take a quick look at an imaginary team’s strengths and figure out an offensive formation that can maximize their offensive output:

This team has good shooters and passers, a guard who likes to constantly attack the basket, and has excellent offensive rebounders.

So, based on the above information, we know that this team has excellent guards and versatile forwards that can crash the offensive boards and hit from the outside. We can also extrapolate the fact that this team has athletic and talented centers with some perimeter range.

With talent like this, there are many different offensive formations that could be used, but to properly optimize and maximize the talents on this team, they should run a 1-4 offensive set. Why?

Well, mainly because the 1-4 offensive set places their players in advantageous spots on the floor. It creates space and attacking lanes for their dynamic point guard to wreak havoc on the opposition. And, by nature, it places their big men in positions to utilize their explosiveness and shooting abilities.

More than any other offensive set, the 1-4 offense really allows this team to fully take advantage of their speed and athleticism.

The whole “fully understanding” thing is starting to make a whole lot more sense now, isn’t it. You can see why without this advanced knowledge a coach would have no clue as to optimizing their team on the offensive end.

This fact alone is the main reason why you constantly see teams with lots of talent, but no championships to show for it. The problem doesn’t lie with the players; it is the coaches who are to blame.

The coaches are solely responsible for putting their players in optimal spots on the floor to maximize their team’s talents and abilities.

This is really the difference between an elite coach and an average coach. The elite coach truly understands his team and knows how to fully take advantage of his team’s strengths. Basically, the elite coach uses his basketball expertise to maximize his team’s chances of winning.

This is something an average coach can never be able to do, simply because he doesn’t have the knowledge necessary to implement game winning strategies.

And after all, having the right knowledge is the key.

Faisal Khetani is an athletic trainer and contributing writer to an award-winning basketball site. Over 600,000 coaches and players have improved their games and winning percentages with the basketball tips, drills, plays, and coaching advice on: http://www.basketball-drills-and-plays.com