Transition Offense

Well, it has been homecoming week here at our school and it has consumed most of my time and energy.  With that being said, it has been a good week and the kids have been having fun.  We have a big football game tomorrow night so I am excited to watch our players play a good game.

I thought I would share a variety of good transition drills that everyone can look at and modify to fit within their system.  The one misconception that I see or hear when talking with coaches is that in order to be an effective transition team, you need to play like North Carolina, Grinnell, or VCU.  The other misconception is that you have to have deep bench to have strong transition team.  Being effective does not mean you have to push the ball as hard as you can and taking a shot within the first 10 seconds of the possession.  Effective to me means that you use opportunistic situations to put pressure on the defense and hold them accountable for getting back on defense.  Some games will allow for more opportunities than others.

Therefore, we are going to look at a number of transition resources.  Some of these I have shared in my emails that I send out to those of you who subscribe, and others I have posted on here on my blog.  Either way, I believe these resources can benefit any program.  As always, take the elements that fit your team strengths.  Hope they help.

UNLV Running Game

Attacking Ball Screen Secondary Break

Josh Kerkau 5 Out Transition

Tom Izzo Numbered Break

Hoffstra Up Tempo Offense

If you are looking for some new ideas or are wanting to implement an up-tempo offensive system, you will like this resource on Hoffstras Up Tempo Offensive System.  It contains the philosophy to their approach as well as drills to teach the system.  A great resource in my opinion.

Hoffstra Up Tempo Offense

John Groce Transition Offense

Here are some transition notes from John Groce that have some influences from the Phoenix Suns that incorporate a lot of transition ball screen actions.  With style of play, your players will enjoy being able to get out and run and make some plays by using their athleticism.

John Groce Transition Offense

University of California Speed Offense

Today, we are going to take a look at the University of California Speed offense.  I love looking at different philosophies to playing uptempo basketball.  Hopefully you get some good ideas to add to your offensive system.

University of California Speed Offense - Part 1

University of California Speed Offense - Part 2

Secondary Break Options

For teams that have transition offense built into their philosophy need to have a seamless way to get from their early break to their base offense.  There are a wide variety of secondary breaks out there and it is vital that you find or create something that easily flows into your base offense.  Personally, I prefer simplistic secondary break packages that emphasize quick scoring looks and quick ball movement.

The following resource gives you some simple secondary break options to consider.  The actions are simple and allow you to put pressure on the defense while the defense is trying to get organized.

Secondary Break Options

Terry Carroll: Second Cutter Press Break

If you are looking for some different press break ideas, you might be interested in Terry Carroll's Second Cutter press break.  Coach Cutter provides a number of simple strategies for breaking full court defenses.  As with most zone defenses, often the second cutter through the zone is going to be open. 

Terry Carroll: Second Cutter Press Break

Simplified Swing Offense for High School Basketball

We used to run a lot of Swing offense.  At heart, I am a motion coach, but I would have to say the Swing offense is one of the better continuity offenses out there.  It has great spacing and a lot of screening actions that get you post looks as well as perimeter looks.  At that time, I reallly broke down this offensive system.  While the basics of this offense are the same as the Wisconsin Swing, I did modify some elements and added in some quick hitters, primary break and the scoring options we got the most frequently. 

Simplified Swing Offense for High School Basketball

Ric Wesley High Post Offense

Here is a breakdown of Ric Welsley's High Post Offense for those of you coaches who like to run a high post style of offense.  He also has some good transition ideas that lead into to his offense as well.  Hope it helps.

Ric Wesley High Post Offense

Roy Williams: UNC Transition Game

UNC is well known for thier transition game.  Not only do they have great athletes, but they also have a great system in play as well.  Here is an in-depth look at their transition game.

Roy Williams UNC Transition Game

My Favorite Drills #4: Progressive Fastbreak

One of the next drills we work on to teach transition offense and defense is a Progressive Fastbreak.  I got this drill from Mike Neighbors who is a great assistant coach for the University of Washington's Womens basketball team. 

The Progressive Fastbreak is a team drill that is very competitive and allows you to teach multiple aspects of the game, including time and score situations.  I hope it is something that will help you and your team.

Progressive Fastbreak

My Favorite Drills #3: Sideline Break 3 Man Warm-up

The next drill that we use to teach our sideline break is another drill that I got from Tom Izzo.  We call it the Sideline Break 3 Man Warm-up.  It is an extension to our Sideline Outlet Progression.

Sideline Break 3 Man Warm Up

May Favorite Drills #2: Sideline Outlet Progression

I have talked before about how my approach to transition offense has changed over the years, largely due to my conversations with Wayne Walters (SWARM Enterprises).  Since then, I have become a big component of a sideline break.  The sideline break has improved our overall transition game these past few years.  At practice, we have even used a stop watch to time how long it takes us to get the ball advanced up the floor, and we have found that we advance the ball up the floor 1.5-2 seconds faster (from the inbound pass to the first scoring action) when using the sideline break approach rather than a dribble break.  When we get the ball advanced up the sideline, it forces our bigs to run the floor faster.  They have to in order to beat or stay level with the advancement of the ball.  Last year in a game, we were in a free throw situation.  Our opponent made the free throw and they started running back to get set up in their defensive set.  However, we had already advanced the ball up the sideline and had a lay-up before they even turned around to locate the ball. 

One of the first drills that we use to teach this is very simplistic in nature, but probably the most critical as well.  We call it the Sideline Outlet Progression.  I wish I could say that I came up with the drill myself.  However, I actually modified it slightly from a drill that Tom Izzo uses to teach his number break.  We simply modified to be more a sideline approach.  Next week, I will post some other drills that we use to teach the sideline break as well. 

Sideline Outlet Progression

Coaching Quote #11: Key to Key

"The difference between great teams is often the time it takes to advance the ball from top of the key to top of the key."

--- Hubie Brown

Vance Walberg Drills

Here are some intense pratice drills that Vance Walberg uses daily in his practices.  Each of these drills teach transition offensive and defensive concepts.  Even if you don't run a DDA/DDM style offense, you can adapt them to fit your style of play.

Scramble Drill
Texas 22
Texas 111
Cardinal

2011-2012 Spurs Playbook

Here is a short playbook that I put together on the San Antonio Spurs from last year's playoffs.  Gregg Popovich is a master at offensive play design for getting the ball into the post.  I hope you can find something in this playbook to help your team this year.

2011-2012 San Antonio Spurs Playbook

Competing with Less Talented Teams

Most coaches at some point in their careers will experience a team that is lacking in talent. This was my case a few years ago when I was coaching girls. We won 4 games over the course of 2 years. At practice, we did a lot of fundamental development focusing on passing, dribbling, footwork, shooting and ball toughness.

My thought at the time was that in order to keep ourselves in the game, we need to minimize the number of possessions that the other team would have and play really good defense. Looking back at this approach, especially the offensive side, I can see that this approach was not ideal. I could see it working had our players had a good base of fundamentals. However, it was a struggle for us to get ball reversals, find quality shot attempts and ultimately we had a large amount of turnovers each night and were struggling to score 30+ points. Regardless of how good our defense was, it is tough to win games if you are scoring 30-35 points.

Over the years, I have done some research, talked with numerous coaches and watched some videos on this topic. Granted, I came across many different philosophies that emphasized slowing down the game, but ultimately, my opinion has changed. If I could re-coach those 2 years with those exact same players, in a nut shell, my approach would be as followed:

1. We would look to do the bulk of our scoring out of our transition offense. We would spend a large portion of practice working on a sideline break that would also serve as our press break. As I noted above, we had a hard time scoring out of our half-court offense because of our fundamental ability, style of play and the athleticism of our opponents. Rarely would we get a quality shot that was not contested. Therefore, getting the ball up the floor as quickly as possible with the pass and attacking the rim in transition would have probably given us better quality shot attempts. It would have also given us a better chance of getting offensive rebounds and more free throw attempts, both of which we struggled to do in the half court set.

2. I would have also been more aggressive with our defense (full court and half court). I probably would have stayed with our match-up zone, but would have been more aggressive with trapping. I would also have extended our defense and played the game full court. Granted, we were going to get with some of our rotations, but we would also force a few more turnovers that would have led to higher quality shots that we were not getting in the half court set.

3. In both our transition offense and defense, I would have had to play more people in order to play that aggressive style for a full game. In reality, there was wasn’t much difference in ability from players 1-12. Not only would more kids have played, but I think kids like to play this style anyways, so we would have probably been a happier team regardless if we would have been winning or losing.

4. I would have continued to use a simple have court offense that emphasized attacking the basket with the dribble and with the pass regardless if we saw man or zone defense. I would have also reduced the number of sets and quick hitters.

5. Fundamentals would continue to be taught in practice. I would have just incorporated more multidimensional drills that incorporated combination skills in the transition game (being that is where most of our game would be played at).


I don’t know if we would have won any more games than we did those 2 years, but I know I would have enjoyed coaching more and the kids would have enjoyed playing more. In my opinion, even if we lost those same games, but were scoring 50 points rather than 30 and more kids played that were probably about the same ability level anyway, it probably would have been a better couple of years.


We are currently using this approach this year with our boy’s program. We have done a lot with statistical analysis and have found that the numbers (FT attempts, shooting percentage, turnover differential and points per possession) support this style of play for us. We have an athletic group which makes it even more enjoyable to coach and play.