Dribble Drive Motion at the NIKE Hoop Summit

A couple of days in between games before the NBA playoffs, a great opportunity to show some emerging talent. For you hoop crazed fans out there like me, you probably caught the NIKE Hoop Summit on FOX this past Saturday. I like it better than the McDonald's All-American game which is more NBA All-star game than team competition.

The NIKE Hoop Summit pits the USA Jr National team against a squad of same aged (U19) international players. I think the competition is a little unfair against Team World, because of the additional communication barriers and lack of preparation time as compared to Team USA. But some of those factors are unavoidable.

Anyways, Team USA basically went with a dribble drive motion offense in the half-court. Team World switched defenses between M2M and zone which confused Team USA a little but they stuck with the dribble drive throughout. Here are a few sequences from a tight first half,



I'll say that it wasn't strictly the dribble drive, more like a spread drive and kick (ala Duke this year) as Team USA did use the ball-screen occasionally. Although Team USA did not shoot the ball well and did rely on penetration, offensive rebounds to score. Another reason why it isn't technically a motion offense, is because with international rules of a 24 second shot clock, you essentially have 1 maybe 2 drive-kick series. So it's basically dribble drive early offense.

I took this screenshot just to show the simplicity of drive and kick. This is from the 2nd clip with Team World playing M2M,


Team USA #6 uses a great stutter step to freeze the defender up top then attacks the elbow forcing the corner defender to step in to help. #6 kicks it out to #9 who is so wide open. #9, just drives into the open spot and shoots a floater and banks it.

Summary:

This game was almost tied at halftime, pretty amazing when you consider that Team USA has traditionally dominated Team World. In the 2nd half, Team USA began pressing and aggressively overplaying and Team World didn't adjust and thus the 20 point differential, 98-78. Another big factor was the 8-sec halfcourt rule, it allowed Team USA to really pressure in the backcourt and force some bad passes by Team World.

I like the dribble drive offense in the halfcourt for Team USA though, it was very suitable. They're more athletic and 1v1 on the perimeter, every Team USA player can penetrate.

For a relatively new video on perimeter play improvement, take a look at Jason Shay's DVD on 33 Perimeter drills. Coach Shay's is an assistant with the University of Tennessee men's team. Don't forget to check out the X's and O's of Basketball Forum to talk about this and your favorite basketball topics.