A Good Zone Baseline Inbounds Play

Throughout the season, I've started to see more and more teams use a zone to defend the under the basket inbounds (BLOB) play. On the one hand, I think the zone is good at protecting the basket, but at the same time, it leaves you extremely vulnerable if the other team knows you are running a zone and can take advantage of it.

I saw this play from a book that I read, it appears on the surface that it would work very well against the zone. Depending on how the zone is defending (either packed in or spread to defend), it is flexible to take advantage of either situation.

Zone BLOB:

The set formation is a 2-2, with O1 inbounding and your best shooters setup at each corner. Your forwards are setup at each elbow of the lane. Against, the packed in zone (diag 1), you should be able to get an open 3-pointer with a pass to O2 or O3 along the baseline. Against a team that wants to spread out and defend the extremes (diag 2), your forwards O4 and O5 do an X-cut, guaranteed to throw off the zone defense for a quick score under the basket.

In fact, you can and should run the X-cut anyways, against any zone that hasn't prepared for it, should be a guaranteed bucket.

Your safety in this situation is O2. If O2 is being completely overplayed, O2 should be able to cut to towards the inbounder to receive the pass before a 5-second count.

Summary:

I'd venture to guess that most teams that zone up the inbounds are probably packed in zones, looking to protect the basket. So the O2 and O3 3-pointers are probably the most likely plays out of this set. The X-cut is a nice surprise option for teams that haven't scouted you.

For more great video infor from a truly great basketball mind, take a look at Hubie Brown's DVD Part I + II on Special Situations. Don't forget to check out the X's and O's of Basketball Forum to discuss this and other basketball topics.