Michael Jordan's Triple Threat to Crossover

A few days ago, we were talking about Kobe Bryant and how he is obsessed with learning more about the 1v1 game, how to beat your defender, what move works best. Today, we'll take a look at a segment from one of Michael Jordan's videos from the Triple Threat, specifically the jab crossover.

When you're in triple threat, you want to see how the defense is playing you. As coaches, we usually teach attacking the front foot. What that means is if the defender is playing you to 1 side (to help usually), you want to go away from the help obviously and so you want to attack the front foot and cross over. If the defender is parallel, then you want to use a jab step first to force the defender to react, then attack the other way. MJ explains it better,



Jab Series From Triple Threat:

Here, the defender is parallel to MJ. So, MJ uses a jab step with his right foot. The defender reacts by side-stepping left, thus the defender's right foot is not higher and the defender is no longer parallel but staggered,

Once MJ has his defender off-keel with the jab step. He can lift his right foot and cross over to attack the defender's lead foot. As MJ says in the video, always protect the ball. He uses his right foot on the lunge, but I still emphasize using the right hand with palm outwards to fend off a potential arm by the defender,


Summary:

Back in the day, we used to call this move a rocker step. You jab, then cross over and attack. It is a very effective move. A question I get sometimes too is, what happens if the defender does not react to the first jab step? If that is the case, then I say make a quick but longer lunge the same way and blow by the defender. As a defender, you should react to a jab step, if you don't, it means the offensive player can just keep going that way right by you.

If you want to learn more about this and many other 1v1 offensive moves, take a look at Ganon Baker's new DVD on his Encyclopedia of Street Moves. Discuss this and the rest of your favorite basketball topics at the X's and O's Basketball Forum.