Greece's Awesome Screen the Screener Inbounds Play

12 teams, only 3 get to go to Beijing. The FIBA Olympic qualifying tournament kicked off today from Athens. There weren't any major upsets in day one action. I caught the first half of the Greece game against Lebanon before it got out of hand. Greece is just far better talent wise than Lebanon is and it was evident from the opening tip.

I really like this one BLOB play that Greece ran to start off the game. It's one of those screen the screener plays. If you scout your opponents and notice that they don't make a habit of switching screens, especially on BLOBs, this is the perfect play to run. Take a look,



Box Set BLOB:

It starts out in a high box set. O2 is the player that will eventually get to shoot the ball, so make sure you put a good shooter there, doesn't have to be your shooting guard as that might tip off the play. The bottom players set screens for the high players. They both v-cut to setup the screens, O1 going to the ball and O4 going away from the ball,


This is the beauty of the screen the screener once the other players have cleared. O5 goes across the lane to set a screen for O2 who just finished setting a screen for O4. O2 comes off the screen by O5 and gets the inbounds pass from O3. The defense doesn't start out switching and by the time they realize what's going on, the switch comes way too late, so that is why they get caught and O2 gets the open look.


My only pet peeve about the execution of this play is that the Greece shooter did not check his footwork. If he was 6 inches further back, it would've been a 3-pointer. Whenever we run shooting drills, we position a pylon about 6 inches from the 3-point line so that players get into the habit of shooting 1-2 feet away from the line.

Summary:

I'm a little disappointed that the Slovenia vs Canada game is so early, 3am here on the west coast, oh well, it's 1pm Greece time. Anyways, that's going to be the best game of the action tomorrow. I've got my fingers crossed for Canada...

For a brand new video from a great coach, check out Bob McKillop's new DVD on Winning Special Situations including BLOB and SLOB. Coach McKillop is the head coach of Davidson College whom we all remember for their memorable run in this past year's NCAA Tournament. Don't forget to check out the X's and O's of Basketball Forum to talk about this and your favorite basketball topics.