As you may or may not know, I am currently the head basketball coach at Metuchen High School in Metuchen, NJ. We have had some great success over the last six seasons and I have been fortunate enough to coach some great basketball players while there. One of those players, Marqus Blakely, signed as an undrafted free agent this summer with the Los Angeles Clippers and is working to earn a spot on their team while playing in the N.B.A’s Las Vegas summer League. The other night, he looked like the best player on the floor for them as he posted 14 points and 6 rebounds. The members of my current team were so proud and excited to talk about Blakely’s game as most of them got the chance to see it on tv. So we spent the better part of our warmup talking about that, but then we go into actually playing some basketball. This brings me to my title, “Using 3 on 3 to Develop Your Team’s Offense.” This topic has come up on my site before in the post 3 on 3: The Key to Teaching Team Basketball, but using three on three drills in my last two practices has resulted in so many good results for us in our games this summer that it deserves another post.
Three on three basketball can and should be used to develop your team’s offense because the games can be altered in many ways in order to fit your offensively philosophy. At yesterday’s practice, we worked on multiple variations of three on three basketball in order to help develop our team offense and defense (which will be covered in the next post). Each game was to one point and the loser would rotate off while the winner stayed and played the next team. We used both sides of the court so that teams would not be standing for a long period of time. Each block of games which usually lasted for 10 minutes had certain variables that needed to be followed and worked on based on our team’s offensive principles. Offensively we run the dribble drive but with more movement off the ball and some added pick and roll sets. Consequently, we worked on all of these concepts during our three on three play.
The first concept that we worked on was moving without the ball. In order to do so effectively, the players were not allowed to dribble at all during this time period. Too many players get caught dribbling too much and the other players tend to stand around and watch. By eliminating the player’s dribbles it forces them to rely on cutting and screening in order to get an open look at the basket.
During the second block of games, the players were all given one dribble per touch. Once again, this forces them to really move without the basketball in order to get open looks but at the same time, they were now working on using their dribble for a purpose. Players can do more than they think with one dribble provided they use their dribble to attack a gap and force a teammate’s defender to help or attack the basket and score. By limiting the number of dribbles a player has, they are forced to use their dribble properly or they will waste an opportunity to score.
As we progressed into the next block of games, we allowed each player three dribbles on each touch. Now we were getting into more of the dribble drive offense’s concepts. Once again because of the limited number of dribbles, the players had to learn to attack properly with their dribble in order to be productive, but at the same time they were still forced to rely on moving without the basketball and setting screens in order to keep their spacing and create driving lanes for the man with the ball.
The final variable that we added was that the score had to come off the pick and roll. Each player still only had three dribbles per touch because we wanted to work on attacking off the pick and roll effectively and not with an excessive number of dribbles. My players are drilled to go by screener tight with their shoulder low enough that they actually hit the screener’s hip. It is preferable that they use two dribbles while coming off the pick and roll with the second dribble being the one to clear them from the pick and attack the space that is being created by the action. It is preferred that the player with the ball attack coming off the pick and should not go sideways. Attacking while coming off the pick will put the defenders at a disadvantage when trying to help and recover and should lead to better scoring opportunities. On the other hand, cominf of the pick and attacking laterally creates an easy help and recover opportunity for the defenders.
Once we had worked on all our offensive variables, there was an, “anything goes” session of three on three. This is meant to work on all of the concepts we had worked on in the previous four sessions while allowing the players to use their own creativity within the offense. This is an important concept because players are too often confined to what their coaches want them to do that it actually limits their capabilities as a player. A player’s creativity can sometimes be the best part of their game and it should be cultivated to make your team better.
Ultimately, making the team better is the goal of every practice and game and three on three basketball can go a long way towards accomplishing this goal. Using three on three basketball can be a highly efficient way of developing your team offense. The games can be short, competitive, and altered in a way that fits your team’s offensive concepts. By adding rules to the games, the players are able to work on those concepts more effectively. Since there are fewer players per team than in a regular game, each player will get more opportunities to work on the designated concept. Also, because the games are short (only one point games) it forces the players to compete harder in order to win and stay on the court. Consequently, they will try to execute the concepts better more often and more efficiently in their attempts to win. Overall, three on three basketball is an excellent way to develop your basketball team’s offensive concepts and improve in a game like setting.
