Guides
Long reads on sets, screens and coverages, with diagrams you can open and run.
ATO plays: building a late-game package
An ATO is the one possession a season where you get to choose everything. This is how to build a package of five calls instead of a binder of twenty.
Making basketball breakdown videos and reels
The formats that work, the pacing that keeps people watching, and an honest account of where the animated diagram fits into the edit.
BLOB and SLOB basics: inbounds plays that work
Baseline and sideline out-of-bounds plays are the easiest free points in the game and the easiest turnovers. Here is what to run and what the rules let you do.
Horns offense: the family of options
Horns is not a play, it is a starting position that makes a defense choose. Here are the entries, the option families with a diagram each, and how to install it as one call instead of five.
How to beat a 2-3 zone
A 2-3 zone concedes the same four places every time. This is how to get the ball there, which habits matter more than the set you call, and when to stop running zone offense altogether.
How to draw up a basketball play
A practical guide to diagramming a play so a player can read it in four seconds — the standard symbols, phases instead of frames, and the spot names that keep a staff honest.
Motion or set plays: choosing for your roster
The honest trade-off between an offense built on rules and one built on calls, and the five roster questions that decide which way you lean.
Pick-and-roll coverages and how each one breaks
The eight ways a team guards a ball screen, in plain language, each with the thing it gives up and the specific counter that attacks it. Plus off-ball screens and handoffs.
Scouting a coverage and picking your counters
A short, repeatable way to work out how an opponent guards ball screens and off-ball screens, and how to turn each answer into one thing you run.
Spain pick-and-roll, and how to guard it
A ball screen with a back screen on the roller's defender. It asks one big man to do two jobs at once, and this is how you run it and how you guard it.
Teaching a playbook players remember
Most playbooks fail at the install, not at the whiteboard. A practical way to teach sets so players still know them in February.
Basketball plays for U12 and U14 teams
At this age the play is almost never the problem. Here is the short list of what to teach, in what order, and what to leave for later.