Building a High-Low Motion Offense to Create Mismatches

with Mike Brey,
Atlanta Hawks (NBA) Assistant Coach;
University of Notre Dame Head Coach from 2000 to 2023;
3x Big East Coach of the Year;
2015 ACC Tournament Champions;
2012 Associated Press College Basketball Coach of the Year;
2011 USBWA Henry Iba National Coach of the Year;
2012 Jim Phelan National Coach of the Year Award;
2011 Associated Press College Basketball Coach of the Year;
2011 CBSSports.com National Coach of the Year;
2011 Sports Illustrated National Coach of the Year;
2x NABC District V Coach of the Year (2011, 2012);
2008 Skip Prosser Man of the Year Award;
2001 Big East West Division Champions;
Delaware Head Coach from 1995 to 2000;
2x American East Regular Season & Tournament Champions (1998, 1999);
1998 America East Coach of the Year;
Duke University Assistant Coach (with Mike Krzyzewski) from 1987 to 1995;

A little-known by-product of building and utilizing motion offense is that it creates strong minded players. These players, collectively and instinctively, know what to look for and where scoring opportunities will most likely come from.

Mike Brey is a coach known for having tough-minded teams with players who stick together and stay on-point during the heat of closely contested games.

This by-product is what the three-time Big East Coach of the Year award winner calls, ‘creating a healthy fabric within your team.’ Possessing a healthy ‘team fabric’ means that you have players who not only know how to play, but they also know the right way to play the game.

Using build-up drills to teach the actions within a High-Low Motion Offense enhances these critically important decision-making skills in players – which builds a healthy ‘team fabric’ as a by-product result.

In this highly valuable coaching video, Coach Brey uses on-the-court demonstrations to teach key 3-on-0 and 4-on-0 concepts and in-game actions that you can use within a High-Low motion Offense. These concepts are easy to learn and easy to reach, while remaining tough for opponents to guard.

Team Fabric

Basketball is a long and grinding season. Players are excited and energized to start the year and are willing to work together. As the season goes on, however, they might struggle to work together and maintain a high level of confidence in each other.

Coach Brey outlines tangible concepts you can use to instill and build your ‘Team Fabric.’ By being a coach who works hard at being a confidence-giver it uses these concepts to keep players motivated and believing in themselves – while also believing in their teammates.

According to Brey, possessing a plan for building confidence (i.e., a healthy team fabric) pays dividends as the season goes along. As an example, he shares how a steady and consistent focus on the assist-to-turnover ratio by the coaching staff is something that helps foster a mentality for players to play unselfish, share the ball and move the ball more within the offense. 

During the long grind of the season, this is just one of the helpful tactics that Coach Brey uses to emphasize the ‘Team Fabric’ mentality throughout the season. 

2-on-0 Warm-Up

Every coach has a warm-up routine that players go through. As Coach Brey shows you, incorporating actions to get players warmed-up while simultaneously mimicking the most-used action within your offense is a terrific way to begin your workouts.

Brey showcases a terrific strategy for incorporating a 2-on-0 warm up that teaches cutting, spacing and post-feed actions to get players loose before you start to ‘get after it’ in practice.

Coach Brey also covers other good warm-up tactics to use – such as using dribble-entry or post feeds to help players work on their fundamentals, while getting loosened up, and all the while, helping you install some of the most-critical actions within your High-Low Motion Offense.  

3-on-0 and 4-on-0 Actions 

Building up your players confidence and raising their basketball IQ, as you use breakdown drills to teach motion offense actions, is a valuable tactic many coaches never even consider. Coach Brey demonstrates several actions that are popular within today’s game and can be used to help players understand how to maintain spacing within your offense.

In ‘Squeeze Action,’ Coach Brey shows how players use a downscreen, post feed and relocation action to keep the floor balanced, while maintaining the ability to attack from multiple angles.

Brey points out how post players can also improve their passing ability as they pass out of the post on the wing and use a skip pass to open the floor up – which are great actions for players to learn how to play and space on their own.

In 4-on-0 block-to-block action, Brey demonstrates how players can work on skills that improve and reinforce the ability to screen across, fake the screen or continue their screening action into a wing ball-screen. 

Each of these actions are based off of reads that defenders often give to the offense unknowingly. Once an offensive player learns how to read a defender’s reaction, he or she will know how to play out of anything a defense may throw their way. 

Coach Brey also showcases several pressure sets, half-court sets and zone sets you can also use to incorporate these actions. These simple sets and actions are easy to teach, easy to install and players will love running them.

Learning together and playing together is great to develop basketball IQ and improve your team fabric. Players learn tendencies and learn how to play the game by feeding off each other and competing in practice on a daily basis. After watching Coach Brey’s video, you’ll be able to add the 3-on-0 and 4-on-0 actions into your own practices – actions that teach proper spacing, cutting and passing – which will help you develop an unscoutable, explosive motion offense!

81 minutes. 2023.

DeMatha High School Assistant Coach (with Morgan Wootten) from 1982 through 1987;also played for Morgan Wootten at DeMatha High School (MD)