Terrific Tactics to Get Your Best Player the Ball!

Steve Pikiell, the head men’s coach at Rutgers, has some first-hand experience with designing plays to get his best player the ball. Most recently, having a talented son of a former NBA champion on his team, Pikiell was forced to be creative in his journey to help set his team up for success while trying to get that talented player the ball in a good position on the floor. Coach Pikiell shines the spotlight on some of the most successful methods he’s utilized to get his best player the ball. You will learn the basic sets and creative counters to thwart defenses and make adjustments to keep opponents off balance.

Alignments

A Box-Set alignment allows you to do a lot of different things out of a basic alignment. Coach Pikiell shows off his favorite initial movements out of basic box-set alignment. Even with a common alignment – such as, beginning with post players positioned on the elbows and guards on the blocks – you can begin with screening-down and screening-across actions, or even simply just use a pop out move to get open.

Pikiell demonstrates the simplest way to pop out and create a back screen cross-screen action. This basic action sets up the rest of plays, coming from similar looks and all if which are designed to get your best player the ball.

Wide Options

Coach Pikiell explains that from any basic alignment set, you can now manipulate the defense anyway you want in many different ways. In a play called ‘Wide Hold,’ Pikiell shows movements where your best player starts with the ball and cuts to the opposite side of the floor. Instead of having your post player come off a back screen, he or she will hold as the ball is reversed and create an isolation for your best player. 

If your best player happens to be a post player, Coach Pikiell has you covered – as he shows how you can use a play called ‘Wide Tebow’ to create a slip-and-easy lob at the basket for your post player coming off a back screen.  

If your best player needs to knock down a 3-point shot, Pikiell shows how you can use ‘Wide Flare’ to set up a flare-screen skip pass, or if that gets taken away, utilizing a re-screen for an open shot look from the top of the key.

Coach Pikiell has come up with an innovative hand signal system for using different hand signals and changing one word within each set – as a tactic that will leave your opponent guessing as to what option you’re looking for off your sets.

BLOBS and SLOBS

Winning the special situations with your best player can help you steal easy buckets. Coach Pikiell demonstrates a simple box-set baseline out-of-bounds play where you can manipulate the defense to get your best player the ball at the rim or open for a corner for a three-point look. Pikiell shows off a terrific sideline inbounds play, where players look to set a screen for your best player to come toward the ball, only to have them suddenly come off a secondary screen for an open bucket! 

Utilizing planned strategies that create fresh set plays – from the same offensive alignments you normally use – can be a primary method for getting your best player the ball, while also leading to easy buckets for the other players on your team, as the defense struggles to recognize what you're doing on any given set play.

With the defense occupied by your best player, and frustrated by what you’re running, you can get wide-open scoring opportunities, while keeping your offense fresh.

Coach Pikiell offers a ton of fresh and creative offensive concepts in this on-the-court instructional session – all while providing you with game-tested plays that will help you win more games!

Coaches Rating: 5 Out of 5 Stars. ‘Great video! The sets that Pikiell shows are simple to teach and install, yet effective! This is a must-have video to add some fresh, new plays into your playbook.. this is an excellent coaching video!’

82 minutes. 2023.