Diana Taurasi
It’s sometimes difficult to find creative ways for your best player to score, especially when you just have one. There are some great ways to navigate these challenges with this type of roster for better offensive possessions.
Here are 🤚
SPACING:
Defense is taught to keep eyes on their player and the ball. The better your spacing, the more difficult this is to do. It also decreases the chances that the help will be as impactful because they are not as close to the proper gap position.
Great spacing allows for better driving lanes, better vision and better possessions.
MOVEMENT/FALSE ACTION:
It’s also hard for defense to keep eyes on both when your player is in constant movement. Standing cripples your offensive scorers because now the secondary defenders are more engaged and locked in to them.
Encouraging more player movement will keep defenders heads on a swivel making it more difficult for them to impact plays.
SCREENING:
Whether on the ball or off the ball screens are involved, this highly impacts defensive vision as well as forces miscommunications. The more you can occupy defense by forcing communication the less attention they will be able to pay to your scorers.
WEAKEST DEFENDER:
Identifying you opponents weakest defender is a great way to take advantage of your scorer. A simple way is to have the poor defender’s player set a screen for your scorer to create a switch, putting your scorer in a better position to get a great shot.
You can also find ways to manipulate your sets to involve these defenders in crucial parts of your offensive actions.
NEXT BEST PLAYER:
Since they are the next likely to score for you, they will have a decent amount of attention on them, not allowing for their defender to be as much of an impact in help situations.
If you put your next best player in 1 pass away situations, their defender will be forced to choose to help on your best player and risk leaving them open or to stay home and let their teammate handle your best player one on one.
So when breaking down your film and analyzing poor possessions, try to identify where the attention of the defense is. If at least three defenders are not consistently changing sides of the floor or having to turn their heads, then these tips should help to better occupy defense allowing for a more efficient offense.
There are many ways to take advantage of your lone scorer but as always, the importance of buy-in from the rest of the team is crucial. The more they buy-in to the movement, spacing and screening the more success this will create.
Although they may not score, praising their efforts to commit to these areas will create a more seamless transition to accepting and appreciating their roles to help the team win.