Driving To The Basket: The High IQ Player’s Ultimate Guide

Maybe the single most important part of being a great offensive player, whether it be scoring, creating for your teammates, just overall being successful on that end, is understanding when to do what. I always use the example of it's like having a toolbox, right? You can have the, the best toolbox ever with all of the newest, most expensive tools. But if you don't actually know when to use your hammer or when to use a screwdriver, or when to use a wrench or, or when to use a drill, then those expensive tools that you have, as great as they may be, it doesn't actually matter because you don't know when to apply those things. And it's very similar when it comes to basketball. Okay, you can spend all this time working on your skills and working on your athleticism and whatever the case may be, but if you don't understand when to do what on the court, then you're going to struggle to actually be successful and to use those things that you've worked on. Maybe the most important part of being great on offense is having that understanding of, okay, when am I looking to do this? When am I looking to do that? What's going to tell me that this is the time to drive, to shoot, all those sorts of things? So I want to talk about something specifically when it comes to driving the basketball, because this is where a lot of players struggle. I probably get this question. It's probably one of the top five most asked questions I get where players will say, coach, like, you know, I'm really struggling to consistently drive to the basket. I'm working on my ball handling, I'm in the weight room, I'm doing all this stuff, and I still just can't drive to the basket with any sort of consistency. And generally the number one reason why players can't do that is because they don't understand when. And this is. It probably matters when we talk about driving more than any other skill, is that you have to know when and if you don't know when you're going to be wildly inconsistent, it's going to be way harder for you than it should be. But with, like, the very simple things we're going to talk about in this video are going to help you to become way better at recognizing great opportunities to drive and ultimately being way more successful and consistent driving into the basket here, the number one thing that I think prevents players from driving, getting to the rim successfully is driving too early and not understanding why that's a bad thing sometimes. So a lot of times players just want to Go. And so you'll get onto offense and the ball will get swung one time and then you'll try and drive and you won't have an opportunity to do it. Like maybe there's good help or you know, the on ball defender is in a good spot and you have to pick the ball up and kick it, or maybe you lose the basketball and, and then players get stuck on that, they're like, well, I tried to drive and it didn't work. The thing to understand is that the worst time to drive is against a stagnant defense. Meaning early on in the offensive possession when you first get down the court, the defense hasn't had to move at all. So the on ball defender is in really good spot because that they haven't had to move, they haven't had to go to help or anything like that. All the help defenders are in a good spot because they haven't had to rotate anywhere yet. And so the hardest time to drive to the basket is early on in the possession before the defense has had to rotate at all. Driving at this point, a lot of times is going lead to turnovers. It's going to lead to bad decisions happening. It's going to lead you being in, in like tough spots with the ball, four shots. It's going to lead to things that you don't want to happen. A lot of times when you look to drive really early in a possession. Now obviously there's exceptions to that, right? Maybe you have a really good matchup or maybe the, the defense did mess up early in the possession, but a lot of times when the defense is stagnant, it's going to lead to negative things being way more likely to happen for you. The key here is patience. So instead of attacking right away, you've got to play the long game. And this is where a lot of players struggle to, to take the next step. And I think this is like one of, one of the key aspects of having a high basketball IQ that a lot of players don't quite understand. Offense is all about playing the long game. So what that means is that you have to recognize that the first time you touch the ball might not be the best time to attack. Like we talked about early on in that possession, the defense hasn't moved, everybody's stagnant. So a lot of times the best thing you can do early on in a possession is make the simple play, which is generally to pass the basketball, pass the ball, make the defense shift, make the defense rotate, and then what you're going to start to notice is that as the possession plays out for longer, so the more the ball moves, the defense has to rotate. This guy had to go from help to on the ball. This guy had to go from on the ball into help and then maybe they have to do that again. The more that you make the defense rotate, the more vulnerable they're going to be, the more likely somebody's going to mess up, somebody's going to be late on a close out, late on a rotation. It's going to be a miscommunication. And so the first time you touch the ball early in the possession, you might not be open, but you move the ball, the defense moves. All of a sudden it comes back to you after the defense is fully rotated and now you have a closeout that you can attack or the defender is out of position or they miscommunicated and one defender thought you were switching and, and then the other one thought that they weren't. And next thing you know, you're open and you have an angle and a lane to drive because the defense broke down due to the fact that the ball moved and it forced them to rotate. Rotating defenses, that's the best defense you want to go against right there. And we get that by making the simple play. A lot of players can't understand that. They think themselves, well, okay, I got the ball. How do I score now? Or how do I. How do I get an assist? Now the fact of the matter is, unless you're playing as a bad defense, that's not really going to be what happens. A lot of the times you're going to have to move the basketball and then the next time you touch the ball might be when it's time to drive or shoot or pass, you know, for an assist or something like that. It might be the third time you touch the ball in possession, but the more that it moves and the more patient you can be waiting for that, that the defense to rotate and then you to have a vulnerability that's going to allow you to actually drive and, and find some success consistently because of that. Really. There's three keys to doing this at a high level. Number one is we want to look for defensive rotations after like a skip pass or off of like a ball reversal. So the ball is on the right wing and it gets skipped over to you in the left wing or maybe it just gets swung really quickly around the perimeter to you. And your defender who was in help now has to close out to you all the way on the other wing. And that's going to be a really good time to drive because not only is your defender closing out, which I talk a ton about attacking closeouts and how closing out is the hardest thing defender is going to have to do in a defensive possession. You got to get there, slow down, take away the shot and also not get beat. Really hard to do that consistently every single time. So not only is it good for you because your on ball defender is closing out, but also a lot of times help defense is late or there's miscommunications. So that's going to be the time when the paint is the most open as well, is on those ball reversals or on the skip passes. So those are the times where you really want to hunt opportunities to drive because of again on ball closing out, but also help defense having to rotate. And it's just, it's a lot of moving pieces for a defense to deal with. Number two is we want to pay attention to closeouts where a defender is off balance or late. So if there's a miscommunication, if they take a bad angle or you know, maybe they mistake where you're at and so they close the wrong way. Whatever the case may be, when we see those vulnerabilities as well, another great time to look to attack. And then the third thing going with that, it really applies to both. You want to make sure that when you make that decision to attack, you go like you have to be so decisive about when you drive. And this is the other part of it, because players will spend all this time working on their ball handling and working on their athleticism and in the weight room and then they'll get to games and they're so afraid to be wrong that they don't do anything decisively. And the problem is when you're not decisive, it ruins what you end up doing anyway. You know, you're going to end up driving the basketball. But when you only drive when you're about 75% sure of it, you're probably not going to be successful. Right? And maybe you wouldn't have been anyway if you had gone at 100%, but you definitely won't be now. So you've got to make sure that when you spot these opportunities, you go and you're decisive about it. And then guess what, what that means is that you're going to mess up and this is going to become more of a skill. Eventually you're going to recognize, all right, this is a really good time to drive. I was successful the last time I saw this. I wasn't when I saw that. And you're going to get better because of that. But you're only going to get to that point if you attack decisively and figure out what works and what doesn't work for you. Right. Unfortunately, there's no secret pill you can take to skip that step. That's just how it works right there. And when you. When you make that mindset shift from attacking a stagnant defense and playing the short game, where you got to go now and it's got to be immediate and you make that shift over to playing the long game and understanding the fact that, hey, if I can get the defense to move and now I can attack a rotating defense, that's going to be the best opportunity for me to consistently be successful. Driving to the basket, getting paint touches, scoring for myself, getting fouled, getting kick outs to my teammates as well. It's going to make you so much more effective and so much more consistent. So it's almost like being able to keep track in your head. Okay, hey, this is the second time I've touched the ball this possession, so I got to see if I have something. This is the third time I've touched the ball of possession. Now I really got to see if I have something. And then when you get past that four or five, that's generally where you're really going to have a lot of opportunities, is when you start to recognize, all right, the defense is rotated already here. I'm getting the ball again. Okay, they rotated again. I'm getting it for a third time here. And that's when you're going to be really good at recognizing opportunities to drive right there. And the thought is, earlier in a possession, the defense that is best, the longer that they have to play defense for, the worse that they get. So them playing defense for 10 seconds is going to be way better for them than them, you know, being 20 seconds in, 25 seconds into a possession right there, it's going to be really difficult for them to consistently be able to rotate close out, do all that sort of stuff right there. Now, when you master this and you get really good at recognizing it, driving to the basket, getting by your defender is going to be much easier. Now, you understand, when do I apply this to the game and when do I look to do this? And that is like 70% of the battle right there. And then when you do recognize these opportunities, like I mentioned, you got to make sure that you're really decisive, like it's okay to be wrong, but when you're wrong, make sure. It's with 100% effort. Okay? Something that I always preach to my players is the 8020 rule. You can be the best basketball player in the world, the best decision maker, the most athletic, you can be the best ever. You are still gonna make the wrong decision like 20 of the time because you're playing hard. You know, if you're playing against other good players, like you're just gonna make a wrong choice, you know, once out of every five possessions. And so it doesn't matter how good you are, you're never going to be 100 perfect, 100 successful. So knowing this, knowing that, hey, at minimum I'm gonna mess up 20% of the time and it doesn't matter how hard I try, that gives you some freedom to say, okay, well, you know what? If that's the case, I'm going to make sure that when I make a decision, I am 100% in on that. When I drive, I'm driving hard. When I shoot it, I'm shooting it. Like I know it's going to go in because guess what? If I do it only 70%, it's not going to change the fact that, hey, I'm probably going to miss shots, I'm going to mess up and that stuff's all going to happen. So you got to make sure that you stick to what you can control, which is how, how decisive you are and how, how hard you, you, you go after the decision as you make, understanding the fact that you will not be perfect, nobody's going to be perfect and it's okay. But again, you're going to be decisive and that's going to allow you to be successful as often as you possibly can be. Now this is obviously a big part of basketball iq. If you want another resource that's going to help you take your basketball IQ to a whole new level. Once you check out my free basketball IQ masterclass is linked down below top link in the description going to help you to score more points, create more plays for your team and overall just play with way more confidence, way more consistency. And I always say like the stuff that we talk about inside of the the master class is over an hour long. It can easily help you to start scoring six or eight more points per game right now. Just with the stuff that we talk about so highly recommend you check that out. Like I said, completely free. And continues to help players take massive steps forward when it comes to basketball iq. Like I mentioned, nothing matters more than basketball IQ because you can have all the tools in the world if you don't know how to apply them, you don't know when to apply them, then it's useless, right? So that's a big part of why I created that masterclass. So make sure you check that out down below. Like I mentioned, it'll help you to score more points, create more for your team, and overall, just be a way more confident, successful basketball player. Hopefully this video gave you some ideas on how to become more successful on offense. I appreciate you for watching. Talk soon. Peace.