Skills You NEED To Have As An Undersized Guard (Full Breakdown)

It takes a lot to be great at the game of basketball. And in a sport where height has a lot of value, being an undersized player means that you need to be even more solid than most players. In this video, I'm going to go through step by step why the best undersized players in the game are able to thrive, overcome their lack of size, and in some cases, even use their lack of size to their advantage. Let's get into it now. Being a smaller guard certainly has its disadvantages and its challenges, but there's also a couple aspects of it that you.

Can use to your advantage.

One advantage of being smaller is that it can allow you to create better angles for yourself when you're driving because you're naturally lowered to the ground.

Your goal should be whenever you drive to get your shoulder to the same level as the defender's hips, not going to be able to stop you without fouling you if you can drop that shoulder low. And in basketball, just like in a lot of sports, low man wins. Being low not only gives you a speed advantage and a balance advantage over that defender, but it also makes it almost impossible for him to use his off arm to slow you down. Now, the best way to actually be able to do that is to have that first step past your defender be a longer step than normal. This is going to naturally drop you a little bit lower, and it's going to naturally kind of tilt you forward.

Which is going to put you in.

That ideal position to beat your guy. Another detail you can add to the beginning of this to make it even more effective is by going out of a drop after Chris Paul goes between the legs right here, he drops and allows his feet to land again. You'll see both his feet hit at the same time while he drops his hips, and then he can push off that back foot into that big first step. So having an understanding of the angles now, you need to understand how important playing with pace is as well for players who undersized. Being able to use your quickness to your advantage and being able to exaggerate your quickness by changing your pace is such a major key to being an effective undersized guard. There's a couple ways you can go about doing this. In these two clips right here, you'll see Chrislikes go from slow to very, very fast, using either a double move.

Or using a push cross. This can also be great when attacking a mismatch or a switch on a big. And it can also be great in transition when the defense is scrambling to get back and get in position. Change of pace can also be from fast to slow, as especially when you use that time to read the defense.

And then make a decision.

Having an active off arm too is super important. And if you watch these guys play, you'll notice just how much activity these guys are doing with that off arm when they drive to the basket. Now, utilizing change of pace and your off arm is an insanely difficult combination for the defense to stop. And we can see in this play with Chris Legs right here, he's setting his man up with these slow size up dribbles. When he decides to attack at full speed, he swipes with that off arm to make sure that defender has no way to impede his momentum. Watch what he does in this clip right here. As soon as he starts to attack this defender, he uses his offhand to swipe away the defender's arm to prevent the defender from making any contact with him. If that defender can create contact with you early on, he can slow you down. So Lex buys himself a little bit of time by using his off arm to keep the defender off of him. And by the time the defender is able to create contact, Lex already has too much speed and momentum going downhill that there's nothing the defender can do to cut him off. All of these smaller guys understand the power of change of pace combined with using their offarm. And it's to the point where they've developed a habit that anytime they see that arm reaching out to try and create contact, they're immediately swiping for it, even if they don't create any contact at all. If you guys aren't in the habit of using your off arm, I highly suggest that over the next few times that you play consciously, think about using that off arm to prevent the defender from creating contact with you or slowing you down. And you're going to find that eventually you'll start to do this. Naturally, if you're a small guard and you want to play at a high level, step number one is becoming a knockdown shooter. You're going to have a much, much more difficult time scoring consistently against defenses if they know that you can't shoot the basketball. But if you are a knockdown shooter, the defense is going to have to respect that and it's going to completely change the way that they have to play you.

What makes undersized guards like Chris Leichs and Trae Young so difficult to stop is that defenses fear their shot. So they really have to crowd and take away that three point shot or else they're going to risk giving up threes and because of that, that opens up a lot of opportunities for Trae Young and Chris Leichs to be able to beat their guys downhill.

Being a small guard, the ability to pull up and shoot from any place at any time is also a crucial skill to have. Chris Leichs has fantastic stop start ability and he's also able to pull up at any place on the court using a variety of different moves. Because his defender respects likes quickness, he he's giving him a little bit of space right here which puts this defender in a very difficult situation because if he plays up on him he'll get blown by and if he gives him space, he can pull up in this clip right here. He does a fantastic job of changing pace and getting downhill. And because he goes so explosively downhill, his defender is trying to catch up to him, meaning that he's sprinting with his hips turned and he has his hands down so he goes right up into a pull up and it's uncontested. This is why playing with pace is so important. When he explodes downhill, he forces that defender to react and meaning he has the defender in control.

Again.

The ability to pull up from any place on the court is super important. So you should have a good mid range game if you're an undersized guard especially. And it's also a big plus if you're able to pull up from three as well. That's just going to give you some more versatility and more options the defense has to account for in terms of finishing. One of the aspects these guys are best at is using their body to create contact when they're going in for finishes. This helps to neutralize the shot blocker to prevent them from jumping forward and and at the same time it's going to help them to draw a lot of fouls. The other major finish these guys have is the floater. And the reason it's such a great finish for smaller guards is because you can get it off very quickly and also it allows you to be farther away from the rim and farther away from the shot blocker when you actually get the shot off. Make sure you guys click the top link in my description to get my free elite perimeter score workout. We're going to hit a bunch of skills that you're going to need if you want to be an elite scorer on the perimeter. As always, make sure you guys drop in the comments what you want to see next. That's it guys. Peace.