Pushing the ball up the court is second nature for me. It was drilled into my head as a high school and college player, and I did my best to instill the same fast break mindset into the players that I coached. A run-the-ball mentality doesn’t happen over night, but by using drills that focus on the fast break, and consistent encouragement, your team can learn to move with ease into transition offense.
A Fast Break Mentality
Make sure your players know from day one, that they are going to be a fast break team. Explain what it will take to become a great running team and the advantages they will gain from the effort they put in. How they can get easy baskets and win games.
Set the Expectation of Hustle
To be an excellent fast break team your players need a different mindset. They need to hustle throughout practice. To sprint when they meet you at the baseline for instructions, and when they line up for drills. They need to make hustling a habit. Not only will this help get them in shape, it will build their fast break mindset.
Push The Ball
We ran our transition offense up the middle of the court, but many teams run sideline breaks, they key is to move the ball up the court quickly. Normally one thinks of a fast break happening after a shot is missed, but a fast break mindset will help even after your opponent makes a shot. If your inbounder is trained to get the ball out of the net and hit a guard right away, you can often beat your opponent up the court and score before they can set up defense. Push the ball!
Start With The Rebound
You can’t run the ball if you don’t have it. Teach your players how to get position and get rebounds. Encourage them to pivot to the outside and look up the court right away to find an outlet, and then pass the ball. A quick outlet pass from the rebounder leads to a great fast break. If the ball bounces long off the rim, the rebounder can even keep the ball and push it up the court themselves. Coach your players to be strong rebounders, while instilling a fast break mindset.
Passing Is Faster Than Dribbling
Every basketball coach has heard this before, and it’s true, so why not take advantage of it. Emphasize to your players to look up the court. As I mentioned, after a player gets a rebound they should pivot and look up the court. When a player receives an outlet pass, they should turn and look up the court. A fast break mindset means looking up the court. Start building this habit during practice. For ball handling drills make sure your players keep their heads up. Praise your players when they push the ball, and encourage them to look up the court when they forget. Do you have drills where you can push the ball more? Look at your practice plan and see where you can highlight passing.
Fast But In Control
As Coach John Wooden used to say, “Be quick, but don’t hurry.” Have your players push the ball, but also emphasize control. When a player rushes, they make mistakes. They need to learn to look up the court and read the defense. The more they practice doing this at a fast pace, the better they will get. Controlled quickness will limit turnovers.
Expect Mistakes
A fast break team tends to have more turnovers. Of course you don’t want them, but that’s what happens when you push the ball more. Prepare your players by pushing the ball a lot in practice, and there will less mistakes in games.
Consider Defenses That Compliment Being A Running Team
Aggressive defenses can add opportunities to run transition. This isn’t a necessity but it can be helpful. When you get other teams off balance, you have more chances to steal the ball, and get easy baskets. A running mentality should be integrated throughout your game.
Instill A Fast Break Mindset Into All Drills
When you run a rebounding drill don’t forget to emphasize the outlet. When running basic laying lines, don’t allow lazy passes, set the expectation of precision and speed when passing to the next person in line. If possible, add an outlet to your favorite drill. It’s the little things that make a difference. Remind your players to push the ball during drills and remind them during scrimmages. Think fast break all the time, and your players will too.
Fast Break Drills
Your drills don’t have to be fancy. Simply work on having your players do the drills with a focus on pushing the ball up the court under control. Basic ball handling, passing, rebounding and even shooting drills, when done with a fast break mentality, will help your team become better at transition offense. Then soon a fast break mindset will become second nature for your team in drills, scrimmage and games.
4 Basic Fast Break Drills
- 3 Person Weave
I encourage crisp 2-handed chest passes during this drill when I was coaching. But it doesn’t always end up that way and as you will see in a couple of these examples, a bounce pass is often used for the last pass down the court. The 3 person weave can help your players to look up the court while learning to control their passes. And it can also add to their conditioning which is an important aspect of being a good fast break team. Here are a few examples at the youth level to check out.
- Rebound Outlet / Partner Layup
I love this drill! We often ran the drill continuously, meaning the partners would exchange positions at the end of the court and work their way back to where they started. And while that was happening, after the very first outlet pass happened at the beginning of the drill, the next two players stepped up, and started the drill. You end up with two ball handlers coming up the middle from opposite directions, which is fine, because they learn to keep their heads up while controlling the ball. This drill also allows for all players to be rebounders and ball handlers, and works on both conditioning and basketball skills. Run this drill both directions so athletes work on right and left hand layins. You can also have shooter stop and pop with a jumper or crossover. It’s basic and easy to add adjustments.
Rebound Outlet / Partner Layup 1
Rebound Outlet /Partner Layup 2
- 3 on 2 2 on 1
This is another great drill. It helps with pushing the ball and seeing teammates on the break and it’s an excellent drill to get your players talking together on defense as well. We ran this drill a lot.
- 6 Passer Fast Break / Around The World
We also ran what we called 6 person passing. It is simple but works on conditioning, quick passing and catching, and layins. The drill starts with six players lined up around the court (3 players on each side of the court, standing on the sidelines at both hashmarks and mid-court), and the rest of the players have a basketball and half go to one baseline and half on the other. The first person on each baseline passes to teammate on sideline and runs toward that person up the court. They get a pass back, then make quick pass to teammate on halfcourt sideline, get the ball right back, then pass again to next teammate on the sideline before they get the ball back and go for a layin. The idea is to run up the court making passes and receiving passes without dribbling the ball. Go for a chosen amount of time and switch out passers for shooters. Make sure to run in the opposite direction. Very basic, but gets the job done.
Set the expectation of hustle and instill the mindset into your practice plans and before you know it, the fast break will be second nature to your team.
