3 Competitive Dribble Penetration Shooting Drills That Improve Spacing, Ball Handling, Passing, and Team Offense

You just made a great move to blow by your defender on the perimeter. But as soon as you get near the lane, you have a swarm of defenders. Obviously, you should pass the ball!

But what if no one is open because nobody moved to an open spot and you’re in a terrible offensive position. A great move results in a poor outcome due to lack of understanding. And it’s something that’s relatively easy to fix.

The first thing we do is cover our dribble penetration rules. Ours are quite simple:

1. Move to an open spot. Sometimes, this requires no movement at all.
2. If you’re overplayed, go backdoor.

Next, we incorporate some shooting drills that practice these dribble penetration situations and offer some options for the player’s off the ball.

And once the offense has built confidence in the dribble penetration situations, you can start to incorporate game-like situations with competitive skill-building drills.

If you’ve been following Breakthrough for awhile, you’ll know that we’re huge fans of competitive skill-building drills because you develop multi-threat scorers and everybody is forced to game-like touches in the particular situation you trying to practice which rarely occurs in scrimmages.

Below is a series of dribble penetration shooting drills that you can use to improve shooting, passing, spacing, and movement off the ball.

Dribble Penetration Shooting Drill #1 - Wing Movements

For simplicity reasons, we will just look at the situation where the ball handler attacks the middle of the floor and another offensive player is positioned on the wing. We will present you different options to attack from the wing position.

In this situation, I would teach 4 options for attacking the defense:

1. Stay
2. Curl Up
3. Fade Down
4. Backdoor

The diagram to the right simulates a situation where 1's defender steps UP to stop dribble penetration. Most coaches would tell you the best option is to fade to the corner or go backdoor in order to keep proper spacing.

I teach differently because I believe you present the different options and you let the player choose. I want you to do the movement where you have the highest amount of confidence because I believe the overall results will tend to be better and that doesn't always result in "PROPER" spacing. At the same time, if a player keeps making a choice that ends in a poor result, we will suggest they do something different. However, these philosophies would require more in-depth conversations.

Also, the "wrong" read of curl up in this situation allowed me to assist a teammate in 6 straight 3-pointers during the 2nd half of a game.

Option 1: Stay

4 makes dribble move at first cone, comes to a quick stop at second cone.

As 4 reaches 2nd cone, 4 passes to 1 who STAYed on the wing.

Option 2: Curl Up

As 4 reaches 2nd cone, 4 passes to 1 who CURLed UP to the top.

Option 3: Fade Down

As 4 reaches 2nd cone, 4 passes to 1 who FADEd DOWN to the corner.

Option 4: Backdoor

As 4 reaches 2nd cone, 4 passes to 1 who cut BACKDOOR to the basket.

On this drill, you'll want fake high, then pass low to simulate what would happen in a game. Or if you have elite athletes, you could work on lob passes.

Points of Emphasis

Passer uses outside hand - In these diagrams, player would pass with right hand. On left side of the floor, player would pass with left hand.

Fake opposite before cutting - It is good to form a habit of faking opposite before cutting as this will take your defender out of position to open up the cut. However, it may not always be needed in this situation.

Cut at full speed - This helps you create separation from the defense.

Hands and feet ready - Stick your feet with hands up where you want the pass, so you can get the shot off as quickly as possible.

Dribble Penetration Shooting Drill #2 - 2 on 1

Now to get some reps with the game-like situations, you can add a defender to incorporate decision-making and increase difficulty.

4 makes the dribble move and looks to score.

There is one pass limit.

Dribble Penetration Shooting Drill #3 - 2 on 1 with Chaser

This is the same as the situation before, except now you add a chaser.

There is a two pass limit.

You can also add dribble limits if you would like.

As I was writing up this drill I thought of adding multiple chasers from different positions to elevate the difficulty even more. I have not done this yet so this may completely bomb. Let me know how it goes if you try it.