Getting ready to start coaching a group of seven-year-olds that I have been coaching since they were five years old.all the kids on the team are able to dribble pass shoot ect. This year I want to start working with them on spacing and I feel like 5 out motion offense is the best way for them to understand. The problem that I see with the 5 out is I'm not gonna have any perimeter shooters most of the kids can't shoot past the foul line.I want to start off really simple and only give two rules, first drive to the basket or pass back out. I have even thought about a four out one in and have whoever has the ball to drive to the basket look for post or pass back out if shot is not available. I don't want to spend a huge amount of my practice working on offense when there so much more fundamental stuff that I could be working on. On the other hand I also put some type of organization in the offense, spacing and not have kids running everywhere.is this even something to consider

I love the 5 out motion offense because it is flexible with regards to what rules you put in place. The bigger case for this offense (especially at the younger levels) is that you're teaching good solid fundamentals on offense and you get more ball touches. Spacing, movement, cutting and passing are all great fundamentals. Honestly, if you just put enough space on the floor, you're almost guaranteed a dribble drive to the basket at some point. However, that kind of defeats the purpose of teaching the other fundamentals on offense.

At age 7, it will probably be a bit challenging at first. Personally, I like the pass and cut version of the 5 out motion offense to begin. You pass, you cut all the way to the basket and fill the open spot above you. Same goes for the others, they fill the open spots above them. Again, might be a bit challenging at first, but I stuck with that offense at the younger levels and worked through adding screens and when to drive to the basket. You can teach the fundamentals of setting up a cut and what it means to cut hard to the basket. If the person with the ball could see their teammates jersey #, that was a go for a pass to them cutting.

We marked the spots on the floor during practices so it was clear where the kids were supposed to go. They tend to bunch up after a few pass and cuts.

If you're willing to put up with some growing pains, I think you'd be doing the kids a huge favor by working through some type of 5 out basic motion offense. You'll have to end up praising them for trying to do the right thing, even if it looks ugly at first.

I love the 5 out too. Works great at all age levels. Nothing wrong with other offenses and I actually like giving more freedom to players than what you see in the traditional 5 out offenses, but if I had to pick one offense for youth teams, the 5 out would be it.

Totally agree with you.... don't want to spend much time on offense, so you can focus on skills.

The funny thing is we run 5 out and we work on offense almost the whole practice via skill drills. Passing, cutting, spacing, layups, shooting... all pieces of our offense or a concept regarding offense.

The standard 5 out with cutting is a good place to start. Eventually you can add screens, posting up, and just about whatever you want. But that is a few years down the road.

The only thing I would add is this...

- practice string spacing drills. Example. Top player dribbles at wing, wing back cuts as the ball comes toward them, pass, and lay up. Repeat. Another example. Wing dribbles at post, post pops toward elbow, pass, shot. We do different drills like this all the time and I think they help us tremendously with skills, spacing, passing off the dribble, shooting, and getting our offense moving.

- Practice no dribble drills.
http://jeffhaefner.com/coach/trying-new-drills-no-dribble-is-still-one-of-the-best/

For the most part our youth offense is 5 out with lots of cutting. You wouldn't believe how well we move the ball. We get shots off passes, dribble drive, drive and dish, etc. Very well balanced and dynamic. None of our players can shoot outside... about half of them can hit a shot from 15 ft at most. The rest have to be closer.

95% of my emphasis is... keep spacing and move the ball until you get a good shot. That's it. They get lots of freedom as long as they do those 3 things. Works great for us.

What about offensive rebounding. How should rebounding be taught in the 5 out. All the teams in our league play zone defense, I play m2m.we are not allowed to full court press, defense is not allowed to steal the ball until 1 complete pass is made. I purchase the sklz floor markers last night at a local store and going to start working with the kids. I do feel like the black sheep of my league no one runs this and I worry my parents may not like it at first. Every one in my runs the 3 guards and 2 post players zone type offense. one of the problems I see in my league is that if the kids do not have the ball they just stand there and the post players do all the work.

That's too bad. Just unbelievable that they play zone defense with 7 year olds. Unless you have better, talent you have a good chance of losing most of your games. But at least your kids will be developing!!

For the teams using post players, I hope they are rotating positions and not pigeonholing kids into positions.

Glad that you have some sense. Sounds like the rest of the league has no clue.

For rebounding, you just emphasize it. Praise it. Talk about it constantly. Last year our 4th graders were the shortest team on every occasion... we ran 5 out and did really good on the boards... out rebounding most teams. We were simply quicker to the ball. Anticipation is key.

Who rebounds? You should almost always have a couple players close to the basket:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIWKd2JSeIE

As long as you emphasize it, maybe track stats, you'll be good. I don't really practice rebounding with young kids but I suppose you could. We just track the stats and emphasize it constantly.

For going against zone with 5 out, make sure players fill spots to the ball after the cut. This allows for good ball movement. So if the player at the top cuts to the basket, this should pull the perimeter defenders in a little, opening up the pass back to the top. But the weakside wing must fill on time.

I also have these 5 out adjustments against zone. However this is way too advanced for your young kids. I would just run 5 out like normal and make sure players fill the open spot to the ball on time.

Zone Adjustments

Move corner spots in to the short corner.
Hook and look in the middle after you cut
If ball goes to the middle, look to score or get the ball to short corner players
If ball goes to short corner, top player should dive
Players inside should find gaps and seal defender

I'm vp of my area, Last night League got together and voted on rule changes. They wanted to make it mandatory that all teams play zone all the way to 12U and raise the goals to to 10ft for all ages 6u to 12u. I got in a heated debate over this. 7u will play on 8ft goals and 8u will be pushed up to 10ft which is crazy and stupid. I put up a very good argument on the m2m and it was voted down.yes they pigeonholed kid in post positions starting at 5u. I have been watching this league for about 10 years because of family kids playing in the league. it's sad to see a kid born in early fall tower over kids born in late summer be placed as post players and max out at 6ft high school. I think a lot of this comes from coaches and parents being naturally gifted athlete and I'm not. I was alway the kid who had to go out side and do 500 layups to perfect it before I was comfortable doing it in a game. In middle school the agressive kids win out and timid kids are cut becaus coaches only want to work with the aggresive kids. I went to the middle school coach asking about what is the biggest problem he faces with 7th grader his answer was passing, footwork and set playes kids ran at elementary levels hurt them.

Well it might be too little too late but if you want you can show them these articles:

https://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/defense/age.html

https://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/coaching/Van-Gundy-Outlaw-Youth-Zone-Defenses.html

https://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/fundamentals/shooting/youth-shooting-adjustments.html

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Other night I worked with dribble drive and would kick the ball back out the wing when the zone all bunched up in the lane. My son thanks to your drills is a incredible ball handler and great passer. He can drive the lane with ease but the shortest kid in our league. I have two decent outside shooters so I was having him kick the ball outside once the zone imploded on him.I was also having the number one point guard pass to number five instead of the number three or the number 4 instead of number two and most of them they were wide open to either back door or take the jumper. How do you guys feel about motion dribble drive for kids this small. It works great for me but I want to develop kids not take short cuts.

I'm curious what the thinking was behind those who voted you down on the M2M? Did they give reasons why they wanted zone mandatory?

Unfortunately, you may have to re-think your offense if you'll be playing against zone defenses. Dribble drive motion would probably work after moving the zone around with good passing.

I'm not sure how the dribble drive motion would work against zone... I'm just not experienced with that offense. With that said, the 5 out pass and cut has a lot of dribble drive. I know the combination of cutting, passing, filling, and driving works against zone.

And from a development standpoint, I think you want balance... a mix of driving, passing, cutting.