I’d like to share my opinion on a popular ball screen play that I see all the time.
While coaching my daughter’s 4th grade team, the high ball screen for the point guard is the most common play I see. Seems like almost half of the teams run a variation of this play.
I hope I don’t offend anyone but I’ll be honest.
I think this play is a waste of time and does very little for player development…
Most teams use a high ball screen to free up their point guard and get something going to the basket.
I believe there are better ways to solve this problem.
Now if you have the court spread and two players are applying good pick and roll fundamentals, that’s another story. But I’m not even sure 4th graders can execute pick and roll fundamentals and the basic reads.
If they are able to, the rest of the team is missing out on touching the ball and developing. That is why I like our 5 out motion offense (all the positions are interchangeable and everyone touches the ball).
More issues with this ball screen play…
1. It’s predictable. Teams would set this screen constantly against us and get nothing from it. You see it once and then you know it’s coming. Even when they set the second ball screen inside the 3pt line, it still didn’t work. They might get a shot the first time running it. But never the third or fourth time.
2. The ball screen is occurring 30 feet from the basket. If you want to actually score off the ball screen and play some “fundamental” basketball, the screen should occur near the 3pt line or closer.
3. The point guard is not learning anything or developing skill by using this screen near half court. If you’re going to set a ball screen, the point guard needs the ballhandling skill to set up the screen and advance the ball near the 3pt line. Then they can use the screen properly and utilize some pick and roll fundamentals.
4. Other players on the team rarely get to touch the ball. The play is dominated by the point guard and maybe one other player. How are the other players on the team supposed to develop if they are not involved?
Better Solution to the problem – teach players “how to play”…
I’m sorry. But if your PG can’t beat a defender 1on1, there is a problem. You need to spend time working with these players teaching them how to beat a defender 1on1 in the open court. Work on ballhandling skill, changing speed, changing direction, protecting the ball, retreating out of trouble, etc. That is a much better solution to the problem. It can be done…
Every single player on our 4th grade team can break down their defender off the dribble at the PG spot. That’s because we practice and teach those fundamentals. It was not easy and required lots of practice. But even if you only practice once a week, it can be done. In my opinion, this is “step one” in learning how to play basketball. For whatever reason, lots of coaches skip that step.
I see a lot of poor fundamentals out there and this is one example.
When you run into problems with youth players, instead of creating a “play” to solve the problem, I believe you should almost always use “fundamentals” to solve the problem. To me that is great youth coaching.
Food for thought.
Not to mention that most of the coaches utilizing the ball screen don’t teach the screener how to set a good, legal screen either. A lot of kids end up just bulldozing the on ball defender. It’s a good way to get kids hurt if not executed properly. I just had my 5th grade team go under every ball screen. It’s not like they’re going to beat us with pull up 3 pointers.
Good point! Didn’t think of that until you mentioned something. But I have thought the same thing watching our games. Moving screens, forearms up, and kids getting hurt. Not good!
Agree 100% with this post, some of the leading European federations actually call on-ball screens at the U14 and younger as illegal to help with player development.
I am a high school basketball coach in Malaysia. I am totally agree with Jeff Gardner abt the ‘High ball screen play’ in a game. It did little benefit to my team during the high school tournament in my country. It worked at the beginning of a game but then it wasn’t. A lot of my players were hurt when they set the screen. Injury on the upper abdomen and knees were common.
I prefer the fundamental plays of 1 on1, 2 on 2 till 5 on 5.In between I introduce some playing patterns and the kids learn fast. I can easily identify their weak points and playing positions.
Another drawback to the high ball screen is that it draws a second defender to the ball. Smart teams will blitz the ball handler and create many turnovers against on ball screens at the youth level.
I have to agree. I have first hand experience. Coaching my son’s team and using this play for 4 years has now rendered him “tentative” when getting back court pressure. My son is a great ball handler. He has been the point guard on all his teams. However, now he is “expecting a pick” to beat ball pressure. We are now working on the mental hurdle that HE must beat the pressure some times. He especially can’t understand how to dribble backwards to retreat out of trouble. And, my teams are finding it hard to understand the screen away from the ball concept. Thanks for the post. It has opened my eyes.
I’ve started using more ball screens, but our offense calls for them to happen within the flow of the offense, much like the Spurs do. So it’s ball reversal, handoffs, penetrate and pitch, and if we can’t gain an initial advantage in the first4-5 passes, we’ll flow right into a ballscreen. Since we have emphasize sharing the ball and making the extra pass multiple times that leads to an open shot, the ball screen facilitates ball movement, rather than stifles it. I too am opposed to just running a high ball screen set where guys just stand around and your two best players dominate all the action. I do however think teaching your kids the nuances of the pnr and how to space, move, and play off it can go a long ways toward developing their bball iq.
I agree. I like how the Spurs share the ball! I too will incorporate ball screens into our 5 out motion offense. Haven’t decided when though. We’re not quite ready yet. We’ll probably introduce it next year as 5th graders, although I have a feeling we won’t be ready for game use until 6th grade. We have a ways to go on executing away screens and even cutting for that matter. Once we have those base screening/cutting fundamentals down in our offense, we’re going to add pick and roll fundamentals too.
My youngest team is 5th grade and they picked it up pretty quickly. I tell them we look to ball screen after 2nd ball reversal. We’ll reverse the ball, look for cutters, post opportunities, maybe we’ll throw it back the other way due to a screen away, and if we can’t get penetration off the intial movement we’re setting a ball screen. What I tell them is I want everything to flow. There’s no “setting up”, no holding the ball, just attack the defense with good spacing and quick decisions.
Great article. I couldn’t agree more. Those high ball screens are so prevalent in NBA and NCAA games, coaches see that on TV and try to apply it to kids, when there are so many other things they need to learn first. I coached my fifth graders to trap ball screens this past season and we had a lot of fun with that. Most coaches like to teach plays instead of skills, this is a huge problem with basketball. As a coach who teaches skills it is fun to play against those teams that are lost once their plays are disrupted though.
Amen to everything in this post. I know it’s tough for coaches to let go and allow players to beat pressure 1 v. 1 without the high ball screen (and there may be turnovers as kids learn) but, as you say, it pays off quickly in enabling them to learn evasion moves and swagger. I always feel sorry for the kid who is forced to set the ball screen time after time after time, and almost always incorrectly and in a way that results in contact. Does being elbowed in the face twenty times a game sound like fun? And I can’t count the times I’ve heard an opposing coach shout at a young kid, “Where’s the screen?!? David, YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO SCREEN FOR (NAME OF COACH’S SON)!!!
“Where’s the screen?!? David, YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO SCREEN FOR (NAME OF COACH’S SON)!!!”
LOL – that is funny, so true, sad, but true.
Thanks Jeff for sharing. Definitely didn’t offend me. In fact I agree with everything you said. From a practical standpoint when teams set those screens so close to half court we simply just go under them. They can’t hurt us out there defensively. Or we hedge hard like KU does. I enjoy opportunities to practice that. What I’ve found is that teams that monopolize this move have point guards that can’t retreat very well and we get a lot of turnovers and back court violations. From an offensive standpoint if you constantly set screens you are just giving your player a crutch and they don’t develop their individual skills. We try to keep the game very simple when these kids are young. The first thing I teach them is that on offense we want you to beat your man off the dribble and on defense (as we play only man to man) you want to keep your man in front of you. It’s as basic as that. We then introduce help-line principles. We want all 5 kids on the floor to be comfortable with the ball. In fact I often invert the offense and have the bigger players handling the ball on the perimeter as typically the bigger kids on the other teams defensively are not able to move their feet as effectively. That leaves my smaller “guards” who are many times superior outside shooters open on drive and kick moves to the basket. We have a very open offense and try not to set a lot of rules. We just let the kids play. When they have that freedom they tend to figure things out for themselves over time. There may be bumps along the way but the end result is a much more skilled, well rounded basketball player.
The post is great. The comments are great. However, I think there’s one MAJOR item that hasn’t been brought up. Youth basketball players, especially at the young ages mentioned in this post, need to have fun and feel engaged. What are the two primary reasons a coach would run any type of pick and roll at that level – he/she wants the ball in the best player’s hands and that is a primary way to win a game. Neither reason is appropriate for youth basketball. The kids that aren’t getting in the action feel left out and the kids in the action – as mentioned – don’t get the skill development they need.
These kids need to learn basketball, but it’s more important to get them having fun, to develop life and basketball skills and to keep playing the game. Those not involved feel they aren’t good enough or the parents don’t feel their kids is getting enough from the experience and leave the game.
That’s when we all failed.
Great post. I have 2nd grade to HS varsity teams in our program and run the 5 out read react offense. It is a great development tool to learn the game of basketball. All my teams run this and we implement layers each year. In fact my 5th grade group has the highest basketball IQ of all of them and run this to perfection. We are a match up nightmare for teams. We do skills development longer than we practice and it shows when we play teams. End of game situations I just find the match problem for the other team and exploit it. Teaching fundamentals is a lost art in coaching but it is great fun coaching against a team that relies on the pick and roll at 30 ft. We jump all picks above the 3 point line and I would have to say we get steals 70% of the time. Typically the screener has no skill set other than being big and has no idea what to do with the ball when the point guard is force to pass them them ball. It just places that kid in a bad spot with his team mates and parents as they will continually turn the ball over. Hopefully coaches reading this will change there approach and teach their kids how to be basketball players.
You’re right. I used this high ball screen last year and it got us nowhere. Like you said, it doesn’t do any good for our point guard developing skills. Toward the middle of the season, we changed things around. We had more people open and the PG learned how to beat her defender. Good article!
I don’t disagree with the post but some links to “5 out motion offense” and ” ballhandling skill, changing speed, changing direction, protecting the ball, retreating out of trouble, etc” would be very helpful.
Linking to the 5 Out Motion Offense isn’t easy because I took bits and pieces from about 5 different offenses to create my own. However, it is very similar to other 5 out offenses you see. You can find the rules to the offense here:
http://jeffhaefner.com/coach/what-we-did-with-our-4th-grade-youth-basketball-team-offense-defense-skills-and-more/
For video, you can watch the Perkins 5 Out motion DVD. You can implement this 5 out offense, then once players are ready, add in some of the rules I outlined in the link above. Or just keep running the same way Perkins does. Can’t go wrong either way.
http://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/pr/perkins-open-post-offense.html
For the ballhandling skill, I would like to make a video about that. It’s not complicated. But very effective and much easier to explain in video. Here’s an article that covers some of those concepts and might help:
https://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/fundamentals/everything-good-ball-handler.html
While I agree with most of what is being said, the comments seem like a hallejuah chorus. I believe in a free-flowing motion offense based on reads and players learning how to play the game, how to react, but more importantly, how to dictate happenings on offense to the defense. I like a down hill attacking offense. In my opinion, the ball screen is good in a pinch, as a change up, especially when the offense is stagnant, when you have a guard or ball handler (and screener too) who knows how to set up defenders to make things happen, and with the proliferation of those types of players at higher levels of basketball, I can understand why it is ran so much. To support the other comments, incorporating the high screen and roll offense in youth basketball seems to go against the very fundamental of skill development (much like the use of zones, traps, and presses).
Just to add on, when I played, I did not want a teammate coming my way too early, because I felt they were crowding me, and interfered with the spacing that could be created with me beating my defender and making others collapse so I could penetrate and create for myself and others (a lot of times we waved off screeners). Plus, where I am from and how we learned how to play the game, we never worried about the first defender because we always felt we could beat our man, so we were always looking at the second man, or level of defenders, to see how they might react to the moves we made so we could make plays for ourselves or others.
Hi Jeff,
Love the site and have found it to be a great resource.
The whole reliance on set plays, except at higher level with older children, seems pointless until the kids learn how to play basketball and accomplish the fundamentals. We rarely have any set plays, even at Year 9 level and have only now introduced the idea of moving across to set a screen to assist a ball carrier (but still a concept not a set play) and demonstrated how the screener can then move into a ‘pick and roll’.
I think that you touched upon the philosophy that coaches should be employing:
Don’t teach them plays – Teach them TO play
Agree. Teaching what not to do at that age is vital…pick away good….pick for the point bad…jumping on D bad… Staying low and help side good.