Continuity/Patterned Offenses

In today’s basketball coaching culture, if you mention that you run some form of continuity offense…you might get a few stares, some under the breath comments, and eye rolls.

However, having some continuity/patterned offense in your playbook can do a couple of things:

• gives your team an identity
• helps your team be GREAT at something
• takes away some decision-making for lower-skilled or less experienced teams
• allows for familiarity — which leads to understanding every defensive mistake the defense can make — and making them pay
• can help settle your team down
• can be used as a delay offense

With that being said, here are a few of my favorite continuity or pattern-based offenses:

1. MOTION — this 5-out motion set has a lot of slip/blur options to punish the defense; when teams cheat, burn them with backdoor cuts

1. WING — this simple motion gets guards shots and post players opportunities to get touches inside

1. FLEX — one of the oldest motion/continuity-based offenses; there’s a reason its principles can be found in team’s offensive game plans throughout the country

1. 1 HIGH — this is similar to “Motion” but more out of a 4 out set; timing is key

1. CONTINUITY BALL SCREEN/ROLL — almost every college basketball team runs some variation of this; here’s the basic version of it

1. SPECIAL — I saved my favorite continuity set for last. This pattern has curls to the rim, staggered screens, and slips galore. It also makes ball reversal easy and offers opportunities for backdoors when teams start to try and overpressure.