The Scissors Offense

3 min readApr 11, 2024

“Scissors” is a simple set that can get some player and ball movement, maybe steal a few easy looks, and flow into a lot of effective and popular actions/concepts.

(Here’s the YouTube video explaining “Scissors”)

A few things to keep in mind:

this is just a beginning list — you could morph just about any action to flow after the initial cutting sequence
keep the defense honest — once your players get the pattern of the initial cuts down, let them slip/pop/make reads
don’t sleep on the initial actions — if your players cut to score on the initial action, you’ll be surprised at how many points you can steal
if you really wanted to, this has enough options to be your entire offense…once your players understand the flow, timing, spacing, and reads…they could just trigger different movements based on what certain players do

Let’s dive in.

INITIAL POSITIONING AND CUTS

the set starts like this every time you run it
as mentioned before, don’t sleep on the option to hit 1 over the top or 4 on that blast cut to the rim — every cut should be a cut to score!
one of my favorite actions out of this that doesn’t get looked at much is a post up opportunity for 4 after that initial hard cut — there’s not a lot of help down there.

BALL SCREEN/STAGGER OPTIONS

Ball Screen: this is a simple action out of the scissor cuts — just flow right into a ballscreen with 5 and have 4 “shake”
Simple Stagger: after the cuts, 5 and 3 stagger away from 1
You can run a lot of actions merely from this stagger set

REVERSAL BALL SCREEN

This is similar to Euro Continuity action with the ball reversal and immediate backdoor from 3
Once 3 goes backdoor, have them clear out and then it’s an empty ball screen with 5 and 1
5 can roll, slip, pop, ghost, etc…or even go into a handoff here

ZOOM

On 5’s pop and catch, 3 screens down to 1 to trigger “zoom”

PRINCETON SPLIT

you can even run some Princeton actions from this
5 takes a step to the ball after cutters clear, 2 passes to 5, and now you’re in split
if nothing develops, 2 and 5 have the entire floor to run empty ball screen

FLARE

when the ball reverses to 5, it triggers a flare screen between 1 and 3
3 flares and then 1 makes a read
1 could slip to the rim, receive a pass and follow ball screen from 5, or go into a handoff with 5