3 Great Scoring Opportunities in Basketball

This basketball coaching article was written by Georgetown University assistant men’s basketball coach Kevin Sutton. Coach Sutton is in his first year with the Hoyas (13-14) but has been in coaching for over 25 plus years. He has held jobs at George Washington University and was the head coach at national high school powerhouse Montverde (among other nationally ranked high schools). Coach Sutton is one of the great basketball minds in today’s game. 

Scoring on out of bounds basketball plays either from; Baseline Out of Bounds (BLOB) or Sideline Out of Bounds (SLOB) are excellent potential scoring opportunities for your team.

I believe these are great opportunities to be taken advantage of because:

1. Your basketball team is in the exact position that you want them to be in on the particular play.
2. The players are not moving into those spots.
3. The team knows who is going to take the shot and where they are going to shoot from. This gives the offensive team an advantage to rebound the potential miss.
4. Especially on a baseline out of bounds play, you have the ball close to the basket.

Another great opportunity to score is After Time Outs (ATO’S). The team’s ability to execute a basketball play that has just been drawn up by the coach is a sign of their basketball IQ and their ability to concentrate/focus.

Just like on out of bounds plays, the offensive knows who is going to shoot and the location of the shot, giving the offense a greater opportunity to rebound the ball if it is a missed shot.

The teams that execute their ATO’S win a higher percentage of their games. ATO’S are also a sign of a well-coached basketball team.

According to Synergy (the statistical company that is used by most college and NBA teams): last year, the top 5 NBA teams in scoring on out of bounds plays and after timeouts were the: Boston Celtics, Miami Heat, San Antonio Spurs, Oklahoma City Thunder, and the Detroit Pistons. Out of the 5 teams listed, only the Detroit Pistons didn’t make the playoffs.

You must be willing to spend the needed time in practice to be good at the execution of baseline out of bounds plays, sideline out of bounds plays, and after timeout plays. You can’t expect your team to be good at something if no time is invested in it.

Several ideas to improve offensive execution of your BLOB’s, SLOB’s & ATOS’ in your practice are:

1. Ten-minute Execution scrimmage. Each team is given 5 minutes to run their plays. The score is kept. Fouls are called.
2. Each day “shadow”(w/out defense). Run through your out of bounds basketball plays.
3. Between basketball drill transitions or from segment to segment in practice, run one of your BLOB’s, SLOB’s, or ATO’S. Have managers keep score. At the end of practice, winners are rewarded while the losing team has to run.

Investing more time executing out of bounds and after time out basketball plays will provide a good return on that investment: scoring more = more wins.