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Ball Screen Basketball Plays

Ball screen basketball plays are pretty common, and every team will have a couple of ball screen plays in the playbook. They can be excellent offensive sets if run the right way. The reason why is because it forces the defense to communicate and negotiate the ball screen action, and if they don’t do a great job of it, there will be a breakdown somewhere.

Good ball screen offense usually works best if you can run some kind of action before it and get the other team’s big man trailing the play. This makes it hard for him to do his defensive responsibility on the ball screen.

All of our basketball plays come with a video clip of the actual play and written text breaking down the play. This way, you will be able to watch the play and then read the emphasis points for the play, and hopefully, this will help your team execute the play better.

Executing Ball Screen Basketball Plays

Most ball screen plays in themselves are not very complicated, but how well they are executed makes them effective. Here are a few things that you as a basketball coach need to emphasize to your players when running a ball screen action.

There are two parts to a ball screen, and both are equally important. The player setting the screen is the first part of the equation, and they need to be able to take a good angle on the ball screen and then make legal contact with the ball handler’s defender. After the screen, they need to read the defense and then either space, roll, or set another screen.

The other part of the ball screen is the ball handler, and they are equally responsible for how well the screening action works. For the ball screen to work, the ball handler needs to set his defender up, come off the screen shoulder to shoulder, and then make the right read. The defense could guard the screen several different ways, and it is up to the ball handler to make the right read and then exploit the defense. Check out our basketball drills section for some great ball screen drills to practice the different screening situations.

Away from the ball screen action, the rest of the offensive players need to be a threat to score. So whether it is an off-ball screen, a hard cut, or simply spacing the floor ready to shoot, they need to be a threat to score.

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List of All Ball Screen Basketball Plays