Fastbreak (I): Using The Side Lane

Last season I worked quite often fastbreak rules in my team. The truth is our players were not used to keep very good spacing or the right order when running the break and I thought we needed to improve that aspect of our game.

I'll show you in the next series of posts some of the rules we followed, I think we ended up being quite a good team if we talk about how to run the fastbreak. 

Let's start with the use of the side lanes. Even if it's not forbidden for my players to use the middle of the court, I really think that running the fastbreak with the ball close to the sideline is a good idea, being the main reason that the defensive balance tends to place a lot of players in the mentioned area.

I worked a lot in the first pass after rebounding. I like this pass to go to the free throw line extended area:

And also in the spacing of the players who run in front of the ball. The bigger the space to cover by the defense, the better for our options to score. This was one of the most difficult things for my players to learn, and we really had to put a lot of work on it. Finally, as I said, they get used to run as close to the line as posible.

Let's take a look at one example. First pass, run near the sideline... and of course, unselfishness to give the second pass, strong quick passing and aggressive finish towards the basket. Notice how the defenders colapse the central area and how we manage to "beat the crowd" by following our simple fastbreak rules: