Saturday, February 16, 2008

For Basketball Junkies

Dean Smith had his "Four Corners", Bob Knight loves screens, and Pete Carril loved his cuts, including the famed backdoor cut by Gabe Lewullis, who ran by UCLA's Charles O'Bannon about 10 years ago (okay, a little longer) to give the Princeton Tigers a first-round NCAA tournament victory over defending national champion UCLA. The latter two offenses have spread widely, but there's now a relatively newer one that has proven successful and is worthy of your attention.

It's called the dribble-drive offense, the brainchild of legendary California HS and JC coach Vance Walberg, who recently resigned from the head coaching gig at Pepperdine, and the offense of Memphis, the #1 college team in the country. Grant Wahl discusses the dribble-drive offense in this piece from Sports Illustrated.

It's a good piece on an innovative offense that, needless to say, requires you to have a bunch of good players who can penetrate. It's spread through the HS and college ranks into the NBA, and the article is worth a read if you're interested in good hoops offenses.

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