2.5 Surefire Ways To Improve Your Transition Game

OK. Here’s the scenario.

Last year, you played too much 5on5 in games. You didn’t get any easy scoring opportunities, and every trip down the floor became a grind. You found it increasingly difficult to get easy baskets.

This year, you have a pretty athletic bunch. You want to run more, but have struggled to improve your running game in the past despite giving a valiant effort in practice.

Here’s some tips that can help your team get out score on the break (or defend the break) more consistently.

1. Give transition roughly the same amount of floor time that you give offense and defense.

Transition constitutes 1/3 of the game, whether you are a “fast break team” are not. No matter what your style, after every possession, you have to go to the other end of the floor.

As coaches, it’s easy to minimize transition and put the majority of your focus on halfcourt offense and/or defense.

It might feel as though you are letting things get too loose or undisciplined if you spend too much time running up and down the floor.

The reality is that great transition teams are very disciplined teams; just as much as the team that can execute its backdoor offense flawlessly.

It takes a high degree of discipline to play the game well at full speed, which is what good transition teams do.

Spending more time on transition in practice will give you the time the you need to develop the discipline you need to see game time results.

2. Include transition into every scrimmage situation, beginning the first day of tryouts.

You don’t need to turn every situation into a scrimmage. And you definitely shouldn’t sacrifice one area of the game for another; just because you are emphasizing transition doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t emphasize your halfcourt offense and defense. But the bottom line is…transition occurs after every possession, for every team, in every game, with very few exceptions. But I would wager that for many teams, not even 10% of practice possessions include conversion.

If you work on transition on only 10% of your possessions in practice when you know there will be a transition situation in almost every possession of a game, you might not be emulating game situations.

A simple way to do this is to allow the defense one quick break after every possession in practice before resuming halfcourt work.

So, if you’re working on your half court offense, begin play by handing the ball to the offense and having them execute their schemes. At the end of the play, whether it ends in a made shot, a defensive rebound, a steal, or an out of bounds situation, allow the defense to take possession attack the basket on the other end. Stop play at the end of that possession.

You’re conditioning your players to always think about conversion. Your offense understands that they should be in the habit of getting back after every single possession.

The defense quickly learns to capitalize on an opportunity every time they gain possession.

3. Stop running the 3 on 2, 2 on 1 drill.

I didn’t include this point just to be different. I included it because I have a dirty little secret; I hate this drill. It might be the most misused drill in the history of sports.

Here’s why: The 3 on 2, 2 on 1 drill serves a very specific purpose. It teaches your team how to score/defend in 3 on 2 situations, and how to score/defend in 2 on 1 situations.

The 3 on 2 portion of the drill should occur quickly, with the shot going up no more than 3 seconds after the ball crosses the half-court line. When the wing catches first pass the options are:

a. layup,

b. pass to the other wing cutting to the basket,

c. short jumper

If the defense takes that second pass away, and there is no shot, the pass should go back to the point guard (who followed his pass to the ball-side elbow area).

When the point guard gets the return pass, he should shoot. This emulates a game situation.

Unfortunately, most teams that spend a lot of time with this drill don’t do this. I have seen teams pass the ball the ball sometimes as many as 5 times in this drill.

They forget that any 3 on 2 advantage won’t last more than 2 seconds, at the most. In a game, there will be 3 more defenders hot on your tail…if you don’t execute with purpose, you won’t score.

I also see teams run this drill for 15 to 20 minutes at a time. The problem is, unless you are the worst team in your league, you aren’t ever going to spend 20 minutes of any game in a 3 on 2 or 2 on 1situation.

And, if you spend all of the time set aside for transition running this drill, you probably won’t develop the skill set that needed to get the numbers advatage in a game anyway.

I probably overstated my case and in beginning; this drill doesn’t need to be abandoned completely… It should just be recognized as a small piece of the fast break.

It’s very easy for coaches to treat this drill as though it were the fast break. I would argue that instead of spending 15 minutes on this drill, you would be much better served spending five minutes developing your primary break – with this drill or another three lane drill- and spending 10 minutes developing elements of your secondary break and the transition from the secondary break to the halfcourt offense or defense.

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