It is challenging to teach a grade school basketball team an effective offense. Motion offense is a way to get your players moving to open spaces on the basketball court. From there, makeable shots will develop as the players keep moving if they do not receive the pass right away. This article describes a motion offense that you can effectively teach to your grade school basketball team.

It starts with emphasizing to your players that they move every 2 seconds on offense. This makes it more difficult for the opponent defense to guard. The ball is also to move quickly to the first open teammate. This makes it more challenging for the opponent defense to rotate toward the ball and to keep proper positioning.  When a pass is received, your player ought to turn toward the basket and take a peek to look for open teammates and an open shot. If one of those is open, a quick decision to shoot or pass should be made.

Where should the players move? The answer is to any open space on the court not too close to a teammate. Spacing the 5 players on the court also makes it difficult for the opponent offense to guard everybody effectively. There are some areas on the court which make your players more of a threat to score: behind the defense, foul line extended against most zones, coming off screens, between two defenders against a zone defense. The key is for you and your players to identify the vulnerable areas of the defense and to have your players moving in and out of those areas often. With the motion offense, all 5 players are encouraged to use the whole half-court on offense. It is not a static offense in which players plant themselves in one or two spots. Rather, it is a flowing offense in which your players are free and encouraged to be pass receivers al over the court.

Within the motion offense, it is certainly alright to do solid moves like give and go and pick and roll. These are moves that are hard for the defense to handle when done correctly. It is worthwile spending much time practicing these moves within the motion offense. Dribble handoffs also work well to get defenders momentarily out of position. Swinging the ball from one side of the court to the other is also effective when done quickly, as it forces the defense to rotate quickly or be out of position.

You can see that the motion offense is challenging for the opponent defense to guard. When you emphasize a relatively small number of concepts as described in this article, your team can learn it quickly. Then you and your team will experience the confidence that comes from creating many scoring opportunities!