Basketball inbound plays that actually work

The only thing an inbound play has to do

Get a shot up before the defence recovers. Not a good shot in some abstract sense — a shot at the rim or a shot from a spot your player has practised, taken inside about three seconds of the ball being touched.

That deadline is why most inbound plays fail. Coaches draw four cuts and three screens on a clipboard during a timeout and hand it to five twelve-year-olds who have thirty seconds to learn it. What survives is the first cut and nothing else. So both plays below are built the other way round: the first cut is the one you can afford to have go wrong, and the second is the one that scores.

Both are drawn on the half court in the basketball play designer — open either one and drag the players to match your own lineup.

Sideline: box, and screen the screener

A box set is four players around the lane, two high and two low. It is the friendliest set in basketball to teach because everybody starts in a spot they can find with their eyes shut.

The action is one screen and one lie. The high player on the ball side comes down to screen for the low player, the low player clears all the way out to the corner — and the screener is the one who turns and goes to the rim.

Why it works against a team seeing it for the first time: help defenders read screens by watching the cutter, not the screener. One team in ten switches this cleanly. If they do switch it, the corner is genuinely open for a three, so the play has a second answer without anybody having to remember one.

Coaching points:

• The screener sets a real screen, then turns immediately. A screener who watches his own cut is late every time.
• The corner cut goes all the way to the corner. Stopping halfway drags a defender back into the lane you are trying to empty.
• Inbounder counts. "One" on the slap, "two" on the screen, "three" the pass. Say the numbers out loud in practice and the timing survives the noise.

Baseline: stack, and the last one out scores

Three players in a line up the lane, an inbounder on the baseline, a guard at the top as the safety valve. The three go in order: the front player empties the corner, the middle player goes up to the arc — and the back player, who has been standing still watching two defenders leave, cuts to the rim.

This is the play to run when you need two points rather than three, and it is the better one to teach first: the cuts are in a fixed order, so a player who forgets the play can be told "you're second" and still be right.

The mistakes are always the same two. The cuts go too early — all three leave at once, all three are covered. And the inbounder throws to the first thing that moves, which is the front cutter, who is not the play. Both are fixed by counting out loud.

When not to run a set at all

If you are inbounding in your own half with plenty of time on the clock, do not run any of this. Get the ball in, get it to your best handler, and play. A set play against a set defence in the back court gains you nothing and loses you a possession every time somebody forgets it.

Save them for the sideline in the front court, for the baseline under your own basket, and for the two or three moments a game where five seconds of certainty is worth more than everything else you could do.

Getting them into your players' heads

Both plays above are links. Open one in the basketball play designer, move the five to where your five actually stand, name it something your team will remember — "Box" and "Stack" are fine — and send the animation to the group chat. A player who has watched the cut happen twice on a phone knows it better than one who has looked at a printed diagram for a minute.