Basketball plays against a 2-3 zone: three that work

Where a 2-3 zone is weak

A 2-3 zone puts two guards at the free-throw line extended and three players across the bottom: two forwards off the blocks and a centre in front of the rim. Start from the 2-3 zone template to see the shape. It is a good defence, and most youth and high school teams meet it every week, because it protects the paint and the boards and asks you to beat it from outside.

Every zone leaves gaps, and the 2-3 always leaves the same three:

• The free-throw line. The two guards stand either side of it and nobody stands on it. A player who catches there is facing the basket with the whole bottom line in front of him.
• The short corner. The baseline between the lane and the corner three. The bottom forward on that side cannot guard the wing, the corner and the short corner at once.
• The weak-side corner. When the ball is on one side, the whole zone slides towards it, and the corner on the far side is the last place anybody looks.

The three plays below attack one gap each. Left and right are the offence's, facing the basket, and the defenders move the way a 2-3 is taught to move: the guard on the ball side takes the wing, the other guard drops to the middle, and the bottom three slide with the ball.

Play one: flash the high post, then high-low

The four starts in the right short corner. As the point guard looks for a pass, he flashes up the lane to the free-throw line, into the gap between the two guards, and catches facing the basket.

Now the zone has a problem. If nobody steps up, the four shoots a fifteen-foot jump shot. If the centre of the zone steps up to stop him, the rim is empty, and the five, who started on the left block outside the lane, seals the defender behind him and steps in for the pass. That is the high-low: the ball goes in high and comes down low.

Coach the four to catch with his feet already turned to the basket, and to look at the rim first. The three-second count starts the moment he steps into the lane, so he catches and decides: shot, high-low, or back out to the point. The five must not move until the centre of the zone commits, or he walks into the defender instead of past him.

Play two: the short corner and the dive

The ball goes to the right wing. The four drops from beside the lane into the short corner, and the zone slides: the guard closes out on the wing, the bottom forward sits up between the wing and the corner, and the centre slides to the ball-side block.

The pass from the wing to the short corner is short, and the bottom forward cannot get there in time, so the centre of the zone has to step out. The moment he does, the five dives from the top of the free-throw line straight down the middle of the lane. The four hands it off for a layup.

If the centre does not step out, the four turns and shoots from 13 feet with nobody on him. That is the whole point of the short corner: whoever guards it leaves something else open.

Play three: overload one side, skip to the corner

This one beats a zone by moving it. The point guard passes to the right wing, the four is in the right short corner and the five steps out to the right elbow. Three attackers on one side pull the whole zone over to them. On the left, the wing drifts down to the corner, behind the zone, where nobody is looking.

The right wing throws the skip pass, two-handed and over the top, to the left corner. The corner three is the shortest three on the court, 22 feet in the NBA and 6.6 metres under FIBA rules, and the closest defender is the bottom forward, who has slid into the lane and has to run the width of it to close out.

The skip pass is the one coaches worry about, because a lazy one is a turnover. Throw it before the zone recovers, not after, and make the wing look the defence the other way first. A pass fake towards the short corner holds the guard's hands down for long enough.

Practising it

Zone offence is about timing more than shape, so practise it against five defenders who move. Run the shell defence drill with your second unit in a 2-3, and use the closeout drill the other way round: the shooters learn where the closeout comes from. If the opposition changes to a 1-3-1, the 1-3-1 zone template shows how the gaps move.

Sending it to your players

All three plays above are live. Open any of them in the basketball play designer, change the names to your own players, and send the link before practice. For the plays you run out of bounds, read the basketball inbound plays guide.