How to Run a Motion Offense in Basketball

Series Summary

Basketball, b-ball, hoops—these are all names for one of the most popular games in America. Whether it’s professional play in the NBA, college games, the local high school team, a friendly round of one-on-one round, or an outdoor street game at the playground court, basketball is exciting and fast-paced, pitting player against player and skill against skill. Having strong fundamentals like dribbling, passing, and shooting is the key to the success of any aspiring player or team. Though flashy dunks, trick shots, and off the wall dribbling antics are fun to watch and have their place, they often create a “superstar” mentality that ultimately hurts the team if not put in check. What makes basketball great is the combination of individual talent and team strategy, ultimately producing a match that’s sure to keep you on the edge of your seat.

In this free video basketball lesson, an experienced coach will tell you how to set up and run a motion offense. This style of offense, invented by college coach Hank Iba and used by his Oklahoma State teams during their NCAA championships in 1945 and 1946, is a free-flowing style of play which takes advantage of quick offense players. In this series of videos, coach Sean Hobson will demonstrate how to run this offense, showing you how to get started and how to take advantage of the opportunities which it presents. You will learn how to set screens and get easy baskets off of back-door cuts.

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Sean Hobson and right now we want to talk about the importance of using a motion style offense. Now a motion style offense is a little bit different than what you would call a "quick hitter set" because set plays are designed to go one particular way every time and they're easy to scout. Motion style offenses are hard to scout for the reason that, most of the time, they're either a pass and screen away type of motion but other things happen off of them. Players learn to read the defense and they learn to move within the motion. But the key thing to a motion offense, is you've got to stay in motion. You want to keep moving all the time and make yourselves as hard as possible to guard. You can see how we're kind of set up here where everything is spread out. One of the most important things that you can remember in a motion offense is you always keep things spread out. If you screen over, somebody else has got to pop up, if the post screens over, the other post has to go to the other side. You have to keep the floor balanced at all times, you have to set good screens, you have to move, guys exchange places but the main thing is you keep moving within the motion offense and this is a dangerous type of offense to run because even though you know kind of what they're doing, you don't always know what they're doing because you're going to be moving the whole time and you're going to be adjusting to the defense. That's why I like to run a motion offense."