How to get the ball to your go-to player

The east-west dribble (Dribble At a perimeter teammate) can be used in many interesting ways to score. The basic way to use it is to force a backdoor cut by your teammate when he is overplayed. In this post I want to focus on how to use the Dribble At to get the ball to your go-to player or to the player who is hot in a game or in a practice scrimmage.

3 is our go-to player and the 2 wants to get the ball to him.

2 can decide to dribble at 1 in order to pass to 3.The basket cut by 1 must be a legitimate scoring threat, not just to get out of the way. If 1 is open when cutting 2 could pass to him, but he wants to deliver the ball quickly to 3. There is a chance the defense will loosen up on 3 to defend the cutter and thus giving 3 space to receive the ball.

Now that 1 is out of the way 2 can pass to 3 who can shoot or score in some other way.

What's the next best action decision?

In this situation we have two cutters entering the R&R decision box. There are several next best action decisions these cutters can make after they cut - like posting up, filling out or setting a screen. Which decision should be made can be up to the player or coach. If we want to give our go-to player space to get to the rim I suggest our cutters fill out to the weakside perimeter. It all depends on your player personell, player strenghts and what you want to accomplish as a team.

Why not pass twice?

Now why not make two passes to get the ball to our go-to player? We could, but the player in between might not be very good at handling the ball or making good decisions with it. Maybe he is not aware that his teammate is on fire. Since whoever has the ball in the R&R has the freedom to make independent decisions 2 has no guarantee that 1 will pass the ball to 3. 2 can use the east-west dribble at to more quickly get the ball to his main target.