Coaching - Swinging the basketball

As you get into higher levels of coaching, one thing you learn about is swinging the basketball around the perimeter of the basket. In essence, swinging the ball means to move the ball from one side of the basket around the perimeter at a quick pace to get the ball to the other side of the basket. Why is this important? Well, one of the keys to a good offense is to keep the defense moving. Anyone who has played the game can tell you that it is easy to play defense if you can just stand there and watch the person with the ball standing there or trying to make a move to the basket in addition to your man standing there and watching as well. In a good offense, players off the ball are moving around to lose their defender and get into position to score. The same holds true with the ball itself. You want to move the ball around the court so that defenders lose track of where the ball is or they focus on following the ball and they forget to keep track of where their man is.

A classic example of when a team should swing the ball is when the point guard initiates the offense on one side of the court and nothing is open. When the point guard gets the ball back, they go right back to the same side of the court to initiate something. When this happens, the next time the point guard gets the ball back, I usually yell to the team to swing the ball to the other side of the court. This will force the defense to shift and if one or two players do not shift properly, then something might open up. In a good offense (particularly against a zone), if you swing the ball around a few times, eventually something will open up.