In the list of Scoring Opportunities under Layer 1: Pass East-West there is a section of opportunities under the category of SPACING. The ball movement, player movement, and spacing of Layer 1 creates DRIVING OPPORTUNITIES for the crafty player that can spot them. I named them so that we could teach them:

Real Estate Drives
Killing Close Outs
Draft Drives
Oops Drives
Most of our readers know what a DRAFT DRIVE is. When a teammate passes you the ball and cuts to the basket, he/she takes the first natural helping defender with them. If you can drive to the goal behind your cutting teammate, there will be no defender in position to help. And we call this a DRAFT DRIVE because it looks like one Race Car DRAFTING another Race Car – the car in the rear is allowing the car in the front to break the air, creating less resistance (and a boost of speed) the car that follows.

A new scoring opportunity needs to be added to our list. When a FILLER fills the empty spot created by a cutter and when the defender of the FILLER goes over the READ LINE, our FILLER has been trained to Rear Cut to the Basket for a scoring opportunity.

But we all know that the Read Line Cut is not always open. Most of the time, the defender is DESPERATELY recovering to defend this “lay-up threat”. This creates the perfect opportunity for the ballhandler to DRAFT DRIVE THE READ LINE CUTTER!

We all need to put this in our drills. The player making the Read Line cut should be given a DRAFTING ASSIST!

But I have a bonus for you. Add the following as another version of DRAFTING THE READ LINE CUTTER: The teammate who is filling behind the Read Line Cutter can DRAFT the cutter as well! This looks like a READ LINE CUT followed closely by a CURL THE PUPPYDOG cut!

That’s two more opportunities to add to our Read & React Library!