Full Team Counterattacks and Making the Correct First Pass for a Quick Strike

A story I heard once about the late great Bill Walton was that as he was up in the air pulling in a rebound he was already looking down the court to see who to pass to to push his team’s fastbreak.

You can’t take your eyes off the ball mid-block to look down the pool to see who to pass to.

But as quickly as possible you need to corral the ball, get it up into a passing position, and get the ball up into your counterattack.

You are the first pass of the counterattack so you can set your team up for success or failure

The clip below from Socal Black vs Mission is an example of a failure

I’ve said many times before, as you move up in playing levels your counterattack scoring opportunities are going to come from a full team counterattack and less from individual breakaways.

Having the right 6-on-6 counterattack structure and attacking ti quickly is key.

The majority of your team is going to be right-handed. So you want to move your 6-on-6 counterattack from right to left.

The first pass should’ve been to a short release on the right side near the half tank.

This release pass would pull a defender towards them. Most likely this defender.

This opens up a lane for this guy to counter hard to the post.

But there is no early release and the ball does not get out of the goalie’s hands quickly.

You as the goalie need to be yelling your teammate’s name to release.

If he did open up and get the early release then he would make the next pass up the same side of the pool to the deeper release.

This pulls his defender wide with him continuing to open up the driving lane to the near side post for their last teammate coming up the pool.

But none of that happens.

The goalie sits on the ball waiting for someone to release instead of calling for his teammates on the right side to release for the ball.

The goalie burns a lot of precious clock time sitting on the ball and then it finally ends up here.

And then more time is wasted as he swims the ball up into the offense.

But look at all this space.

Yes, they have a set to the left side of the pool. And I know the common lesson for goalies is to pass the ball up to the side you are set on.

But that set will still be there later in the clock. Right now you are pushing a full team counter. You’re looking to take advantage of a defense that is out of position.

If you get the ball up to the right side on the counterattack and the ball moves up to the deep wing. Then you have all that space to attack to either get a goal or an ejection on a defender out of postion.

The deep wing can attack the baseline with the ball.

This allows either the player who should've been the early release to attack the space and rive on his defender.

Or it allows that trailing teammate to continue countering and attack that right-side post.

If nothing comes of the counterattack, you can stay in a double post-formation or clear out along the baseline and work the ball back over to the left side for an entry or a shot from the right-hander’s strong side.

Correct Counterattack Structure & Release

I will preface this by saying it is not the best execution of what I talked about above. It develops slower than I would like because it is coming out of a man down but it was the first example I could find and I don’t have all day to find the perfect clip.

Compare this counterattack versus the one above.

The ball moves up to the mid-tank release. Then it is moved up to the front line and wide. Both moves pull their defenders out wide into a press.

Their teammate trailing the play pauses at the top but then sees all that open water in front of them and finishes his counterattack to the nearside post.

That stop-and-go move helped and pulled his defender out to him in a press. But the defender’s hips were down and the offensive player was able to drive past him and get him on his back.

The deep wing player enters the ball to the drive and the ejction is drawn.

A quick strike because they were able to finish their 6-on-6 counterattack structure.

Be Bill Walton

So be like Bill Walton rebounding.

Scan the pool as you corral your block and get the ball up the pool quickly so your teammates can attack the counterattack effectively. More times than not it is going to an early release to the right. Then a secondary release up the same side so your teammates can set up their appropriate 6-on-6 counter structure and take advantage of being up out of the backcourt.