LOW POST PLAY STANCE & POSITIONING Stance and positioning are very critical to effective low post play. The proper stance in the low post is very unnatural for post players, especially if they happen to be big. However, the bigger the post player, the more important it is to teach her to maintain her stance. And the key word is “maintain.” There are very few players that cannot begin a possession in a good posting stance, but the great ones maintain that stance. What we try to get across to our post players (and our entire team) is that you might be able to come down and post up early and score against a poor team. What we want to do is to prepare you to play against the top teams and to do that, you are going to have to post up the entire possession. First and foremost, we want our stance to present a “wide base” in order to take up as much room as we can while posting. The feet should be as wide as possible without giving up balance. The knees should be bent to make us more mobile and able to move more quickly. The butt should be out, again so that we can take up as much space as possible. We want the hands in front of the face with the elbows parallel to the floor. Our basic posting position should be to straddle the first hash mark on the lane. Dur- ing practice sessions, we use floor tape to outline a “posting box” as a guide for our post players. The tape is a little higher than where we generally want our players to post, but we find that during game slippage they will drop a little. Taping the posting box a little higher is part of our “overload” teaching philosophy. Overloading is placing the player(s) in a more difficult circumstance than they would encounter during a game. FOUR THINGS TO MASTER Each day we try to work in some capacity with our post players to master the four fol- lowing phases of offensive post play: 1. GET OPEN IN YOUR SCORING AREA It does no good to get open in an area where you are not effective. Know your range and your most effective shots and get open in an area where you can score. 2. SEAL—MAKE AND KEEP CONTACT Effective sealing means that you are open in the post from some vantage point on the court. It also means that you are controlling your defender instead of her controlling you. Sealing also means that you always know where your defender is (through con- tact), and that is extremely important. 3. CATCH THE BASKETBALL This sounds very simple, but there are a lot of post players on all levels of play that have everything necessary to be an effective post player but they simply can’t catch the ball. There are a lot of drills to work on hands. Don’t accept bad hands. All play- ers can improve their hands and their ability to catch the basketball. 4. SCORE SIMPLY Too many players take an easy shot and turn it into a difficult shot. Some players don’t understand the concept of getting a simple shot and don’t work accordingly. The best move is to not to have to use a move...to work so effectively that all you have to do is catch and score. THE SEAL Sealing is absolutely critical to be an effective post player. We believe it is something that should be worked on in practice every day in some shape or form. Some im- portant teaching points on the seal include: 1. Initiate contact with your hips. Don’t seal with your upper body. Believe it or not, the feet are far more important on the seal than the upper body. If you are using your upper body for sealing you are going to have some major problems in regard to bal- ance and movement. It is also a very poor habit to seal using your arms, as this is an easy offensive foul call for officials. 2. Two methods of working to get open on the seal are to hook the defender (take your leg and hook it around the defender to blind her to the ball), and to drive and spin (face your defender, step into her, and then spin into your seal). 3. Once we have established the seal, we always want to “sit down” on the defend- er’s front leg. This creates contact for the seal, allows us to know where the defender is through that contact, and establishes us in a low, wide base. 4. We want to really drive home the philosophy of “getting a piece of the paint.” This means that we want the seal to come with at least one foot in the paint. In fact, we of- ten tell our perimeter players not to feed the post unless she has a foot in the paint. The ultimate seal is to have both feet in the paint. 5. We want to hold our seal for at least 3 seconds. In a drill, as a form of overload teaching, we ask them to hold it for 5 seconds. 6. A major problem early for most players is that they release from the seal too soon. We like to hold the seal until the ball is “in the air,” and then go get the ball. 7. We want our post players to meet the pass. This is a major reason why getting a piece of the paint is so important. If we start with a good seal, and both feet in the paint, then stepping to meet the pass will still have us in good position around the lane. FOUR TYPES OF SEALS We have four different types of seals that we use. Each seal is predicated on the posi- tioning of the defender in regards to the offensive low post. 1. SEAL IN (Defender Is Playing Behind) If the defender is playing behind the low post, we want to “seal in,” trying to get a piece of the paint by driving the defender back into the lane. 2. SEAL DOWN (Defender Is Playing On The Low Side) If the defender is playing on the low side of the low post, we want to “seal down,” trying to get a piece of the paint with our inside foot while driving the defender toward the baseline. 3. SEAL UP (Defender Is Playing On The High Side) If the defender is playing on the high side of the low post, we want to “seal up,” trying to get a piece of the paint while driving the defender toward the free throw line. 4.SEAL OUT (Defender Is Fronting) If the defender is playing in front of the low post, we want to “seal out,” trying to create space by driving the defender out of the lane. A key teaching point when a defender is fronting is that we want the poster to have both hands up in the air to call for the lob. We do this to stay away from the push off foul. THE LOB There are several important factors in making the lob pass. First, we believe that you need either a height or jumping advantage for proper execution. You must obviously have the proper spacing or movement to clear out the helpside, or at least to keep them occupied long enough to make the pass. We believe all players can seal out for the lob, but you can’t necessarily throw it to all players. Keys for the lob seal are the following: #1 Use the sealing principles: seal with the hip not the upper body #2 Initiate and maintain contact #3 On the lob, we want the post to be squared and facing the baseline #4 We want BOTH hands up. This way there can be no push off, and we believe it aids our ability to catch the lob. #5 Don’t release your seal until the ball is directly above your head. If you release too soon, the defender will be able to adjust and deflect or steal the pass. We tell the passer to throw the ball to the corner of the backboard. RECEIVING THE BALL The ability to catch the basketball, we believe, is one of the most underrated portions of low post play. It is something that must be constantly drilled, with players that have good hands as well as those with poor hands. Receiving teaching points include: #1 Proper mental attitude, you must desire the basketball — call for the ball with your mouth and your hands. #2 Catching is done with the entire body, not just your hands. You must have soft hands but you must also “watch” the ball into your hands, never taking your eyes off of it (not even to find the defense), and you must use your feet to maintain good balance. #3 Catch the ball with two hands. This is a big one for us and one that we must constantly stress to our players. In the day and age of the NBA, players think it looks better to make the one-handed catch. Stress that possession is everything! It doesn’t have to be pretty — there are no style points. Go catch the ball. #4 We want to catch the ball in the air, slightly coming back for it and landing in a jump stop position. We cannot emphasize enough the importance of catching in a jump stop for maneuverability.