Basic Basketball Passing

Basic skills of passing are similar to the basics of dribbling, shooting, and defense. Basketball players must have vision, have touch, maintain balance, and awareness. And just like each of the skills mentioned before…they take practice to build.



Some basics:

Stance and Vision: You will pass out of a variety of scenarios depending on your position and circumstances you are confronted with; facing the hoop in triple threat, back to the basket in a post-up, while on the dribble, inbounds pass, and many more. Throwing a post-entry pass from the wing is much different than a full-court baseball pass on a buzzer beater inbounds, but a couple things are always constant: You should try to always stay balanced and always have your head up surveying the floor.



Take care of the ball: Learning to use your body and footwork to shield passes, and learning to use pass fakes are both required. If you don’t learn how to do these things, you will turn the ball over and will be sitting at the end of the bench. Always keep your body between a defender and the ball when making a pass, step around the defense to make a pass, or use a ball fake in the opposite direction of where you actually intend to pass to get the defender out of your way.



Always look for the easy pass: Not every pass needs to be on a highlight film. In fact, it is often the pass THAT LEADS to a pass that results in an easy basket. A good passer can see that if they pass to the guy at the top of the key, he will be able to feed it into the post at a better angle (but if you, yourself, passed it directly to the post…the D might pick it off). Here is an easy rule of thumb…if you aren’t sure if the ball can fit through a gap, or you aren’t sure if they can catch the ball, DON’T THROW IT.

Note – we call these passes where you aren’t sure about the result "50-50 passes".



Shorten the pass: Long passes can lead to turnovers. The longer the ball is in the air, the more time the defense has to react and make a play on it. Minimize the amount of long cross-court passes thrown, and be careful on long skip passes. If you need to, take one or two dribbles toward your teammate before passing.



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