Coaching Basketball's Blocker-Mover Motion Offense: Winning With Teamwork and Fundamentals

Almost since the day Dr. Naismith invented basketball, the argument over which approach to offense, set plays or continuities versus rules based free-lance offense, has been raging.

Motion offense has been used by some of the most innovative and successful coaches in the game, Don Meyer (923+ career wins), Bobby Knight (902 wins), Dean Smith (879 wins) and Mike Krzyzewski – (910 wins – still active) and Coach Dick Bennett, the innovator responsible for the Blocker-Mover version of motion offense.

Motion offense’s advocates love the offense because:

-- once players have learned it, they can attack any defense.
-- players love the freedom motion offense gives them to play the game.
-- it is difficult to scout.
-- there is a high degree of carryover from one season to the next.
-- it can be used at any level of play.
-- it can be adapted to any personnel, allowing continuity from one season to the next.

If motion offense has led to so much success, why don’t more coaches adopt the offense? Some reasons include:

-- fear of loss of control over the offense.
-- confusion over how to teach motion offense.
-- concern over how to make adjustments during a game.
-- the belief the nature of the offense is too confusing for players (and coaches).
-- confusion due to the rules based approach to offense versus the predetermined approach with set plays, quick hitters and continuity offenses.

Using Blocker-Mover Motion Offense will allow you to run motion offense and "fix" the problems common to the offense including:

-- eliminate standing by increasing cutting and screening.
-- generate more good shots by controlling where, how and who takes the shots.
-- eliminate bad spacing with Blocker-Mover alignments.
-- eliminate player confusion about who should set screens and who should be a cutter.

Coaching Basketball’s Blocker-Mover Motion Offense: Winning With Teamwork and Fundamentals addresses all of these issues. There are lots of books on motion offense but many do not address the concerns that coaches interested in adopting motion offense have.

The Blocker-Mover system provides structure without eliminating the advantages of rules based offense, providing a coach with the means to maintain a degree of control over the offense, a method for easily making adjustments during a game just to name a few of the benefits of Blocker-Mover motion offense.

Within Coaching Basketball’s Blocker-Mover Motion Offense’s 262 pages, including 250+ illustrations and 50+ photographs, 16 chapters address the following:

-- Rules for Blocker-Mover motion offense complete with explanations.
-- Descriptions of the concepts of the Blocker and Mover concepts
-- The strengths and weaknesses of each alignment -- Guidelines for which alignment best fits certain player personnel.
-- Approaches to teaching motion offense with insights into teaching Blocker-Mover specifically.
-- Drills to teach the essentials of movement, cutting, screening and more that are essential to successfully running any offense.
-- Drills specifically designed to teach motion offense.
-- Ideas on how to make adjustments to the offense during games.

The author, Coach Kevin Sivils, learned the Blocker-Mover offense from both Coach Dick Bennett and Coach Don Meyer and used the offense with success for years as a varsity basketball coach, winning 479 career wins along with 8 Coach of the Year awards.

Other books by Coach Sivils include Game Strategy and Tactics for Basketball and Coaching Basketball’s Fast Break Attack.