2 Line Read Line Drill

This drill was posted by bshutter in the forum and it was so good that it needed to see the light of day on the Tribe. So, I pulled it out of the forum, shined it up a bit, added some diagrams and now here it is. Thanks bshutter and if you want to see the original forum thread, check it out here.

This is a great drill to train the Read Line. Even though the Read Line can be simple to teach and simple to learn, players could begin to cheat by cutting to the basket whether or not the defender is over the Read Line. Emphasizing a drill like this will help clean up that slippage.

You can use this drill as it sits or you can use it as an idea generator and tweak it to your own needs. For example, in this version, a player is the defender and the rotation acknowledges that, but you could easily make the defender a coach and have players only focus on offense. Just a thought.

And, by the way, the blue shading simply represents the 4 OUT spots. If you like this drill, check out the Expanded version here.

Start with two lines – one on the right guard spot, the other on the left wing spot.
Put the ball(s) in the right guard line.
5 must fill the empty spot.

















Option 1: If x6 steps over the Read Line, 5 basket cuts and gets the pass for the lay-up.

5 then gets his rebound, passes to the back of the right guard line, and becomes defender x5.
x6 rotates to the back of the line with the balls.
1, the passer, rotates to the back of the fill line.

This is just a diagram of the new alignment following the rotation.

Option 2: If 5 fills and x6 does not step over the read line, then 1 passes to 5.
1 must basket cut (he doesn’t get the ball) and fills out to the back of the left wing line.

5 passes opposite to 7 and cuts. (By the way, here is a place where you can train Front Cut or Rear Cut depending on how the defender plays the pass. I know, this drill is great, right?)
7 passes to 5 for the lay-up.

5 rebounds the shot, passes to the back of the ball line, and becomes x5 on 7.
x6 rotates to the back of the right guard line.

And, once again, a diagram of the new alignment. This rotation simply continues for the duration of the drill.