Ball receiving and stopping
to offensive stance (Zdeněk Janík)

These game actions are the final part of cut and they are limiting for application of following forward’s actions with ball and are closely linked to travel rule.

Ball receiving blends with the pass practise itself. We put emphasis on right position of the other arm and hand. Arm moves toward to the ball, shows the direction and thump points to the body. Other fingers are stretched. Receiving the ball in movement after cut (step toward the passer) and stopping to the position is not physically demanding, but even thought it makes some quite big difficulties not just to the beginners. Especially the stopping in terms of front-rear balance is quite difficult. Unfortunately, these actions are often neglected.

Training methodology:

• At first, focus on stopping techniques
• Followed by static receiving
• Then dynamic receiving and stop
• At the end receiving in movement and other actions (with or without stopping)

Exercises focused on ball receiving and stopping to the stance

1. Exercise description

3 players, 3 balls, ball catching and stopping; Players throw ball twice over them while doing stop and turn (Fig.18)

Fig. 18: Ball catching

Simple exercise variation:

• Connect with dexterity exercise – receiving of wrongly passed ball – coach kicks the ball – emphasis on hand position when receiving the ball
• Connect with 360° turn (Fig. 19),

• blind receiving – a player react to rebound (Fig. 20),

• ball catching with one player throwing the ball with the 180° turn (Fig. 21),

• ball catching with two throwing players (Sutton, 2005) (Fig. 22)

• Exercise with pushing to panel holding by assistant – emphasis on step toward the pass.
• When the defender stands back, reverse cut can be used – contact by inserting leg between defender legs at the moment of ball receiving and then continue around defender toward to the basket.

Critical parts:

• Stopping to wide posture
• Catching by both hands
• The way of ball handling
• Dribbling start when doing pivot’s drive, the moment when the travel rule is often broken.