There are a great number of Individual Offensive Skills that a player must master during their time involved in basketball. Basketball is a very complicated and technical sport and requires a player to think of themselves as a constant work in progress. Always working on their individual offensive skills to better themselves for the next level of competition and game.
All too often players make the mistake of focusing too heavily on one set of individual offensive skills instead of taking a balanced approach to developing a wide range of competence across all of the fundamental skill areas. At the elite level even highly specialised players, with very specific roles have the ability to perform all of the fundamental techniques listed in this section. They might not be world class in each, but they will be able to perform them all competently and without hesitation.
The individual offensive skills are a very wide and diverse within the sport of basketball. To help with breaking down this range of skills the following groupings have been categorised:
For each of the categories there are a number of very specific technical skills to be understood, learnt and then finally master. For example within the shooting category there is:
- Jump Shot
- Set Shot (Form Shooting)
Each of these fundamental skills have specific teaching points as well as specific basketball drills which can be utilised to help progress a player as rapidly as possible from the point of beginner to competent performer as soon as possible.
It is worth noting that because of the enormous amount of complexity in basketball, each of the player positions Center, Power Forward, Small Forward, Shooting Guard, and Point Guard have a basic assumption about what their roles and responsibilities are within a team environment will be. This does not mean however that a Center should not be able to dribble or that a Point Guard cannot play in the post. All players should have these fundamental skills. The more advanced skills might be limited to the player’s respective position though. There is of course an exception to every rule and many of the significant players within basketballs history have been players who have displayed unusual characteristics and traits.
As a coach taking the time to identify these unique skill sets a player might be able to utilise can place a player into a very special category of player who is able to play across positions or fill a wider range of roles. There are many examples of where games have been turned by a team because they are able to use their individual member’s strengths to their benefit and at the detriment of their opposition’s weaknesses.