Bob Knight talks to basketball coaches like yourself at the nike mens basketball clinic every fall and spring. Most coaches at the nike mens basketball clinic ask one question.

What is the question most asked at the nike mens basketball clinic? How did Bobby Knight come up with Motion Offense?

Bob Knight is one of the game’s biggest influences on motion offense. It’s not that he didn’t help come up with the motion offense, but that he didn’t run it at all until he left West Point. Here is a basketball history lesson for you. Bob Knight had his Cadets run reverse action.

Yes, they ran Pete Newell’s reverse action at West Point! Did you know that basketball fact?

Reverse Action was an offense that had the ball reversing from one side of the floor and screening along the way. It was a West Coast offense, because of Pete Newell. He used it exclusively throughout his storied coaching career.

Coach Knight will tell you that the offense had a focus on the forward and center, but he put in more cutting with the offense, which helped transition it to the Motion Offense that you see today.

Bob Knight came up with motion offense after he spent years watching Princeton run offense when he was at West Point.

What exactly is the Princeton Offense?

The Princeton offense was where the guard would make the first pass. If the guard hit the forward with the ball, a certain action happened. If the guard hit the other guard with the ball, a different action happened, etc.

After viewing the Princeton offense, Bob Knight went to the 1972 Olympic Trials to learn more about the passing game. Coach Knight would talk with Pete Newell in his living room as they talked hoops and came up with the motion offense.

During the summer of 1972, he put in the 3-2 offense and said here is what can be done out of this set. He came up with 72 different things that he diagrammed out and spread them all over Coach Newell’s living room.

When he was finished with the diagrams, Coach Knight came up with his set of rules for Motion Offense:

Spacing – The width of the floor has to be covered. Everyone was 15 to 18 feet away from the other guy.

Coach Knight developed a book on passing, screening, and cutting.

He named the offense because it was constant motion.

Coach Knight thought that after you passed the ball that you could do one of seven options. You could go behind and get back. You could go screen, and make an inside cut. You could cut to the basket. You could screen away. You could start away and replace yourself. You could just stand there.

Coach Knight’s idea of motion offense takes away some options, including standing around, going and getting the basketball back or screening for the man with the basketball.

Coach Knight made several different cuts over the years and put his players in different positions all over the court.

Whenever they practiced, Knight would tell his players to go to a specific spot on the floor and then give them options what to do depending on the defense.

The offense was reactive. It all depended on what the defense did.

Coach Knight didn’t like set plays at all.

He changed the rules to adjust to the three point line also.

Coach Knight didn’t like the three-point field goal, but that line helped his offense out with spacing.

The three-point line helped space out his players after they cut.

Coach Knight’s offense had a two-count. Post player could post up for two seconds and if they didn’t get the basketball then they went to screen. Players with the basketball got it for two seconds to see what would happen. Screens were only held for two seconds also.

When coaches started switching the screens, Coach Knight put in the slip screen. You would set the screen and then slip to the basket.

They never had a playbook for the players either. The players were expected to write it down daily. They focused on something new all the time.

The motion offense was made for man defense, but it was effective against zone defense too.

They used the dribble more against zone defense than man defense.

Most of the concepts could be used against both defenses.

Reading the defense was the key to the motion offense. Coach Knight’s style determined what type of recruit that he would sign.

He felt that if the players knew the game, they would play better.

That is a story that I learned from attending the nike mens basketball clinic and listening to Coach Bob Knight. Coach Knight is still the brightest basketball mind that I have ever listened to today in all my years of coaching.

Click on the pdf link to download the nike mens basketball clinic notes on Bob Knight’s Motion Offense:
Nike mens basketball clinic notes on Bob Knight’s Motion Offense