Basketball Passing - Bounce Pass

Arthur Jackson: Hi, I am Arthur Jackson from One on One Basketball, and now we are going to talk about the bounce pass. We have just been talking about the chest pass. The bounce pass is something that's very valuable in basketball games, because nine times out of ten the defense plays with their hands in this area. So a lot of times in games we want to be able to get the ball to our teammates by using the bounce pass. It's a more effective pass, especially when there is a lot of defensive pressure. In terms of the ball position and hand position, it's very similar to the chest pass. We want to keep our hands on the sides of the ball. We want to keep our fingertips touching on the sides, with our thumbs behind the ball. We bring the ball back to our chest, again, our elbows are behind the ball for power, and not bringing it up. Lot of times with young kids, they will bring the ball up, and the motion is a downward motion, kind of a spike, we want to extend out with our thumbs and fingertips to our target. The biggest difference with the bounce pass is we want to have our chest forward, whereas before in the chest pass, we had it straight up and down. With the bounce pass, we want our chest forward, we want to rotate right at the hips or upper body moves forward, and again, our eyes are up on the target, my head is up, but now instead of aiming out, I am aiming down. We extend out and aim down. My fingertips are pointing to the target, and I push through with my thumb. What we want to do now is, as we step to our target, we want to extend out, push through the ball with our thumbs, and follow through to the target. One thing that's very important is where you aim. Again, I have a coach, Monty Gray, our Regional Director from North Carolina, here as my partner for passing. If Monty and I are standing, we want to aim a little bit more than halfway for the ball to hit the target; some people say two-thirds, a little bit more than halfway. The most important thing also is that we are pushing out, and not down. When the ball comes and is being received by a teammate, you never want the ball to go above their waist. If the ball goes above the waist, then you are giving the defense more of an opportunity to steal the ball. So again, Monty has the ball in his chest, he gets his shoulders forward, he is nice and low. Now he is going to take a little step, push through, and follow through to the target.

We talked about power and getting more on the ball. One way to do that again is getting nice and low, and as I get low, my shoulders automatically move forward a little bit. Now I am down, I am more compact, I take a nice step, and again, explode through, pushing through the ball. I don't want to throw down. Lot of young kids again make this motion with their elbows and they throw down, which causes the ball to go up.

We want to extend through the ball, follow through with our fingertips to the target, our thumbs are down, and I stay nice and low. The other thing that we talked about earlier, that we don't want to do is lift our back leg. So again, we are nice and low on balance, the lower. As I step, I keep my back foot on the ball of my foot. My heel comes off the ground a little bit, so that I can get a little bit more power and momentum into my pass. We are aiming about two-thirds of the way, just past halfway. Next, we are going to talk about the overhead pass in basketball.