Basketball's "Where's Waldo?"

Find the Mismatch, Exploit the Mismatch

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MISMATCH! Coach Mark Cascio of SAVI Coaching (and a regular guest on A Quick Timeout podcast) likes to use the phrase “Where’s Waldo?” when identifying the mismatch on the floor. I introduced the phrase to my team this year, and it became almost a game for the bench players as they looked to find the advantage. It was most often either a size or quickness advantage after a switch or an over-aggressive defender that we were trying to exploit.

This week, I’m sharing a few of my favorite play calls to use once we found Waldo.

4-Low Burn

A couple, simple baseline out of bounds sets were some of our most effective ways for scoring against a mismatch. In this first BLOB, we’d find an aggressive defender and then start the set piece off with something that looked similar to of our other BLOBs.

In a lot of 4-Low BLOBs, the 5 cuts up the lane and either receives the pass or goes and screens for the strongside corner. In this play, the 5 starts to move first, then the 4 begins his cut up the lane. All it takes is one or two steps to get x4’s momentum moving away from the basket. A quick change of direction by 4 and a lead pass from 1 result in an open look inside.