5-Out Offense Basketball

A 5-out offense is a half-court motion offense with no player stationed on the low block. Five players spread around the arc, with one up top, a pair on the wings and a pair in the corners. They move by a short set of shared rules, so nobody waits for a play call and any player can end up in any spot.

The 15-foot figure is the usual coaching guide. USA Basketball's four keys to an effective motion offense(opens in new tab) calls fifteen feet apart "a good guide for spacing" and treats spots as "simply guides or teaching tools." That matters on day one. Your players learn the spots so they can find them again when spacing collapses, and then they learn to leave them.

Open Post Versus 4-Out 1-In

In a 4-out 1-in, one player stays inside. That player posts, seals and screens while four teammates work the arc. 5-out pulls that player out too. You give up an automatic post touch and a body near the rim for rebounds. In return, the lane belongs to whoever cuts or drives into it next.

Many teams switch between the two inside one game. A strong post scorer is a reason to stay 4-out. A center who passes well and hits open threes is a reason to go five out.

Positionless on Purpose

The same USA Basketball article puts it plainly. "Any player can end up at any position on the floor, so they better be ready to play every facet of the game." If your roster still thinks in numbers 1 through 5, the breakdown of the five traditional positions shows what each role asks for. 5-out asks every player for a little of all of it. Your center dribbles. Your point guard cuts.

One thing this page leaves out on purpose is the spot-by-spot alignment for a ball screen out of this shape. The standard five-out spacing table in our pick and roll basketball breakdown already maps it, including where the screener rolls.

Coaches word 5-out differently, but the rules boil down to five. Teach them in this order. Each one leans on the one before it, and adding rule four before rule two holds up only creates more standing around.

1. Hold the five spots. Top, two wings, two corners, roughly 15 feet apart. If one defender could guard two of your players, someone's in the wrong place. USA Basketball's sample rule list adds a second test: "Don't stand for more than two seconds."
2. Pass, then basket cut. The passer cuts hard to the rim right after the ball leaves the hand, looking for a return pass. Every pass creates a cutter. That's the engine of the whole offense.
3. Fill the empty spot. The nearest teammate slides over to fill the spot the cutter left, and the next player fills behind them. The cutter exits to whichever perimeter spot is now open, usually a weak-side corner.
4. Dribbled at? Go backdoor. When the ball handler dribbles toward a teammate, that teammate cuts behind their defender to the basket. USA Basketball lists the same rule in its sample set: "If the ball is dribbled, you go backdoor."
5. Drive the gap, kick, relocate. A driver attacks the gap between two defenders. Teammates slide along the arc so the kick-out pass has an open target, and the passer relocates after the kick.

Who Fills Where After Each Pass

Rule three is the one players get wrong most, because the right fill depends on where the pass went. Here's one pattern that keeps all five spots covered, with the ball starting on the right side. Flip it for the left.

Screens away, handoffs and ball screens come later. Layer them on once the five rules run without a coach talking. Until then, extra actions just give players more ways to stop moving.

Walk your team through a single possession at half speed before anything else. The sequence below opens with your top player holding the ball and ends with either a shot or a fresh cycle.

1. 1

   Step 1: Entry

   The top player passes to a wing. Both corners hold, and the other wing is ready to slide up.

2. 2

   Step 2: Cut

   The passer basket cuts through the lane, showing a target hand for a return pass.

3. 3

   Step 3: Fill

   The far wing slides to the top, the far corner lifts to the wing, and the cutter exits to that empty corner.

4. 4

   Step 4: Read

   The wing with the ball hits the cutter, swings it back to the new top player, or drives the gap.

5. 5

   Step 5: Repeat

   Whoever passes next cuts next. The cycle continues until a defender helps and someone is open.

1. 1

   Step 1: Entry

   The top player passes to a wing. Both corners hold, and the other wing is ready to slide up.

2. 2

   Step 2: Cut

   The passer basket cuts through the lane, showing a target hand for a return pass.

3. 3

   Step 3: Fill

   The far wing slides to the top, the far corner lifts to the wing, and the cutter exits to that empty corner.

4. 4

   Step 4: Read

   The wing with the ball hits the cutter, swings it back to the new top player, or drives the gap.

5. 5

   Step 5: Repeat

   Whoever passes next cuts next. The cycle continues until a defender helps and someone is open.

Run it 5v0 until the fills happen without you pointing. Then count. A clean possession at walk-through speed has the ball touching three or four hands and every player changing spots at least once.

Where It Usually Breaks

• The half-speed cut. A jogging cutter is easy to deny and does not pull a help defender. Fix: the cutter must reach the rim before the receiver takes a dribble.
• Two players filling one spot. Both teammates react to the same cut. Fix: fills always travel toward the ball, one spot at a time, from the nearest player.
• The cutter who parks in the paint. Now the lane is clogged with your own player. Fix: no stopping under the basket. Cut through and out.
• Corners watching the ball. A corner player who is not ready to catch lets their defender help for free. Fix: hands up, feet set, every time the ball moves.

5-out is a good offense for some rosters and a poor one for others. The question is what your ten players can do today, and whether the offense will make them better at it.

Where It Fits

• No dominant post player. Without a true post-up scorer, a player parked on the block just brings a second defender into the lane.
• Several players who can dribble and pass. The offense asks for decisions from all five spots, so it rewards depth in ball skills.
• Development-first teams. Young players learn every spot instead of being labelled a center at eleven years old.

The youngest players need a smaller version first. USA Basketball's curriculum suggests introducing 5-on-5 principles "only in late phase" of its Fundamentals stage (roughly ages 6 to 9). For that age, a three-against-three game on half the floor, with no center, teaches the same habits with fewer bodies. That is the point of a 3v3 with no center: players have to create space themselves.

At the college level, Villanova under Jay Wright is a common reference point for positionless spacing. A Wooden Award retrospective(opens in new tab) describes Wright shifting toward a pace-and-space offense built on "five players who could shoot, pass, and switch defensively," with the 2016 national title as the proof.

The Honest Disadvantages

• Offensive rebounding gets harder. Nobody starts near the rim. Assign one or two crashers on every shot and rate offensive rebounding like any other skill.
• Defenders sag off non-shooters. If the corner player cannot make an open shot, their defender stands in the lane and your driving space disappears.
• It can turn random. Kobe Bryant dismissed the league's "penetrate and pitch" style as "accidental basketball," as Basketball Network recalls(opens in new tab). The same piece pushes back that today's offense is "structured, but it's also scriptless." The five rules are that structure. Rule five turns penetrate-and-pitch into a pattern: the drive goes into a gap, the kick goes to a filled spot, and the passer relocates, so all five know where the next pass is going.
• The decision load is high. Every player reads every possession. Teams that rate low on decision making stall, then hand the ball to one player.

Diagrams show where players go. That's all they show. They don't tell you whether your players can do it at speed with a defender leaning on them. It's also how an offense that looks clean in an October walk-through stalls by December.

A cleaner way to decide is to rate the skills each rule depends on. When you set up your basketball team in Striveon, your account starts with five skill sets of four skills each, plus twelve drills. Seven of those twenty skills carry the five rules.

• Spacing (Team Play). Holding the five spots and finding them again after every cut.
• Off-Ball Movement (Team Play). The cut itself and the fills behind it.
• Passing (Ball Handling). The pass that sets off every cut, on time and to the right hand.
• Receiving on the Move (Ball Handling). Catching in balance while filling a spot.
• Court Vision (Game Intelligence). Spotting the backdoor before the defender recovers.
• Decision Making (Game Intelligence). Drive, kick or finish, chosen in under a second.
• Catch & Shoot (Shooting). The open shot that punishes a defense for helping.

Two more Team Play skills join later. Screen Reading arrives with handoffs and ball screens, and Offensive Rebounding covers the hole an empty paint leaves after a miss.

The Five Drills That Build It

• Cut-and-Fill Movement. Four players in the half court, no defense. After every pass the passer cuts to the basket or screens, then fills an open spot, in three-minute rounds where nobody stands still longer than a second. Add defenders once the movement runs on its own.
• 3v3 Half-Court. Three against three on one basket with no center, in five-minute games where the losing team rotates out. To make it harder, no shot counts until the team has completed a pass and a cut.
• Read and React Game. The read is the whole drill. If the defender steps up to the ball, the attacker passes to the open teammate, and if not, finishes. It runs two against one or three against two, roles rotate every rep, and the window for the decision shrinks as players get quicker.
• Catch-and-Shoot Circuit. One shooter cuts to a spot, catches and shoots with the feet set, three shots from each of five spots around the arc while you count makes. Once the feet are set on every catch, add a defender who closes out on the shooter.
• Pick-and-Roll Workshop. The ball handler chooses drive, pull-up or kick-out, and the screener chooses roll or pop, both reading a 2v2 defense. Pairs run eight reps before swapping roles. Hedges and switches come in once the timing holds.

Line them up against the rules and you get the table below.

The Levels Behind the Check Column

The check column uses levels 3 to 5 from the Ten Levels table that sits above the readiness sheet below.

Rate skills one at a time. USA Basketball's Player Development Curriculum(opens in new tab) makes the same point about its own levels. In its words, "a player may be at the Advanced Level for one skill, but at the Foundational Level for another skill." A guard can be game-capable passing and still be at level 2 on off-ball movement. One overall number would hide that.

Fill this sheet in the week before you install. That's your baseline. The seven skill columns are the seven skills listed above, one for each skill the five rules need, so a low number always points at a rule and its drill. The headers are short. Off-Ball is Off-Ball Movement, Receiving is Receiving on the Move, Vision is Court Vision, Decisions is Decision Making and Shooting is Catch & Shoot. Write each player's level, then read the sheet in two directions.

• Down a column. Whether a column of 2s and 3s is a gap depends on the next rule. Level 3 carries rules one to three without defense, while rules four and five ask for levels 4 and 5. Where the column falls short, build that skill with its drill from the table above first.
• Across a row. A row of low numbers is one player who needs extra reps. Give them individual work and keep the team moving.

The Ten Levels

The ten levels below come from the same basketball setup as the drill names on this page. If your program already rates on its own scale, use that.

The last column is yours to fill with the next rule that player is ready for. Print it for the clipboard. Or type straight into the cells and download a PNG to send your assistant coaches before practice.

Good opponents will not let you cut and fill in peace. Expect a plan. Each common defensive answer takes something specific away, and each one leaves a counter open. The table pairs them with a drill that rehearses the counter.

The 1-3-1 needs one more note. Its bottom defender is the only one living near the baseline, so a filled corner is that player's longest trip, and also the spot where the zone springs its hardest trap. Our 1-3-1 zone defense guide recommends attacking the high post first, the spot a flashing 5-out cutter can occupy.

Once the rules hold in 5v5, add one action at a time. Each of these keeps the five-spot shape, so nothing about the spacing has to be retaught.

• Dribble handoff. The ball handler dribbles at a wing and hands the ball off instead of passing. It turns rule four into a two-way read: the wing either takes the handoff or goes backdoor.
• Screen away. After passing, the passer skips the cut and screens for a weak-side teammate. The receiver curls to the rim or pops back out.
• High ball screen. One player screens for the ball handler at the top while the other three hold the wing and corners. Pick-and-Roll Workshop builds the 2v2 reads before the action goes live.

Your 5-out playbook rarely needs more than those three. Keep it small. Most of the variety comes from who sets the screen and which side the cutter exits to.

The sample below spreads the five rules across a six-week block. It assumes two or three practices a week with about 20 minutes on offense each time. Stretch any week whose check column is not met.

• Week 1. Rules one to three in Cut-and-Fill Movement. Run it cut-only. The drill's screen option waits for the plays section.
• Week 2. Same drill with defenders. Re-rate Spacing and Off-Ball Movement against the baseline sheet.
• Week 3. Rule four in 3v3 Half-Court, where a dribble at a teammate triggers the backdoor cut.
• Week 4. Rule five in Read and React Game, then Catch-and-Shoot Circuit with the closeout added.
• Week 5. Live 5v5 with no plays called. Stop play only when a rule is broken.
• Week 6. Re-rate the whole sheet and compare it with the baseline from the week before install. Add one action from the plays section if the Decision Making column has moved.

The block also has to share the gym with everything else you teach. A weekly basketball practice plan shows where a 20-minute offense segment sits beside shooting, defense and conditioning.

In Striveon, these drills start out in your drill library, each linked to the skill set it builds, so filtering by Team Play in week two lists Pick-and-Roll Workshop, Cut-and-Fill Movement and 3v3 Half-Court together. For the baseline ratings, save them as evaluations. Each one keeps its date and who rated it. You can also rewrite any level's definition, and your organization's rating scale can be changed in its settings. In week six, open the player's Evaluations tab and step back to the older evaluation to compare. Practices built from those drills attach to the training event as a session, which is how structured training sessions work.

Is 5 out a good offense?

Yes, for a roster with several players who can pass, dribble and make an open shot, and no post scorer who needs touches. With one dominant big or corner players who can't shoot, defenders sag into the lane and the offense stalls.

What are the disadvantages of the 5 out motion offense?

Offensive rebounding gets thinner, defenders sag off non-shooters, and a poorly taught version drifts into one-on-one play. All five also read the defense on every trip, which overloads young teams.

What is Steve Kerr's offensive system like?

Kerr's Golden State offense is a motion system of constant cutting, screening and passing with few called plays. In remarks reported in January 2026 he described "five out spacing, corners filled, high ball screens," aimed at making one defender rotate, which he likened to a domino falling, after which you have the advantage.

What are three types of offense in basketball playbook?

Most playbooks group offense into transition, which attacks before the defense sets, motion offense run on shared rules (5-out is one), and set plays with fixed, called movements. Many coaches also keep separate sets for man-to-man and zone defenses.