The Benefits of 1 Hand Passing & Ways To Drill It
Elite Passing ft. Sabrina Ionescu | Stationary Passing Series
One skill that I definitely wish I had worked on more as a player was passing, especially with my weak hand. Most players rely on and can usually get away with making the majority of passes with their dominant hand regardless of the angle or side of the floor they are on. Accuracy and touch are two the most important attributes when it comes to becoming a next level passer. A great passer can thread the needle and fire a bullet right into the hands of a cutter within a split second window, drop a high and soft lob pass over the defense to a post player on the block and easily throw that touchdown pass down the floor in transition.
There’s no doubt that the ability to become a great passer starts with IQ and decision making but what really stands out about elite passers like Sabrina Ionescu is how efficient they are passing the ball with one hand. The 1 handed pass has been known to drive coaches crazy and is one of those traditional “no no’s” when you first learn the game growing up. I’ll probably upset a lot of people by saying that improving a players arm strength and single hand passing ability would be one of the first things I start working on at a young age. What player do you know that excels at one hand passes, can’t pass with two? No one that I know! But there are so many players who lack the coordination or just pure strength to be able to zip the ball across the court even with two hands…
Passing With 1 Hand Allows You To…
Create better angles to pass around defenders
Create more power behind the pass
Play on the move without killing momentum
Deliver the ball faster instead of having to gather
Both of these clips above show Ionescu executing a baseline drive and kick out to the corner shooter. Notice how in both clips she used her outside hand to deliver the pass along the baseline. Instead of having to gather the ball with two hands, Sabrina is able to make the pass right off of her live dribble, creating a nice angle around the defenders outstretched arm. Using a 1 hand pass in this situation allows her to make the pass on the move before the defense can recover and contest the shot.
Staying on the concept of passing on the move, Sabrina threads the needle while on the run. The 1 hand pass in this clip allows her to exploit a small window at just the right time as her teammate cuts behind the defense. This pass would’ve been nearly impossible to make with two hands as her momentum was going in the opposite direction of the pass. Using 1 hand she is able to throw across her body and thread the needle perfectly.
Another baseline pass here, Ionescu shows off the strength of her left hand as she fires shovel pass to a cutting big for an easy two. Watch how quickly she is able to wind up and throw this pass around two defenders. A left handed pass with that kind of power on it is something that she has repped over and over again to build up that strength. In the next segment we will take a look at some of the drills I’ve found, studied and used to work on passing with players!
Again, everything that you’ll see has been taken from someone else and adjusted to fit the needs of our players/team.
Warmup Passing Series
Instead of just doing a normal stationary ball handling warmup, we added a passing element after each dribble combo that allows for players to get more reps in a short amount of time. Passing with 1 hand is a skill that has to be consistently worked on in order to develop that strength, so starting each workout with 50 - 100 passes per hand is the stepping stone to building that muscle memory. We can make the warmup progressively harder by moving around from spot to spot between each rep and or moving further away so the player now has to identify the new target and put more power behind each pass to reach that new distance. In this clip we are focusing on the one hand pass with her weak hand, but you can mix it up in terms of the type of pass you want thrown and the dribble combo they are performing.
Adding Decision Making
The next step after completing those scripted reps is to add some sort of decision making. For some players we will just jump right to this drill depending on the day and skip the warmup because I believe that the decision making aspect is much more important.
Adding a 3rd person and another ball, the basis of the drill is for the player to perform some sort of dribble combination and then make the pass to the coach who does not have the second ball. The decision making happens when the coaches start to pass that 2nd ball back and forth as the player is executing the dribble move because it is now randomized in terms of the player not knowing ahead of time where they are going to throw the pass. It’s nothing life changing but it’s an easy way to stimulate thinking early in a workout. You can tailor it however you’d like - mixing up dribble moves, types of passes and the distances of where each coach stands.
By the way, it definitely takes some communication on the part of the coaches as well, we have had our fair share of making the pass back too one another to late and then one of us gets hit with two basketball haha… but overall, it’s been a fun drill that our players have enjoyed!
Resources of The Week
What I Read
How The WNBA Experienced The 3pt Line Revolution - Seth Partnow The Athletic
What I Watched
Fran Fraschilla International Pick & Roll Clinic
What I Listened To