5-Out play
5-Out: Pass and Basket Cut, Fill
- Court
- Half court
- Length
- 8 steps
About this play
The first rule of the offense and the one everything else sits on: pass, cut hard to the rim, and fill the open spot above you. Why it works: five players fifteen to eighteen feet apart on the NBA line leave the paint empty, so every cut has room and every defender who watches the ball loses his man. The cutter face cuts in front of his defender if he can and back cuts if the defender jumps to the ball; either way he finishes the cut to the rim and then fills the farthest open spot. Everyone else fills toward the ball: a top-to-wing pass sends the passer through to the opposite corner, the far wing fills the top, and the far corner fills the wing. Counter shown: the scouted defense denies the fill at the top to stop the reversal, so the filler plants and back cuts for the layup, because a denied fill is a back cut by rule. Common mistakes: standing after the pass, jogging the cut, and filling before the cutter reaches the rim. I wrote the trade-offs up in the youth five-out post on the site, and PGC's cut-after-you-pass video is the cleanest teaching of the rule I've found; the base rules themselves come from Basketball For Coaches' 5-out guide and Coach's Clipboard's open post offense.
