Create Plays With Play Lab, the Underdog Hoops Play Designer

Every coach has a camera roll full of whiteboard photos. Arrows on top of arrows, a number you can’t read, and a play that made perfect sense at 10 p.m. but nobody on the team can follow the next day. I got tired of it, so I built my own tool. It’s called Play Lab, and it’s how I draw, teach and share plays now.

Draw it the way you’d teach it

Put your five on a real court, tap a player and pick the action: cut, dribble, pass, screen, hand off or shot. Then tap where it goes. Cuts curl the way players actually move, you can run a down screen and the cut off it at the same time, and you can mark a line as an option to show a read. Break a set into frames and you can teach it one piece at a time, just like you would walking through it in practice.

A defense that reacts

This is the part I’m proudest of. When your play runs, the defense moves too. Help side, deny one pass away and closeouts happen on their own. You can pick from 21 defenses and presses, including man, Pack Line, the 2-3, 3-2 and 1-3-1 zones, matchups, box-and-1, triangle-and-2 and full court presses. Your players stop memorizing spots and start seeing why the play works. If you’re building out your sets, my posts on offensive concepts every team should master and zone offense strategies for every level pair well with this.

Describe it and the AI draws it

Type a play the way you’d call it in a timeout, something like “4 down screens for 2, 2 cuts to the corner, 5 slips to the rim,” and Play Lab puts the players on the floor and animates it. You can even upload a short clip of game film and it builds the play from what it sees. Great for scouting, and great for stealing a set you saw on film last week.

Your playbook goes everywhere

Sign in with email or Google and your plays follow you from the laptop at home to your phone on the bench. Sort them into playbooks, print PDF playbooks, make videos for film sessions, or turn a play into a Reel, TikTok or YouTube video. If you’ve never put a real playbook together, start with creating and maintaining a playbook.

Free, Pro or University

• Free: save 3 plays, draw and animate every action, help side defense and image downloads.
• Play Lab Pro, $9 a month or $67 a year: unlimited plays, Create with AI and from video, video, PDF and social exports, and no logo on your exports. Starts with a 14-day free trial.
• Underdog Hoops University: Play Lab Pro is included, plus my practice plans, drills, playbooks and clinic notes. Also starts with a 14-day free trial.

Draw your first play tonight. Open Play Lab and see what your offense looks like when it actually moves. Next possession.