Basketball Moves
How to Throw a Chest Pass
Learn how to throw a chest pass from former top-ranking college basketball player Jason Curry in this Howcast video.
One of the most basic passes in basketball is called the chest pass. Right now we'll demonstrate how to make the pass. Making a chest pass is very important because it's a very fundamental pass. But you have to understand how to make it correctly as far as accuracy and being able to make the pass to your teammate so they can catch the ball and be able to dribble, pass, and shoot themselves.
So what Sammy and I will do right now is we'll go on opposite sides of the lane. The first thing we want to do is make sure that we step towards the player that we're throwing the basketball to. Once I step I'm going to make a sharp accurate pass to Sammy and you notice that as I pass, at the end of my pass I'm following through and my palms are pointing outward.
What we don't want to do is this. Sometimes people make chest passes with one hand. That's not necessarily a chest pass, that's a one hand pass. The other thing sometimes people do is they'll hold their hands on top of the basketball and they'll do this. That's not a chest pass, either. That's more of a push pass.
What we want to do is we want to take the ball here from my chest level, hence the name chest pass, I step into it, I pass, and I follow through. The last important thing that we always want to do when we make sure that we pass the basketball is make sure that we have the spirals of the basketball going in this direction. This is the way we want the ball to go because now if Sammy is a shooter I want to be able to give him a good pass with the spirals where he can catch it and now he's ready to shoot it as opposed to passing the ball with this type of rotation on it and now I'm throwing off his shot or he has to change the ball for the spirals.
Now we'll demonstrate going the opposite direction, we'll make five short passes to one another. The last thing that I want to mention is also accuracy. As we make this pass we don't want our teammate to catch the ball to the left, to the right, down low, above their head. It's very important that we make a sharp straight B-line type pass where it's catching them just like this.
So now we'll make five straight passes. That's one. Very good. Notice Sammy does a good job. Excellent rotation on his ball. He'll step in. Notice we step in for power. He'll pass to me.
We don't want to do this. We always want to step in. Excellent job.
That's how you make a chest pass.
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