Stand in the corner is not a spacing instruction, it is an abdication

Spacing gets coached as five marked spots on a floor when it is really a set of moving relationships between two players at a time.

Tape on the practice floor. Five dots, one per player, and a coach reminding everybody to hold their spot. It is a clean way to install an offense in three days and it produces players who understand exactly nothing about why they are standing where they are standing.

Spacing is relational. What matters is not that a shooter is in the corner, it is the distance between him and the next man such that one defender cannot reasonably guard both. That distance is not fixed. It depends on who is guarding him, on whether the ball is on his side, on how fast the low man rotates, on whether the driver is left handed. Against a defender who will not leave the corner, standing there is fine. Against one who is cheating in every possession, the same spot is a wasted player and the answer is to lift, to shift five feet up the line, to make the help distance uncomfortable again.

The dot on the floor cannot tell him any of that. A coach shouting corner cannot either.

What I would teach instead is a rule about relationships and then a lot of live repetitions where the rule gets tested. Two players, one driver, one spacer, one defender who is allowed to cheat as much as he likes. The spacer's only job is to punish whatever the defender chooses. Do that a hundred times and the player stops thinking in spots and starts thinking about the man guarding him, which is the actual skill.

The obvious defence of spots is that a young team needs a floor map or the whole thing turns into a playground, and I accept that entirely for the first month of a season. Spots are training wheels. Almost nobody takes them off.

You can see which version a player learned when the shot clock hits six and the play is dead. The spot player is standing in the corner watching. The relational player has already lifted to the wing, because he can see his defender's head has turned, and now there is a pass to make.

Same offense. One of them is playing it.