Basketball Drills

      Basketball is a game of quick stops, fast direction changes, jumps, spins, shots, quick hands and quick feet.  Basketball drills are a necessity to learning and playing the game well.

     As a coach you want your players to learn the fundamentals first and foremost. After the players learn the fundamentals or least have a good grasp on them you need to teach them some basketball plays.  As players move up in grades and age, fundamentals is something that they should always be fine tuning.  Normally when a player gets into seventh grade and up, coaches don't take as much time to work with fundamentals.  By that age they are assuming the player knows their fundamentals and now can work on strategies and techniques. So the early the player learns and fine tunes the fundamentals, the better off they will be. 

  What fundamentals do you start with?

• Footwork
• Ball Handling
• Dribbling
• Passing
• Shooting

• Let’s take a brief look at each of these.

1. Footwork: "When the legs go, the heart and head follow quickly behind." Footwork has a big part on the court.  The player needs to not only learn to move their feet quickly in all directions, but balance, agility and strength. For some sample drills Click here.
2. Ball handling:  One of the most overlooked fundamentals are ball handling. Double dribble, carrying the ball are due to poor ball handling skills. Teaching your player the importance and focus on ball handling is vital to their game.  Start basic and then build on these drills.  Click Here.
3. Dribbling: Dribbling should be used as an emergency measure. Teach the players the concept of proper dribbling (finger tips, head up, keeping the ball low). Teach them how to dribble using each hand.  Show them how to drive towards the basket, create a better passing position and how to dribble out of trouble. But teach them first to look before they dribble and only use after they have used all their other resources.  Click here.
4. Passing: To be a great passer, players need to see the whole court and know what passes to use in what situations.Players need to understand the different passes; chest, bounce, overhead, one handed pass.  They also need to learn about what a passing lane is and how far is appropriate for passing distance. Click here. 
5. Shooting:  The most important part of shooting is learning the correct form from the beginning.And only then start improving on the correct form as the player builds confidence in their own shooting. Teach players the proper balance and stance from shooting.  Where their feet go, where their hands go, where their shoulders should be facing, where their eyes should be.  And then its practice, practice the jump shots, foul shots, lay ups. Click here.

  The important thing to remember is Fundamentals first, then the game.

                                                                          To learn more about basketball drills...

> Realizing coaches and players don't have enough practice time to fine tune the fundamentals, we have developed and used successfully a program that allows the players to work on their skills at home on a daily basis.  The program has had wonderful results.  It's called Courtside Kids Drill-Skills.  Check out the link below.