3 DRILLS TO HELP BASKETBALL COACHES MAXIMAZE PRACTICE TIME

Coaches’ time with ath­letes is lim­it­ed, but these drills will help max­i­mize every moment.

Time — the resource every coach craves more of, and the one that sim­ply can­not be bought or man­u­fac­tured. Coaches may only get a few train­ing hours per week with their teams. It’s dif­fi­cult to devel­op ath­letes and cre­ate team chem­istry in such a small amount of time.

Coaches must find a way to max­i­mize every pre­cious minute they get and drill selec­tion can play a huge role. Anyone can roll out a ball and have play­ers run a three-man weave or the Mikan drill. While there’s val­ue in prac­tic­ing those skills, we have a few more sug­ges­tions to help squeeze val­ue out of every minute of practice.

5-Minute Full-Court Shooting

This drill serves three impor­tant pur­pos­es: it gets play­ers warm at the start of prac­tice, empha­sizes pass­ing over drib­bling and has a num­ber of play­ers tak­ing shots in a short amount of time. Nine play­ers are involved, leav­ing no one stand­ing around.

The middle player passes to the sprinting right wing, who passes back to the middle. The ball is then skipped to the left wing for a layup.

As the layup goes up, the other two players are fed passes for jump shots. The two passers and a third player, stationed under the basket, restart the dill going the other way.

Three play­ers start the drill by mov­ing the ball upcourt with a few pass­es. One of them makes a layup and the oth­er two are fed pass­es by play­ers sta­tioned along the base­line. They shoot jump shots and grab their own rebounds while a sixth play­er, sta­tioned under­neath the hoop, rebounds the layup and starts upcourt with the two passers, set­ting in motion the same look the drill start­ed with.

Your ath­letes are in near con­stant motion and will all take a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of shots, all com­ing off the moves. They’ll also devel­op chem­istry and learn the spots on the floor their team­mates like shoot­ing from best.

3-on-2, 2-on-1

This con­tin­u­ous drill incor­po­rates fast-break offense, pri­or­i­tizes good shots and prac­tices defens­es hav­ing an advan­tage. One play­er brings the ball up the court flanked by two wings. Opposing them are two defend­ers. Let the pos­ses­sion play out until the defense forces a turnover or grabs a rebound, or the offense scores.

The drill imme­di­ate­ly flips the roles as the two defend­ers move quick­ly the oth­er way, look­ing to score in tran­si­tion. The offen­sive play­er who shot the ball or com­mit­ted the turnover becomes the defend­er and has to stop the oth­er two on the fly.

Many of the game’s best head coach­es use this drill because it pri­or­i­tizes tak­ing care of the ball, mak­ing quick deci­sions and tran­si­tion defense. Players quick­ly rotate in and out, ensur­ing every­one gets involved.

Free Throw 1-and-1 Drill

Getting free points from the line can be the dif­fer­ence between win­ning and los­ing. Instead of just send­ing your play­ers to sep­a­rate bas­kets to get some shots up, raise the stakes a bit.

Assign three or four play­ers to a bas­ket and have them shoot a 1-and-1 sit­u­a­tion like in a game. If they miss the front end of the 1-and-1, they must run a lap and the next shoot­er is up. If they make the first and miss the sec­ond, they have to run.

This drill not only con­di­tions play­ers and teach­es them how to per­form when tired, but also adds in a game-like con­se­quence of missing.

Whichever drills you pick, make sure you record them. You’ll catch things you missed dur­ing live action to bring up to play­ers lat­er. You can select cer­tain clips, make your com­ments and draw­ings, then share them with play­ers to review dur­ing the week.

Source: Hudl