This list was developed by Kevin Eastman and sent out by Steve Smiley.

As practices at all levels begin in earnest in October and November, it’s always good to make sure that each group involved brings to each practice what’s most needed for each practice to be the best it can be.  Let’s take a look at some things that both coaches and players need to bring each day:

THE COACH

• must bring great energy and enthusiasm (and not just the first week, but every day)
• must bring the preparation needed to make sure that what he’s working on is what’s most needed for that day
• must bring a keen eye to spot the mistakes that will keep the team from improving that day
• must organize the practice so that he gets maximum work in the allotted time
• must know his system so well that he actually has the answers before the players ask the questions

THE PLAYER

• must bring great energy and enthusiasm
• must walk onto the floor “clutter free” — all outside distractions must be cleared up or at least put to the side for that time period
• must always seek to “get from” practice not just “get through” practice
• must bring great focus, as the first month is always filled with teaching and learning
• must have a “get in great shape” mindset for both physical conditioning as well as mental focus (being able to stay focused even through fatigue)

This is a short list of what all players and coaches must bring to make sure they’re holding up their end of the “practice bargain” and the “improvement bargain.”

One final thought — both groups must jump on every opportunity to help someone else get better, learn faster, go longer.  That’s a sign of a great team!

Click here for  information on the complete basketball practice e-book
“130 Great Ideas to Get a Lot More Accomplished in Practice”

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Here is a list of some ideas that I have gathered from various sources to use to plan, execute, and evaluate our practices.  The list is not intended to be all inclusive for every situation, but just what has fit our programs over the years.  Feel free to add a comment below if you have ideas to add or something that you disagree with.  The list is not in order of importance.  It is helpful to me to have these types of  checklists in my planner to review both while planning and evaluating practice.

I have added in some commentary to make my checklist easier to follow.

Every Practice Checklist

1.  Every day our coaches need to be teaching our players and setting standards in a way that will make them better and tougher both as individuals and as players.

2. Our goal is to practice every day with the technique, intensity, toughness, and togetherness of a state champion.  We have that as a sign in our locker room.  I can’t say that we are even close to perfect, but I want to set our standards high.  And, I think that it makes it clear in our players’ minds that an average or ordinary effort is not what we are after and not something that we will accept.

3.  Spend 30 minutes in individual skill development every day.

4.  No purposeless possessions, drills, discussions.  If we expect that in a game, we cannot accept less in practice.

5.  Establish and make clear to the players a standard, score, or accountability measure for each practice activity.  Examples:  If it is a pre-practice meeting, the players must look the speaker in the eye, if it is a warmup layup drill, establish how many makes in a row they need to complete the drill.   Make as many drills that we can make competitive against a team record, personal record, a team standard, or another player or players.

6.  Put our players in as many situations as we can that are harder in practice than in games.  Examples two ball dribbling, 2 on 1, 4 defenders guarding 5 offense, run our offense with no dribble, second team gets double the points for each made shot are just a few ways to do that.    Our starters and others in our rotation will be playing against much better competition on game night than in practice.  Players and coaches find ways to overcome this discrepancy.  Play at a disadvantage each night.

7.  We videotape the practice and have managers keep stats that  are significant such as turnovers per quarter or defensive points per possession.

8.  Provide repetition with variety.  We want to practice our system and skills, but vary up the drills so that things don’t become stale.

9.  Evaluate–Is everything we do contributing to our team goals for this year?  Our goals are: daily improvement, being the toughest team on our schedule, making the year the most rewarding of each player’s basketball experience.

10.   The emphasis should be on what’s important. 20% of the activities bring about 80% of the results.  Take into account what the individuals and the team needs to improve on and what we need to keep sharp.

11. We emphasize communication in everything.

12.  I do not want a practice with purpose, not one that moves so fast that we are are not making any improvement.  I want one where teaching and learning is constantly taking place.  The process must be one where the players learn and then can react quickly and properly in games.

13. Players slap five at the end of practice and shake coaches hands before leaving the floor.

14. Huddle up to start and end practice

15. 12. Play and teach basketball, don’t just run drills

16. Play until the whistle in everything

17. Conditioning (psychological and physical)

18. Experiment with new ideas, drills, sets, etc.. a couple of times each week.

19. It’s about Skill Schemes, Conditioning/Toughness (Mental and Physical), Our Program’s Way.

20. End on a positive note.

Click here for  information on the complete basketball practice e-book
“130 Great Ideas to Get a Lot More Accomplished in Practice”

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of resources for coaching basketball including basketball practice, basketball plays, basketball drills, basketball quotes, basketball workouts, basketball poems, and more!

These notes were taken by Jim Ponchak, and sent to me by Steve Smiley

Clinic To End All Clinics III Manhattan College 9/17/10
Jim Calhoun with Kevin Ollie

Make Practice Time Your Winning Time
Jim Calhoun

• “Most teams take a break in practice for shooting.” – Bob Knight
• Winning questions – know the answer beforehand
◦ ex. “Why are you shooting a low percentage in games?” “You’re a terrific shooter taking bad shots.”
• The hardest Coach Knight went in practice was shooting drills.
• You can’t just shoot, you must take game shots at game speed.
• Ben Gordon took 500 game speed 3 point shots every night and charted them.
• Coaches should have packages of drills
◦ ex. UConn’s Defensive Package includes shell drill (they do it everyday), zig-zag, 1-on-1, etc.
• Practice with a purpose
◦ If someone from outside your program comes to your practice, they should be able to learn
how you want to play by watching that practice.
◦ If they cannot tell that, you are wasting your time in practice.

4 Things the Coach Can Control

1. Every team can rebound if you put enough emphasis on it

• Drills
• Emphasized throughout practice
• Can’t give a lot of 2nd shots
• Real judge of your defense is FG% defense
• % of offensive rebounds you get – 40% + is good
• % of defensive rebounds you get – 65% + is good

2. Defense

• Contest all shots
• Pressure the ball with help behind you
• Pressure everything from the NBA 3 point line in
• Make them shoot, pass, or dribble; don’t let them stand with the ball
• Force offense where you want them and then contain them there
• Need to make stops when the game is on the line
• Defend through all of practice, make the defense challenge the offense
• Have a thought of the day (ex. Nothing great has ever been accomplished without great enthusiasm.)
• Have an emphasis of the day (ex. Rebounding)

3. Run

• more possessions
• allows for more mistakes
• allows you to play more kids
• run for conditioning and in drills
• get #s to create good shots and create rebounding advantages

4. Play Hard

• steals
• charges
• make everything competitive in practice
• everything is a slice of the game
• 60% of practice is full-court (helps teach)
• 20 minutes of practice is assistant coaches doing warm-ups
• 4 minutes of shooting each day
◦ Players take in-between shots
◦ 1 minute at each spot
◦ They should make 110 swishes or 140 bank shots

• Technique work
◦ how to feed the post

• 15 – 20 minutes fast break
◦ 3-on-2
◦ 2-on-1

• Practice must be
1. Who you are
2. What you are
3. What you want to be

Kevin Ollie

• Play hard
• No substitute for hard work
• Be prepared to play
• Coaches must have enthusiasm
• Coaches must have love of game, not passion for it
• Passion is temporary, love is unconditional
• One of the greatest gifts a coach can give a player is believing in him
• All drills are done at full speed
• Can’t go half speed in a game
• “The game starts the day before.” – Larry Brown
• If you’re prepared, all things fall into place.

UConn Men’s Shooting Drill

Do not accept incorrect technique, correct it in the drill so you do not create a bad habit.

Shooting Drill #1

	• Shooter sets up defender by taking him away and then curls to elbow for shot • After shot, back pedal to 45 degree angle • Rebounder gets the rebound and passes the ball back to the coach • Shooter sets up defender by taking himaway and then curls to elbow for shot• After shot, back pedal to 45 degree angle• Rebounder gets the rebound and passes theball back to the coach
	Coach passes the ball to the shooter and then closes out on the shooter Shooter rips through low and drives for the layup Shooter should cut the shoulder off of the defender as he drives by him
Shooting Drill #2	Coach dribbles up the floor Shooter sprints to the wing Coach passes to the shooter Shooter catches the pass as an airborne receiver and shoots
	Shooter runs under the basket and out to the hash mark Coach gets the rebound and passes to the shooter at the hash mark Shooter drives to the elbow and makes a right to left crossover move Shooter gets the defense to lean on the crossover and drives by him for the layup

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These drills are from the July Arizona Newsletter.

There is a link at the end of this post if you are interested in downloading the complete newsletter.

I hope this gives you a thought or two to add a drill for the upcoming season, or to find a way to improve your versions of these drills.

Practice Drills of the Month

Wildcat Money Ball — 2 players 1 ball

• Goals are 11 in 1 minute, 22 in 2 minutes, 33 in 3 minutes
• Start with a drive and kick worth 3 pts
• Same shooter takes 4 shots in a row
• Shots 2-4 are worth 1 pt each
• Last shot is from 15 ft.
• Switch shooters and repeat

Close-out 3 man weave

• 2 passes with the 3 pass a skip across with
• a close-out coming from middle defender
• Man who skipped it becomes help side defender
• Live 1 on 2 after the skip pass
• Drill going live at both ends

Olympic Shooting — 4 min (5 balls)

• 3 players on court with two passers on each baseline
• Start with pass to wing, back to middle,opposite wing for lay-up
• No dribble before the lay-up
• Two players left shoot jump shots, receiving passes from baseline
• Wing Shooters become baseline passers and lay-up man continues in drill with the original baseline passers
• Drill counts 2’s and 3’s

Green Bay Transition

• 3 on 3 full court with two outlets out of bounds on each side
• Whoever gets the defensive rebound outlets and runs in transition with the two outlet guys
• Continuous drill with two teams
• Red vs. Blue (keep score)

3 on 2

• Wings run wide, point runs down middle (w/ball)
• Wings cut toward basket at hash mark
• Point passes to a cutter (best shooter)
• Shooter has 3 options
  Shoot off of 1,2 step
  Shot fake, 1 dribble pull up
  Pass back to cutting guard through the middle
• Wing who does not receive 1 pass boxes out top defender right away (slice)
• No wing to wing passes!

Here is a link to download the entire July Newsletter:  Arizona Newsletter

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RESTRICTIONS FOR DEVELOPING YOUR OFFENSE

This article is from Bob Starkey.  Bob is the associate head coach for the LSU women’s program.  You can check out his blog at http://hoopthoughts.blogspot.com

We really like the use of restrictions to both emphasize and correct in terms of our offensive play.  Your team is not getting the ball inside enough: “No perimeter shots until we have two low post touches.”

Your team doesn’t look to set re-screens after setting back screens: “We can only score off of a back screen with a re-screen.”

Your team is not reversing the basketball: “Two ball reversals before a jump shot.”

Again, what you do with your restrictions is limited only to your imagination. We usually apply a restriction daily to our offense for at least one drill and it is usually derived either from something that we didn’t do well in our last practice or game, or it is something that we want to emphasize for our next opponent.

A great example of this is playing 3/3, 4/4, or 5/5 against a switching defense while using the restriction that you can only pass the ball to a screener. This is a great way to “adjust your player’s vision” against this type of defense. How many times do you see a team come out and pass the ball in the waiting hands of a defender who switched a screen and didn’t have to move?

We teach our team that against the switch, the screener has a better chance of being open than the cutter. Now it is easy to tell your team this – it is quite another to prepare them for it. If you are use to passing to cutters it is not necessarily all that natural to switch and pass to the screener. That’s why this drill is so effective and important.

Not only do you put the emphasis of the passer to look for the screener but also you now have put pressure on the screener to make a good second cut toget open for a pass.

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These are some notes I wanted to share from an article written by Coach Don Hawkins of Nashville (IL) High School.  The article was sent to me by Coach Ken Sartini.  The red text are my additions to what Coach Hawkins presents.

Basketball is situation specific and how a teams handles those situations often makes the difference between winning and losing.

Coach Hawkins uses a “special teams” concept much like a football team and looks to find the players who are best for each situation.

He finds that it has been a confidence builder for his substitutes because he feel that he can find situations in which most of them can be successful.

He allocates time in each weekly practice for offense, defense, and special teams.

His Specialty areas are:

1)  Sideline inbounds (“pecking order” of players to inbound the ball, plays for end of game or period, defending sideline inbounds)

2)  Underneath inbounds (“pecking order” of players to inbound the ball, plays for end of game or period, defending sideline inbounds)

3)  Jump Ball (hold, rotate, defend) This is an area that makes a difference to start an overtime

4)  Delay (purpose, pattern, defense)

5)  1-10 seconds left in game (full court, back court, half court, front court, baseline–all of these offensively and defensively

6)  End of period both offense and defense

7)  Free Throws (ahead and behind by one, two, and three)

8)  Time Situations (60 seconds, 90 seconds, two minutes)

Early in the season he covers when and what they will do in each situation and what the roles needed for success in each one are.

Weekly practice breakdown:

Monday:  (10 minutes of practice time) End of game situations ahead and behind by one, two, and three points.   Involves as many players as he can.  After two or three weeks will settle on the best players in each situation and then work those players as units.

Tuesday (10 minutes of practice time) Two minute situations.  ahead and behind by different point spreads.  If the first unit that starts out ahead and loses, they must repeat the process.  I would add to this to  make sure to define the number of fouls for both teams and individuals, possession arrow, and time outs remaining.  This is a good time to practice how to foul by taking the ball away and possibly being called for a foul to stop the clock as opposed to getting called for an intentional foul.  You can also practice fouls to give in this situation.

Wednesday (10 minutes) End of period.  Delay game to get the last shot of the period and transition into the last shot.  You can execute this at the end of a game without having to call timeout if it is practiced. Again, work both sides of the ball. I like to start our play at 12 seconds and shoot at 5 seconds in the first three quarters. I like to shoot with 3 seconds at the end of the game and have found that if you expect that to happen and practice it, players will execute it in a game.

Thursday (15 minutes of practice time) Specialty review.  Reviews all of his specialty items and emphasizes the ones he feels will be significant in their next game.

Coach Hawkins usually uses 8 to 10 players each game and looks for where each one can be successful.  The special teams approach encourages player participation.   Having practiced the areas that come up in a game he can tell his players that “we have a plan and have been here before,” which is a confidence builder.

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During Tuesday evening’s HoopClinics webinar with Coach Bob Hurley, he gave us a lot of great information.  One of the things he said that resonated with me was the idea of validating drills.  He said that he picked it up from Coach Vance Walberg of Dribble Drive Motion fame.

Consider telling your team at the beginning of some of the competitive drills that you run that at the end they will need to “validate” it.  For example, if you split your team into two groups and do a competitive shooting drill, the team that wins the drill must then make a free throw (coach chooses the player to shoot so that all players have a chance to shoot the free throw eventually) to validate their win.

If the player makes the free throw, the team that lost the drill must run.  If the player misses the free throw, then the team that won the drill must run.

It is a good way to shoot some pressure free throws and to teach that for most of the games you win, you have to close them by making free throws.

We have posted the audio recording of the webinar for those of you who couldn’t make it or would like to hear it again.

Bob Hurley Webinar

Growing up and playing high school basketball in the state of Indiana, then becoming a high school basketball coach, I know how all of the young players grow up dreaming of being Miss or Mr. Basketball.  Only one player of each gender is awarded that title each year that goes along with recognition by the state coaches and media that he or she is the best player in our state.  No one ever achieves that honor without years and years of hard work leading up to that senior season.  It takes several hours of working to perfect your basketball skills through repetitions of basketball drills.

April McDivitt Foster lived that dream during the 1998-99 season as she was selected “Miss Basketball”  .She then headed to Knoxville to play for the Lady Vols before finishing her playing career in the WNBA.  All of the lessons she learned and hours and hours of practice, both practicing basketball skills individually, and practicing basketball drills with her teams, have made her a great resource for ideas to improve the individual aspects of any player’s game, of any gender, and any level of competition.

HoopClinics has scheduled an interactive webinar with her for Monday January 26 at 9:00 EST.  For more information on the event, check out this link:

Basketball Skills and Basketball Drills

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Coach Ed Schilling is one of the best teachers of individual skills in the game of basketball. That is why he has NBA and Division I players come to him to have him help them to improve their individual skills and individual scoring moves. But, Coach Schilling also has extensive experience working with players all the way down to grade school through 25 years of working at basketball camps and as the Executive Director of Champions Academy in Indianapolis, Indiana.

That is what makes his new DVD, “Mandatory Moves” one of the top training DVDs on the market for coaches and players of all age and ability levels.

If you are watching the DVD as a player, it is just like you are in the gym with Coach Schilling. If you are a coach, you will pick up several teaching points and some terminology that can help you to teach your players to make plays in a much more effective way:

To see a small segment of the DVD, click here: Ed Schilling Short Corner Moves

For more information about the DVD, click here: Ed Schilling Mandatory Moves

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I recently watched on of the best individual basketball skills training DVDs that I have ever seen. The DVD is entitled “Mandatory Moves” and it features Coach Ed Schilling working with three younger high school players on individual scoring moves from four separate areas on the floor. The DVD has a lot of great information that players (regardless of their age or level of competition) can use to improve their games immediately.

For coaches, Coach Schilling breaks down the “Mandatory Moves,” how to teach them, when to apply them, and it shows Coach Schilling re-teaching and emphasizing the specific teaching points that allow these players to show some improvement during the drills.

I believe that better players and not just better plays is what leads to offensive success in basketball. If you are in agreement with that, then you should take a look at Coach Schilling’s DVD “Mandatory Moves.”

Here is a link to a segment from the Video:  Ed Schilling Mandatory Moves

Here is a link to more information about the DVD:  Ed Schilling Mandatory Moves

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of resources for basketball coaching including basketball practice, basketball plays, basketball drills, basketball quotes, basketball workouts, basketball poems, and more!