Basketball Drills

Basketball Drills: Rip Hamilton Shooting

By Brian Williams on September 1, 2015

This toughness shooting drill called “The Rip Hamilton Drill” and is among the resources for both coaches and player available from basketballhq. They have several more videos as well as basketball coaching resource articles.

Please make sure your sound is on to see the video.

Click the play arrow to see the drill. The drill is a YouTube video, so you will need to be able to access YouTube to see the drill.

The Coach in the video is Russ Willemsen from the South Alabama men’s staff.

The drill can be modified to fit your needs and used during your fall skill development workouts or can be used in practices this coming season as well.

To score a point in the drill, the player must make 2 shots in a row from one spot. One shot is a catch-and-shoot three-point shot, the second shot is a one-dribble pull up. The shooter should alternate those shots until they make two in a row. When you do the drill live, shoot pull ups going right for the first 2 minutes and 30 seconds, then shoot 5 free throws. Finish out the last two and a half minutes with pull up shots going left.

The goal of the drill is to score as many “spots” as possible in 5 minutes. Since the video is a demonstration, the shooter only shoots for 2 minutes.

If you run the drill for 5 minutes, there certainly is an aspect of mental toughness as players need to fight through consecutive misses.

I have also posted a second shooting drill video below.

Rip Hamilton Shooting Drill

Hedge Game Situations Shooting Drill

Competitive Rebounding Drills

By Brian Williams on August 25, 2015

These 2 rebounding drills are from Matt Monroe’s former Hoops Roundtable site.

Matt is the Head Boys Coach at Saint Ignatius in Chicago.

Use these drills as ideas for improving the drills you use to teach and reinforce your defensive concepts and principles.

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4 on 4 Line Rebounding Drill

Brandon Bailey

Coach stands on the baseline with a basketball

Coach calls out a number and passes to one of four players on the peflmeter

Which ever number he calls, that number has to closeout and block out on the player with the basketball

(IN THIS FRAME. THE COACH HAS CALLED OUT 1, 50 1 CLOSES OUT AND BLOCKS OUT x2)

The other players have to communicate and block out the other three players

Once the offensive player catches the ball, he shoots

When the ball touches the rim, the play is live

There are no out of bounds, no fouls, and the offense doesn’t have to take the ball out

The team that scores goes to defense

The team with the most points, or is the line at the end of the drill wins

Creighton Switch Rebounding Drill

Scott Miller, Head Boys Basketball Coach, Glenbard East High School (IL)

X passes the ball to the player on the elbow

O catches and shoots the ball

The first X in each line boxes out the player at the opposite elbow

Play two on two until a team scores

Winners stay on the court, keep an overall score to make the drill competitive

Basketball Drills: Defensive Conversion

By Brian Williams on August 17, 2015

In my opinion, regardless of what type of half court defense you play, you can’t be a great defensive team without being a great defensive conversion team so that you don’t allow easy baskets in transition.

Here are a couple of conversion drills that you might consider adding to your defensive portion of your team’s drills book.

These drills came from Army Men’s Assistant Zak Boisvert’s PickandPop.net site.

I have a link at the bottom of this post to the pdf that these two drills came from that show his 10 favorite defensive conversion drills.

I have always called going from offense to defense “conversion” and going from defense to offense “transition” just to make our communication and teaching clear for our players.

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55 Line Conversion Defensive Drill

Two teams of 5 players line up 10 feet off the half court line facing each other. Coach is at mid court with the basketball.

Coach can throw to either team.

When a player catches the ball, his team attacks the defense.

The player opposite the player who caught the ball must go touch the lane (giving the offense a 5 on 4 advantage, then convert back to defense.

Rim Runner Conversion Defensive Drill

Red on Offense, Black on Defense.

Defense has a 6th player at the opposite end under their offensive basket, simulating a rim runner.

When black gets possession of the ball, they can throw the long pass to force red to sprint back to defense.

You can put x6 on the wings if you are preparing for a team that throws ahead to the wing.

You can also start off with only 4 black defenders and the 5th as the rim runner under the opposite basket.

If you would like to see all 10 of Zak’s favorite defensive conversion drills, click this link: Defensive Conversion Drills

Basketball Drills: Shooting with Conditioning

By Brian Williams on August 14, 2015

Some shooting drills with some conditioning that hopefully you might be able to use in your pre-season program if you are allowed to work with players, or to file and use in your early season practices.

These drills are from Coach Justin Remington’s Moreno Valley High School Out of season (aka improvement season) Shooting Program.

He is also a basket instructor for PGC (Point Guard College)

His Twitter feed is @Coach_JRem

I posted some other shooting drills last month at this link: 3 Competitive Shooting Drills

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Transition 3s

PLAYER MUST MAKE TOTAL OF 10 SHOTS 2 FROM EACH OF THE 5 SPOTS AROUND THE PERIMETER:

Player starts half court

Player sprints to corner and receives pass from coach, if it is missed they must sprint
back to half court and back to the same spot again until it is made…

When shot is made they sprint to the half court line and move on to the next shot in the progression…

the wing shot, then TOK, then other wing, and then corner…

PLAYER MUST MAKE THE SHOT AT THE SPOT THEY ARE AT BEFORE MOVING ONTO THE NEXT SHOT

GO AROUND THE ARC AND MAKE YOUR WAY BACK TO END THE DRILL

Agility Shooting

Player starts at the top of the right elbow sprints diagonally to left block, turns and curls the corner and runs up to left elbow, curls and receives pass from coach for a shot,

then runs to the bottom right block and curls that cone and curls the top right elbow cone for another pass and
jumper…

Make 5

The possibilities here and patterns are endless, use your creativity to incorporate agility into shooting…

Opposite Rim Finishes

Player starts under the basket and sprints to the sideline, touches, and sprints back receives pass from the coach and finishes
(can be a regular finish or a reverse layup, or any style of layup finish you feel needs to be worked on)…

Player will go to the other sideline, touch, and come back t o the rim again for another pass from the coach.

Select a number of makes you want. Put a time and number of makes you would like to see to make it more competitive.

Basketball Drills 3 in a Row Toughness Shooting

By Brian Williams on August 4, 2015

This toughness shooting drill called “3 in a Row” is among the resources for both coaches and player available from basketballhq. They have several more videos as well as basketball coaching resource articles.

The drill can be modified to fit your needs and used during your fall skill development workouts or can be used in practices this coming season as well.

Please make sure your sound is on to see the video.

Click the play arrow to see the drill. The drill is a YouTube video, so you will need to be able to access YouTube to see the drill.

The Coach in the video is Russ Willemsen from the South Alabama men’s staff. Coach Willemsen saw Vanderbilt Men’s Coach Kevin Stallings use the drill.

To score a point in the drill, the player must make 3 in a row from one spot. The goal of the drill is to score as many points as possible in 5 minutes. Since the video is a demonstration, the shooter only shoots for 2 minutes.

The player is allowed to select the spots where they shoot from. You can decide whether you want to allow them to shoot more than once from a spot where they have already scored a point from.

If you run the drill for 5 minutes, there certainly is an aspect of mental toughness as players need to fight through consecutive misses or missing on the 3rd shot.

3 In a Row Shooting Drill

Basketball Drills: 3 Defensive Drills

By Brian Williams on July 31, 2015

These 3 defensive drills are from Matt Monroe’s Hoops Roundtable site.

He posts a new article daily and has a lot of really good articles that he has written as well as contributions from several other coaches.

Use these drills as ideas for improving the drills you use to teach and reinforce your defensive concepts and principles.

Diagrams created with FastDraw

Defensive Drift Drill

#1 passes the ball to #2 and closes out

#2 passes the ball to #3

#1 sprints to the denial area

#3 passes the ball to #4 #1 sprints to help

#4 drives and #1 sprints to take a charge

3 on 3 Sprint to Help Closeouts

In my opinion, anything you can use to teach “Sprint to Help.” “Run when the pass is in the air,” and “Get there before the ball does” is a great drill for your defense.