Basketball Drills

These thoughts are from an old Xavier Men’s Program Basketball Coaching newsletter. If you are interested in seeing their archive or signing up for the newsletter, click this link: Xavier Basketball Newsletter

Blueprint for a successful coaching philosophy–Jimmy Dykes

Coach Dykes is the former Women’s Coach at Arkansas. Prior to taking the job this past spring, he has been an analyst for ESPN and has served as an Assistant for several D1 Men’s Programs. He also spent a year as a Scout for the NBA Seattle Sonics (now the OKC Thunder).

Even though you probably won’t agree with everything, I think that there are at least a few thoughts included that can be applied to your coaching and to your team.

1) Everyday guys will beat sometime guys every day.
– High talent guys that are sometime guys will be a year of frustration.
– Key areas of recruiting: evaluation of talent and evaluation of character.
– Everyday guys go every day, every possession.
– When evaluating a player, watch how they respond in a bad game.

2) If you are not tough, you will not win.
– Do not flinch on a loose ball.
– Blow up screens.
– Do not let one mistake become two.
– “Toughness is doing what is right when it is really really hard to do what is right.”

3) If you cannot talk it, you cannot execute it.
– Players must be able to talk the action.

4) Practice for 5-10 minutes without talking.
– Will drive home the importance of talking real quick.

5) If you aren’t talking loud enough in practice to be heard in a silent gym, you will not be heard in the loudest arena.

6) Where are we scoring from? 3 key areas:
– The free throw line should be a number one priority in an offense .
– Are you scoring off of rim shots?
– Clean 3’s.
– The quality of shots of us vs. them will 90% of the time determine who wins the game.

7) How hard are your cuts?
– Be in good enough shape to still be able to hard cut in the last 5-6 minutes of the game, not just for a half.
– Cut with purpose and passion.
– Hard cuts wear people down.

8) 24/24 last final four teams have shot 32% or higher from the 3pt line
– Who is shooting your 3’s? Has a lot to do with what you shoot as a team.
– Selection of the 3: are you open? Are you balanced? Are you shooting a bad pass? Quit shooting bad passes and shot percent will rise as a team. Good 3pt shooting teams and good passing have direct correlation.

9) it is not the number of plays you have but the number of plays you can run with perfection.

10) You cannot be a great player if you avoid contact.

Simple things to always keep your eyes on:

1) Guard your yard.

2) Average teams can defend the first on-ball action, good defensive teams can defend the second
action, but only elite level teams can defend the third on-ball action.

3) ANY FORM OF SELFISHNESS MUST BE ELIMINATED, CUT OUT.

4) Leadership is backwards now-a-days. The freshmen or first year guys are the ones that have to do
things last, carry stuff off the bus, get the leftovers, etc. The greatest leaders are those that are
servants.
– How can you serve others? Get your leaders to think that.

5) What is emphasized the last 10 minutes in the locker room before a game better be emphasized
every day in practice before that.

6) When you watch your team play, they have either been taught to do that or you have allowed them to do that.

7) Good coaches can see the problem but great coaches can fix the problem.
– Great teams fix the problem right now.

8) We all need a reference point because we are either going to be ready or be rattled.
– Why is that happening?
– What do you go back to when things get chaotic?

9) Do not get bored with the basics. Shot goes up, are all 5 guys in motion?

Things not seen enough in drills

1) Not enough one on one.

2) Tremendous need in just knowing how to play the game. Need more 4-on-4 or 5-on-5 halv court no dribble. Do we know how to screen to get people open?

3) In golf, every swing you ever take should have a specific purpose. Every single time. Do we teach that when it comes to shooting? The great shooters gear their practice shots toward what they are actually going to do in a game.

4) You cannot allow outside distractions to effect practice and locker room. We cannot demand things of players that we cannot also do as a coach, As a coach, if you have junk weighing on you from outside the job, you cannot perform as a coach at the level that you need to perform. You don’t want that from your players so why want that from you?

5) Very important to raise the bar in areas of your life. Do not settle for less.

Brian Williams, The Coaching Toolbox.

I have always felt that one of the best ways to evaluate ball handling is by having our perimeter players dribble against two defenders in practice.

I also think that it is important that if you use the 1 vs. 2 drill in practice that you emphasize that it is an overload drill for practice only. Every other time you are double teamed while dribbling , you don’t dribble against it, you look for an open players to pass to.

I developed a scoring system to make the drill competitive and I based it on what I value as the outcome for the offensive player. You might not agree with the scoring system because you might have a different philosophy of what you want the dribbler to do.

Diagram created with FastDraw

You can start the drill 2 different ways. If you want your players to work on getting open against a full court press and not catching the ball in a trap zone, you can begin the drill like the black players, offense 1 and X1 and X2.

The coach inbounds the basketball and the offensive player works to get open against X1.

If you want to put your player in a tough position and force them to get out of it, start them where the red players are O2 and X4 and X5.

Both groups from the diagram do not go at the same time, it is there to illustrate two ways to start the drill.

Once the drill starts, the dribblers will go towards the opposite opposite basket from the end where they start, so it is a full court dribbling drill. If the defense steals the ball, they will attack the basket opposite from where the offense is looking to score.

Each possession lasts 20 seconds unless the ball handler loses the basketball.

You can allow the dribbler only half the floor or allow them to use the whole court. If you use the whole court, only have 1 group of 3 going at once. If you allow the to use only 1 side, you can have groups going both ways.

Here is what I think the best outcomes are for the dribbler: (5 being best outcome)

(5) Scores or is fouled shooting. For this drill, I don’t make a distinction between making a 2 point shot and making a 3 point shot, and we don’t shoot free throws. You can decide how to deal with non-shooting fouls. We handle them as no harm, no foul. I want the dribbler to be tough and not use contact as an excuse to lose the basketball.
(3) Retains dribble for the entire possession without losing the basketball and not picking it up.
(2) Picks up the dribble and can pivot without losing the ball. We don’t call 5 seconds since there are no other players to pass to. You could have a coach or another player be an outlet if you don’t like the idea of pivoting for more than 5 seconds.
(1) Commits a dead ball turnover (travel, offensive foul, 10 second violation, tied up by the defense, steps out of bounds, etc..) I would rather have a dead ball turnover than a live ball turnover because it allows us to set our defense.
(0) Misses a shot or commits a live ball turnover (loses dribble or is stripped while pivoting).

In order to motivate the defense to play hard, they can score if they make a steal. But it must be in transition. If they make a steal, they must go immediately and score in a 2 on 1 or 1 on 0. I don’t want them pulling it out. When we get a 2 on 1 in a game, I want to execution before more defenders retreat.

If the defense steals the ball and then scores or is fouled, both players get two points, even for a 3 point shot. I would rather they attack the basket on a 2 on 1 situation.

Again, these are the scoring rules that fit our system. Change your rules to fit your team.

Players compete in groups of 3 and rotate so that each player goes the same number of times on offense. Two or Three times is a good amount to have each one go. Once one possession is over, start on the opposite baseline and go full court the other way with a new dribbler.

I like to set the maximum length of a possession at 20 seconds, so we start the clock at 20 seconds when the player makes the first dribble.

In keeping with a theme of providing drills for the start of practice, I am posting some ball screen breakdown drills that were sent to me by Nate Hill. He is the Assistant Boys Coach at Colonel Crawford High School in North Robinson, Ohio.

He provide a post where a few months ago where he outlined what he believes to be the strengths and weaknesses of five different methods of defending ball screens. Here is the link to that article on 5 options for defending pick and roll.

I think it is important for all coaches to put on paper what you believe the strength and weaknesses are for your specific team for various ways of defending ball screens and attacking those defensive strategies in your ball screen game.

That will help you to more clearly and effectively teach both the offensive and defensive ends of ball screens.

Ball Screen Breakdowns

Diagrams created with FastDraw

Start the drill with:

2 on 0 breakdown. Guards and bigs at separate baskets, working on the following ball screen reads: Hard Hedges,
soft hedges, jam and under, Switch, drops, refuse /ice, Blitz / double team.

Then move to:

2 on 2 Live: Coach chooses from under, hedge, switch, ice, drop, or trap. Offense must read the defense and make
the proper play. Offense goes for 2 minutes and switches spots on the court. Next defensive group comes in and
plays a different defense as instructed by the coach.

Here is a link to a post from a few weeks back for working on Attacking Hard Hedges

Defense Blitz

The defense gives up: pick and pops, slip pass, passes over top screen with bigger guards, slow rotations. Teams can make a pass out of the trap, and a quick extra pass to open players with good spacing.

Blitzing takes away: good shooters and drivers, forcing 1 to make solid pass, and 5 to make a shot / play. Forces players to make passes with weak hands

 

Double team / Blitz = retreat dribble and pass: Coach/defender double teams the pick and roll. ball handler uses a retreat / pullback dribble and passes to coach. Coach can also incorporate slips.

 
 
 

 

Double team = SLIP: Defense traps the ball screen, big needs to dive automatically to the rim. Posts vary the finishes at the rim

 
 
 

Under

x1 goes UNDER screen.

The defense gives up: pull up jumpers, turning corner on drives

The defense takes away: screener rolling / slips. force ballhandler to shoot off dribble

Under Screen = race to rim, pull up, rescreen: defender / coach goes under the screen. Ballhandler races defender to the rim, takes pull up jumper, and change directions for a rescreen. Vary your finishes, set up screen with jab or dribble move.
 
 

Under Screen = RESCREEN: Defender goes under the screen, the big can RESCREEN and Roll

If you would like to see the remainder of the document and all 5 scenarios, Click Here for Ball Screen Breakdown 2.0