Shooting Drills

These two shooting drills are among the thousands of resources for both coaches and player available from basketballhq. They have several more videos as well as basketball coaching resource articles.

The drills are coached by Ryan Panone.

I encourage you to think about the best way to tweak the drills before you implement them so that they offer the most benefit for your players. Even as you are first implementing them, you may need to continue the process of making some adjustments so that they are contributing to the improvement of your players.

You can change the number of shots, the percentages, the spots of the shots (distance), the amount of time they have to shoot, types of shots, etc… so that the drill helps to contribute to your objectives.

If you have multiple baskets, you can make the drills into team drills by having 4 or 6 players shoot at a time.

Make sure that your speakers are on to hear the narration and that you can access YouTube to see the videos.

Click the play arrow to begin the videos.

Field Goal Percentage Shooting Drill

In my opinion, any time you keep some type of score, it helps players to focus and also helps both you and them measure improvement.

You could let the players decide what level they will shoot for and talk to individuals about adjusting if you feel that they are not challenging themselves enough.

Stephen Curry Warmup Floater Drill

You might not want your players shooting all these shots, and you might not want all of your players shooting the same types of floaters, but his point about making sure that players who shoot floaters in games need to practice them in an equal ratio to the other shots that they practice and shoot in games, whatever you feel that ratio is.

This shooting drill is from Arkanas Women’s Coach Mike Neighbors Newsletter.

Might give you some thoughts on some ways to offer some variety in your practices.

This post was created when Coach Neighbors was at Washington.

Softball Plus One Shooting Drill

This series is more about the application than the actions. You need to make the actions fit your offense.

I will give you one example that we use in each round, but the magic is in making them breakdown your offensive actions and simulate your games.

Diagrams created with FastDraw

The first round is called SINGLES…. Thus the softball/baseball reference…

SINGLES refers to single made shot. We will set the number at how many players we have. So, everybody makes ONE shot in this round before we move to the next INNING.

In the above example, we break down our Dribble Drive Motion.

Our 1 player will ‘rack it lane’ for a game speed, game finish basket. After our 1’s get their SINGLE. The 1 will ‘drop 4’ to our post players for a game speed/game finish basket for their single. When all 11 players have a SINGLE, we move to the next inning.

Over the course of the year, we will change the actions to simulate the game we have ahead of us, work on areas we have been deficient in, or even introduce new concepts to our of-fense. We do inbounds actions, sidleline actions, and other special situations as well.

The second inning progresses to DOUBLES… now we introduce a second shot. The players must each make a game speed/game finish shot to complete the DOUBLE.

You can vary the number of DOUBLES needed to advance to the next inning as you see fit but we usually do 5-10.

This round brings in the element of timing and spacing and passing so that the two shots don’t interfere with each other around the rim.

Keeping with our Dribble Drive stuff, we would have the 1 rack it and finish and the 4 player fill behind to “make 2” get the rebound of a made shot to simulate an offensive rebound.

We would also have the 1 “drop 4” for the first make, then the 1 would fill to arc for a kick out pass and a 3 point shot to complete the double. We could easily run drags or open windows as well to simulate other dribble drive actions. Can also use this in a guard forward breakdown and just do actions for each position.

We will also had a penalty in this round. Any action that ends with ZERO makes is a Strikeout and takes one away from our total toward our goal. So, if our goal is 10 doubles and we have 5 at this point. The group goes and misses both shots, we are back to 4.

We also progress as the year goes on to have the players pass rather than the coaches so we can work on that skill as well.

We move to the third inning… now we need TRIPLES!!

Obviously adding shot attempts make it more difficult so you can vary the number necessary to advance as you see fit for your team and your situation…

This is also where you can begin to use your players to make the “extra” passes so that they can work on passing as well as understanding the timing so that balls aren’t all hitting basket at once. Learned this one from experience… they will understand timing/spacing better if you let them “figure it out” and “fix it”.

In our Dribble Drive example above. 1 would “rack it” and drop 4… 4 finishes. 3 rises to open window and receives pass from extra passer for 2nd shot. 1 continues to her fill spot and gets third shot from a pass from 4 player who has rebounded her own make.

Just like in softball/baseball TRIPLES are a little harder.

At this stage you begin to add a little bit of pressure on that last make. We always like this shot to be a three pointer or a hard drive pull up jumper. Keep mixing it up on people. I begin charting this in my head too. You’d be surprised how many years your teams BEST shooter isn’t your most CLUTCH shooter!!!

It gets real in the fourth inning… now you need HOMERUNs aka… Four makes in the breakdown sequence. The last shot adds some pressure and you can also begin to point out after the last person makes a few when earlier shots have missed, that ALL the shots are big and you NEVER no which one is the game winner… Shot value same in first quarter as it is in the 4th quarter…

Dribble Drive is easy to continue adding actions and is main reason I love this offense so much. It’s able to be broken down into simple actions that repeat and are hard to guard.

All the actions above are the same but we add the 2 player “locked” in the corner. We might also have the 3 player one dribble drive for a floater or mid range J rather than catch and shoot a three. You could also make your layup in the sequence be a Drop 2 back door cut and have the 1 player FILL to that corner for her shot.

The options really are boundless.

We usually try to get 5-7 Home Runs before getting to final stage!!!

This Plus One is the BALLGAME stage… since basketball uses five players on the court, we had to abandon our softball/baseball analogy… the PLUS ONE shot is the BALLGAME.

You will find your players yelling Dubs, Trips, HOMERUN after the earlier stages are completed… after this one they yell BALLGAME.

The last shot on this one truly will have GAME WINNER feel.

Five shots…five makes!!!
We usually only do ONE of these…

In above diagram, we simply add the 5 “drag(on)” screen for a 3.

You can also do this drill for a timed period. Sometimes we will put 10:00 on the clock and see how many innings we can complete. This puts some focus on operating under time but staying within yourself.

If you come up with ways to tweak this other than simply changing the shot sequence, let me know. We are always looking for ways to improve it.

This drill is with North Florida Coach Men’s Coach Matthew Driscoll.

The drill is to work on side dribble 3 point shots.

You can run it with a group of shooters or an individual workout.

The shooters shoot from 5 spots.

If you miss 2 in a row, you have to start over.

There is sound with these videos, so please make sure that your sound is on.

The videos are YouTube videos, so you will need to be able to access that site.

Click the play arrow to play the video with the drill.

Coach Driscoll’s Teaching Points are:

1) Use a hard pound dribble to take you into the shot
2) Use 1-2 footwork rather than hop into the shot
3) Use 5 spots, but shooters can dribble either direction.

Give players solutions to the problems they encounter in games.

If you are interested in learning more about the Coaching DVD that this drill came from, you can click the following link: Competitive Shooting Drills for Basketball Practice

This zone shooting drill came from the FastModel Sports Basketball Plays and Drills Library.

You can also find out more about FastModel Play Diagramming software by clicking this link: FastDraw

The drills were contributed by Coach Bert DeSalvo. Bert has a regular coaching blog, Expressions from the Hardwood. You can also follow him on Twitter @coachDeSalvo

IMO, it is important to replicate the shots that you shoot in games from your offensive system during your improvement season workouts. That means shots you get against man to man defense as well as against zones.

Even if these shots are not a part of your zone attack, I encourage you to incorporate you cuts against zone and the shots you get into your shooting workouts.

Swing and Skip Pass Shooting Drill

Bert DeSalvo

3 and Coach 1 and Coach 2 each start out with a ball

3 reverses to 2

2 steps to the pass and reverses to 1

1 steps to the pass

3 runs the baseline

1 hits 3 running the baseline for a curl jump shot (inside foot pivot)

Coach 1 passes to 1 for a 3pt shot attempt

Coach 2 skips to 2 for a 3pt shot attempt

**NOTE: Coaches can add shot fake 1 dribble shot, etc.

This zone shooting drill came from the FastModel Sports Basketball Plays and Drills Library.

You can also find out more about FastModel Play Diagramming software by clicking this link: FastDraw

The drills were contributed by Coach Bert DeSalvo.

Bert has a regular coaching blog, Expressions from the Hardwood. You can also follow him on Twitter @coachDeSalvo

IMO, it is important to replicate the shots that you shoot in games from your offensive system during your improvement season workouts.

That means shots you get against man to man defense as well as against zones.

Even if these shots are not a part of your zone attack, I encourage you to incorporate you cuts against zone and the shots you get into your shooting workouts.

Zone Relocate and Flash Shooting Drill

Bert DeSalvo

1 passes to 3 who flashes to FT line area

1 relocates (slides) towards baseline

3 passes to 1 for one-dribble pull up baseline jumper

 

 

3 turns and locates 2

2 passes to 3

3 steps to the pass, takes one-dribble and shoots a FT jumper

2 slides towards Baseline

Coach 1 passes to 2

2 shoots “catch and shoot” 3pt shot

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

Modify these drills to fit what types of shots you get from your offense and that fit the shots that your players take in games including adding in 3 point shots to the drill.

You could add an element of a time limit or change the scoring so that players are competing against each other or against a scoring standard.

Diagrams created with FastDraw

 

 

 

 

Free Throw Golf Drill

Jason Dycus, Head Girls’ Basketball Coach, Naperville North High School (IL):

There are 3 or 4 players at a basket.
Put three minutes on the clock.
Each person shoots one free throw and rotates.
Each time someone makes a free throw, one point goes in the bank.
The first person to miss add the score in the bank to their score (for example, if three people make a free throw in a row and the fourth person misses, the fourth person now adds 3 points to their score).
The player with the lowest score wins.

Cougar Shooting Drill

In my opinion, the cones are not there to simulate defenders. They are there to show your players where to work on their dribble move. I believe that players need to develop skills before they can use them against a live defense.

#1 dribbles through the cones using various change of direction moves and attacks the basket.
After taking a shot, the player widens out to the corner and cuts hard off the cone simulating a cut off of a screen.
Coach passes the player the ball for a shot.

Utilize various moves on the first and second legs of the drill: Power finish, Shot-fake finish, Floaters, Runners, Reverse lay-up, Jump shot, Pull-up jump shot, Step-back move, Step-back counter move, Inside hand finish, Hips across lay-up, Spin move, Up and under move, Ginobili move, or any other move that you need to incorporate.

Plus 4, Minus 4 Shooting Drill

Jim Harrington, former Head Boys Basketball Coach, Elgin High School (IL):

Use the 7 spots on the floor that are shown in the diagram.

Player flips the ball out and get hind the ball (circle it)
You get +1 for a made field goal and -1 for a missed field goal
Play until you get +4 or -4 total.
Use or incorporate all moves (shot fakes, catch and shoot, cross/onside step, etc.)