Practice Improvement Notes

Here are some notes that I personally wrote out for my assistants at the Jr. Hi level and for my high school assistants. Nothing earth shattering here but some key points on basics of practice ideas that I have and expect them to have.

Tips to Improving Practice

I am a very big believer in practice and making yourself and your team better with each practice. You have to treat every practice as a way to make your team better. As a coach you have to put in the time to prepare each practice to make your players better and your team better.

1. Improve yourself as a coach everyday. If you aren’t improving how can you expect your players too? Find what you can get better at it, study it, and improve it. Don’t be afraid to try new things.
2. Skill development everyday
a. Jr Basketball thru varsity needs to have a focus in this area
3. Pace of practice- Slow practices lead to boredom and bored kids don’t learn or improve
4. Fundamentals everyday- Take pride in improving your kids in the basics
a. Pivot work
b. Post feeds
c. Weak hand dribbling
d. Passing
5. Don’t worry so much about the offense
a. When you look at the percentages very few baskets come from running set offense so make sure you don’t spend 80% of your time working on something that only creates 15% of your points
6. Lines- I can’t stand going to a practice in any sport and 90% of the team is standing watching.
a. Utilize your gym
b. Adapt your drills to get guys more touches
c. Are you better off breaking your guys up at 4 baskets and losing some control or having 5 guys working and 10 guys watching?
7. Conditioning
a. You have to be in shape but this doesn’t mean you have to run the most sprints
b. If your running have a ball in your hands a majority of the time
c. We run sprints when I’m mad or I want to test my guys and see how hard they will work for me
8. Practice the way you play- We play fast and aggressive at every level
a. Add transitions to your drills if you want to be good at it—Defense gets a stop they are going the other way
9. Repetition for the good stuff
a. Instead of doing it until they get it right focus on how many times in a row you can do it right. Reps of correct form is the only way to get better
10. Teach on the go
a. Don’t stop drills too often unless you really feel you need too

Ball Handling
1. Weak hand focus- everyday your kids need to spend 5-10 mins on their weak hand. – Before they get a drink everyone gets a ball and dribbles as hard as they can with their weak hand 100 times.
2. Retreat dribble- Tired of watching people go farther to their right or crossing over every time they are pressured. Teach them to do a retreat dribble with 2 dribbles to create space and they now have room.
3. Talk with each player about what they need to do better when handling the ball and what their strengths are
4. The dribble has taken over basketball with the drive and kick offense but you have to get your guys to attack vertically and work downhill to the rim. Too many dribbles are going sideways.

Pivot
1. Watch how much your guys improve if you do at least 1 pivot drill per day
2. Put 30 secs on the clock and have player pivot with a defender on them

Passing
1. Favorite passing drill of all time is man in the middle. Two offensive players and 1 defender and you have to pivot and pass.
2. Pass fake is a fading skill and it shows in how hard it is to get an open shot
3. Fake low pass hi and vise versa