Moving to Twitter

It's been a long time since I have posted anything on this blog. I'm going to keep this blog active because there is still quite a bit of download traffic. All of my new posts will be on twitter. https://twitter.com/#!/ReaperBball

Limited Space Drills

I put these drills together for my lower level coaches and thought I would share them on here. All of them are designed to be done with limited gym space. One of the hardest things for a coach can be getting skill work done when you have half the gym or less. Hopefully you find some ideas here that might help you this year. Let me know if you have any questions or comments.

bmoore@plano88.org

Boisvert Passing

This is a great drill that I found last year from Zac Boisvert's twitter feed. This drill worked really well for us because of the focus on footwork and the need to make good passes for the group to have success. 1 Pass that isn't perfect tends to throw the group off much like half court offense.

4 Man Iso

Another play for the 7 Seconds or less offense. Can be ran out of a dead ball or as a regular play to Iso a big that can play on perimeter. More and more teams are going to 4 perimeter players and creating huge matchup issues for coaches that use 2 post players.

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

4 Out 7 Seconds or less

Classic ball screen look out of 4 out set for a quick hitter. Fits right into the seven seconds or less offense.

Alan Stein

Found this video online today and thought I would share it. Alan Stein has tons of free stuff that he has shared. Watching the video it really reminded me how differently you have to train for basketball than any other sport. Make sure you check out some of his other videos on youtube as well.