Coaching Youth Basketball - Teach Your Kids Passing That Works

I was faced with another contradiction the other day. We were at a AAU youth tournament and I was watching the game scheduled before ours. The difference in approach could not be more stark - particularly in this area: passing.

Both teams were fairly equal in talent and size, it should have been a competitive game. But it wasn't. And it all came down to passing. One team was very fundamentally "sound". They made great jumpstops and passed the ball hard with two hands, they liked the overhead pass to skip the ball from one side of the floor to the other, and they were patient.

The other team was passing after jumping, throwing weaker one hand passes, and hardly threw any skip passes (I can't remember if they threw even one skip pass).

Guess which team won? Not only won, but won easily?

Yes, the second one. And it came down to this: they passed the ball faster by throwing one-handed passes, they made passes that led to scores by challenging defenses, and I don't recall even one jumpstop the entire game. They were constantly challenging and taking the game to their opponent. Somewhere along the way a coach taught them that a good pass is one that leads to a score.

Coaching Youth Basketball - Spring Edition

We had tryouts for our spring team last week. What you do with your youth team will effect your kids potential for making a team like this. Let me give you an example.

We had one kid that could do some things on the floor, get to the basket a bit, shoot it some, decent rebounder. But he was hampered by his terrible habit of driving the lane and jump-stopping before going up to score. If you'll remember from a previous post, we talked about how the jumpstop is the most useless fundamental taught by youth coaches today. It looks good, it makes the kid look like he has been coached. But where is the benefit to using this tactic?

When someone jumpstops, that player immediately becomes weaker. The defense has time to catch up to the dribbler and the offense is usually left with only one option - pass. Perhaps even more important, the offense loses all of his aggressiveness, all of his "attack" mode when he jumpstops.

I'm not saying don't teach it. I'm not saying it will never be used. Here's the rule I use. "If you jumpstop, you had better be shooting."  Everything else comes from being on the run.

Coaching Youth Basketball - Why You Should Teach All The Skills

We have this kid who has been with us for 5 years. When he got to us, he was the least skilled player on the team. He was tall but slow and couldn't handle the ball at all. Most coaches would stick him in the post and let him founder there. We had a different agenda in mind.

We are of the mind that every player will learn all the skills. Guard skills, post up skills - everyone handles in the full court and every has the green light to shoot it. We quickly learned that this one kid brought with him something that no other kid has. He's terribly smart. Like best in his class smart.

So he stayed with us and within a year he was able to handle the ball in the full court. He couldn't beat anyone on the dribble yet because of his speed, but he never turned it over either. He would challenge for a few dribbles, draw a defender, then make a pass that would free up our offense. During this time he continued to work on his post up skills and guard skills.

He developed a jump shot and some nifty ball moves. Long story short, this kid has the potential to drop 30 on anybody any day. Now, let's be clear. He did all the hard work. We just guided him and pushed him when he needed it. But he did the work.

Coaching Youth Basketball - A Great Offensive Drill

We run a great offensive drill that you might want to try. It's easy and extremely effective in getting your guys to read the defense and react to what it gives them.

Put four defenders in a 2 up 2 down zone against 3 offense. You can set your offense however you want but we always go with a point and two wings. Then it's 3 on 4. What's great about this drill is that both the offense and defense are unscripted. The defense can tee-off because it has superior numbers and this forces the offense to be more aggressive to be a double team or to challenge a gap to draw a double team. Then the other offensive guys have to move early and decisively to make a play.

The first few times you run this you will find your offense standing a lot and wondering what to do. Having to play with inferior numbers is so foreign to their thinking that they will struggle a lot. Plus, most coaches wont let their team be the aggressor when they have even numbers, let alone inferior numbers. So this will be very different for them.

The cool thing is that you will see huge improvement very quickly in how they approach the game. They will become more aggressive and decisive. And that's a huge advantage when you start playing games.

Coaching Youth Basketball - First Day of Tryouts

We are starting another level of our AAU program. Today is the first day of tryouts. I thought you might be interested to know what we're doing for this.

We will do some full court fastbreak stuff. Two drills actually. The UCLA drill - which I'm sure all of you are familiar with. We emphasize in this drill having the ball handler identifying that first gap in the defense and attacking it. From there, we are looking at if the other offensive players can read the floor and move appropriately. This is the essence of skill development - reading the defense and playing off of what it gives you.

Another full court drill we're doing is a full court defensive matchup drill. We have one offensive player with the ball at the far end. The other four offensive players are at their goal's end. The 5 defenders are lined up at halfcourt facing away from the offense's goal. On the whistle the offens starts playing and defense has to matchup and start guarding immediately. After each turn, we move the offensive players to different spots on the floor so that the defense has to find a player and start guarding.

We are also playing a lot of 2on2, 3on3, 3on4, and 5on5.

Coaching Youth Basketball - Kareem's Way

I little bit ago I watched an interview with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The interviewer asked why no one else shoots the sky hook anymore. I found his answering interesting - and completely true. He said, "because everyone only teaches guard skills anymore."

Okay, so I don't believe his answer is COMPLETELY true. But it is in this sense: to the extent that programs teach individual skills at all, they usually teach guard skills exclusively. And that's a shame. When you are coaching your youth team it is imperative that you teach all the skills to all the players. Everyone should be able to put the ball on the floor and everyone should be able to play with her back to the basket. Some will do some skills better, due to a lot of factors, but they should all be able to pull off at least the basic skills from all positions.

We have a kid on our youth team that is a perfect example of why this is so important. I'll tell you about him in a future blog.