Coaching Youth Basketball - Your Attitude Can Make A Great Team

It's the old chicken and the egg question. Or in basketball terms, what comes first? The talent to play a real motion? Or do you run real motion to develop talent?

If you've followed this blog at all you know my answer. If your goal is to win enough games to be over .500 then it doesn't really matter what you do. Some years you will have the talent to do that and some years you won't. But if you teach your pattern really well, you will probably win more games than you lose.

But if your goal is to develop your players and to develop your program into that team that everyone hates to play, you will change your thinking. You will see that teaching your kids how to play the game, rather than how to run a pattern or a list of entries, will develop your team into a perennial winner.

Give your players the freedom to do things on the floor. To make mistakes. They will throw up crazy shots that land in the parking lot. But when they do this, they are exploring what their bodies can do at this stage in their lives. They are seeing what skills they have and don't have. I'm sure you've heard other coaches say something like, "practice what you're not good at, not what you already know how to do." That's what I mean. Let them play.

What brought out this comment from me? I happened by another team's practice the other day and they must have spend an hour memorizing their pattern. I thought: "Wow! Is there any way we could play that team every game?"

Coaching Youth Basketball - More Inbounds Plays

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not against patterned inbounds plays. I completely understand if you are not comfortable giving your players the freedom to run an inbounds play that has no set pattern. I'm just saying that I don't think I will every run a patterned inbounds play again. Which brings me to this observation.

The other day I saw a team their inbounds plays in the hall before a game. The players were glassy-eyed and bored. The coach was dutifully instructing them on where to go, pre-programming them for what he thinks will happen. My problem with that is what if they defense wasn't at the meeting? What if the defense decides to play you a different way?

No, it's much better to teach your players good offensive principles like screening, spacing, and reading. And as an added bonus, your player will enjoy the game more. Inbounds plays become an opportunity to really get in the game, to do something exciting, rather than run from point A to point B like the stuffy old coach said.

Coaching Youth Basketball - Inbounds Plays

I had a coach tell me once that he expected to score off of every inbounds play. I agree. To accomplish that I used to practice our inbounds plays a lot. Every one of our kids knew where every player was supposed to go, they could run these plays in their sleep.

How wrong I was. It wasn't until I applied motion offense principles to inbounds plays that we started to really click on this part of the game. In effect, we had one play that we called a number - that is our inbounder or point guard would call out any number she could think of and that would be the play. All of our other inbounds plays were names - names of college teams mostly, like "cougar", or "Jayhawk", something like that. But the other play would "13" or "57". Our numbered play quickly became our favorite play and during our third year we junked all of our "named" plays altogether.

Here's what we did. A number play is simply: do what you want. Take what the defense gives you. Go to the open spot. Set a backscreen. WHATEVER. Just read the defense and react.

I remember one of the coaches we played said to another coach we played against something like, "We have the hardenst time scouting their inbounds plays because they have so many of them." He couldn't wait to tell me what this other guy said. What neither of them knew was that we didn't have ANY inbounds plays.

Coaching Youth Basketball - What Is Good Defense?

I think sometimes we coaches think good defense is simply being in a good position on the floor, that our girls have rotated correctly and have the ball in front of them.


But really good defense is so much more than that, and good defense will require that you demand more from your players that just positioning. Here's a better way to put it: we are talking about action versus reaction. Good defense is action oriented, not reactionary. Good defense is anticipation. Good defense is steals and blocked shots and cutting off dribblers.

So how do you get there? If you will remember from our earlier discussions, good offense is reading the defense. Well, good defense is the same thing: reading the offense. Anticipating what they will do next and beating them to the spot. Which is why running a pattern offense is such a bad idea (at least until your kids have the skills to score OUT OF the pattern)

Coaching Youth Basketball - Easy Way To Get Your Kids Ready To Play

Recently I've been researching what players do to prepare themselves to play, either a game or practice. I've stumbled on an easy, effective, well researched tactic that can get your guys in the right frame of mind and body to perform at their best.


As I've bounced around looking at different theories, there is one author that has a lot to say about athletics, and I don't think she mentions sports in her writing and talks but a few times. More on her later, what she has to say is really important to you as a human being, and to your players as people trying to get their bodies to perform at their best.

But the tactic is simple: jump rope. Yeah, jump rope. Now, I know that all of you know the positive conditioning effect jumping rope has on a player. It makes them faster and more coordinated. But there is a mental positive to it to. You may want to read what this author has to say on this so I'll post this author's blog here pretty soon.

Here's a link to a video if you're interested

http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/massai-dance/4f6204fb6380738a5ff54f6204fb6380738a5ff5-527747711849?q=african+jumping+dance&FORM=VIRE7

Essentially what happens is that when a player jumps rope, she becomes more grounded, more in tune with her body, her mind and body work together more efficiently. There's a fusion that occurs.

So I've been doing a little experiment. I've asked one of your players, the one who is probably the least athletic right now because he is taller and has not outgrown his gangliness yet, to jump rope before every practice and every game. The sessions before practice are pretty intense, I think he's up to about 750 jumps right now and he's shooting for about 2500 jumps. And before every game, about 30-45 minutes before, he will do have of what his daily routine is at that point. So the other day before a game he jumped about 300.

I can see a dramatic difference in his game play. He's more active, alert, and productive.  We will be getting into more of this later, but this is something you should consider trying.

Coaching Youth Basketball - Scoring Enough To Win

If your team isn't good enough to score 80 points a game, that is, they just don't have the offensive skills to make that many baskets, here's a good way to approach it.

Teach your guys two perimeter moves and two post moves. As you know from earlier blogs, teach ALL your players every move you want. Your post guys will get out on the perimeter and do them and your smallest guard will learn how to post up and do one or two post moves.

Take those two moves and hammer them home. Work on them every day, maybe 20 minutes a day. You might want to break up that 20 minutes into 5 minute blocks and do them at separate times during your practice. But drill those moves into your kids.

I would suggest something very simple to start with. For your perimeter guys 1) sweep and go; 2) one dribble jump shot. For your post guys 1) drop step (everyone does that) 2) spin out and go.

Two simple moves that your guys can master in a month or so. Then demand that they use it in games. All of these moves complement each other in that once the defense takes away one move, your guys can use the other to get a shot.

Now I'm not saying you should stick to these two moves exclusively. But I am saying that if you want to add more moves into your practice, add more time for them. Your 20 minutes (or however much time you choose) should be devoted to these two moves only and if you want to add another, then go to 25 minutes.

Coaching Youth Basketball - Scoring!

It always amazes me how coaches who think they have a handle on things will call themselves "defensive" coaches. Nothing could be more wrong. As one professional coach said to a friend of mine, "if you aren't spending 80% of your time working on offense, you are easy to beat."

Which brings me to a comment another coach made the other day. She said to her, "good job scoring 40 points, most college teams would be happy with that." My first thought was that 40 points is about half of what your goal should be. Even for high school teams, given that you will run into some bad team where you can ring up 90 or more points. I understand that summer games are little bit shorter in length so maybe your goal will be 70 points, but 80 for a hgh school team is about right.

Now your next thought might be: "what if my players aren't good enough to score 80 points?" Good point. In our next talk we will discuss how to get your team to score 80 points this season, and every season after that.

Coaching Youth Basketball - Tow Teams That Get It

We were at a AAU basketball tournament a few weeks ago and of course our coaches get to watch a lot of games during these things. We take advantage of that because we feel like there is always something we can learn by watching other teams play. Sometimes what we see re-enforces what we are already doing and sometimes we see a better way of doing something. If you are not open to that, you are not giving your kids your best effort.

Fortunately, we saw two teams playing against each other that supported what we've been doing. To be specific, it was what we didn't see that was so cool. During this game neither team ever ran a pattern offense and I can count on one hand how many entries we say. They both were playing in the flow of the game and the flow dictated that they both run a real motion, read and react offense. They went to the basket and made plays, they scored off of breaks, and sometimes they slowed it down to get a little more "organized". I put oganized in quotes because most coaches would still think they were not organized because they were not running some ridiculous pattern or entry.

Coaching Youth Basketball - Teaching How To Run A Fastbreak

We previously talked about how passing up the sideline is not always the best way to run a fastbreak that leads to scores. In fact, I maintain that it is rarely the best way to get baskets. Here's a better, more effective way.

Teach your kids to challenge the first defender. Ideally, teach your kids to at least make the first defender guard you, and at best teach your kids to beat the first defender. To support that, think about how many kids can guard another player in the open floor? Or how many have been taught HOW to guard a player in the open floor? Not many.

So if your guy has the ball with a teammate open ahead of him on the sideline, there are two defenders against your two guys. Making that pass will NOT lead to baskets. Instead, have your dribbler challenge right at his defender, drawing help from the second defender. Then your guys are in a position to make a play, either your dibbler keeps it and goes through the defense or he makes a play with a pass.

Passing up the sideline without numbers (more offensive players than defenders) will only lead to a stalemate at best.

Coaching Youth Basketball - Run a Break That SCORES

I have run into this phenomenon a lot recently. Maybe it's because we have been working with a lot of kids from other teams who are new to us. The conflict is this: running a fastbreak that leads to baskets.

I love to play against teams that pass the ball up the sideline to initiate a fastbreak. My defense then always knows where the ball is going. If the team your playing has a default position of passing the ball up the sideline on a break you should at least be able to easily defend that and at best pick off that pass.

Passing up the sideline looks pretty and, again, it looks like your team is well coached. But it is not always the best way to score. Sometimes - and I would offer that the majority of the time - passing up the sideline only looks pretty but it doesn't lead to baskets.

There's a better way. Meet me here in two days and I'll tell you a simple way to teach a fastbreak that leads to baskets.

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.

Failure! Coaching Youth Basketball

I was reading about a surprisingly effective NBA rookie. They asked the question about this guy: how can he be so effective when he was drafted so low?

The answer: confidence.

Okay, we've all heard this before, but where does this confidence come from? This confidence comes from missing a lot of shots, it comes from failure. This confidence comes from missing all of these shots a bunch of times, in games, in practice, everywhere. Yes, missing breeds confidence because of this: missing while being allowed to expand ones game is what causes confidence.

Confidence does NOT come from giving your guys a false sense of security by playing against equally talented players.

And this is where the youth basketball coach comes in. Teach your guys to shoot correctly - and I don't mean this foot there and that foot here, should position, blah, blah, blah - I mean shoot from a position of power and snap the wrist at the rim. Then give your guys the freedom to shoot these shots often enough where they will confidence in it. That means your guys will miss this shot a bunch of times. A whole lot of times.

Then one day, your guys will make 3 out of 10. Then 4. Then 6. Then he's confident.

St. John's Game Winning Shot - Coaching Youth Basketball

Did anyone see the game winning shot St. John's University had against Pitt? Let's take a quick look at it. The play broke down - as plays almost always do. And the Johnnies were left with a guy with the ball on the right side of the floor. Plenty of space and time to get something going. He drove and put in a twisting, running layup.

This just didn't happen by luck. This guy practiced this shot. And somewhere along the way, his youth coach gave him the freedom to shoot this shot, and many others very much like it. At some point, his youth coach saw the value - the long term, life changing value - in allowing this guy the freedom to try new things, to expand his game, to fail.

This is exactly what you should be encouraging, letting your players play in a format (note I avoid the term "system") that gives them the freedom to fail.

But what of the other guys? If you watch closely, the other four on the team adjusted their position on the floor to be available for a pass, ready to make their own play if that's the result would be. What looks like an entirely 1 on 1 play was really 5 guys working together to get a game winning shot. Unscripted, and within the flow of the game.

I wonder how many times before this player missed this shot? Probably hundreds if not thousands.

Teaching The Pattern Offense in Youth Basketball

Yesterday we talked about playing against the pattern offense. Let me take a moment and describe to you what the team running the pattern offense should have spent their practice time doing.

We were consistently able to steal the ball on the dribble. Rather than learning the pattern, they should have spent that time practicing their dribbling. We were able to steal the ball on the wing entry pass - use your time learning how to get open on the wing. We were able to steal the ball when they tried to pass the ball into the post - use that time to learn how to pass off the dribble or from a position of power.

The point I'm making is this: practice time is incredibly precious for any basketball team. If you use your time practicing a pattern instead of working on the skills to make that pattern work, you're not making your kids better players. You're only making them better at running a pattern. There is a huge, substantial difference.

The Pattern Offense in Youth Basketball

This is a lesson that applies to any level of basketball - young kids to professionals. We were playing a 6th grade girls game last week. Our team consists of a couple of 6th grade girls, a couple 5th graders, and a 4th grade girl. The team we were playing was big, probably the tallest we have faced this year.

So through much of the first half, we really struggled defensively. The other team was running a simple pattern - enter the ball to the wing then look for a big post camped out in the lane who would then shoot over us. We tried and tried to stop this simple pattern but they were just too tall. They would simply shoot over us, miss, get the rebound, and shoot layups.

However, in the second half, we played against the pattern, NOT the player. It was easy from there. If we didn't get the steal on the wing pass, we would force the wing to put the ball on the floor and steal it off the dribble. The ball went into their big post maybe 3 times.

That's the trouble with pattern offenses. If your team can learn the pattern, then the team you're playing against can as well. And the simply defend the pattern, not the players.

More tomorrow on why you should avoid patterns.