Catching, Passing and Faking Skills Part I

Teaching Catching, Pivoting, and Faking Skills: Part I

by Alan Lambert President of The Basketball Highway

Introduction

The fundamental skills of catching, pivoting, and faking are amongst the most overlooked and undertaught skills in the game of basketball today. I cannot count the number of times in observing a game (including college and professional), that I have seen poor play as a consequence of a team or players inability to catch, pivot or make an effective fake at a critical time. 

In today's game, aggressive pressure defenses require that you teach these fundamentals. If you have a big man that can't catch or make a proper pivot at the appropriate moment, you may as well put a stone statue on the court, because you'll be about as successful. Interestingly enough, I have to think extremely hard to find a great scorer today in the game, who cannot catch and pivot very effectively. The two are inextricably bound. My point is this, if you are not spending 5-10 minutes per day on catching, pivoting and faking, how can you expect your players to execute these skills under duress in the heat of battle and perform at a high level. You may have a race horse of a player, but unless the horseshoe is comfortable, you're not going to win the race.

The purpose of this month's clinic is to provide you some basic rules for each of these skills, some suggested drills, and descriptive ways to make these points retainable when teaching your players.

Catching

Here are five simple principles which I have taught to my players when they are having difficulty catching the ball:

• 1) Always practice moving to the ball with both hands up. This is an unnatural position because our normal running motion involves swinging the arms in opposite synchronization with our leg stride. Lifting the arms, and in fact any movement of the body involves what is called a response time. Response time is a combination of reaction time and movement time. For very simple movements a reaction time can be as fast as 100 milliseconds (or 1/10th of a second). For larger movements such as raising the arms to catch a ball reaction time is more likely in the neighborhood of 200-400 milliseconds (or slightly less than half a second). Movement time is generally a little bit more than reaction time. I don't want to get caught up in a long scientific discussion of reaction and movement time, the point is that it likely take from a 1/2 to 3/4 of a second to make a response to catch a ball. If your player always seems to be late in getting their hands prepared to a pass, they aren't necessarily bad at actually catching the ball, but rather ALWAYS late to prepare to catch the ball. By moving with their hands constantly up, they reduce their preparation time. Finally, moving to the passer with both hands up signals the passer that your player wants the ball and is alert for a pass at any time. All coaches teach this (or attempt to), however very few players actually put it into practice to the point that it is a non-thinking repetitive skill (such as shooting a free throw).
• 2) Always run through the ball when catching a pass. This is another basic and simple rule, but more turnovers are caused in the game of basketball today because the player catching the ball, doesn't practice this. Another reason for doing this is that it is easier to pivot and keep your balance if your body has some motion or energy in it. By stopping your movement too early, most players release all of their energy into the floor and are susceptible to being forced off balance by an aggressive defender. Motion means energy, and as long as the energy is balanced (controlled) you have a player who is prepared to shoot, pass, or drive when they need to.
• 3) Catch the ball with your thumbs pointed upwards and towards the eyes, collapsing the arms to absorb (decelerate) the force of the arriving ball. It is difficult to collapse the arms if your thumbs are pointing outward away from the eyes, try it and you'll see what I mean. It's a very awkward and rigid movement. Many young players have trouble catching because they catch with stiff arms. The energy must go somewhere usually remaining in the ball and causing the ball to glance hard off of the hands. By slightly relaxing the arms you reduce the force (remember from your physics class that Force=Mass x Acceleration). The mass (weight of the ball) stays constant so to reduce the force...collapse. It's the same principle that auto makers use in designing bumpers on their cars to absorb the force of a crash. When you players learn to do this, they will have softer hands and become good receivers of the ball. Make sure they watch the ball completely into their hands before quickly locating the basket with their eyes when the ball is properly secured.
• 4) Always catch the ball near the basket from a one contact (two foot) jump stop. If you're catching the ball on the wing, it is better to catch the ball off the inside pivot foot, but still as nearly as possible to a one contact stop. A player who does this will nearly always have balance and be able to read, react and move with equal quickness in any direction from that position. This is equally important for pivoting which we will discuss later on in this month's clinic. Simultaneously catching the ball on both feet in the high or low post is a must. You eliminate too many post move options by pre-establishing a given pivot foot. The reasons you should catch the ball off the inside pivot foot (foot closest to the basket) from the perimeter or wing position are; first, by establishing the inside pivot foot you are actually closer to the basket by a few feet than if you took used the outside foot. This may not seem like much but when you are talking scoring threat for most player the difference of 19 feet versus 21 feet is quite substantial. Secondly, if a player must circle behind you to get the ball (called a give back) you are in a much better position to hand the ball safely off to this player and use your body as a screen away from the aggressive defense. In either case, whether in the post or perimeter, the two foot jump stop gives you two direction options at all times.
• 5) Whenever you catch the ball you must immediately bring the ball to the triple threat position. Many players afraid of pressure defense are either taught or through habit bring the ball high above the head or low toward the knees. There are situations where these positions are affective, however not when you have immediately received the ball against pressure.

When the ball is brought high above the head you cannot shoot from that position, or penetrate quickly, so in effect you are telling the defense play me for the pass only. If you bring the ball too low, you can really only penetrate from that position. The older and more experienced your defender is, the great the chance they will read these signals and take away your strength. Pete Newell, one of the truly great teachers of the game, has said that basketball is a game of "read and react". If you bring the ball to any position other than the triple threat you going to take away one of the three options which your defender might be forcing you to react to.

This is an uncomfortable position for many young players, however with much practice they will learn when that defender reaches for the ball in that triple threat position, they will likely have to raise their center of gravity and lift up their body, thus opening the "react" decision to penetration dribble. If the defender stays low, they can quickly "read and react" by taking the jump shot before the defender can challenge the shot.

One last point here is to keep the ball basically motionless. I have worked with a number of young players who have a fairly decent shooting technique however the ball is constantly being shifted around to avoid defensive pressure. The react decision is not to move the ball when you're pressured, but to move the body toward the basket or open spot away from the pressure for an open shot or lay-up. When the offensive player is shifting the ball, their shooting accuracy will dip considerably. It would be analogous to a golfer trying to hit a golf ball that was swinging from a rope. It can be done, but not very accurately.

Teach your players to bring the ball with strength to the triple threat position prepared to shoot, pass, or drive.

When you are working on catching drills it is best to build them in sequence. Start first with catching from a stationary position. This is best done in combination with stationary passing drills. Simple examples players in pairs, or in a circle. The next step is to add movement to the catching. I always create drills which are similar to our game situations, such as creating a lead on the wing or post players coming to the high post, and squaring up. The final step of catching off of movement should be catching in the open court on a full speed run, such as required by the fastbreak.

I have found that using a simple 2 on 0 pass and catch drill is effective for teaching catching in fast break situations. In this drill the players are required to pass, sprint, and catch the length of the floor for a lay- up, without any dribbles, traveling, or bad passes, with 6, 5, then 4, possibly 3 passes. This is a good warm-up drill, and also teaches players to stride (remember stride length and stride rate= speed) to the basket. How many fast breaks have your teams had where they were open but the players threw the ball away or couldn't catch it.

Drills you might consider using after your players have mastered the basic art of catching include bad pass drills, where the receiver must adjust and gather the ball to the triple threat position once they have caught the poorly thrown pass. DON'T do this is your players have trouble catching the ball. You'll never build confidence this way. Finally, I have used four corner dribble, pivot and pass drills, where different types of pivots and passes are called out for at various intervals to teach concentration. Even the best players with the best skills will make mistakes if their concentration isn't sharp. I'm a firm believer that concentration is a practiced skill. You can't expect your players to concentrate for 30 or 40 minutes in a game if they can't keep their concentration in a 2 minutes passing drill.

Remember coaches teach your players to:

• 1) Always practice moving to the ball with both hands up.
• 2) Always run through the ball when catching a pass.
• 3) Catch the ball with your thumbs pointed upwards and towards the eyes, collapsing the arms to absorb (decelerate) the force of the arriving ball.
• 4) Always catch the ball near the basket from a one contact (two foot) jump stop.
• 5. Whenever you catch the ball you must immediately bring the ball to the triple threat position.

Go to Part II of our clinic where I discuss techniques and rules for teaching Pivoting, and Faking Skills