Teaching Young Players The Fundamentals

Although I have coached older players, I am currently working with youth boys.  At this level I am not sure what specific fundamentals to teach in the one or two hours a week we have.  Most have played driveway ball, but have not played on a team full-court.  Can you offer any drills to teach them fundamentals?  I figure that most know how to shoot from the schoolyard or driveway.  What should I practice?  If you can offer any drill ideas I would appreciate it.

Coach John Ebbecke

Dear Coach

I am often asked these types of questions by many youth coaches regarding what to teach or how to drill.  You could write volumes about coaching youth, which is not my area of expertise.  None-the-less I would offer these comments.  Regardless of the level you are coaching you must learn to coach based on your teams and individual players needs.   Your coaching success will in fact be determined by your power of observation, ability to communicate specific teaching points in a clear precise way, and motivate your players to practice them.  

If your players have pretty good shooting skills, but poor ball-handling, dribbling, passing or pivoting skills then be sure to focus your practices on those areas.  You can make the drills more fun for the kids by completing specific drills with a shot.   Just be sure they know the major purpose of the drills and on what to focus their attention.  My experience has been that very few youth coaches spend enough time on the basics these days.  Most players think they are boring, but in fact failure of players to routine their skills will always handicap them as players down the road.  You job is to be creative in drills.   

Shooting
1.    Practice shooting from a stationary position for automating shooting motion, focus on consistent set position of the ball, elbow pointed toward the basket, wrist cocked, a high release point and follow-through with the forefinger into the basket.
2.    Then practice one and then two-stepping into the ball to the shooting motion direct to the basket.  The key here is teaching them to keep energy in their legs.
3.    Teach them to step in low and with explosive energy.  This is done by teaching them to sprint into their movements.  Most young players walk to the ball.  
4.    After their shooting motion has become fairly consistent have them practice coming to the ball off a pass from the side (right and left).
5.    Once they become familiar and confident with this motion, then add changing rhythms.  Have them sprint to the ball, and you call shot at different rhythms.  This teaches them to keep their balance, and also maintain energy in their legs necessary to shoot properly.  Most young players release the energy and end up “arming” the ball to the basket because of lack of energy.
6.    At progressively higher levels you can then work on catching bad passes and bringing the ball back quickly to the correct set position from a variety of movement.
7.    Finally add shooting off the dribble, both left and right.

Dribbling
1.    Practice the stationary dribble, then controlled dribble forward and backwards and with either hand, then finally add speed dribbling with a controlled stop.
2.    Begin teaching change of speed and direction keeping the hand behind or slightly on top of the ball, hard dribble, head up, and fingers spread never allowing the palm to touch the ball.
3.    Teach them to back up with the dribble against pressure.
4.    Teach them to crossover and reverse pivot before adding more complex dribbles such as through the legs, behind the back, and spin dribbles.
5.    Teach them to stop quickly and pass with either hand from the dribble.
6.    Teach them to drop almost to their knee in preparation to pivot or make a penetration dribble, or pass around a defender.

You can make your own list like this for each of the other basketball fundamentals.  These are only my abbreviated suggestions.

It sounds like you know the game reasonably well.  Simply sit down and make a list of each skill and rank skill drills from simplest to most complex.  Then write down three drills for each skill fundamental level.  Each day in practice make sure at least two of all basic skills are practiced if not more.  If you are short of practice time, then create combination drills.  Such as a dribbling drill, leading to a pass, leading to a cut, and then defensive shuffle.  Such practice time should be allotted each day to the most basic fundamentals but progress quickly to combination drills once the basics have been “refreshed”.

Once you feel the basics are being somewhat mastered, then begin to progressively add them together into drills such as defensive footwork to rebounding, passing to shooting, or shooting to defensive footwork.  Then begin to add elements of team offense, defense, and transition.  These drills are taught in the same way.  Make a list of the most important elements and rank them from simple to complex.  Then create 3 drills for each level and element.  Once your team has begun to master team skills you can add progressively more complex elements.  Any time you confronted with elements that cannot be executed go back down one level and practice those lower level fundamentals.

At the end of each practice and each week, jot down some notes about your player’s progress and then construct a list of skills that need more attention for the following week.  Then plan your practices accordingly.  

One final note about coaching youth.  One of the best things you can do for young kids is to give them a large amount of “movement experiences”.  The more they learn about their bodies, their strength, and learn to control it the more quickly they can apply those previously learned experiences to higher level skills.  This is called transfer of learning and is good cause to provide them a lot of challenging physical drills or games.

Your powers of observation and your teaching ability and creativity will determine how well your player’s progress.

Thanks for Asking the Coach