A lot of times my players are dragging and see no immediate reward for hard work, so they may slack off. Therefore, I try to make every one of the [tag]basketball practice drills[/tag] a competition and the winners choose the losers’ punishment (10 sidelines, 1 suicide, etc.)
I have found that in competition mode, the players are always pushing it and trying to win. When practicing 5 on 5 concepts, a team will receive points for boxing out, talking on defense, running a play correctly and at game speed, and so on. Once the [tag]basketball drill[/tag] is over, the punishment begins.
Usually, the winning team will run too, as support for the losers. One-on-one drills are immediately stopped and reinforced with running if they are slacking. Also, when they are running sprints, I will randomly throw a [tag]basketball[/tag] to a player in transition and have him make a lay-up while tired.
Some days, I will come to practice with a card that has anywhere from 50-100 boxes on it. Each number stands for 1 sprint. They are aware of the number on the card. For each hustle or successful play etc, one sprint is marked off. Sometimes, depending on the degree of the hustle, 2 sprints will be marked off. Also any sprints that they run during practice is marked off as well. At the end of [tag]basketball practice[/tag] the remaining sprints are run.
If in a rare case there are like 30 left, they would run segments of 3-2-1’s and suicides to account for multiple sprints. The players love this because they never know what to expect during practice.