My assistant and I were frustrated by poor shooting around the basket and a lack of concentration at the beginning of practice. These simple basketball practice drills improved both problems.
Concentration and Shooting Skills
1. Lineup all players on the right side of the basket about 8 feet from the rim. The first man has a basketball, takes one dribble, makes a layup, and passes the ball to next player who repeats the process. The team has to make 15 layups in a row – starting over after a miss.
2. After completing the layups they have to make five bank jump shots in a row from the low block. Once again a miss means you start over.
3. After completing the jump shots the entire process is completed again on the left hand side.
4. The first time through we do this drill un-timed. The second time we place 1 min 15 seconds on the clock (adjust this based on the skill level of your players) and the goal is to complete the entire drill in that time.
5. If the team does not complete the drill in 1:15 we do it again. This time if a player misses a shot he drops out of the line. You can have that player do push ups but we found that just being pulled from the drill accomplished what we wanted.
6. After the second timed attempt we proceed with the rest of our practice, whether the team is successful or not. At first we kept doing it until we were successful but if they are unsuccessful again and again it gets practice off on a negative note, and we want just the opposite.
The drill is very successful at improving the percentage of layups made, emphasizing the proper use of the short bank shot, improving time awareness and executing as time is expiring.
The players were amazed that with concentration they could actually miss one or two shots and complete the drill in the allotted time.
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