In today’s blog post, I am bringing you a couple more fun basketball drills based on favorite childhood games – “Shooting the Distance” and “Around the World: Musical Basketballs”. Implement these fun basketball drills into your practice plan, and your kids are going to be left wanting more!
Fun Basketball Drills: Shooting the Distance
For this silly shooting game, coaches will need to use different colors of tape to mark positions on the floor. Players will practice shooting from greater distances and see who can make a shot from the farthest away.
Using the different tape colors, coaches will mark spots on the floor to show where players should shoot from. For example, there should be a blue, yellow, red, and green mark from five, ten, fifteen, twenty, and thirty feet away from the basket, all the way to across the floor. The further away from a basket a mark is, the more points it is worth.
Players will be divided into teams based on each color. Each player will take a shot from each mark and receive points according to which baskets they make. For example, each person on the blue team will take a shot from each blue mark on the floor.
The point is for players to practice making shots from ridiculously far away positions, just to challenge themselves.
Coaches should make sure that each player gets the chance to take each shot. Once a shot has been taken on one round, that team cannot repeat that shot until the next round. Assistants should act as score-keepers.
Fun Basketball Drills: Around the World – Musical Basketballs
This game is like musical chairs, but instead of sitting down players have to grab a basketball. Coaches will need a CD player and enough balls for everyone on the team, minus one. To make the game more fun and meet the “around the world” theme, coaches can play music from different parts of the world.
The game begins with all of the players standing in a circle around all of the basketballs. When the coach starts the music, the players start running around in a circle. When the music stops, the players have to grab a ball from the middle of the circle.
Because there should be one fewer ball than there are players, one person will be left without a ball. That player will sit out the rest of the round. The players put their balls back in the circle, minus one. Then the coach will start the music and the next round begins.
Another variation of this drill is to have one basketball per player inside the circle. When the music stops the players race in to grab a ball, then run to the nearest basket and try to make a shot. When player makes a shot, he immediately sits down, showing he is done.
The last player to make their shot is eliminated from the game. Continue until there’s only one player left.
If coaches want to make the game sillier, they can have players dance around in a circle instead of just walking or running. Players should be aggressive when going for the balls, but they should be careful to not hurt any of their teammates.
For more fun basketball drills, be sure to check out “Basketball Basics for Kids”. And be sure to Become a Fan on Facebook, where I will share more fun basketball drills for kids!