Online Basketball Drills

Basketball Drills, Plays and Coaching Tips

Triangle Breakout Drill

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Drill Type:  Defensive Drill

Purpose:

The purpose of this defensive drill is to teach the defense to box out. It also teaches players to transition quickly from defense to offense.

Set Up:

  • Three players set-up in a triangle under the basket.
  • Two other defensive players stand on each wing.
  • Three offensive players will try to get the rebound.
  • The three defenders must box out these players.

triangle-breakout-drill

Execution:

  1. Coach takes the shot. When the shot is taken, the defensive players must box out the offensive players.
  2. Once a defender grabs the rebound, that player must make an outlet pass to one of the players on the wing.
  3. The offensive players should contest the outlet pass. If the defense doesn’t grab the rebound or successfully make an outlet pass, then the ball goes back to the coach for another shot.
  4. Once the outlet pass is made, all five players (the three in the triangle under the basket and the two outlet players) break up court and run a play.
  5. Once the play is completed, the drill is run again.

Coaching Keys

  • The coach should make sure the defensive player find a man and successfully box that man out.
  • Players should go up strong for the rebound. Then a crisp outlet pass should be made.

Defending the Dribble Drill

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Play Type:   Defensive Drill

Purpose:

The offensive player’s goals here is to take the ball as hard as he can to the basket, while the defensive player’s try to defend the dribble for eight seconds.  You want to see a great battle of offensive talent and defensive talent.

Execution:

  1. If the offensive player gets through, instead of shooting it, he takes it back out again.
  2. Continue to come back and attack him again for a period of eight seconds.
  3. The defensive player will attack tenaciously, focusing on staying between the man and the basket.

Coaching Tips:

  • With this drill and others like it, we put an emphasis on is defense. If we play defense, then we’re going to be in every game. But defense has to be played by all five that are on the court – five or six or eight more, depending on your team’s size – ready to come in and pick up the same effort.
  • We don’t give any fool’s gold. Fool’s gold means is if we’re working at the defensive end and the offense just goes half-speed making the defense look good, that’s fool’s gold. We don’t want to get a false sense of security of doing something right if our teammates aren’t pushing as hard.
  • Stop penetration, challenge the shot, and screen out so that we give up no second shots – Those are our three components at the defensive end.

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Super Drum Defense Drill

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Play Type:   Defense & Scoring Drill

Purpose:

In this defense drill, you are playing a 3 on 3 defensive game. The only team that can score is the defense.

Set Up:

  • Put the kids in teams of 3.
  • Have Team 1 as the defensive team on the baseline, and everyone else in 3 lines behind the 3 point line.
  • The person in front of each line is team 2.
  • The coach is on the baseline, and rolls the ball to one of the players on team 2.

Execution:

  1. It is now 3 on 3, and the only team that can score is the defensive team (Team 1).
  2. They get a point by getting a steal, creating a turnover, or getting a defensive rebound.
  3. If the offense scores (Team 2) they get no points, but replace Team 1 as the defense, and Team 1 goes to the end of the lines, and the drill starts over.
  4. Do this drill for 6 minutes and the team with the most points doesn’t have to run the consequence.

Coaching Tips:

This drill works on all aspects of defense: closeout, backside, cut off baseline, screen and roll etc.. It makes for a good offensive drill also, because they want to score to play defense.

 

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Hide and Seek Team Defense Drill

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Communicating in transition is especially important, with the margin for error shrinking due to the fact the defense is not set.

This drill gives us a chance to practice all of the skills we’ve learned in halfcourt and apply them to a full court transition situation.

Setup

Have five offensive players lineup on one baseline, and five defenders line up on the free throw line on that side of the court – facing AWAY from the offense so they can’t see them.

hideandseek

Execution

Now a coach will stand in front of the offensive players, and make a pass to whoever he chooses.

Once that pass is made, the coach will call out “go.”

The defenders will spin around, identify who has the ball, and immediately begin communicating as they hustle to get back to the key.

Each defender should call out who he’s guarding the whole way down the court.
“I got Chris!”
“I got Brian!”
“I got Jaden!”

And so on.

Once the offense gets over halfcourt, the defense will continue to chatter constantly, letting their teammates know where they are and what they’re doing.

For example…
“I got ball!”
“Watch screen left!”
“Back door! Back door!”
“I got your help on the weakside!”
“Deny! Deny!”

From there the offense tries to score, with the defense collecting a stop on a defensive rebound.

Variations

To make this drill even more challenging for the defense, move the offense players up to halfcourt.

This will force the defenders to communicate VERY quickly under pressure of an immediate score.

hideandseek2

Scoring The Drill

After the defense has collected three stops in a row, they switch, with either a new team coming in on offense and offense going to defense

Or if you’ve only got 10, just an offense defense switch. If the defense fails to communicate, the stop does NOT count.

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