Basketball Practice

Starting Off on the Right Foot With Your First Practice

When starting off the season, it’s a great time for a coach to come with a basketball practice routine that his or her team will follow throughout the entire season.  In doing so, players will know what to expect and less practice time will be wasted.  

At the first basketball practice of the season, provide a handout for players and their parents that includes your contact information such as phone numbers and email address, the team’s practice and game schedule and contact information for all players on the team.  I like to set up a phoning tree, which divides the team into three groups who phone the person below them in the tree when any important information needs to be delivered.  The final person calls the first person back to let them know that the information has successfully made its way through everyone.  

Also, this handout should contain your policies regarding lates, absences, and playing time.  Personally, I am of the option that all players should have equal chances on the court, especially at a young age where the goal should be having fun, with winning games coming as a bonus.  However, I do give more court time to the kids that consistently give it their all, show up on time for practices and display a positive attitude.  I like to spell this out as early in the season as possible to avoid the confrontations that can occur.  Believe it or not, I’ve actually seen parents in the stands with a stopwatch to prove that other kids are playing more than theirs are.  

Developing a Practice Routine 

Now it’s time to come up with your basketball practice routine.  Personally, I have two routines: one for sixty minute sessions and one for ninety minute sessions.  I’ll outline the longer practice plan here.  

First, we begin with fifteen minutes of warm-up drills and exercises that include light jogging, skipping, and jumping practice.  Stretches are also a key component of a good warm-up plan.  After warming up, we do ten minutes of ball-handling and dribbling drills followed by ten minutes of passing drills and ten minutes of shooting drills.  

Choose Your Own Skill

Once we’ve reached the halfway point of the basketball practice, I allow the kids a break while I explain the special skill of the practice.  Sometimes we work on our offensive strategies, other times defensive skills, and sometimes we focus on special skills like free throws or side court throw-ins.  Special skill development takes up fifteen minutes, and the final thirty minutes of the practice are devoted to scrimmage where the team can display the skills they’ve been building throughout the practice session.

No practice plan would be complete without a cool down, which lasts for five minutes, followed by a quick pep talk for our next practice or game.  At this point in the basketball practice players are allowed to answer questions they have about the skills learned or anything else that may be unclear.  I also give the team a chance to reflect on the practice, highlighting their favorite and least favorite parts in order to gauge what’s working and what’s not.