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basketball practice Planning great practices is a constant challenge for anyone involved in coaching basketball. We recently received great questions from a several coaches who are feeling the pressure to put productive units on the floor after just a few practices. The questions:

Q: There is so much to teach early in the season. How do I know where to start? How many schemes should I teach early in the season.

A: Much of this depends on the level you coach and on how long your players have been together. Experienced varsity teams will be able to start working on different schemes much earlier than 8th or 9th grade teams. Nonetheless, the following general principles can be applied to all levels.

The focus early in the season should be on laying a foundation to build on over the rest of the season.

One coaching maxim states that a coach has a responsibility to prepare the team for every possible situation ; there should be no surprises. This principle should NOT guide your actions early in a season! It is helpful to know the general tendencies of other teams in your league, conference, etc….I.e. if most of your early opponents are known to play a lot of zone defense, it makes sense to go into those games with a basic zone offense that you are somewhat comfortable running. If those opponents are known to play 95% man to man, you should obviously adjust accordingly.

Trying to prepare for every possibility is counterproductive if it prevents you from developing the basic skills needed to execute more complex schemes later in the season. It’s very possible that there will be some surprises early in the season. If you’ve spent enough time teaching principles of play, you have a good chance of success when those surprises occur. For example, you might not have enough time to perfect your offense against a specific halfcourt trap, but if your players have an understanding of the basic principles for attacking traps (i.e. ball fakes, ball reversals, keeping the dribble alive, making sure that there is a pass receiver available behind the ball, facing the basket with vision of the rim when receiving a pass) you stand a good chance of success.

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Do you have a long term plan?

Practice planning should extend beyond daily practices to include weekly and monthly plans. These form the framework of your season and provide general timelines. For high school teams, monthly and weekly plans should take scheduling patterns into consideration.

If the preseason schedule starts on December 1, you might set the following target for that date:

Have your base defense installed
Have a basic man to man offense and basic zone defense installed.
Be able to get the ball inbounds (1 or 2 B.O.B’s, and a way to inbounds against pressure)

If league play started on January 10th, I would want to have my basic package installed – so that I was at minimum able to “go vanilla” comfortable against any opponent. I might look to reach the following milestones on that date:

1. Basic defense installed and executing well

2. secondary defense installed

3. Situational defense (i.e. a press to run when behind or a zone defense to run on baseline out of bounds situations).

4. Man to man offense installed

5. A zone offense installed,

6. A pressure offense

For the second round of league play, I would want to be able to throw several new looks at an opponent that they hadn’t seen earlier on. This could include several wrinkles, set plays, offensive entries, and/or multiple defenses.

Most coaches like to save a couple of extra looks for the playoffs – these are usually situational things like inbounds plays or defensive pick-up points (i.e. running a full court press after made field goals instead of just after free throws) but can also include entire offense and/or defenses.

Start with the fundamentals – and build on them

It helps to define the staples of your program. If your school runs zones 99% of the time, your practices will look very different than a team that only runs man to man. Whatever you run, you want to teach the general framework and core concepts first, and build on them towards more specific plays and schemes.

My philosophy is that any fundamentally sound defense is built on solid man to man principles. I LOVE the press, and with most teams I will try to employ some kind of press for the entire 32 minutes of a high school game because I want to be the Aggressor, I want to put the offense on his heels and force him to react to me, and I want my kids to hustle.

But…..I NEVER teach the press before I teach man to man. I have to feel comfortable that my players all have a good understanding of man to man principles (how to pressure the ball, how to close out on the shooter and defend the drive , how to give early help, how to help and recover, establish a help side defense, bump cutters etc., etc.) before I install other, more complex schemes. I know that if I teach those man to man principles well, they will carry over and allow me to be successful with any other defense.

As a ‘motion coach’, I want my team to execute and understand basic motion principles before I start to add a bunch of extra plays. A Great way to measure understanding is to ask your players…why did you cut that direction?…what are you supposed to do when the ball hits the post?…Your defender was trailing you on the screen? What should you have done?

As player begin to recognize and respond correctly to different situations, they are demonstrating an understanding of the game that will help them execute more effectively in any situation.

What are your “Daily Dozen”?

Having a daily dozen helps structure daily practices and defines how quickly we introduce new concepts. Ask yourself, “What basic skills do we have to execute well in order to succeed?” These are the areas that are critical to your success….the specific amount can vary (the term daily dozen is used loosely here) but usually includes 6-10 area that you should try to work on every day. While these will change from team to team, after looking back over years of practice plans I noticed a theme…shooting, passing, dribbling, ball pressure, and defensive positioning are ALWAYS in my daily dozen. As a result, almost every one of the hundreds of practice plans I’ve made over the years includes some form of the shell drill, some one on one play, and some basic offensive skill work. As your team becomes more proficient at it’s daily dozen, it is telling you that it is ready to wove on to more complex schemes. However, the ‘takeaway’ here is that ‘fundamentals’ ALWAYS have a place in any teams practice plan.

For school teams, winter break can be a defining point for the entire season. Good teams will stay very involved over winter break, playing in tournaments and possibly ravelling. some teams do nothing or do very minimal work, and it will usually define the remainder of their year in a negative way. An incredible amount of growth and team cohesiveness can occur at this time for teams that are willing to put in the necessary work.

Filed Under: Basketball Practice Planning