Developing Individual Basketball Skills

So far, Coach Ed Schilling’s Mandatory Moves has made quite a splash with the coaching community.   That’s a good thing for me, because I’ve spent a ton of time on it in the past two weeks, at the expense of updating this website as regularly as I’d like.

Luckily, I’m getting better at the non-basketball side of this – writing sales pages, web code, setting up a good customer service system. etc. – so that the events we have planned for the coming months will go smoothly and allow time to stay up to date on Perfect Practice.

The fact that Coach Schilling and Brian Brinkerhoff at Fullcourt Basketball put together a great product has made it a lot easier. I can make some mistakes with all of the projects listed above and still be confident that coaches are getting a higher value than they pay for when the product is good.

I see a lot of coaches take one of two approaches to offensive skill development that aren’t necessarily the best approaches. The first approach is to de-emphasize individual skill development in response to the “And-1″ mentality that many kids have – and many coaches hate. Personally, I don’t have a problem with the spirit a lot of the And-1 stuff – as an expression of personal creativity and love of the game. The popularity of the game today can be directly linked to the creative expression of great players like Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Dominique Wilkins, Juliuis Erving, Isiah Thomas, Kobe Bryant, Chris Paul, and Magic Jordan (er, excuse me, I meant to say LeBron James).

Part of the problem is that players often try to emulate those guys when they don’t possess the skill set to pull it off effectively. Another part of the problem is that those guys didn’t mess around playing a lot of “East-West” basketball – which is what a lot of the And-1 stuff has turned into. By “East-West” I mean that players tend to make a lot of lateral dribbling moves that lack purpose and don’t attack the defense, failing to realize that every one of the great players mentioned above was always focused on attacking the defense. They did not and do not have a lot of wasted motion in their games.

The response should not be to de-emphasize skill development – it should be to teach it correctly.   For some coaches that can be difficult to do, for several reasons – i.e. they aren’t sure what to teach beyond the most basic stuff like  establishing triple threat position, they don’t feel like there is enough time in practice, or they feel like trying  to develop those skills is going to lead to a lot of conflict with their “And-1″ type players.

Nonetheless, the fact is that individual skills, especially on the offensive side of the ball, need to be developed every day.  It’s the difference between coaching and teaching – and if it gets ignored for too long, you end up with a team full of underdeveloped players.

My enthusiasm for Mandatory Moves comes from watching Ed Schilling’s superb teaching from beginning to end.  It also comes from learning a lot from the video.   After several years of coaching, most coaches get to a point where everything gets a bit repetitive.    Those are the coaches you hear over and over again saying, “Well, if I can learn just one thing from this (video, clinic, or book), I’ll call it a success”.    I’ve said that to myself several times, and have always kind of felt lame saying it.    The short corner series in Mandatory Moves exposed me to a set of moves that I haven’t taught before from an area of the floor that I look to get the ball to quite often, especially against zones.

I’ve seen a few coaches respond to the ‘Dribble Drive’  phenomenon by going to the other end of the spectrum with skill development by allowing all kinds of 1 on 1 play without teaching it giving it any sort of structure.   It the “dribble drive motion”, not the “dribble wherever the hell you want to motion”.    This isn’t to say that the Dribble Drive is not a good offense; in fact, its a great offense, but it is one that still requires good, fundamental teaching.

Filed Under: Basketball Offense Articles

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