Tool of the Day Archive June 2008

June 30 1000+ SHOTS SHOOTING WORKOUT we received a shooting workout that one of our subscribers has developed that he wanted to share with everyone.  It is called the 1000+ Shots Shooting Workout.  You can take a look at it by clicking on the link.

June 27 BLOCKER MOVER We have added some concepts from Dick Bennett's Blocker Mover offense in our TEAM OFFENSE section.  Even if you are not a motion team, it is worth a look as you might be able to use and idea or two in what you run.  Another thought is that if you face anyone who runs motion, it helps to learn as much about as you  can to be better able to defend it. When you get to the TEAM OFFENSE section, click on the schemes tab at the far right.

June 27 HALFTIME With most school starting fall sports practices in a little over a month, take some time to recommit to your goals for your summer basketball skills workouts.  Rededicate yourself to the areas that you are working to improve and adjust your plans and drills if necessary. I truly believe that basketball players are made in the summer through individual skill development workouts.  It takes dedication and commitment to workout in a hot gym in the middle of the summer.  Not everyone has what it takes, but for the players who persevere in the summer, they will be rewarded with improved play in the winter. If you did not see yesterday's quote of the day, here it is:"Successful people form the habit of doing what failures don't like to do. They like the results they get by doing what they don't necessarily enjoy."--Earl Nightingale, motivational speaker.  The only thing I would add is that even though it is a lot of hard work, I hope you enjoy your summer workouts. The quote is on our basketball quotes page now.

June 26 MEGA LEGS Today's e-mail is going out to both coaches and players.  It is a follow up exercise to the Super Legs workout from My Trainer that we sent out at the end of May.  This one is called Mega Legs and takes it to another level.

June 25 OPEN OR CLOSED? Coach Don Meyer asks his players. "If the basketball had eyes, would they be open or closed when you have it?"

June 24 A GAME OF INCHES Make a shot fake a two inch fake.  Start the shot and stop it after two inches.  That is enough to get the defender to react and is compact enough for the player to then make either a dribble to get away from the defense, or a pass to a teammate and a cut. Make the fake believable by making it the same speed as the normal shot. Make practicing the two inch shot fake a part of your basketball drills routine.

June 23 WHAT DO YOU EXPECT? Michael Jordan always expected to get hit when he took the ball hard to the rim because he did not want to be angry when shooting his free throws.  After all, the best revenge is making the free throws.

June 20 THE LEADER IN LEADERSHIP If you have not seen any of John Maxwell's leadership and team building books, it is certainly worth your time to take a look at them.  He speaks to and is read by most NBA and NFL coaching staffs. He has a leadership newsletter and archives of all of his newsletters at his Injoy website. Anytime you have a chance to borrow one of his books, you won't be disappointed. He has written over 20 in all.  Here are some links to Amazon to look at parts of three of my favorites: The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader, The 17 Essential Qualities of a Team Player.

June 20 MICHAEL JORDAN DRIVING OFF THE FAKE This is the third part of a four part series with Michael Jordan teaching about individual offensive moves. In this short video he goes over driving off the fake.

June 19 IF... Here is a link to one of our basketball poems by Rudyard Kipling entitled, "If."  We hope that coaches can use it for your player notebooks and that players who are subscribed will find this to be inspirational as well.

June 18 TWO OUTA THREE AIN'T BAD Coach Dick Bennett built his pack line pressure defense on the belief that of these three defensive skills:  Denying the passing lanes, helping on dribble penetration, and recovering to a shooter, it is only possible to do two of those three consistently well.  He chose helping and recovering for his pack line defense.  Seems like it worked out pretty well.

June 18 MICHAEL JORDAN CROSSOVER This is the second part of a four part series with Michael Jordan teaching about individual offensive moves. In this short video he goes over the crossover step.

June 17 MICHAEL JORDAN TRIPLE THREAT This is the first of a four part series with Michael Jordan teaching about individual offensive moves. In this short video he goes over the jab step from the triple threat position.

June 17 FEEDING THE POST When the ball is at the free throw line extended and the post is being fronted, the lob pass is only open if it can be thrown on the ball side of the basket and caught at the block.  That way it is thrown away from the helpside defense and once the post player catches, he or she has room to score rather than catching the ball too far under the basket.  Just one more reason that post players need to establish position above the block.

June 16 SAM CASSELL ON THE MID RANGE GAME Last Friday's e-mail encouraged you to develop a mid range game as one of the three parts of your game.  Today's tool of the day is a video from Sam Cassell discussing the mid range game.  Make sure that you do not use the bump he is talking about when you use your step back move.  The NBA can get away with that, you won't be able to.  It is still a very effective move, even without the bump.

June 16 BORING...BORING... Dean Oliver, who has served as a basketball statistical analyst for the Seattle Supersonics and the Denver Nuggets wrote some interesting articles in the online Journal of Basketball Studies.  The link on his name above is to his entry in Wikipedia.  The entry has a list of the contributions he has made to the statistical analysis of basketball. This  link is to his article, "How Slow Can You Go? " which offers statistical proof as to why an underdog increases its chances of winning by slowing the pace of play.  The fans don't like it, but the numbers say it is the best strategy.  You will arrive at the Journal of Basketball Studies site, then click on articles, and on "How Slow Can You Go?" The article was written in 1997, but it is still valid today.  His book, "Basketball on Paper," was released in 2002 and offers some very interesting information on the statistical analysis of the game of basketball.  It is worth taking a look at.  You can Click on  "Basketball on Paper," and go to a page on Amazon where you can read excerpts from the book.

June 13 THREE PARTS OF YOUR GAME In your summer workouts and as you play 5 on 5, make sure that you are working to develop these three areas of your game: Three Point Shot:  Work to develop the ability to come off screens or relocate to be able to catch and shoot the ball quickly, but without hurrying. Midrange Game:  If you can hit the three point shot consistently, defenders will jump or at least come out of their stance to challenge your shot.  Learn to shot fake the three point shot and make a getaway dribble for a midrange shot. Driving Game:  Once you can hit that one dribble pull up shot, a helping defender will come after you, so you need to be able to make a dribble move to beat that helper to get to the basket. Make sure that you are consciously practicing each of those aspects of individual offense to be able to fit them into your team's offensive concepts.  Look for how and when to apply those in summer games and then evaluate the effectiveness in games of each and then how you will practice to improve in your individual workout tomorrow.

June 12 30 YEARS OF FAILURES Abraham Lincoln had his share of failures, but maybe that is what molded his toughness to lead our nation through some of its most difficult years.  Here is a list of some of his setbacks over his 30 years of adulthood:  Abraham Lincoln. We hope that you can find this useful and inspiring for yourselves and your team

June 11 WORKING TO IMPROVE THE WORKOUT At the request of one of our subscribers we are putting together one long document with our competitive workout drills all on the same page on our site.  It is still a work in progress, but here is what we have so far.  You might want to bookmark it and check back from time to time. Competitive Workout

June 11 ANOTHER YOUTH SUMMER CAMP IDEA In our opinion, the best way to teach layups in summer youth camp is by shooting two foot power layups with the strong hand on both sides of the basket.  We do not feel that it is a productive use of time to continually go over weak hand layups with large numbers in a youth camp with elementary level players.  We feel that during the seasons, their coaches can work with them on weak hand layups and that there is not enough time to do it right in a short summer camp.  Our feeling is that it is worth the time to teach proper shooting mechanics and ways that they can practice on their own to improve.

June 10 UP AND COMER FROM DOWN UNDER One of the fun things about doing this website has been the number of coaches and players that we have corresponded with from all over the world.   Today's  tool is a new website that  Coach  Heath Millar is putting together a good site in Australia.  Like us, it is relatively new.  Here is the address so that you can follow the progress:  www.hoopshelp.com.au

June 10 THE ONLY WAY TO PLAY The only way to improve when you play pick up games is to work yourself into the mental state that you are going to play as hard every game this summer as you do in your team's biggest game of the season. It has been proven that you can increase your energy level by the thoughts that you think.  So, spend a few minutes working yourself into the frame of mind that at the end of the game, anyone watching or playing would agree that you played harder than anyone else in the game.  You can't control your quickness, size, speed, etc... but you can control the effort that you give on every possession.  Not many players play as hard as they can in the summer.  Use every chance to play as hard as you can.

June 9 MOVING WITHOUT THE BALL Another one of the NBA Fundamental clips from TNT posted on YouTube, Richard Hamilton discusses moving without the ball.  He makes some great points on changing speeds and changing directions. In addition to the instruction that he provides in this basketball video, he demonstrates one of the drills that he uses in his basketball workouts to work on moving without the ball.

June 6 YOUR WORTH TO THE TEAM We found a 25 question test for players to give to themselves called Your Worth to the Team.  Click the link to see it on our site.  It is also a nice piece for coaches to stick in their filing system to use with your team.

June 5 A BETTER WAY TO PLAY 1-ON-1 1 on 1 can be a valuable part of an individual workout.  To use  1-on-1 as a tool to improve,  play "Continuous 1-on-1."  In continuous  1-on-1 there is no "checking up top."  Once a player scores, the other player who is now on offense, takes the ball out of the net and spins it out  anywhere behind the three point arc, goes out and meets the pass , squares to the basket and plays from there.  Even if the shot is missed, if the defender gets the rebound, he or she spins it out  behind the arc and  plays from there.  It is a good toughness and conditioning drill to finish a workout with  and it forces players to go from offense to defense and defense to offense in a more game-like way. 

June 4 IDEA FOR YOUTH CAMP 3 ON 3 GAMES. Here is an idea if you run a summer youth basketball camp or clinic.  This is a really good thing to do with 4th - 6th graders.  To keep the 3 on 3 games from being a dribbler and 2 watchers, consider making it a rule that every completed pass followed by a basket cut is worth one point for the offense.  It emphasizes the give and go, you can teach passing to the outside hand away from the defense, meeting the pass, and other areas you want.  It de-emphasizes dribbling, and it makes the defense play harder to stop the passes.  You can set a limit of no more than 7 passes if there is lack of action.  Still count baskets as 2 or 3 and free throws as 1.  After a few days of doing this, it starts to look like basketball! 

June 4 THE EXTRA DEGREE We sent this out a couple of months ago to our coaches' list.  It will only take 3 minutes of your time to watch it and we feel that it will be a great inspiration for players as you begin your summer workouts.  Remember, you are going to commit to doing 25 basketball skill development workouts before school starts again at the end of the summer. We hope you benefit from 212 The Extra Degree... and find some thoughts you can use to share with your teammates. Make sure your sound is on and then click Here to watch: 212 The Extra Degree...

June 3 A GREAT BASKETBALL NEWSLETTER Coach Creighton Burns, a very successful high school and college basketball coach, has begun putting out a newsletter with a lot of great ideas from various sources. Click here to see a sample of one of the articles or download an entire newsletter. There is a place to sign up for the newsletter if you are interested.

June 3 SHANE BATTIER ON TAKING A CHARGE Today's Players video was from the same series as yesterday's video, but is a short explanation on Taking the Charge by Shane Battier.

June 2 THE BASKETBALL PRACTICE MINDSET We have had several requests for more ideas on improving basketball practices.  In order to throw out some thoughts, we have compiled our best ideas to improve basketball practice into an e-book called, "130 Great Ideas to Get a Lot More Accomplished in Practice."  The ideas are grouped into 7 practice principles.  We have posted Principle #1 "The Practice Mindset" on our site in HTML format. You can download it in pdf format if interested. We are offering the entire e-book with all 7 principles of having more effective basketball practices through the application of our 130 ideas for $12.95 with an unconditional 100% money back guarantee if you don't feel that it was worth that price once you have read the entire document.

June 2 RAY ALLEN ON JUMP SHOOTING We found some good videos on YouTube.  It was a TNT series called NBA fundamentals. The first video is Ray Allen on Jump Shooting.  It has some good game footage of his shooting form along with some basketball shooting tips.