Junior Hoops of America

Seven Great Basketball Tips

Whatever your basketball level, you can greatly improve your game.  Like everything else in life, being on the look-out for continuous improvement leads to greater results and reflects a commitment to excellence on your part.  Below are a few tips that will help you to improve your game:

1. All Great Players Are Great Athletes

The most important thing you can do to improve your game is to become a good athlete. The stronger and faster you are, the better you will play. Achieve this goal through conditioning and weight training.

2. You Can't Shoot Properly Unless You Hold The Ball Correctly

The most difficult skills, including shooting, passing, catching, dribbling, and rebounding, involve holding the ball. There are many signs of faulty ball handling: dropping passes; spraining and jamming fingers; palming the ball; rebounding poorly, shooting poorly. Learn how to properly hold the ball when passing, catching or shooting and work on this skill daily until it becomes the natural way of holding the ball.

3. Use Your Wrists In Shooting, Passing, and Dribbling

The wrist skills, which include shooting, passing, and dribbling, involve the motion of the hand and wrist. Waving good-bye is an example of wrist motion that needs to be practiced. This rarely practiced motion reaps incredible benefits. Not only will you improve, but you will permanently improve.

4.  Pivoting Is A Key To Many Other Skills

Many players and coaches underestimate the importance of pivoting.  Every movement with the ball initially involves pivoting.  Players routinely pivot to shoot or pass.  What is not so obvious is that all moves, most fakes, and driving to the basket all depend on the ability to pivot.  Poor pivoters do not have moves and cannot drive well to the basket.  You must be able to pivot forward and backward using either foot.  

5. Defense Is Easy To Learn

Your stance for defense and dribbling is very similar. In both positions you need to be ready to run full speed in any direction.

6. Practice Shooting Within Your Shooting Range

If you do not shoot with the proper technique you are solidifying a bad shooting form.  Practicing from great distances distorts your shot. Improper practice makes your shot worse. So, practice from a distance that is within your range and do it with proper shooting fundamentals.  If you want to develop your shot from a farther range, make sure that you have the strength to hoist shots from downtown and that you do so in the proper way.  Don't develop bad shooting form.  Period.

7.  Play Full Court Rather Than Half Court

Half-court street basketball is very different from full court ball.  Problems associated with half court ball include:

• Half court does not have a transition from one basket to the other.  Starting a play half court and starting one full court is very different.
• In half court games you do not need to run full speed for great distances.  In full court games, you must perform out of breath after sprinting down court three or four times.
• Players congregate closer to the basket in half court than in full court, yielding more three second violations.
• In half court you are so close to the basket that players readily go one-on-one, rather than play team ball.
• In half court you have a greater chance for injury since players must make many direction changes in a small crowded area.

The Fast-Break

One of the first things that coaches look at when evaluating their talent in the preseason is overall team speed.   There is no substitute for team speed, which can be an immeasurable asset to a basketball program.   Speed is one common denominator for all successful teams, whether in high school, college, or the National Basketball Association.   Top performing teams all have excellent speed and can get down courty quickly.

The fast break is one of the best-known tools in basketball.  If you have the talent to get down the court and score points in a hurry, why not use it?  The key to running the right fast break is to create mismatches.  You want to see three-on-twos, three-on-ones, or two-on-ones,  all in your favor.  As simplistic as it may sound, there is a lot more to running a successful fast break than just grabbing a rebound and running the length of the court.  It has to be coached and taught.  Just like any other offense, players have to be in the right spots to work the break completely.

When you develop a reputation for deploying an effective fast break system after each rebound, teams  will stay at your end of the court after a basket to press you.   With this in mind, you will have to develop multiple ways of breaking the press and getting the ball down court in a hurry using ball movement and player positioning.  To do this, you will have to teach all your players to rebound the ball and push it up the court.

At the end of the day, an effective fast break system executed by a team with speed endowed players is not only exciting to watch, but more importantly, difficult to stop.

The Importance of Free-Throws

You heard it over and over again that defense wins championships and very few will argue win this logic.   Here is another one: 

Effective free-throw shooting wins games. 

According to a 1977 study, when teams are evently matched, the team with the highest free-throw shooting percentage, wins 80% of the games.  In 1986, statistics from a study which surveyed 316 games from four Division I conferences, it was found that the team that made the most free-throws, won almost 72% of the games played.

Free-throws have been estimated to account for 20 to 25% of the total points scored in most games.  Estimates of the number of games decided by free-throws during a single season range from four  to as many as one-half of all games.

It is not uncommon to hear coaches often refer to their teams' success or failure at the free-throw line as the deciding factor in the outcome of many basketball games.  

But the reality of the day is that too many players focus too much time on leaning how to dunk rather than perfecting the art of the free-throw.

With the above statistics and the fact that everyone knows how often free-throws are missed and thus affect the outcome of the game, players and coaches should establish a strict free-throw regimen that transforms the neglected art of the free-throw into their most effective weapon.

15 Qualities For Being A Great Basketball Player

1. DESIRE:  You must have the burning desire to win.
2. EDUCATION:  You must make school first and foremost for you to gain an education.
3. COURAGE:  You need to have the courage to push yourself to the limit of your scholastic abilities.
4. PREPARATION:  You have to prepare yourself physically and maintain top physical condition throughout the year.
5. TEAMPLAYER:  You are a team player and glorify the team in any victory.
6. RESOLVE:  You are bitterly disappointed by defeat, but react to it by displaying a more determined effort and resolve.
7. KNOW YOUR ROLE:  You must learn your assignments thoroughly; both in basketball and in school.
8. RELENTLESS:  You are more relentless than your opponents, retain greater poise and take advantage of any breaks that your opponents may provide.
9. NEVER QUIT:  You never quit, never admit defeat and play every play as if it is the crucial one of the game.
10. WORK ETHIC:  You must work on your weaknesses every day.
11. SACRIFICE:  You are willing to make sacrifices involving limited social activities and adhere to all training regulations.
12. CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT:  You have the intent to come off the court a better player after every game or practice.
13. TIMELY:  You need to develop regular study habits and prepare your assignments accurately and on time.
14. HUSTLE:  You must hustle all the time.
15. DESIRE. OVER AND OVER AGAIN:  Repeat the first quality: You must have the burning desire to win.

The Rebounder

Rebounding is not sexy.  Most players spend most of their time shooting because that is where the glamour exists.  There is no glory in working your butt off to position yourself just right in order to pull down a rebound that someelse has just shot and that some else will requisition from you in order to shoot.  Most kids don't grow up wishing that they could rebound, but instead, salivate thinking about shooting the winning last second shot or the day that they finally get to dunk.  

Yet, winning teams always are in the top category of the rebounding statistics.  Someone on the winning teams is doing the "dirty work" of "cleaning up the glass".    When it comes down to it, more boards equals more possessions.  How many rebounds a team acquires compared to how many the team gives ups determines whether or not there is a championship team in the making.

But rebounding is not so easy.  It is hard work and it is also an art.  To succeed at the rebounding science one must have jumping ability, crafty positioning skills and an intense desire to want to go after every rebound.  Great rebounders don't just jump up in their space to get the ball, they also go after the ball outside of their space.  They create holes through multiple bodies and "hurl" themselves at where the ball is as opposed to waiting for the ball to come to them. 

An elite rebounder must have obsessive compulsive disorder when it comes to going after every rebound.  To them it must be considered an insult when someone else gets the rebound over them.   Wanting to get the rebound has to hurt inside.   There are no "ifs, ands or buts" about it.   Period.

Moving people out of the way is a prerequisite for being a great rebounder.  The desire to get physical must be in the rebounders DNA.  Getting low into the legs of his opponent in order to drive him into the parking lot of the gymnasium must be the goal.  Power, positioning, craftiness and an intense need to have the ball must be in the blood.

Quick Release Basketball Shooting

Basketball Post Moves

By BreakthroughBasketball.com

Two Post Moves

1. 1.  Drop Step - Baseline
   
   
2. 2.  Drop Step - Middle

The goal of the drop step is to get the defensive stuck on your back so he can not disrupt your shot as you drop step towards the basket for a lay up.

 

 

 

How to Drop Step towards the Baseline

• Plant your inside foot as the pivot foot and
• As you receive the pass, drop step towards the goal with your outside leg.
• Drive your knee of the leg that originally was your pivot foot up towards the goal and complete the lay up.

How to Drop Step towards the Middle

• Plant your outside foot as the pivot foot and
• As you receive the pass, drop step towards the goal with your inside leg.
• Drive your knee of the leg that originally was your pivot foot up towards the goal and complete the lay up.

Tips:

Keep Your Hips Low - Approach the chair and keep your hips low. Just like in a game you want to maintain a low center of gravity to keep a solid base so you are not easily pushed around. If you get lower than the defensive player with a solid foundation and you bump into the defender, it is more likely to knock the defender off balance which will open up more scoring opportunities. 

Long and Strong - I like to remind players to take a long step and go up strong towards the goal. This helps them get to the goal quickly and prepares them for contact by the goal.

Advanced Variations:

Power Drop Step - Take one hard dribble and come to a jump stop with both feet before powering up for the lay up. 

Drop Step w/ Contact - Nudge the player as he goes towards the goal with a pad or your hands. This will help condition them to power up towards the goal through contact.