The First Day of Practice

Official practices begin on Thursday which means that all players and coaches can be on the court at the same time with a basketball. Although basketball instruction has been taking place in small four-player groups throughout the past 6 1/2 weeks, we have not yet been able to put any of our offensive or defensive systems into place. We have focused on the principles or fundamentals of play.

When we begin on Thursday, the returners will know what to expect: more of the same emphasis on principles. The newcomers will undoubtedly want us to play more five-on-five. They will expect more focus on the systems. What they don't know is that 80% of our practices are spent in breakdown drills. It is my philosophy that the system isn't as important as the knowledge of how to use it.
In other words, I am more concerned about teaching athletes how to become better basketball players than executing a particular play or set.

For example, we spend hours upon hours teaching players how to set up their defender, go shoulder to shoulder off screeners and to read and react to where their defender goes. We might do this as footwork only or in 2-on-1 scenario or advance to 3-on-2 or 4-on-3. We move the players through drills adding speed and defenders until we get to 5-on-5. Then we break it down and build it up again. We do this from day one until the last day of practice and we do it for everything we teach.

We do the same thing with defense building on what we think are the essential pieces of defense: ball pressure, denial, help side, talking, boxing out, help-recover and closeouts. We use these principles on our half court defenses as well as our full court defenses. Whatever defense we play, we always go back to our defensive principles.

Everything is connected to how we teach our principles: how we defend screens, how we run plays, how we prepare for opponents, how we set up our scouting reports.

Inevitably, our newcomers don't understand the importance of our principles and they yearn for more scrimmages. Our returners know the benefits of the emphasis on fundamentals and they settle into practices knowing they will reap the benefits of becoming solid players.