Mad Skillz Basketball Drills

This is one of the most basic basketball drills out there. You have to learn the basics of shooting a basketball if you want to get good at the game. This video is by Coach Tony Ingall of Kennisaw University in Georgia. The best basic techique to how to shoot a basketball starts with how you hold a basketball. The most common flaw is how people hold the ball. If you miss your shot, you want to be able to rebound the ball close to the basket. If you hold the ball wrong, and the rubber seams come in contact with the iron rim, it’s going to bounce out really far. So proper hand placement is key. What you want to do is to put your hand on the ball in a way where your thumb and index finger form a “U” shape as opposed to an “L” shape (see the video) The reason is that if your hand forms an “L” shape, it’s usually because your elbow is out. But if you have a “U”, that means that your elbow is typically going to be under your ball. That’s a common flaw for young kids because they use their thumb to grip the ball with their thumb. This is a subtle, but critical thing to keep in mind.

As far as stance, you want your legs shoulder length apart, relaxed, and your knees slightly bent. You want to then hold the ball like we discussed above and bring your second hand, your guide hand, to the side of the ball. You do not want it on top. After you shoot, you want to hold your follow through.

Another key is that as you shoot, the ball is rotating smoothly, not a lot of wild rotation. It looks clean and orange. If you see the seams while the ball is rotating you weren’t holding it right when you shot it. Now this is important because it affects where the ball goes if you miss the shot. If it’s spinning properly, it might bounce out of the rim, on to the backboard, and back into the rim. Or it could hit the rim and give your team mate a chance to go to the basket, battle for position, and drop it back in. So paying attention to these small details will really help improve your game.

Couple points: a lot of guys on the street come down and take the ball way up above their shoulders when they crossover. On the court, you need to keep the ball at your waist. You actually want to step out waist high, cross low at your ankles, step you, push, and go. Efficiency of movement is critical, you want to plant your foot and then cross instead of moving all around left and right. You want to get as many reps as you can, standing in a straight line while executing the move. You step out, and then cross and the ankles, and boom just go. Keep doing this over and over again.

Obviously repetition is critical. Now in addition to working on the explosive dribble, you have to work on the explosive take off after the cross over. I mean, what good is a cross over if you aren’t going to capitalize off it. So make sure you practice the crossover and explode out

This is one of the best basketball drills I’ve seen. If you notice, the best scorers use techniques similar to these. The thing is that you need to be able to create space between you and the defender if you want to do some power moves, shoot, whatever. But in order to effectively do any of these, you need to aggressively to get your defender to move hard in one direction, and then create a gap and make your move. The point is to get the defender to slide and think you’re going one way, then as soon as you get them to turn their shoulders so you can make your move. Master this technique and they’re at your mercy.

To pull this off, you want to attack, and attack hard. Attack hard… remember that. That’s where you get your space. Aggressively move in one direction, get their momentum going, and then quickly step back to make space. Don’t be afraid to go strong and make contact if you have to. If they don’t cut you off as you attack, you got them beat. When you get that space, cover some ground so you have plenty of space to take a relaxed jump shot. It’s much better than having to fight for a shot at the rim. Don’t take small little steps back either unless you have adequate space. You can then pull up for a jump shot or iniatiate another move. If the defender is coming in to close the space, you instantly have the advantage of attacking off the dribble. Keep practicing and you’ll notice a marked improvement in your game.

This basketball drill is supposed to develop quickness in the finger tips and sensitivity of touch. The player is just sitting on the ground and starts to dribble as fast as he can very close to the ground. This sharpens your coordination and makes you quicker. If you’re doing it right, you’ll notice the ball starting to sound like popcorn after a while. Then you see the player extend his hands out, bring them back in, dribbling with his left hand only, out and in. Then the right hand, out and in. Then do two hands, in circles, whatever. The point is to take your time, whether it’s 5 minutes, 10 minutes, or even 15 minutes. You just need to get comfortable patting the ball and developing finger tip sensitivity. It’s an easy drill so you should be able to do it everyday.

Now this basketball drills video is just skillz upon skillz. It comes from the folks over at SuperHandles.com It’s basically a string of clips of some ridiculous basketball handling. They have a bunch of very difficult basketball drills, but they do show just how much you can do with the proper level of practice.

For example they do single ball and double ball drills. One ball drills are realistic and are geared towards getting the coordination aspect down. If you can dribble two basketballs simultaneously during practice, you’re doing really well because by the time you’re doing one of the moves in a game, you’re at a serious advantage… leaving your defender no change to stop you. Towards the end of this video you’ll see an amazing two ball moving drills where the guy is dribbling two basketballs between both of legs up and down the court… handles on top of handles.

Here, in game moves are demonstrated in real game situations, broken down to teach people how to do them. The video is pure excitement, you see some amazing ball control here.