The Complete Player

I love the game of basketball.  I spend a lot of time each day thinking about it.  I love the strategy, the excitement, the physical fitness involved, and most importantly of all, the development of players.  With this topic comes a big question.  What are the important skills/qualities that a player should work on developing in order to become great?

Before I get into specifics, let me answer this question in general terms.  When you play sports, the analogy I like to use is that of a soldier.  A soldier will be a great warrior if he has the following:
  • Weapons needed to go to battle.
  • The training to use those weapons effectively.
  • The courage to go to battle due to the confidence he has in his training, his weapons and his ability to use them.
How does this relate to basketball?  If you view a game as a battle and your opponent as the enemy, you will have more confidence on the floor when you know that you have more weapons in your arsenal than he does and that you have practiced refining those weapons with endless hours of work in the gym. The confidence that you have gained putting all of the work in, will give you the courage to do what needs to be done to win the game.  Even if that means taking the game winning shot.

So now that we know that basketball can parallel a battle and the player a soldier, let's go into detail about what skills a complete player needs to get in order to be considered elite.

To start with, there are 8 facets of the game that all need to be worked on by players who aspire to be great.  Those eight facets of the game are:
  1. Layups
  2. Dribbling
  3. Shooting
  4. Using both Hands
  5. Passing
  6. Rebounding
  7. Defense
  8. Athleticism
Players who aspire to becoming the best player they can be need to work hard on all 8 of the facets listed.  If I had to pick which ones need to be worked on first, I would say layups, dribbling, and using both hands are the 3 most important followed closely by shooting.  This does not mean that the rest of them are not critical.  It just means that I would start coaching beginners on the first three before  anything else.

We will take some time to discuss all eight of the facets in upcoming posts.  For now I hope this gets you thinking about your game and which facet you may need to work on the most.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Drill: 5v5v5 Fast Break

Image
This is a nice drill that emphasizes a whole bunch of game like situations.  Here is the list:  Fast Break Secondary Break Offensive sets Transition Defense Transition to standard defense Recognizing and attacking odd man opportunities.
Read more

Burpees (HIIT) Bakers Dozen

 Below is a great burpee workout that you can use to challenge yourself.  This challenge is called the baker's dozen.  Below is the rep range for each set and rest intervals between each set. 13 burpees 1 minute rest 12 burpees 1 minute rest 11 burpees 1 minute rest 10 burpees 1 minute rest  9 burpees 1 minute rest 8 burpees 1 minute rest 7 burpees 1 minute rest 6 burpees 1 minute rest 5 burpees 1 minute rest 4 burpees 1 minute rest  3 burpees 1 minute rest 2 burpees 1 minute rest 1 burpee 1 minute rest During the rest period you should be walking and getting yourself ready for the next set.  Don't sit down. Once completed you will have done a total of  91 burpees in about 20 minutes. It should be noted that the balers dozen method to HIIT training can be used doing different types of exercises including mountain climbers, push ups, pull ups, squats, lunges, 20 yard sprints and others. If you are in outstanding shape then you can decrease your rest periods to 45 seconds, 30 sec
Read more

Layups, Layups, Layups

Image
 When we go to youth games we like watching how the kids warm up.  To us youth basketball is an easy game to coach.  As a youth coach you need to teach your kids how to play good aggressive man to man defense and on the offensive end teach them how to pass and move towards the basket.  In a pass an move offense, layups are so important.  This goes back to our opening statement about watching youth level warm ups.  Most of the teams warming up spend a lot of time shooting shots, but the good ones are always working around the basket.  We've always found it entertaining that youth teams spend so much time working on jumpers and so little time on layups.  In addition, the little time they do spend on layups is spent doing basic layups using the right hand on the right side and the left hand on the left side.  There is so much more to it than this however and kids should be exposed to different types of layups in practice.  No one can predict what kind of layup opportunity will present
Read more