That Basketball Life

Nice video by Coleman Ayers on how important changing speeds is in basketball. He provides some great tips also.  

This is a nice video on how to get low and how to practice getting low.

 The difference between a player who plays well in big games and the one who doesn't comes down to his ability to embrace playing outside his comfort zone.  If you listen to the successful pros in their interviews before and after big games the one common theme they all share is how important it is to embrace the opportunity that is in front of them.  They all will say how they put their trust in the thousands of hours they have spent in the gym honing their craft.  They will also say that failure never crosses their mind.  They prefer to focus on the opportunity that is before them. How does this translate to kids and how can you as a coach instill values in them so that they can embrace such opportunities?  I think there are a few steps that coaches can take to build up confidence in their team. Find competitive games for them to play in.  Teams and players need to learn how to win.  This is especially true the older the child gets.  It is ...

Interesting take on the famed gap.

The pick and roll has always been a huge part of the pro game.  Over the last few years it has trickled down through the college ranks to high school.  Below is a good video discussing how one of the best point guards of all time uses the pick and roll.      

Nice breakdown of what made Steve Nash so good.

 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 predic...