Shooting Off The Dribble – 30 Point Drill

By Joe Haefner

Shooting Off The Dribble – 30 Point Drill

As mentioned in the video, this is a great drill that helps you improve your shooting off the dribble. And you practice shooting free throws while…

The Serbian misdirection pick and roll play – Score on a backdoor cut too

By Joe Haefner

The Serbian misdirection pick and roll play – Score on a backdoor cut too

This pick and roll play was used by Serbia in the gold medal game against the U.S.A. It uses some misdirection on the initial ball screen and some backdoor…

Utilize “The Buzz” 2-3 Half Court Trapping Defense to Force Turnovers and Tempo

By Joe Haefner

Utilize “The Buzz” 2-3 Half Court Trapping Defense to Force Turnovers and Tempo

This 2-3 half court trapping system has very simple rules and allows players to be aggressive and force turnovers while also forcing tempo. I have found…

Newsletter 58 – New Videos, New Ray Allen Shooting Drill, New Competitive Fast Break Drill, Breakthrough Basketball Camps, and More

By Joe Haefner

Here is the latest copy of our newsletter:
http://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/issue58.html

The newsletter includes:

Ray Allen Shooting Drill – Video
Competitive One on One Fast Break Drills – 1v1 Attack
New Double Ball Screen Play With Multiple Scoring Options From Bill Self’s Kansas Jayhawks
6 Zone Defense Tips
Breakthrough Basketball Skills Camps – Attack and Counter

Newsletter Issue #57 – New Transition Play, New Defense Drill, Tips For Hosting Camps, and more

By Joe Haefner

Here is our latest issue of the newsletter:
http://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/issue57.html

Here are the new articles:

How To Have A Great Basketball Camp Experience

New Competitive Defense Drill To Improve Lateral Speed, Quickness, and Technique

New Transition Play To Get You Easy Buckets Immediately After The Fast Break

6 Tips For Hosting A Successful Camp

New Articles and Plays

By Joe Haefner

We recently released Newsletter 45

Here are some of the new articles:

2 Simple Baseline Out Of Bounds Plays For All Occasions

Can Cross Country Hurt Your Game?

The Biggest Problem In Youth Sports

How Does Crowd Noise Affect Your Team? An Interesting Solution…

Should Youth Coaches AVOID Plays and Patterned Offenses?

By Joe Haefner

One year I coached two teams, a 7th & 8th grade team (12 to 14 year olds) and a Fresh/Soph team (14 to 16 year olds). Besides, being a VERY busy year, it was also an extremely educational year from a coaching standpoint.

I was frustrated from the year before when I coached 6th graders, because the offense wasn’t where I wanted it to be, and I wanted a little more control over the offense (Bad Idea). For both teams, I decided I was going to run Bo Ryan’s Swing Offense (Bad Idea). It seemed to work well for him, and I thought I might as well give it a shot. I created breakdown drills and I decided I would spend at least 15 minutes every practice drilling the patterns into these players. Little did I know…

Here are some conclusions I came to:

1.  Youth players (14 & under) forget patterned offenses or plays, so why spend time on them during practice. Even with 15 & 16 year olds, the offense would consistently break down after 3 to 4 passes.

2.  Most of the points we scored were off of fast breaks, loose balls, turnovers, and offensive rebounds. Shouldn’t we practice some more situational & disadvantage drills if that’s where we get most of our points?

3.  I could have spent a lot MORE time teaching the players the fundamentals of the game. How to read screens, how to pass, how to cut, how to shoot, how to handle the ball, and so on. Instead, I WASTED a lot of time on a patterned offense.

4.  Teaching the fundamentals of the motion offense would have benefited both teams more in the long run. Rather than teaching them a pattern, I should have taught them offensive principles. It would increase their basketball IQ. Also, when they got older, it wouldn’t matter what offense the coach runs, they would know how to play the game.

5.  Kids tend to become ROBOTIC and FREEZE up when running the plays and patterned offenses during games. They don’t react to the defense, because they are trying to please you (the coach) by running the pattern. When they forget the pattern (which is 90% of the time), they panic and freeze up. Why not run an offense that teaches the players how to react to the defense?

I decided that simplicity is better and I will always run the motion, especially at the youth levels. I’m not saying that you can’t use a few simple plays during the year. I just wouldn’t advise any more than that.

If you would like to learn more about how to coach and teach the Motion Offense, take a look at our Motion Offense eBooks and Audio.

What do you think? What have your experiences been?