Below you'll find an excellent video by Mike MacKay called A Games Approach to Teaching Basketball Skills.

I'm a huge fan of game based drills and learning. This videos give you some really good drills and ideas on how to develop your players using "games approach";.

You'll also learn how to create your own drills and how to adapt any drill to your players.

Here are a few other tips from the video...

1) Know the Stages of Player Development

It's important to know the stages and adjust your coaching based on the physical, emotional, and mental needs of each age level. The LTAD (Long Term Athletic Development) model is an excellent guide for you to reference.

2) Three Things Coaches Must Do

No matter what the stage, there are three things we must do as coaches:

• Make each individual player better - basketball skills, physically, emotionally, mentally, fitness, and socially. Develop the whole child. It's about developing them.
• Get all those individuals to work together as a team.
• Build dreams.

3) Blend Game Based and Unopposed Drills

With a games based approach, you do lots of teaching through playing games. But you don't do this totally. It's a mixture. Blending is important.

4) Loading is the Art of Coaching.

Loading is the art of coaching. You must make sure a player's skill equals the challenge. You continually adjust the rules and boundaries to provide the correct challenge. If you stay with the same thing they'll get bored. If it's too hard they'll get frustrated.

This is a really important concept. Simple adjustments to the rules of your drills will challenge players, keep them engaged, and allow them to continue improving. If you challenge them too much, they will lose confidence. If you don't challenge them enough, then they are not improving and/or getting bored.

5) Error Correction and Detection

Give players a chance to self-correct and a chance for self discovery. But you still have to do error detection and correction during the drills. Sometimes you can correct by changing the rules or boundaries. Other times you have to go back to unopposed drills to develop a needed skill or concept. Then go back to the game.

6) Debrief after each drill

After each drill, quickly debrief players to reinforce concepts. With young players, it's a very short debrief. Regardless of the age, use QUESTIONS to enhance learning.

Watch this video to see how Coach MacKay adjusts rules, boundaries and utilizes game based drills to teach players and develop skills.

Here are the drills from the video. Each link below includes diagrams and documented progressions for each drill.

Passing Drill - 10 In A Row (One of my favorite drills)
This fun drill teaches young players how to pass and move without the ball. There are many variations that can be added to progress your team's development.

Dribble Tag - Everyone It (One of my favorite warm up drills)
This fun warm up game uses the elements of childhood favorite tag, to teach ball handling and dribbling with your head up.

Capture the Flag Dribbling
Young kids love Capture The Flag. Introduce aspects from that game to create a fun and competitive dribbling drill.

Protect the Nest
This unique game helps develop teamwork and dribbling by creating a fun and competitive environment.

British Bulldog (One of my favorites for young kids)
This fun twist on a classic game creates a competitive game where players must use strategy and teamwork in order to succeed. It works on trapping, dribbling and court awareness.

What do you think? Let us know by leaving your comments, suggestions, and questions...

Comments Most Likes First   Oldest First   Newest First Charalambos Christodoulides says: 7/7/2015 at 6:32:15 AM Excellent video. Like     login   register Guinness Rider says: 7/7/2015 at 10:12:20 AM Mike MacKay is amazing. I've followed his games-based approaches all season, and in my first year (back) at coaching the interest generated by kids and parents is through the roof - literally 500% increase in sign-ups. Getting kids to play the games is rewarding and fantastic at improving skills. It's quicker, more engaging, and more fun than any method I've ever tried. Pretty much all the Basketball Manitoba videos, free on their site, are great. Kirby Schepp has a basics series that is also fantastic. Like   1 reply   login   register Joe Haefner says: 7/7/2015 at 1:17:13 PM I agree. Some great stuff there. We already have the Kirby Schepp stuff in the newsletter queue! Like   1 reply   login   register Guinness Rider says: 7/9/2015 at 12:19:44 PM Great move Joe. Basketball Manitoba has had some fantastic recent success at youth levels nationally, and clearly part of it is their approach to coaching. The Kirby Schepp videos, while geared toward older players, always have great nuggets I use even with 5-year old beginners - small stuff that helps them achieve. Thanks for keeping this rolling! Like     login   register David Mills says: 10/17/2017 at 4:25:26 AM I love this approach as well as Kirby Schepp’s. I am coaching my sons u8 team and starting to include some progressions. I’m not sure exactly what is to much at this u8 level ... any tips greatly appreciated Like     login   register

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