Hi guys,

First time poster, I am a huge fan of the ebooks and have purchased a number of them to help with organising my team (Rebounding, Man Defense, Motion Offense, Post Play).

I player/coach a social league team in Australia. We are in Division 3 (Div 1 being the highest). Some players are more serious than others, all of us have careers and basketball is something we do for fun. But, we want to improve as individuals and as a team.

Teaching adults who are casual about basketball is quite challenging as, like kids I suppose, they don't want to drill and have short attention spans. Given their age and the casual nature of it, you can't just bark at people or bench them and expect to get results.

One particular problem I have is trying to teach our bigs fundamentals like boxing out and catching. They don't want to drill, so its best if I can give them game situation type drills rather than "pure" skill drills.

I've come up with some drills from the rebounding drills and motion drills ebooks that I can work with. But I'm stumped on how to teach catching. Does anyone have any fun drills that they can share that could be used to develop catching skills, particularly for a post player?

Coach: I coach professional basketball so motivation is really not a problem with us. However, following my season, I was asked to work out a group of enthusiasts from Meryl Lynch. These guys, like yours, were career people so I can understand a little of what you are going through. What I did was design a practice plan which included many different drills but interspersed with fun games, games that challenged them but also made them laugh at themselves and their teammates. I really got a kick out of the banter and hazing these guys did with each other.

I'm not sure how competitive your division 111 league is there but these players competed in an adult league that was not high on skill but was highly competitive and they ended up winning the league. Teaching your post player how to catch can be boring for him, my suggestion is to have your bigs run the drills with your smalls and vice versa. There are a ton of fun competitive games on this website use them. Also run lots of drills such as 2 on 1 progressing up to 5 on 5 that simulate game conditions. If your practices are well planned, up beat, competitive and most of all fun, you will be fine. Hope this helps Coach Mac