Passing Skills Development??????

I have a group of 14-16 year old players who are having a difficult time passing the basketball during the games. This pass weekend, we literally threw the ball away on countless occasions and needless to say, we didn't fair well. What can I do as a coach to help them develop better passing skills? Thanks.

That is a learned skill.... something that you have to work on every day. It takes a lot of patience and repetitions... I had a few varsity teams that were terrible at this skill, no matter how much we worked on it.

http://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/drills/basketballdrills.html#passingdrills

There are some drills there... and find some, or make up your own, passing and catching drills while you are moving.

I think Coach Sar taught me this but my favorite drill for this is 3on3 full court no dribble. You play a regular game except players aren't allowed to dribble. I like to play real short games (to maybe 3 so it stays intense) and require them to defend full court. Teaches players to look before they pass, meet their pass, catch in triple threat, use pivot, learn how to get open, etc. You can also do half court, 4on4, or 5on5 no dribble. Give a big motivation to win the game. Usually I deduct points for turnovers because I hate turnovers. Worked wonders for us and was a great teaching tool.

I'm also a big advocate of the 3 v 3, 4 v 4 type drills with passing. We do one called 10 good passes. Half court, no dribbling allowed and I let them play within reason. In other words, the defense needs to be aggressive here since there's no dribbling allowed. Obviously, if you're on offense, you will have to move to get open and the passes will have to be sharp. First team to make 10 successful passes wins. Other teams do 10 push-ups while reciting, "I will make better passes".

Another important factor is the person receiving the pass isn't aggressive enough. Teach your players to come towards the ball aggressively when receiving a pass.

I think all youth teams have this issue to varying extent. Some of it is fundamentals and more work there will help. Also, I found it is not until they get a little older that they get decent at pass fakes and those certainly help cut down the turnovers.

Really I think the nub of it though (and this also applies to layups and seemingly easy shots that get missed in games) has to do with playing at game speed. I follow a lot of the advice on this site and elsewhere for my practices about making drills competitive, creating game-life situations, and scrimmaging, but nothing can quite replicate the game-like environment where everything is about 10 % faster than even your most competitive practices, not to mention there is the nerves factor which also contributes to passing mistakes and other mental errors, especially early in the game.

Doing more passing drills in practice will help but getting good and sufficient game experience IMHO is probably most important in reducing those silly passes and turnovers.

If you want to make your drills / scrimmages a little more difficult, add an extra defender - that will make your offensive players work that much harder to make good passes.

Jeff / Joe ... Do we have my Man Maker Drill on here??

Man Maker Drill. Is this the one you had in mind?
http://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/playcreator/view.asp?id=167&type=drill

Thanks Jeff -

That's the drill.... and there are a few comments on that site that gives you a few more ideas.

Our kids loved this drill.... the defenders anyway.... but the offensive players loved making them look bad by breaking the pressure.

If you cant pass and you cant catch, you cant play this game. there are more mistakes made in catching and passing the basketball that any other skill taught. I do progressive passing skill daily at practice starting with half court to full court. If you watch some of the NBA teams, this fundamental is at times screwed up and these guys are making millions. I consider this one of the most important fundamentals to teach and drill.
Good Luck Coach mac..

Mac -

It's been a long time.... good hearing from you..... your comment has to be an "age" thing - another "seasoned: friend of mine says the same thing. If you cant pass or catch the ball, you cant play. So, like I said before, its something that you have to work on every day. JMO

Ken: good to hear from you again my old friend. I have finally retired from coaching, I gave it almost 40 years and felt it time to rest. I am back in Mainland China and began working with some younger high school coaches and their teams. I guess I just cant let it go. I watched a couple of practices prior to approaching with an offer of help. Although some of thiese boys are very good, their passsing skills or lack of them was very evident. Here, they concentrate on conditioning so I showed them a way to condition with a ball while actually learning a fundamental. Hope this helps...Mac

Hey Mac -

It took me a long time to figure out that conditioning without a ball is a giant waste of time..... even when you get ticked and want to run them, you can run a drill with a ball and actually get something out of it.

Maybe you should hold a coaching clinic and teach the coaches... would they go for that or would they get turned off?

You can lead a horse to water .....................

Passing is in 3 sections, decision, perception and action.

the decision, (to who do i pass)
the perception (is the pass there or not)
are more important than the action with young players....

http://joebloggsmadrid.wordpress.com/

Coach Sar: Perhaps its time to go back to old school, that statement was made by Bob Knight at a clinic I attended back in the early 90's. After watching years of "new Basketball", I have noticed that most of the emphasis is on THE HANDLE, how to break a defenders ankles with a kiler crossover, Beating one or more defenders ..to the hole, the spin dribbnle. Now, I am aware that all of these skills are important if you want to play big time basketball. But, in my opinion, you need the complete package and passing is includeed as a very important skill and fundamental. With my pro team, its a skil I dedicate at least 30 minutes to every practice. . Sometimes, I even have to break down the correct procedure of the chest, bounce, baseball and overheadc passes. How many games have you witnesed in the NBA where individual players cant even get the ball inbounds. You can possibly credit that to great defense terrible offense, or simply poor passing decisions. l Coach Mac.

Coach Mac -

How are you doing my friend?? The game is pretty simple.... BUT, IF you cant pass or catch the ball, you aren't going very far! After coaching boys for 42+ years, 16 as the boys varsity coach..... I coached girls sophomores for one year.... I figured I would just be able to out coach a lot of guys..... yeah right!!

They couldn't PASS or CATCH the ball.... so I went to Plan B. We spend the first 20 - 30 minutes of every practice for the first month. They DID get better and I was able to cut back as the season progressed but we worked on passing drills every day.... and a lot of m2m defense too. We even played m2m om inbouns plays under... I was sick of giving up easy shots especially late in the game.

SO - YOU sure wont get an argument from me when it comes to passing/catching fundamentals... along with the rest of the fundamentals of the game. The old saying.... " IF your Jimmies and Joes are better than my Xs and 0s, you will win. " So, how do you get YOUR Jimmies and Joes better? By being fundamentally sound, success is a by product of that. You can have all kinds of fancy offenses and defense, plays etc..... but IF you cant execute anything, it doesn't make much difference.

Ok, I got that off my chest LOL Good hearing from you again, how are things going? Feeling better I hope!