WEIRD Basketball Drill For Explosive Dribble Moves: Tennis Ball Drops

Joe Haefner: This is a unique drill that improves your ability to explode out of your dribble moves and improves your ball handling and your finishing. Many players are great at making the initial change of direction move whether it's a crossover behind the back or between the legs dribble. However, not many are great at making the move, then exploding out of the dribble move and blowing by the defender. It's not easy to replicate the situation in a practice setting to get players to explode right after their dribble move. And that's why we love this drill. It forces you to do so. This drill forces you to explode low out of your dribble move, and then after that your next few steps, it forces you to stay low in that position as well. Additionally, you also improve your balance, your hand eye coordination, and your finishing. Next, Breakthrough Camps instructor Jim Huber will take you through the drill.

Jim Huber: Well now we're going to do a tennis ball drop after making a dribble move. So what we're going to working on in the beginning is you're just going to do a change of pace. We're going to have him do a hesitation. He's going to have his ball on his inside hand, so as he makes the move at the chair there, I'm going to have tennis ball stretched out, and I'm going to release it, just drop it straight down once he makes the move to make him stretch out to go get it to extend. He's going to get the tennis ball off a bounce and go finish at the rim is what he's going to do. So we're making him explode after he makes the change of pace move past the defender to create space to explode by them. So we're changing pace as well in this. Ready?

Jim Huber: Go. Here we go. Do it again. And you can sit there and mix it up. You can do a hesitate, you can do a stutter, you can do [inaudible 00:01:36]. You can do whatever you want to do right in your change of pace. Good. So again, you do like he did right there. His change of pace.

Jim Huber: Now we're going to get into change direction. We talked about when someone's chest to chest going to make change direction. So BJ's going to have the ball in his outside hand close to sideline. He's going to go at the defender hard, which is the chair. He's going to make a change direction move. I'm going to drop the tennis ball. He's going to explode past the person, get it off a one bounce. We're going to start with you with a crossover right now. Crossover, you ready?

Jim Huber: Stand and go. Good. Good. Now you're going to go, let's go here. Let's go between the legs. Between the legs attacking, all right?

Jim Huber: Good, BJ, good. Now let's go behind the back. Good stretch, extensions.

Jim Huber: Now I'm going to add something for BJ. Go up, last one, go up there. Now we're going to do a double move. So he's going to take the ball. You're going to start with your inside hand. You're going to make a move at the chair, the defender, the defender cuts you off, gets chest to chest. You're going to make a double move. You make the double move, start making it, I'm going to drop it at that time, okay? Same thing we've been doing but a double move.

Jim Huber: Extend and go, good. So again, it's a great drill to do. Now you're starting to work on change of pace, change of direction moves, you're attacking the defender, you're exploding by them to create separation, stretching at the attack to get to the rim quickly to beat the defender and then you're trying to grab a tennis ball and also finish them while you're doing it.

Joe Haefner: Hey, we hope you enjoyed the video. Now if you're serious about becoming a better basketball player, we wanted to let you know about our Breakthrough Basketball camps. There are hundreds of locations across North America, and there are camps for youth players to overnight camps for high school players.

Joe Haefner: You can find everything from ball handling, shooting, guard play, post play and more. Last year over 12,000 players attended Breakthrough Basketball camps and over 120 camps sold out. If you'd like to learn more, go to BreakthroughCamps.com or click on the link below or in the description.