Tuesday, January 10, 2023

More Basketball Out of the Box Thinking: Training

On my fortieth birthday, my kids gave me a tee shirt, "The Older I Get, The Better I Was." Good one. Can't be a has-been with a little bit of a was. 

Use the tools you have. Ben Franklin opted for the nine-year printing apprenticeship to become a writer. That gave him access to printed articles that he cut and rearranged as his craft. Later, he anonymously wrote the Silence Dogood articles for his brother's paper, The New-England Courant.

I never became a great player but improved enough to contribute on a sectional championship team. What rituals or drills helped some? "Necessity is the mother of invention."

Keep your head up. We never had extra cash. I don't know if dribbling glasses even were a thing. Masking tape across the bottom of my eyeglasses was the substitute. 

Where was Kyrie's plastic bag when I needed him? 



Feel for the ball. Shovel off the driveway and shoot in the freezing cold weather with winter gloves. Maybe the shoveling helped. 

 

Hands in the face. I didn't have any basketball kids in the neighborhood to play one-on-one with. I duct-taped a tennis racquet onto a six-foot aluminum ladder and practiced shooting over the 'defender'. 

Vintage footage from fifty years ago. 


Quick draw McGraw. Jerry West preached taking a hard "pound dribble" to launch the shooter into the jumper. Another drill I did was "slamming the ball" into the floor into a quick catch-and-shoot. 

Get vertical. I put nails in two trees about four feet apart and put a broomstick on those nails for a simulated high jump. Learned how to crash land, too. Diving for a loose ball was nothing. 

Barrel screens. Use trash barrels to represent screens in "Camp Driveway." 

Targeting. Find the target. Facing the basket, I would flip the ball back over my head, pivot, catch on one bounce, turn, and shoot. This helped with catching, targeting, and quicker release. 

Find ways to build skill. 

Lagniappe. Simulate game actions. 

Lagniappe 2. "Zero second decisions..."  

at