Whether you are a new player to the game or a coach of a youth team. It is important to understand the 5 fundamentals of basketball and to have some tips and drills to get better or to help your team get better. Here at sportswarrior365, we have many years of experience coaching basketball and guiding our teams to success.
Below we discuss the 5 fundamentals of basketball and provide some excellent videos on tips and drills that can be used. Basketball is a highly skilled game that takes daily practice and dedication to skill development to truly get good at the game and reach your full potential.
What Are the 5 Fundamentals of Basketball?
The five most important fundamentals of basketball include:
- Dribbling – The ability to dribble the ball to score or to make the proper pass.
- Passing – The ability to not only know the best option for passing, but then to be able to execute the pass with enough power and precision.
- Scoring – The ability to score from different situations
- Defense – The ability to play solid on ball defense and helpside defense
- Court Awareness – The ability to move throughout the court and be aware of where the ball is, your teammates and the opposition.
Below we will dive into each of these 5 key fundamentals of basketball. At the end of every section we will provide our top choices on free videos that provide some tips and drills that you can utilize as a player or a coach.
Here at sportswarrior365, we love sports as much as you do and are on a journey to love the game and compete as often as possible. We believe the life lessons from sports are paramount to the overall development of youth as future leaders in our society.
Dribbling
The most basic of the 5 fundamentals. Dribbling is essential and should be a fundamental that most players and coaches start with. We believe in dedicating at least 10-15 minutes of every practice to dribbling and ball handling.
The reality is that dribbling sets up passing, scoring and court awareness, so it impacts the majority of the 5 fundamentals in basketball. Too often teams over rely on just one player to handle the ball.
We believe the game of basketball has evolved and every player should work to develop their dribbling and be able to distribute the ball as needed.
One of the major keys is to develop both the right hand and the left hand dribbling abilities. The best players can use either hand to dribble, which helps keep the defense honest as they can’t just force you to your weak hand side. It also becomes important to use our outside hand when dribbling through traffic.
Point of Emphasis: Dribble with your head and eyes up. See the court!
Dribbling helps with the follow situations:
- Allows a player to penetrate the defense and attack the hoop.
- Allows the player to advance the ball up court after a rebound or steal.
- Allows the player to create better passing angles.
Point of Emphasis: Dribble with a purpose. Have a plan of attacking the hoop, creating a passing lane or advancing the ball up court. The fault we see at the youth level is players dribbling just to dribble without a main emphasis.
Below are our favorite videos to help you or to help your team improve with their ball handling skills. You will see that we have broken the drills and tips down into three categories:
- Beginning
- Intermediate
- Advanced
Coaches can check out all three and determine where their team is at and what they can handle.
Beginning
Intermediate
Advanced
Passing
It is one thing to be able to dribble, but the ball handler must also be able to make the proper pass. Sometimes at the younger levels, your best ball handler might have difficulty seeing the court and the proper pass.
We believe that passing takes two essential parts:
- The player must be able to see the pass several seconds before it happens.
- The player must then be able to execute the pass.
Too often the younger the player the more difficult of a time they have anticipating the proper pass. They are sometimes a second or two late and that leads to a turnover.
Being able to help players see the court, can come from encouraging the players to keep their heads up and to use their teammates. Teach players move without the ball and how to V cut.
Too often we can get stuck playing isolation basketball and over relying on one player. When you work on passing in practice, make sure you are not only developing the passes below, but also putting players in a position where they have to make a decision.
Five different types of passes include:
- Chest pass
- Bounce Pass
- Overhead
- One hand baseball pass
- One handed push pass
Below are three excellent drills you can run with your teams to help them advance to the next level.
Beginning
Intermediate
Advanced
Scoring
The best part about teaching scoring is that every player is interested in scoring and wants to score points. They might fail to understand the importance of dribbling and court awareness, but they all want to score.
Haven’t we all seen the sportscenter highlights with Steph Curry hitting 3 pointers or LeBron James throwing one down with the right. The ability to score starts with ball handling and being able to get to the hoop and finish or the ability to find an open space for an open shot.
Two Basics to scoring include:
- Finishing at the Hoop
- Hitting the open Shot
It is one thing to get to the hoop, but if you can’t finish it is a wasted possession. The goal is to help our players better finish at the hoop and to hit the open jump shot.
Some Shooting Technique Pointers:
- Correct hand placement on the ball
- Athletic stance
- Look at the the rim
- Elbow under your shooting hand
- Flick the write and follow through
Some Finishing Technique:
- Develop both hands
- Work on the jump stop and pump fake power move
- Euro Step Move
- Underhand layup
- The floater
Shooting Drills
Finishing Drills
Defense
The reality is that we might have an off shooting night, but we shouldn’t have a bad defensive night. Defense starts with effort and attitude and these are really the only two things that we can control on the basketball floor.
There is some major technique with defense that starts with the proper stance, footwork and then awareness. In a solid man to man defense, we must know where our opponent is and where the ball is. We must have the proper positions and this often needs to be trained in practice.
Defenders must be solid in two key areas:
- On ball defense
- Helpside defense
Man to man defense is all about team defense. It starts with the proper ball pressure and then relies on the proper positions to be in a help side position if your teammate gets beat off the dribble. Once we help, we then have to recover quickly if the ball is passed.
The best defensive teams are able to get some easy baskets in transitions as a result of steals or rebounds. The transition offense starts with solid defensive effort. There are also options to run a zone defense, but we believe in developing solid man to man defenders, which we believe is vital as kids are developing as basketball players.
On Ball Defense
Team Man to Man Defense – Shell Drill
Court Awareness
Maybe the hardest part of basketball to teach. All coaches are faced with the balancing act of finding time to develop skills, develop team play and then to develop court awareness.
We often get caught up in the offensive system and lose sight of the skill development and providing kids with the opportunity to develop court awareness.
As kids play less and less pick up games at the school yard or in the driveway, the court awareness can sometimes struggle. Encourage your players to be students of the game and to watch high school or college games.
They will see players handling the ball properly, making the proper pass and helping out on defense.
We must be aware of what is going on all around us and make the proper decision. The game of basketball moves so fast and so many decisions are made, be patient with your players and help them further understand.
Developing Court Awareness
Court Vision
One More Thing to Consider – Small Sided Games
Recently, we have learned more and more about small sided games. What does this mean. Simply, they are drills or situations with less than your traditional 5 on 5 playing. Our personal favorite is 3 on 3 drills and situations.
Here are some of the benefits of small sided games for developing the 5 fundamentals discussed above:
- Kids have more opportunities to make decisions.
- More space to move offensive and more space a player has to cover defensively.
- All players are involved – Gone are the days of teaching 4 and have the other 8 stand on the baseline.
- Breaks the game into smaller portions to help players better understand and see what you are instructing
- A drill can transition to a small sided game where the player is developing skill and court awareness
Small Sided Basketball Drills
Related Questions…
Which of the fundamentals is most important?
This is a really difficult answer. I would say that it all starts with dribbling. Once a player can master the ability to dribble, they can now make better passes, can see the court better and actually have an opportunity to score. Without the ability to dribble, their head is down and not focused on the court. A bad combination!
Should I put in a zone defense?
It depends on the amount of time you have practice each week. We believe in running the shell drill frequently (see video above) and working on the development of skills and using small sided games to help the players maximize their number of touches in a practice. If you have time left over, an option of going to a zone in games might help in key times. However, we believe in players developing their skill set to run a man to man defense.
What about rebounding?
Rebounding is important, but we have found at the youth level, due to the crazy bounces, we can teach the basics of boxing out, but so many crazy rebounds occur. We would rather spend time developing players in the 5 fundamentals above.
Should I get 1 on 1 training for my kid?
1 to 1 training can help your kid get the attention he or she needs to develop the ability to score and go through some key drills for further development. Your player should at least be above average to get your money worth with one on one training. Otherwise just keep working with them on ball handling and some of the very basics of the game like passing and catching.
Take Action…
We have provided a wealth of information with some excellent resources above. Make sure you use some of these videos in practice or in your own development. Basketball is a highly skilled game and in order to get better, one must practice and commit to 4-5 days a week of developing your craft.
The best players often have the ball in their hands throughout the day and become highly comfortable dribbling the ball in any situation. You will be amazed how the court awareness increases with the ability to handle the ball confidently!
Check out some of our other basketball posts!