BASKETBALL DRILLS FOR WARMUPS
WHAT A BASKETBALL PRE-GAME WARM-UP MIGHT LOOKS LIKE WITH A FEW OF MY FAVORITE BASKETBALL DRILLS.
BY COACH 10L
Most warm-up times before the big game in High School are 15 to 20 minutes long. Middle School may be only 10 minutes. What basketball drills will give you the best bang for your buck in that short amount of time? I think it is important for teams to use most of that time getting as many practice shots in as possible. This is even more important when playing on the road so your players can get accustomed to the different environment.
I have watched some teams, in my opinion, waste this warm-up time. They are even heading back into the locker room with as much as 5 minutes still on the clock. Or sometimes not coming out of the locker room until the warm-up clock has already run off time. I believe in using all my warm-up time.
Another thing I have observed that seems a waste of good shooting practice time is teams using just two balls during warm-up. Standing in a long line waiting for a turn to shoot the basketball is wasting chances for your players to improve as shooters. Usually there are 12 balls in a rack for teams to use…six per team. Most of the time a team suits up 12 players. Use all 6 balls as much as possible. Here are a few of my favorite drills for a pre-game warm-up.
“TEAM SHOOTING” BASKETBALL DRILL
I like to divide the players into three groups of four with two basketballs in each group. Two groups start at the wings and one group starts at the point or baseline. The front person in a group shoots then hustles after their rebound. The next person in line shoots as soon as the first person goes after their rebound. After grabbing the rebound the first shooter fires a pass to the third person in line. The third person shoots and goes after their rebound then fires the ball to the next person in line. This continues repeatedly. With the players rotating clockwise from line to line. They then rebound and kick a pass back to the line they shot from.
“FLASH CATCH AND SCORE” BASKETBALL DRILL
The most missed shot in junior high and high school basketball is a bank shot under the basket. At least it seems like that at times. One of my favorite drills for practicing the bank shot under the basket I call Flash Catch and Score. Use all six balls again for this drill. The front person in the line starts without a ball and the next three in line each have a basketball. The lines start in the short corner or near the low block.
The front person in each line flashes across the lane and catches a pass from the first person in the opposite line with a basketball. After catching the pass, they explode up and bank the ball off the backboard. I like to stand in the lane and harass the shooters as they go up to shoot the bank shot. After flashing, catching, and scoring the shooter grabs the rebound and heads to the opposite line to make a pass to a teammate flashing across the lane.
“CONTINUOUS OFFENSE” BASKETBALL DRILL
There are some diagrams for these two great shooting warm-up drills in the post BASKETBALL DRILLS. After the shooting drills, I have 7 players play defense while the starters run an offense. I call this drill Continuous Offense. No shooting is allowed. The players move the ball trying to keep possession while running offenses and plays that I call out. If the warm-up is twenty minutes, we do the shooting drills for 10 and 4 minutes each, then continuous offense for four minutes and free throw shooting with two players shooting simultaneously for three minutes.
If a team does this warm-up before every game and plays 25 plus games, then each player will take hundreds of warm-up shots. All those warm-up shots add up along with the thousands of shots that should be taken in practice over the course of a season.
