Innovative Basketball Team Drills That Lead to Life Lessons

NOTE: The following is meant to help administrators understand the many levels of coaching and strive to hire coaches who embrace life lessons in every aspect of coaching. Activities directors can have discussion with their coaches and challenge them to be at the next level.

The last eight seasons our girls basketball program in Houston, Minnesota, has taken pride in trying to teach life lessons through the game of basketball. One of our program’s favorite drills is the Argentina Passing Drill. (See diagram below from www.coachingtoolbox. net.) This is an eight-player, two-basketball drill, but we typically double each position up so the entire team can do it at once. The players of the same numbers are partners and will always replace each other by sprinting straight across after passing the ball. This drill is continuous and typically done for a certain amount of time and can change direction or type of pass that is made. There are a lot of basketball-specific benefits of this drill as well as life lessons with different variations and challenges that we added to the drill itself.

We tried to focus on the very small details in this drill to look as sharp and crisp as possible to improve our basketball skills. The basketball-specific benefits of this drill that can be achieved if done correctly are: passing (chest or bounce), catching (always being in a shot-ready position, hands above elbows, even though there is no shooting in this drill), meet the pass, jump stop on the catch, rip and pivot as you make the next pass.

This drill has provided great basketball-related benefits in all of these areas of fundamentals. With all of these fundamentals, this drill was always great to use, but we took it to the next level and were intentional in teaching all of the life lessons that this drill had to offer. This drill centered on intentionally teaching three life lessons: communication, decision-making and deep focus. We stressed the importance of communication, both verbal and non-verbal, and asked our players to always be shot-ready (hands above elbows) when receiving and make eye contact with the passer to let the passer know you are ready to receive a pass.

There was also an emphasis on the importance of both the passer and receiver of the ball to call out each other’s names. This all connected the importance of communication, and the fact that communication kills confusion, which is a great life lesson as the more you can communicate and confirm that everyone is on the same page, the easier and better it is for everyone in the long run. This works for meeting times, dates and places to talking out differences and opinions on topics in general. Communication has been key to our success over the years, and we want our players to take communication with them to apply it to their daily lives as soon as possible and hold on to that for the rest of their lives.

Another emphasis was to use drills that were as game-like as possible. Once the two basketballs start to really get moving, there can be four players running through the middle trying to get to their next spot on the court. Drills that are more game-like where decisions have to be made quickly are the best drills to use in practice. The players in this drill need to run through the middle and avoid traffic of other players and not run into each other.

The keys to this drill are running as fast as you can to make it game-like and improve decision-making and how to avoid the traffic. We tried to instill calmness in the chaos. With all of the communication, multiple basketballs, and players sprinting and trying to avoid a collision, the goal was to teach our players to be calm in the chaos as we started to play games and have to channel our nervousness. Anticipating the nerves that would come, but to stay as calm as possible and work through the challenges of chaos and physical conditioning that was also in the drill if done for an extended period of time.

The last life lesson was mental toughness. We define mental toughness as being able to be laser-focused at the task at hand with no distractions. We want to have a deep focus on that task and give it our all mentally and physically until the task is completed or time has expired. In a world filled with distractions coming from every direction on the court and definitely in daily life, we thought teaching one to have a deep focus would greatly impact our players not only during games, but also in school to complete assignments, and in life to make good choices and screen out all of the nonsense that might come their way in a society full of distractions.

We tried to teach this aspect within the drill by making each player wear oversized gloves, which we used in practice a lot before the pandemic. By having the players wear those gloves during the drill, it added another challenge to the drill, and it forced them to really focus on the little things in the drill. It especially made the players focus on the task of catching the ball. With the oversized gloves, if one didn’t really watch and focus on the ball coming into their hands, it was sure to be a turnover, which would result in restarting the drill and having to reset the clock and go the full time of the drill again, which was anywhere from 30 to 60 seconds. We believe the teaching of being mentally tough, laser-focused, and blocking out all distractions made our girls basketball program what it is today – a program that taught life lessons through basketball drills and games which we hope the players will be able to hold onto and use in life during and after their playing days.