How to Improve Passing Without Doing Passing Drills
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On the face of it, passing seems to be a simple task on the basketball court. One player holds the ball, waits for an opening, and then delivers the ball to a teammate in a crisp, clean, well-timed manner. In an ideal world, the offense completes the exact passes you the coach designed, setting up players repeatedly for open shots, and making you the coach appear to be a tactical genius.
Of course, this is not how the world actually works, and any defense’s top priority is (or should be) to take your offense entirely out of its structure, cause chaos, and force your team into poor decisions. Whether facing a full court press, a half court trap, or simply a standard half court defense, rarely will an opponent make ball movement easy for your team.
In order to beat this type of defense (pretty much any defense) we as coaches must take a guerilla warfare approach to passing. That is to say, we must train our players to think on their feet, understand the ultimate goal (scoring the basketball), and function well in chaos. If we can train our players this way, they will respond by surprising us with their creativity in scoring baskets. Here are two ways to improve passing proficiency without wasting time with Block passing drills:
1. Incorporate lots of no dribble games into your practices
In order to become proficient to improve passing in basketball, it is a good idea to practice under circumstances more difficult than a game. No-dribble basketball games in practice set the tone for exceptional passing in games. These games challenge players’ brains on a number of different levels, so let’s talk about a few of them.
– The no dribble rule acts as a defensive advantage, allowing greater ball pressure as well as higher pressure in passing lanes. With no escape valve for pressure other than passing, offensive players must learn precise passing skills or risk turning the ball over constantly. A side benefit of these games is that you can coach your defensive players to apply maximum pressure without fear of being beat by the dribble.
– No dribble means that every single action by the offense must be fully read/plan/act, where both the passer and pass receiver time their motions exceptionally well. There will never be two passes that look the same in this drill as every pass will be hotly contested, unique to it’s location on the floor and player involved, and requiring an entirely new brain process to achieve success.
– The type of fitness required to get open repeatedly under these conditions is enormous as it is purely a sprint/stop game and will overtrain your players for basketball fitness in games. I highly recommend full court, no dribble passing games to replace traditional line running as a regular part of of any practice.
– The spacing required to succeed at these games closely mirrors the spacing required in game situations. Players must discover the correct distance between themselves and a passer, or another teammate in order to avoid traps, collisions, or closed passing lanes.
The benefits of a daily regiment of no-dribble – Passing drills games are enormous, challenging even your best players to function at high speed under intense pressure. I also highly recommend adding extra defenders as teams become adept at handling even numbered situations. If your offense has mastered 4 v 4 no dribble, your emphasis should be to find their passing breaking point, whether that be 4 v 5 or 4 v 9, etc. You have the opportunity to raise your team’s level of passing proficiency under intense pressure and they will have a very high chance of retention and transfer to games.
Lastly, you can add an individual pass clock so that every player receiving a pass has a limited amount of time to either pass the ball or shoot. Adding a pass clock simply supplies one more element of pressure to the players who must now not only act under pressure of space and defense, but under time pressure as well. Depending on your team’s level of functionality, you can adjust the amount of time on the pass clock. The more pressure exerted on your team in practice, the easier game day will feel with none of these constraints. Train your players to get good at a sport that resembles basketball, but is more difficult. In doing so, you will prepare them extremely well for the rigors of competition.
2. Run Your Offense With No Dribble Using Half Court Games
Another very challenging, effort based game for players to deal with is simply to run your team’s offense in a half court setting but allowing no dribbling of the basketball. This maintains all the benefits of the above games, but adds the component of players trying to maintain their structure while dealing with incredible defensive pressure. As a coach, you should be aware ahead of time that the “offense” your players are able to run with this drill is unlikely to look as crisp as you would like it under actual game conditions. Rather than penalize your players for having passes deflected, stolen, or thrown out of bounds, simply watch to see how proficient they can become at your playbook, under challenging parameters. Let them go through the struggle of figuring out how to make the plays work while having a defender in their face constantly. I can guarantee this will be an ugly, mistake-filled game at first, and may stay that way, but it will give your players a fighting chance to learn what type of passing game conditions require when you want to run a specific play against an antagonistic defense. It will also give them an opportunity to learn countermoves and decoys so that they do not act robotically in games. Don’t give up early on this drill. Let them go through the struggle of finding out what works and what does not. If done repeatedly, your players will develop the right kind of decision making for games when defenses simply do not give them Option 1 every time down the court.
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