Dana Altman: Drills for a Competitive Team Practice

Your practices should prepare your players to beat good teams. Using on-court demonstrations with players, Altman takes you through over 20 small-group and team drills that emphasize the importance of fundamentals and quality play on both ends of the court.

PRE-PRACTICE
Before every practice, Altman breaks up his team into small groups to drill offensive fundamentals. These drills are not position-specific, but rather emphasize developing the total player. Specifically, this drill work is intended to improve a player's:

• Ball-handling
• Ability to finish at the rim
• Footwork
• Passing
• Shooting form

DEFENSE & REBOUNDING
Defense and rebounding are drilled at the beginning of every practice to set the tone for the day. These drills allow players to work on multiple skills at one time. Altman also keeps score between the squads to make it more competitive. Practice does not progress until these drills are performed correctly.

In all defenses you have to be able to guard the player with the ball. Coach Altman builds his defensive system from the ground up through half-court and full-court 1-on-1 drills. Through the 1v1 drills you can easily evaluate which players need improvement and more importantly which players are competitors and do not like getting beat! Close outs and rebounding are taught through a competitive 2-on-2 drill. Lastly, Altman walks through six different ways to defend and rotate on ball screens from a 4-on-4 set up.

FULL-COURT
Rather than simply running his team, Coach Altman improves his team's conditioning through a variety of full-court drills. Altman demonstrates three of his most popular full court drills that any coach should have as part of their practice plan. These drills force players to play in transition with and without numbers and make shots while tired. The demonstration is good for any new coach, but his "fine-tuning" instruction and "nuggets" of information are helpful even for the more seasoned coach.

Coach Altman demonstrates a variety of drills on the court that will help your players focus on fundamentals at all times to make themselves better basketball players, and to make your team better. These drills, working from individual all the way to team drills, focus on individual fundamentals on a daily basis, and then apply those to a team setting. All players learn the drills in a game-like setting instead of making drills "position-specific."

Incorporate this drill work into your practices and prepare to beat good teams!

Produced at the Spring 2011 Las Vegas (NV) clinic.

71 minutes. 2012.