Many players are fantastic practice players, but when it comes time to get on the court for an actual game, it’s as if they can’t do half the things they thought they could do. Dribbling around the defense becomes extremely hard and driving to the hoop is also almost impossible. So why is this?

The reason for this is because of practice habits. A lot of players don’t practice in a way that prepares them for the game situations. This could set them up for failure during real games.

In the rest of this blog post, we will go over what is wrong with traditional practice methods and what you could do in order to improve your skills to perform better in a real game.

The problem with traditional practice methods

The biggest reason players have issues with dribbling and driving in a game is because most of the time that they are practicing they are never met with resistance.

Most dribbling drills are performed in a stationary position with no one guarding you and is all about repetition. Also when it comes to driving to the hoop, most layup drills are uncontested, and you’re mainly getting a workout in more than anything.

If you want to improve practice to simulate a game, you want to get a practice partner or partners that will allow you to push your limits.

The importance of incorporating game-like elements into practice

Basketball is all about reaction skills. If someone cuts you off on defense, you want to be able to react to that correctly. Doing stationary drills isn’t going to do this for you.

It’s very important to incorporate game-like elements into your practice so you could perform better in a game. Luckily for you, I have some suggestions on how you can do this:

Get A Partner Or Group To Practice With

The most optimal way to get better in game-like situations is to get a partner or group to practice with. Doing this could help you in many ways. It makes it much easier to practice real life situations on the court. You could use these different drills in order to better yourself in games.

Full Court Press Drill

If you want to be able to dribble in a game more efficiently, get your partner to do a full court press drill with you. If you have cones, set them up 10 feet apart going down the length of the court.

The objective of this drill is to go from one end of the court to the other without having the ball knocked out of your hands. The cones being only 10 feet apart will help you because in a game you will have the whole width of the court to use. So if you could get up the court with that 10 feet of width, chances are you will be able to get up the court with the whole width of the court available to you.

Do Layup Drills With Your Partner Contesting

As we mentioned above, getting good at layups in practice is easy. You have no one going up to block the ball. So for your practice with your partner, you want to be able to work on going to the hoop with a man/woman under there to contest your layup.

It’s very simple. All you have to do is start at the top of the key, or anywhere around the three point line, have your partner waiting down low, and drive to the rim. Doing this will spark new creativity in you, and you can do different things in order to make a layup over your partner.

Some of these things could include learning a euro step, which is essentially a fake like you’re going to take a lay up one way, but you end up stepping the other way. Another could be a floater. If your partner is just too good at blocking your shot, you may want to consider floating it over their head. This shot is especially good if you are a shorter player and you can’t make a layup over larger players frequently.

Play a Game Of 21

Playing a game of 21 will allow you to work on these skills in real time situations. 21 is a game of three players (or more), where who ever has the ball will be guarded by the rest of the players.

So for instance if you’re playing with three players, the two other players may double team your dribble, or they may opt to play one man up top and one man down low. Whatever their strategy is, it’s important to figure out on your end how you can get around them or score on them.

If you need help with your driving and dribbling in game situations, 21 is probably the best game you could play, especially if you only have 3 players.

Work On Keeping Your Head Up At All Times Through All Of These Methods

The biggest key is to be able to control the ball with your head up. So no matter what drills you work on, you want to be able to keep your head up. Seeing your opponents position, along with all the help defenders on the floor during a game is probably the most important things you could master as a basketball player. Doing this will enable you to be a better dribbler, and driver in a game.

The reasoning behind this is because if you can see what your defender is doing, you could react. Also, if a double team is coming, you could easily get the ball out of your hands and find the open man. Last but not least, when it comes to driving keeping your head up is important because you can see when a big man is out of place and this will allow you to get to the hoop much easier.

Use Cones and Imaginary Defenders To Practice

Sometimes we’re not able to get partners to practice with us, and that’s alright. You could utilize cones, and imaginary defenders to practice and master these dribbling and driving skills.

By using cones your able to simulate what a real game would look like with the defense being somewhat in front of you. So you could set up cones in a way that will mimic the kind of defensive scheme you might encounter in game.

This obviously isn’t as helpful as actually having a body available to practice with, but it’s better than doing stationary repetitions that don’t allow for you to learn in real game situations.

Play Pick Up Basketball When You Can

Last but not least, you want to be able to play pick up when you can. Having a partner is good, but playing 5 on 5 pick up is even better.

Playing 5 on 5 pick up is as close as you could get to an actual game, which will allow you to work on your skills more than anything.

This will help with your decision making skills as there are many more scenarios than practicing with one partner, or using cones. The more scenarios you see, the more you will be ready to perform in a game situation.

Take it from me who has played thousands of pick up games throughout the years. Those are some of the most competitive games you could possibly play, and the pressure of those games could make the pressure of a real game feel like nothing.

This is because there are no referees within pick up basketball to control players when things get out of control. So this results in rough defense, arguments, and a whole lot of talking back and forth. This conditions you to tune out the noise and play at your best no matter what’s going on.

Conclusion

So if you’re having trouble in game situations, I recommend incorporating partner drills or group drills in order to get an understanding of how to dribble and attack the basket in a game situation. You also may want to figure out a schedule of playing pick up basketball at least a couple times a week in order to see more complete game-like scenarios.

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