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The whistle blows, the sound of dozens of feet hitting the floor, followed by the screech of shoes digging into the shiny surface. It’s the sound of basketball practice across the nation on tens of thousands of floors.
That sound is as unique as the crack of a bat in a July baseball game, or the sound of pads popping on a cold October night. For those wearing the shoes making those squeaks, it’s something quite different.
Basketball is a sport that relies on players often moving non-stop from the opening tip to the final horn.
Cross country is controlled effort at the runner’s unique pace and cadence for the duration of a race, but there isn’t the stop and go. Wrestling is six minutes of intense, strenuous effort, but once again, it’s not quite the same. Swimming and track are broken into competitive, manageable competitive segments of time and space. Basketball condition is something a little different.
The conditioning done at basketball practice is something every player is familiar with.
As head coach Norman Dale so famously tells his team in the classic basketball movie Hoosiers, “No team of mine will ever run out of steam before its opponent.”
That steam is generated by sweat, sweat coming from physical effort at basketball practice.
There are many ways to build strength, stamina and speed on a basketball court. The brute force method is with little gems called “Sweet 16s”,” Jingle Jangles” or “Suicides.”
A Sweet 16 is sprinting side-to-side with the entire team lined up along the length of the floor. The coach blows the whistle and the assistant coach hits the stopwatch. Players race eight times back and forth, touching the sidelines with hands or feet in under a minute. If you can’t finish in 60 seconds, you get to do it again until you do.
As the old shampoo commercials instructed, “later, rinse, repeat.”
Depending on the day of practice, the condition of the team, and most often the coach’s mood that afternoon, the team can run a couple or maybe a dozen of these.
Suicides, as we called them, are different, they involve the full length of the floor. The whistle blows, the players sprint to the free throw line, you hear collective squeaks as their shoes dig in and they return to the starting line, then squeak again to half-court, return, go to the three-quarter court mark at the opposite free throw line then sprint back for a final run to the end of the gym and back. These put gas in the tank, and occasionally something less desirable in garbage cans along the sides of the court.
Sometimes it’s just up and back, wall-to-wall to the ends of the floor.
These drills are all stop-and-go style conditioning, that mimic the cutting, spinning, sprinting nature of full court basketball.
Other drills are designed to combine passing skills with conditioning.
My favorite, and always one of the favorites for the kids was continuous fast break. You have six lines, one on each end of the floor, with two on opposites sides of the free throw line extended on each end of the court.
Once the ball is in motion, it’s a constant three-on-three fast break, with either the offensive three scoring or the defensive three making a stop and sprinting back as the offensive three. Kids love it, and if you don’t have a lot of players in the gem, maybe fewer than 15, you can get a lot of conditioning done and they don’t even notice how hard they’re breathing.
Three-on-two-on-one fast break drills are similar with three lines on the offensive end and two on the defensive. The idea is to run a three-on-two fast break for the offense, and to play two-on-three defense for the defenders. After the shot, the point plays defense as the two defenders race back in a classic two-on-one fast break. Ideally, they never dribble the ball, passing the entire time. These drills get players moving at top speed in full court play and are similar to the wide-open style of run and gun basketball. Yes, the kids love it.
Creating game like pressure on the team is another method of conditioning, only with an edge.
In the midst of a set of Sweet 16s, or Suicides, the coach blows the whistle and randomly picks a player to step up to the free throw line.
They’re given the ball in a bonus situation. Make both and the running is finished and the practice is over with everyone heading to the locker room. Hit the first but miss the second and you cut the remaining sprints in half. Miss the first, you get a sprint added to the total and send everyone back on the line.
I always added a little annoyance to the free throw shooter if he was one of my top players. Pull the hair on the back of his leg as he shot or bump him with a football arm pad just before he shot, just things to break his concentration.
By the end of the season, every player from freshman to senior had the chance multiple times to step up to the line in a pressure situation.
The football arm pad came into play on many drills. For the big guys, every time we ran a low post, turn and shoot drill, they were popped or shoved with the pad, simulating the contact they’d get on a play in the low block.
On layup drills, you could shove them a little on a shot, fake hitting them with the pad, or even wave the pad in front of their face as they drove in for a layup. All game situations when they’re closely defended on a drive.
These, and many more, perhaps tens of thousands of other little things go into a good basketball practice.
Joe Fan sitting in the stands doesn’t know any of these things. They just sit there cursing the coach, yelling for their kid to shoot more and complain about the officiating. They think they know the game, but all they know is how to embarrass themselves and their children.
Winning is done in closed gym sessions every night after school from Monday to Thursday. The 90 minutes of practice that most teams are allotted is all a coach has to develop their players during the regular season.
Effort produces results, and results lead to championships.