Basketball Coaching Tip to Reduce Turnovers

By Joe Haefner, Breakthrough Basketball

The opposition smothers your offense with tenacious defenses. A player with the ball is closely guarded on the perimeter. Another player cuts to the 3-point line to relieve the pressure. A defensive player denies the perimeter pass, and as soon as the offensive player cuts backdoor, the ball is passed to where the player was standing and sails out of bounds.

All too often we see this mistake occur at the youth level and sometimes even at the pro level.

Well, if there was a super-easy tip that would cut down on those bad passes and improve team passing and you could instantly implement this into your practice, wouldn't you want to do this?

Well, now you can!

We actually got this tip from Bo Ryan who is the Head Men's Basketball Coach at Wisconsin and one of the best college coaches in the game. Here's how it works...

You simply establish some rules for your team and drill them in ALL of your practices:

1. Show a hand target when you want the ball passed to you. When you change directions, drop the hand target and show a new hand target.
2. No hand target, no pass!!

It's as easy as that. This is a subtle way to establish non-verbal cues with your basketball team.

If you drill these rules long enough, you'll find that players make more accurate passes and reduce turnovers. As a result, this will improve your team offense as well.

To take things a step further, you can also emphasize these five other passing concepts:

• Your hand target should be away from the body.
• Make passes away from the defense.
• Fake a pass to make a pass!
• Use two hands to catch.
• On every catch in the front court, chin the ball and get in triple threat position.