Initial Shooting for Beginners

Once you've got the basics of dribbling down, spend the next portion of your first few practices working on shooting and layups. This is a great youth basketball drill to teach beginners good shooting techniques.

Layup Lines: Divide the team up into two lines. First up is the basic layup line you see done at every level in basketball. A shooting line and a rebounding line. Shooters work on layups while rebounders retrieve the ball and pass it to the next shooter in the other line. They then switch lines after their play is finished.

Make sure players:

1. keep their heads up
2. jump off the inside foot
3. talk about an imaginary string from the shooting hand to the outside foot, drawing the knee up as the shooting hand goes toward the basket.
4. aim softly for the square in the middle of the backboard

Crossover/spin move: Have the basketball players dribble from further to the side, change direction either with a crossover dribble or a spin move and go to the basket.

Pull-up Jumpers: Same drill, but players pull up from 8-10 feet short of the basket and shoot a jump shot.

Make sure players:

1. jump straight up and down with no drift forward, back or to the side
2. aim for the front of the rim
3. leave your hand in the cookie jar