Shake True Blog

One of the most basic basketball concepts is Triple Threat Position, where you have the ball in the shooting pocket, in a ready position to shoot, pass or dribble.

I am a great advocate of getting the ball into the Triple Threat Position upon receiving it, however I am going to deviate from that idea for now and explain why it’s also important to recognize opportunities to do good things with the ball when you keep it above your head after receiving a pass.

Keeping the ball above your head means to have your arms fully extended upward and having your elbows locked. Your wrist and forearm do all of the work here, so it’s important to practice strengthening these parts of your body to have success with keeping the ball high.

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Instead of moving aimlessly, it’s great to have an idea of where and how to move when you don’t have possession of the ball. There are a few things you should do to increase your ability to get to a spot where you can receive the ball in a scoring position. All of them require you using some misdirection and changing your speed.

1. Beat your defender to the basket. If the person who has the ball is doing their job and has their head up, seeing the court, you should be in a great position to receive a pass that will lead to a scoring opportunity when you beat your defender to the basket. In order to do this, you must first give a misdirection, to throw your defender off balance, followed by exploding to the basket and calling for the ball, while showing a good target. If everything goes well, you should have an easy lay-up.

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Being able to visualize is an important tool that is vital to a complete basketball game. Along with the physical tools such as a strong body and the ability to manipulate that strong body to do what you want it to do on the court a player needs to develop their mind to handle the successes and failures that are inevitable in the game of basketball.Everyone is going to miss some shots. Most people miss more shots than they hit. If you are able to hit more shots than you miss, while shooting a large volume, you are pretty good and will probably play professionally some day. However, very few of us fall into that category.

Because most of us tend to miss more shot attempts than we hit, we have to develop a sense of understanding that after the ball is released one of two things are going to happen. Either the ball will go through the hoop or it will not. Those are the only two outcomes. If you are able to recognize and envision that those two possibilities are the only ones that exist, then you will be on your way to being a much better basketball player.

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Being able to move your feet and hands at a fast speed is a gift that not everyone is endowed with. For those of you who want to become great ball handlers and are not blessed with the talent of quickness, there are some simple things you can do.

The most basic is to not look at the ball while dribbling. If you’re in a position to handle the ball a lot, you want to be able to see what is happening on the court so you can make a move to the hoop, attempt a shot and fire a pass to a streaking cutter. Instead of just dribbling with your head up, work on looking around while dribbling. Look up, look down. Look left, right, behind you. Look at everything except the ball.

Another important idea is to move the ball quickly. You don’t have to have fast hands to move the ball quickly, you just need to use some strength to push the ball hard and try to keep the ball low. Work your crossovers while trying to keep the ball below your knee (difficult, I know) and you will actually end up keeping the ball below your hip. If you can do that while moving the ball fast, you might end up being a good ball handler.