YBCA

Practiced today:

1. Dynamic warmups

2. Played \"pig,\" shooting game-like jumpers/layups/freethrows. Kids had fun. Practice the day before game has turned into more of a fun, lighter type of a practice. It's just rec league, and giving a little more autonomy to the kids is fine. So I ask them what dynamic warmups, layups, games (tag, shootiong, etc) they want to play. 

3. Played Foster's 1v1 for about 5 min

4. 5-10 minutes of Americanized netball

5. Scrimmaged for the final 25 minutes (of an hour) practice. 

So I'm coaching another season of 3rd/4th grade boys in a rec league and this year's team is very different (skill level) from last year's team.

In the the group I got last year, 7 of 9 kids could make a layup pretty much every time they tried on the first day of practice. This year, maybe 4 of 11 can make a layup. Many of the 3rd graders are very physically weak and it looks like 2-3 kids have never played any type of hoops, not even at recess.

However, I'm more pumped to help out this group this year, even though last year's team had some players that were pretty talented for their age. 

I get to coach my son again (he's a 4th grader and I don't want him being "coached," I want him taught), which has given me a bit of a measuring stick, comparing him at the start of last year's season to this year, and comparing him (he still has a long way to go) to the other 3rd graders to see what they need to learn.

I've spent a decent amount of time lately watching "Basketball Manitoba's videos" (especially the ones by Mike Mackay and Kirby Schepp on using teaching games), as well as continuing to read just about everything Brian posts. Here's the website for the Manitoba videos: basketballmb

I'm looking forward to teaching this year's team.

So, for fun, I went to go watch the 5th/6th grade boys play and was disappointed, but not surprised, to see coaching to win (short term) rather than coaching to develop (long term). In each quarter, for both teams, there was a clearly designated ball handler. One team's "PG" brought the ball up, called the "play" (usually, a ball screen for him to penetrate to the hoop) or a pass to the wing (but then the play called for him to get a back screen/return pass for a layup.

The other team's "PG" brought the ball up and kept attempting to pass to their 6-foot center, except that the other team kept stealing that entry pass.

Out of 10 kids, I saw 5 kids touch the ball. Of the 5, except for the PGs, the others dribbled less than a minute.

This is no way to develop players.

I see that learned behavior in high school kids (well, younger kids, too) when coaches are complaining about the referring, the kids do it too. It's learned behavior. (This also reminds me of your recent re-post of the Durant/Nowitzki + height . Really, it's a miracle somebody didn't force Durant down into the post in middle school.)

I'm guess it's the peak-by-Friday/win-now mentality. I had a 6-1 athletic post (girl) as a freshman on varsity and I wanted her to be able to play both wing and post as 1) I had 3 other 6-footers whom were bulky, slow posts, not wings; and b) she was good enough to get a D-I scholarship at a Pac10 school playing, you guessed it, a wing/post combo. (Nobody could see that at 6-1, that's not post material at a D-1 school).

I got a lot of resistance (parents, others) when I was putting her in ball handling & guard drills, even though she was the second fastest player on the team.

That's a fair point. It's useful to get other opinions, which is why I really like this site. It's why coaches, like teachers (are hopefully doing), need to dialogue with other coaches to "stay sharp." I have too many veteran teaching colleagues whom are incurious about their profession and don't really ask question pedagogy in their profession, and choose to do what they have always done.