• Many coaches run practice drills to look better in practice but too often the drills don’t transfer to a game.
• We do a lot of things as coaches that do not transfer into a game.
• A thought from John Kessel – what do you coach? He argues you coach people and they play basketball. Therefore the most important thing is to understand people and how they learn.
• We do a lot of things in basketball that ask players to memorize something – patterns of offence, patterns of shooting, but the game is not a memorization test. The game is different every time.
• We don’t want to teach players memorization. We want to teach them concepts.
• Practice should look ugly because that’s how you learn. You make lots of mistakes.
• How did you learn how to ride a bike? By falling a lot.
• Use Socratic method of bringing out discussion when you ask a question in practice. Ask your players who wants to agree, build or challenge a concept raised in practice.
• Transfer and retention are important terms in evaluating your coaching. Do the concepts transfer to the game and do your players retain them in the game?
• The average number of trips up and down the floor in 5-on-5 play at the women’s FIBA level is three. For men at the FIBA level it is four. This means you should structure your practices in trips up and down the floor of at least three before a stoppage.
• Over 65% of game possessions on offence starts with a defensive rebound or an inbound play. Starting from a check ball situation never happens. He suggests you should start your trips in practice from realistic situations. If you don’t, you are robbing players of learning opportunities and the opportunity to get into offence from chaos. 

Here are some fun and effective ways to start trips:

1. Force left position into a wing steal.
2. Play off a dribble through. An offensive player dribbles from one side of the court to the other by going under the rim.
3. Live off a lay-up shot block.

Three types of drills:

1. Teaching – Can stop it at any time to correct.
2. Learning – Coach on the fly and dead balls.
3. Competing – Just like a game. Time-outs. Play through mistakes.

• If you stop players too much in your drills they will never get the fitness components of the game.
• The number one rule for teammates on penetration reaction is to create a double gap for the dribbler. This means to remove the defenders who are one pass away in help by cutting or spacing.
• You have to learn to play against ball pressure because good defences collapse offensive space
• Build practice plans around the energy systems and not just the basketball systems.
• How can you put pressure on the basket on offence? Three ways: Cutting. Penetration. Screening (With a cut towards the rim).
• Freeze and rewind are his classroom management commands. Teaching signals and their meanings speed up your practice communications.
• Practice cuts vs. game cuts is an important understanding for players and their practice improvement.
• If you stop the action constantly throughout the practice the players will get frustrated.
• In regards to blocked vs. random practice, although it looks like you are getting better when you shoot the same shot over and over again, the problem is that the results won’t hold up in the re-test (competition).
• Once you are on auto-pilot you are not aware. Thinking must be challenged constantly to stimulate improvement.
• Questions to ask players: What’s one thing you learned today at practice you can apply in the next practice?