Basketball Passing Drills

Sean Keating coaches high school varsity in St. Peter, Minnesota, and runs a youth league where third- and fourth-graders don't play 5-on-5. They play a continuous fast-break game, 4-on-3 one way and 3-on-2 the other. Defenders can steal passes but aren't allowed to reach in for the ball. On EP92 Sean described what happened when his fourth-grade boys, after four weeks of it, played their first 5-on-5 tournament. Parents were texting him during the game to say the team looked different.

With an extra player on every trip, as Sean put it, there's always somebody open, and there's always a defender trying to intercept the pass. Every game below keeps both: a receiver to find and a defender in the way.

The line drill is popular because it seems to cover several fundamentals at once: dribble out, jump stop, pivot, chest pass back to the next player. Transcending Basketball argues that in a game, defenders and teammates are always changing, so players can't reproduce what the drill rehearsed.

Alex asked the practical version of the question in his article on line and box drills: when in a game does a player start from the sideline, dribble out, jump stop, pivot and pass back in the direction they came from? He doesn't use these drills even for warm-ups. The book adds that players don't need to master a chest pass before they can make a one-handed pass or find other ways to get the ball there.

The three-player weave has the same problem. Transforming Basketball lists it with the zig-zag as a "timeless classic" of on-air practice: players throw accurate chest passes to teammates and run behind the player they passed to, with nobody trying to take the ball. The book calls this blocked constant practice, the same action repeated many times with minimal variance.

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Every pass in a game involves a passer, a receiver and at least one defender. The defender changes the angle, speed and trajectory the pass needs. The receiver decides where the pass can go by where they move. Take either one away and players lose the information they use to pass in a game, so the drill stops being representative (close enough to the game for the skill to carry over).

The book's glossary borrows a word from the Russian scientist Nikolai Bernstein for what we want instead: dexterity, the ability to solve whatever movement problem comes up. For passing, that means getting the ball to teammates in different spots, at different speeds, heights and angles, against defenders pressuring from different directions. A passing line, the glossary says, doesn't help develop it.

Small rule changes shift all three roles at once. A Constraints-Led Approach to Coaching Basketball gives an example from a possession game with three offensive players and one defender: tell the players they can only pass below shoulder level. The overhead pass disappears, so the receivers have to reposition to open a window with a clear line for a low pass. Nobody is told where to move. The rule makes the movement worth finding.

Players standing in two lines throwing chest passes is the classic passing drill. The book replaces it with the playground game piggy in the middle. Players pass at different angles and speeds, on the move, in different planes and with different spins, because the defender in the middle makes them.

The two-step catch rule changes what counts as a good pass: getting it past the defender isn't enough if the teammate can't use it. The guided-defense step comes from EP136, on how to simplify a passing game without stripping out the defender.

If you like what the dribble-stop-pivot-pass drill is trying to do, keep the movements and add the information. George Vaz's version from the best warm-ups for basketball practices takes a drill he spent nearly an hour on at a camp as a kid and puts a defender in it.

Alex's article offers a 1-on-1 alternative inspired by the box drill. The offense self-passes out from under the basket with a live defender following, then plays 1-on-1 with a five-second clock, starting from a different spot each time. To get pivoting without teaching it, he adds a rule like "stay for three reps, and you must pivot a different way every time or it's a turnover". Try it with ten-year-olds, he writes, and reverse and forward pivots emerge without players knowing what they're doing.

Passing problems also involve the players without the ball. If one defender can guard two receivers, the passer has fewer options. We use "1 can't guard 2" to help players see why their spacing matters: their positions should change as the ball and the defenders move, and the right distance depends on the space and how far players can pass.

Played the same way every day, Alex warned on EP22, even keepaway becomes a games approach rather than the constraints-led approach. His suggestions for keeping it alive:

• Mark out irregular playing areas with cones and change area every minute.
• After every pass, the passer has to leave the area before coming back in to receive again. For a moment the defense has a +1, which can invite them to trap.
• Allow one dribble, which opens up different ways to pass and create space.

A rondo is the same idea with the defenders inside the circle. The Routledge book uses it as a warm-up for first-touch, zero-second decisions, where the ball moves on before the defense recovers.

Keepaway is about keeping the ball, while games are about getting it somewhere. The book's next step is pass touchdown: one team tries to get the ball to the other baseline through passing to score a point. Players now notice when moving away from the ball opens a forward pass, and when coming closer gives the passer a safe option.

Francesco Rossi's Animals game, from EP39, takes direction the full length of the floor: three offensive players have to score at the far basket using only passes, against one defender in each half and one free defender. It's the passing game we recommend against full-court pressure, and the rules are in our press-break guide.

3-on-0 drive and kick is built on a good principle: dominoes, keeping an advantage alive until a good shot appears. But without defense, the book points out, players can't attune to the information they need, like where the open teammate is, what space there is to attack and how to pass around defenders. Its replacement is 3-on-2 Bursts, where the offense stays on for several possessions in a row, covered in our small-sided games guide. A smaller version ties the pass to the shot.

For passing in traffic after a drive, the Routledge book names passing solutions as one of the most common rate limiters in youth players, and gives a game built around the dunker spot.

Alex and George used a harder version with the London Lions U16 girls, described on EP108. Many of the girls didn't yet have the strength for the skip pass when the defense collapsed on a pick-and-roll. The handler came off a pick with a switched defender on them and had to make the skip pass to a shooter in the corner while that defender tried to steal it, earning a point for a strike-zone pass to the shooter's hand. Alex called it a good example of task simplification.

Plenty of youth teams think they're developing passing through a pass-and-cut offense. On EP7 Alex explained why he disagrees. When the cut is filled in a pre-programmed pattern, there's no reason for a real off-ball cut, and the receiver often can't drive because they have to wait for the cutter to clear. He'd rather players simply pass and space, find their window outside the three-point line, and learn real off-ball cuts like the ghost cut, a term he borrows from Mike MacKay.

His practical rule, from a presentation on the topic, is that pass and cut is a turnover. Encourage players to find other solutions, even if that "only" means spacing. The full argument is in why pass-and-cut motion offense is harming youth basketball.

Sean Keating's league is a good model. Besides the odd-numbered fast-break format, defenders don't guard beyond the three-point line, they can steal passes but can't reach in for the ball, and the hoops are lowered to eight or nine feet. The no-reaching rule came from his assistant, Josh, and Sean admitted he resisted it at first. He came around because it gives kids time to learn to pivot and pass, even if it takes five, six or seven seconds. One more rule, borrowed from another coach:

Check distances too. A pass that's open in theory may be beyond a young player's range. Then the rate limiter (the thing stopping the pass from happening) is strength rather than perception, so shrink the space or scale the ball before deciding a player can't see the pass. For more games with beginners, see our youth basketball coaching guide.