Basketball Rebounding Drills

Sometimes a player needs to make contact with an opponent. Other times they need to track the ball and move straight into its path off the rim. We use constraints to help players explore these different rebounding situations.

The simplest change you can make to your practice is to stop ending activities on a shot attempt. The possession is live until a team secures the ball or the offense scores. When players stop playing after a 1-on-1 finish or a shot in a small-sided game, negative transfer is occurring: they are learning the opposite of what the game requires.

Add one rule to the 1-on-1s and small-sided games you already use: keep playing until a score or a defensive rebound. Nobody stops playing when the ball is shot, and every miss becomes a rebounding opportunity.

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21 SSGs for Your Next Practice

21 small-sided games you can run and adapt at your next practice, each one keeping the defenders, decisions and scoring of the real game.

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The box out still matters, but it's one solution, not the only one. Rebounding contact has three parts: a take on, a brace and a seal, and each looks a little different depending on the player and the situation. Boxing out a crashing Dennis Rodman is nothing like boxing out Shaquille O'Neal planted on the low block. Sometimes you have to scrum someone under the basket. Sometimes the best answer is for a player to read the flight of the ball and go and get it, instead of waiting for the ball to come to them. These are examples of how constraints affect the rebounding solution a player uses.

This is why tossing the ball off the backboard from the same spot, or leaving the ball on the floor and having players box out a teammate for 3 seconds before collecting it, doesn't build rebounding skills. With no real shot and no crashers, there is nothing to read. Players can only learn the subtleties of rebounding in constrained small-sided games, where they play against different opponents and the ball is shot from different places.

NBA teams practice it the same way. Here, the Celtics coaching staff are intentionally crashing and changing their offensive rebounding strategies. The goal of the defense is to avoid getting wedged into the restricted area, where no rebounds fall. So against intense crashing, we advocate for clear-outs: defenders use physicality to create as much space as possible between their opponent and the rim. This doesn't have to be a traditional box out technique. In fact, doing it side-on often gives more leverage. When there is no crasher, players can either "sandwich rebound" to help a teammate, or leak out to create an advantage for transition offense.

Defensive Shutdown is a great way to use constraints to make the rebound part of every defensive possession. It works well for 12 players at one basket, so it also solves the problem of working with a large group without many baskets.

You can also make rebounding more of an emphasis inside any normal scrimmage or small-sided game by using Three Lives. A life is lost for every offensive rebound conceded, and a team automatically loses if it loses all its lives, even if it has more points than the opponent at that moment.

Once a player secures the rebound, they need to recognize whether to pass or advance the ball with a breakout dribble. Teammates also need to respond, by running lag free or by a handler becoming available if the rebounder is jammed. Allow your activities to continue after the rebound to create these opportunities. A simple way to do this is to play to half court after a small-sided game, with the defense allowed to score again if they turn the other team over before it crosses half court.

Another principle of play to emphasize is rebounders landing like a quarterback: facing the other basket and ready to kick ahead after securing the rebound. It's a great alternative to the traditional rebound and pivot, which slows down the pace of transition offense.

On the other side of the ball, tagging up is emerging as a popular principle of play for teams that want to be aggressive on the offensive glass. Each offensive player gets level with the "high side" of whoever guarded them on the shot attempt, being as physical as possible with their hip and arm to win the 50-50 ball. Coach Tuomas Iisalo brought the system from Bonn to Paris Basketball, the first team to popularize it in Europe. George Vaz's article on how Paris uses tagging up explains why it works.