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I like the Dribble Drive Offense – but I love defense!

For many years I’ve made defense the centerpiece of my coaching – and I’m in the process of writing a book about it. It’s not something from Walberg, Calipari or any other well known coach (even though I feel it compliments the Dribble Drive very well).

No, it’s something we came up with a number of years ago when we had a team that was offensively challenged, but sound in defensive fundamentals. It involved changing between five different defenses on pretty much every possession, which sounds confusing. It was, but more for the teams we played against, which usually led to a 6-8 minute stretch in the second half where they wouldn’t score.

Anyway, it’s early in the process, but I’ve reached out to a few coaches I respect very much and asked them to read through my material later in the summer of 2024, when I’ve written a little bit more.

I’m hoping it’s ready in the fall of 2024 – but until then the Dribble Drive books are still on sale.

Transition is a continuous 3 on 3 drill that’s fun and challenging, with two teams competing against each other, while focusing on the Dribble Drive Break/Sideline Break and defensive transition.

The drill continues the work started in the Scramble 11 man break drill, using the same tactics, but now requiring the wings to beat their man to force the outnumbered situation.

I can’t think of anything basketball tactics- or skills-wise you can’t do in this drill and it’s one of the fastest drills I’ve ever run.
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The “Blood” drills are the essence of teaching the offense. This is a simple breakdown of the principles of the offense. It’s fast paced drills to also help in conditioning.

The drills can be anything from

• Blood 11: Pure player development
• Blood 22: 2-on-2, guards and post players
• Blood 32/33: 3-on-3, with guards, posts and the 2/3-man
• Blood 44: 4-on-4 (guards, posts and both O2 and O3)

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As a lot of people all over the world has to stay home, we may have a little more time to study basketball.

The new combined man and zone offense e-book offer gives you more than 220 pages of PDF-basketball to study for only $19.99.

Everybody stay safe!

Get it right here

Wow, the book on the Dribble Drive Offense has been published in Japan!

About six years ago someone approached me wanting to publish the book in Japan and bought the rights to do so. And then nothing happened, so I thought that it never materialized.

Then this spring Japanese coach Kohei Tsukamoto approached me on Facebook wanting a biography because the book was just about to be published in Japanese. That was a big, but welcome surprise to me so I talked to Kohei a bit and now the finished product is here!

I don’t know if it will make it big, but I sure am proud!

This is a fast paced drill that involves shooting, boxing out and quick decisions – on top of the full court attack skills of the Dribble Drive. I really like it because it incorporates all of the dribble drive skills in the full court, but at the same time you have to focus on rebounding, aggressiveness and make quick decisions.

  Instructions
Full court drill. Two lines under the basket. Balls in one line. Players switch lines every time they’ve been in the drill.

O1 passes the ball to O2. O1 then sprints over to O2 and taps the ball before he backpedals to his shooting range. O2 passes the ball to O1 for a shot. A made shot is worth one point.

The defender O2 now boxes out and the two players fight for the rebound. Whichever player gets the ball is attacking to the other end. Points are awarded for making a basket.

Next team goes when the rebound is secured. This makes the drill move very quickly.

Variations
You may vary the court size for this drill. If you want to make it difficult you limit the players to the space betseen the lanes. This forces the players to really attack to go by the defender.

Fellow coaches,

We talk a lot about offenses, shooting and other technical things about basketball. Tonight I was reminded what basketball is (also) all about: Heart and love.

In the terrorist attacks in Copenhagen over the weekend we lost a cherished member of our basketball club, Dan Uzan. We had a game on Monday night and the outpouring of love from Dan’s friends and family was incredible. The crowd was full of people that the Gentle Giant had touched over the years. Friends who had grown up with him, teammates from the last 20 years, opponents.

Today i went to a coaching clinic with Nenad Trunic who is heavily involved with the Serbian youth National Team program.

The clinic is on building a defense from 1-on-1 to 4-on-4 and I think it’s really worth seeing. I like coach Trunic’s thoughts on the shell drill which he always starts from a defensive disadvantage situation so the defense has to think and recover.

I apologize for the quality and the sudden jumps. I wasn’t there from the start as we had our one hour practice session with the National Team and I didn’t quite know how to use my new phone’s camera so it stopped by itself a few times. However it should certainly be viewable.

Also see the clinic notes from the same clinic held last year below.

It’s the summertime, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, and it looks like a lot of coaches are busy with basketball even if it’s the off season.

We are obviously getting orders from AAU coaches who are looking to spice up their summer program, but also a lot of orders are coming in from American high school and college coaches who are already preparing for next season.

European coaches are also busy preparing for the upcoming season. Most of them starts pre-season practice in August or September so for them things are getting a bit more urgent.

For me it’s a time of change. Last season was amazing as we started out winning a European B-division Championship with our Under-16’s men National Team in August, qualifying for the top flight of European basketball. It was an amazing experience watching the Danish flag go to the top as we received our gold medals in Sarajevo.

That was also the last bit of real coaching I did last season as I stopped coaching the pro team and transitioned fully into the part of my job which deals with club management. Over the last three seasons we tripled attendance and last season half our home games were on live national TV.

At the end of the season, however, I decided to walk away and look for another job. I soon found one although it ended up being very similar to what I was doing before. at my old job I had to run pretty much everything at the club (including coaching the team for two seasons) while at the new one all I have to do is the internal and external communication, event making, marketing and making sure we get to be on TV a lot… Easy, right?

I’m really looking forward to it for another reason. We will have a lot of volunteers helping out with everything which should leave me with enough time to do one of the things i really love in life: coach basketball.

I don’t yet know which team I will coach as I’ll slot in where the club needs me – there are 500 members so there are a lot of teams to cover – but I’ll look forward to getting back into coaching after a year off.

Another thing I’m doing is that I’ve started looking at writing a new book. This time I want to write about defense as that is one of my great interests. A few years ago I coached a team where we got really creative with defense and at some point I’d like to share what we did with the world. Look for it in… Well, within the next couple of years, I guess!

Have a nice time, wherever you are!