Beginner advice

[Anonymous]

17 yo DS has been a year round swimmer since age 10. Now he wants to learn basketball - he has played pick up here and there but now wants to get better. Any advice ? He is intimidated by the group classes where all the 14 year olds are like young Jalen Brunsons and KATs.

[Anonymous]

What are his goals?

Most likely just playing for fun, so he can play pick up?

Just look up youtube videos for workouts that he can do on his own.

Some of the training places has (had? haven't looked in a while) classes for older people, I'm sure they'll take upper teens too. But honestly he can do a lot of it on his own.


The main things to work on are:
-being able to dribble with both hands (not at the same time, both dominant and non dominant hand)
-being able to make layups coming from the right side of the basket with his right hand, and coming from the left side of the basket with his left hand
-practice his shots making sure he's using proper form and he can get the ball go consistently in


then just understanding proper defense. understanding the proper posture, sliding feet and staying between his man and the basket.

With all of the above, he should do okay going to local playgrounds and gyms and getting in pickup games.

There are some adult leagues too but I think they're a lot of former college and high school ball players or other people that played seriously.

One thing I say and like about basketball is that people are always looking for a fifth player and more often then not are welcoming of beginners or people not good.

[Anonymous]

OP here - thx for the advice !
His goal is to be able play intramural at college or pickup and not be the worst player. Swimming is mostly an individual sport and he wants to be able to play a sport on a team.
Any recs for specific YouTube content that he should watch?
We are in MD looking for beginner classes for older teens. Pat the Roc and Ness seem like they are for AAU level kids. Thx !

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here - thx for the advice !
His goal is to be able play intramural at college or pickup and not be the worst player. Swimming is mostly an individual sport and he wants to be able to play a sport on a team.
Any recs for specific YouTube content that he should watch?
We are in MD looking for beginner classes for older teens. Pat the Roc and Ness seem like they are for AAU level kids. Thx !

I was a HS swimmer/track kid who never touched a basketball but wanted to play pick up in college. I just worked out on my own. Basketball training can be a really fun way to get cardio if you do full court ball handling and layups.

I spent some time learning ball handling - being able to dribble down court full speed while looking up and being able to handle ball pressure while not getting the ball poked away (e.g. knowing how to use your off hand to keep defenders away from the ball) is the thing that will provide the most confidence when starting to play pickup. There are good YouTube videos on this.

Also learning to always finish layups - that’s one of the basic things that HS basketball players at almost all levels have. They can finish layups despite being fouled, going too fast, being out of position, etc. Doing layups teaches this, obviously, but also do Miken drills and reverse Mikens. Having regular and reverse layups with both hands really solid is huge for being able to score.

I actually still remember the first time I worked up the courage to play in a pickup game at UNC. I mostly played defense and catch and shoot for a while, then I decided to try driving to the basket, and I scored the guys on my team were like “Why haven’t you been doing that all game?” It was a very validating moment considering that two months prior I could barely dribble.