Passing Drills — Teaching an Undertaught Skill

4 min readNov 2, 2022

Passing has to be one of the most under-taught skills in basketball.

You see coaches complaining about it being a “lost art” all the time.

But, at the same time, most coaches spend so little time working on improving the actual skill of passing.

There are a few reasons for that:

Coaches think spending time on passing drills is a waste of time and that time should be spent on other more pressing items
We just think it happens naturally — it’s something a player “has” or doesn’t
Passing drills aren’t “gamelike”
We forget
We run out of space in the practice plan
We don’t really believe it can be taught/don’t know how to teach it

Passing is just like any other skill — you have to work on it and emphasize it in practices and skill workouts if you want your players to improve at it.

Here are a few thoughts/ideas:

You can make any drill into a passing drill
watch how your team throws passes in your drills…you’ll probably be surprised at how few gamelike passes are being thrown
a good idea might be to film practice and show your team the types of passes they are throwing
remind your players to throw “perfect strikes” in shooting drills, transition drills, finishing drills, etc.
hold players accountable for throwing on target passes in drills
Emphasize no turnovers in practice
whether you’re working shell drill, playing full court, going over your sets, etc….hammer away at the importance of taking care of the ball
I’ve seen some coaches have a 5 turnover (or whatever number you want) rule during 5-on-5 scrimmages. Once a team goes over 5, they run. Something like this, with your own twist, could help communicate the importance of taking care of the ball.
Add passers to as many drills as possible
Look at all your drills, see where coaches are passers, and find ways to adapt them so your players make the passes
Next, take a good look at your shooting, ball handling, finishing and drills and think of places you can add a passer
WHEN YOU PASS MORE, YOU’LL GET BETTER AT PASSING
Add decision-making with passing to your drills
This piggybacks off the idea above
Where can you add a decision for your players in your drills?
A lot of issues in passing/turnovers has to do with poor decision-making. It’s your job to make your players better decision-makers.
Take away the dribble as an option in your drills
Work on Shell Drill with no dribbling allowed. Do a full-court drill with passes only. Whatever works…just take away the dribble so your team can focus on passing.

And…finally…a few passing drills I like:

Motion Passing

list out every action that occurs in your playbook/within your offensive concepts
from that list, make another list of every type of pass/cut in your offense
construct all your drills around these concepts/plays
for example, if you run Dribble-Drive…there are a few passes you need to be able to make when driving to a corner
kick out, stop and throw back, pitch back, reverse pivot to safety, drop off to post, etc.
construct drills where these actions happen and rep them out…with defense wherever possible