It has never been a question of how fast you can improve or how good you’re going to get. The ultimate truth is that you will improve, and you will become better and better in that infamous sport called basketball. How? There are a lot of ways, but one foolproof plan is to start learning its fundamentals.

Basketball fundamentals are without a doubt the most essential factor to becoming better in basketball. In fact, they are what put GOOD in GOOD BASKETBALL PLAYER. Despite age, skill level, or team that you’re playing with, knowing these fundamentals will be of great help for several reasons. Here are just some of them:

Handling Different Hard-Court Scenarios

For both coaches and players, there are a lot of hard-court actions that need to be handled with the appropriate approaches. And this is one of the avenues where our basketball fundamentals know-how will come in handy. Coaches all over the globe spend a large portion of their training courses and drills on these fundamentals for this very reason.

As an example, you might once in a while find yourself facing opponents with different tactics, or handling coaches with different coaching styles, or playing with team mates with different techniques and attitudes. Now, how do learning basketball fundamentals help in handling these scenarios? Simple. It makes your adjusting and relating with them quite easy. For instance, if you already have the background on shooting, dribbling and ball handling fundamentals, you should be able to adjust to your team’s or coach’s or even opponents’ game tactics with relative ease, no matter how many of them you face every so often.

Element of Surprise

Let’s face it. For most people, basketball is a serious business. That’s why others would go through great lengths to study their opposing team’s moves and strategies in both offense and defense. If you find yourself as the one being under close observation, a solid background on basketball fundamentals will do you a lot of good.

With these fundamentals, you and your team can always switch to from one tactic to another, based on the strengths of each member. Try to experiment with the basketball drills in your practices; dare to try something new but be consistent in executing them properly and excellently. So that even if opposing teams pay a close attention to your offensive and defensive moves, you will still have the upper hand in giving them an element of surprise. The same goes to the one observing the opponents. After analyzing their moves, you should be able to use your knowledge of these fundamentals to come up with a counter move offensively and defensively, to your opponent’s surprise. (more…)