Do These 2 Things To Become The Best Ball Handler You Know

Let me ask you this question. Does this right here? See it? You gotta see it. See it? See the hand? Good job. We're controlling the ball, moving it back and forth. Good. Keep those look anything like this. Boy, that was something. You know what I love when you switch a big. Lonnie Walker was on a journey and completed the mission. Now, the answer that is obviously no. But if we know this, then how do we expect drills like this, which takes up the majority of the ball handling training that a lot of players are doing? How do we expect that to prepare us for the game, which is going to demand way more than just that? So in this video, I'm going to cut through all of the nonsense that goes into ball handling training and I'm going to give you the roadmap to follow if you want to become a better ball handler. I'm going to give you the exact things to focus on. I'm also going to give you three drills that you can start doing. They're going to help you to become a way more skilled, confident and game ready ball handler. Now, ball handling is actually kind of complicated, but it's also very simple at the same time. And I'll explain what I mean by that. But we're going to start off with that complicated part and then we'll, we'll scale back and we'll make it simple. So stick with me. Let's get into it. Now, there's two major things that we need when it comes to being a great ball handler. And the first thing is the ability to manipulate the ball. So when you dribble the basketball, you're not always just dribbling it straight down. This is the first problem with a lot of the traditional ball handling drills that players spend their time doing is they're working on hand, on top of the basketball, dribbling the ball straight down. And that becomes a lot of their work. Think like pound dribbles and, and those little taps and whatever like that. That's a lot of how players work on their ball handling, which is okay to an extent. But then again, you get into a game, you see that your hand is sometimes the same side of the ball on the back of the ball. And you have to be able to kind of manipulate where your hand is on the ball. And you also have to do that so that you can place the ball where you want to, right? So think about what your hand does when you do a spin move, or when you do an in and out dribble, or when you do a retreat dribble any sort of dribble where you're changing directions or you're changing your momentum, you're. You're manipulating the ball so you're able to almost place it where you want to place it. This is probably the single most important skill skill when it comes to ball handling. And it's something that I didn't work on nearly enough as a player. And I think it's a lot. It's something that a lot of players also don't work on nearly enough. Now, a great way to train this, we'll kind of hop into, like, the drills that I was mentioning. We can kind of start off in just a stationary setting where we have a cone, and we're just going over and back with that cone right there. Can make it super simple. A great way to do this is just kind of working on, okay, going over and back, and then maybe you go 1, 2, 3, and then you change hands with like a between or a crossover or behind, whatever. That's a great way to kind of intro it. And then I also like adding in pocket poles as well. Where we are dribbling that ball. We go over the cone back and maybe pull the ball to our pocket, which is just like you have like a hoodie on. It's like bringing it right there. And this is where that ball is going to get. A lot of the times when you're actually dribbling, when you're looking to accelerate or change direction, that ball is going to be in your pocket. So being able to manipulate it, bring it there, and then make a decision out of it is an important skill to have as a ball handler. So we can work on that with that. Again, we can add dribble moves to that as well. We can also train this while moving so we can go moving, moving manipulations where we're thinking about just covering as much ground as we can laterally back and forth. And it's a great way to be able to train our ability to move the basketball, manipulate it, put it where we want to put it. This actually takes us into our next part, into the next, the next most important thing when it comes to being a great ball handler, and that's being able to keep the ball up with your body. So being able to move with the basketball and not be limited by the ball. The biggest limiting factor when it comes to players and their ability to handle basketball is their ability to keep the ball up as they move quickly. Right. Players are really, really good at handling the ball when they're stationary or when they're not moving that fast. But then we get into a game and they have to be. They have to move really, really fast. For whatever reason they are trying to beat their defender or they're trying to break a press or they're trying to, you know, handle some sort of pressure, whatever, and they have to go quickly. That's when they lose the basketball because they haven't trained the ability to move fast, to move as fast as the game is going to demand, and also keep the ball up with them. Right. So we talk about getting a true, like on a string handle. That actually comes from the ability to keep the ball up with our body when we're moving at full speed right there. So we want to make sure that we train this ability by working on moving at full speed and not letting that ball be something that slows us down. So what I love doing with this is working out of like a crawl start. And we'll just go with like a freestyle. A lot of times we'll do this from like half court or for baseline half court, or we'll go sideline to sideline right there. So you're going to start in a crawl and then which is essentially it's going to start us in a lower position so we can kind of accelerate and start off quicker. And then we're just going to basically freestyle all the way across to the opposite sideline or from baseline to half court, whatever. And we're thinking about trying to get there as fast as possible, but we want to just mix up the moves that we're doing. So I'm only led to use crossovers between the legs, behind the back spin moves. And when I do this, it allows me to train that ability. Right. I have to be okay with the fact that I'm going to lose the ball probably pretty often if I'm really pushing myself and working this ability. But then as we get better at doing this, you're going to really develop that ability to have the ball on a string. This is one of my absolute favorite ball handling drills to do with my players now because it builds just that confidence of knowing that, hey, I can move as fast as I need to move and the ball is going to keep up with me. It's not going to be that limiting factor. Again, this is going to be very difficult when you challenge yourself and you really are saying, hey, I want to get better at this. But that's a really important thing to do. So those are two things that are really, really important. And so I'll list like kind of like, a workout that you could use with just these three things there. And if you do these three things consistently, your ball handling is going to go to the next level. Like, it's going to. It's going to take a massive jump forward when you focus on these important things. And I'll add one more piece to that right there. Like I said, starting off with kind of the complex stuff and ending it with the simple stuff, they say that you are the average of the five people you spend most time with. Right. I just talked about this a couple of weeks ago where, you know, I had a video where I talked about becoming a great player and how important it is to surround yourself with not just great people, but who are you watching, who are you listening to, you know, online or whatever? Like, how are you surrounding yourself with people who are going to positively impact you? So you are the people that you surround yourself with, essentially, whatever you're around, wherever you do the most, that is who you become when it comes to ball handling. How much are you just having a ball in your hands? How often is it just, yeah, I'm just dribbling, right? How often is a ball a part of you? We talk about not allowing the ball to slow us down or be able to keep the ball up with our body. We want to develop that just on a string, handle that confidence. A lot of that comes from having just a great feel for the basketball. And the best way you can do this is just dribble as much as possible. Just freestyle. Be creative. You're. You're walking down the streets of the park. Dribble the whole way. Mix up the moves you're doing. Try and just be creative and try new things, right? Have fun. And the more that you do this, the more that you just make the ball kind of a part of you, the better you're going to be. I noticed this when I, like, really first got into training, like, almost five, about five years ago at this point now. And I would notice that, like, after I started and I was on a court for three, four hours a day, just training players, but I always had a ball in my hands. I always just kind of dribbling, just kind of messing around. And I started to notice that, like, the ball felt really, really good. Like, I felt like I had a. Like, my handle was really tight, and I felt like I had the ball in a string and I wasn't doing any drills or anything that I just talked about. I wasn't doing any of that, but I just had the ball with me. All the time. I was always dribbling, just like messing around, just like, you know, kind of freestyling, just whatever. And I just did that all the time, like every single day. And because of that, I started to become a better ball handler. And I think that that's again, where it becomes so simple too. So we have the complex stuff, but when we really, you know, kind of boil it down, can you make the ball an extension of your hand? And you do that by just having the ball with you as much as possible. So something to think about is just adding that and making it a part of your life is, I'm just always dribbling. That's just what I do. And when you do that, you're going to become a better ball handler. So those are things that I think that if you really focus on, it's going to take your ball handling to the next level. Now if you want a full workout that's going to go into like all these things and more like not just your ball handling, but shooting, scoring in general, footwork, all the stuff that goes into it. I have a free two week scoring program that you should definitely check out. Again, we go through the exact ball drills that we talked about in this video, but then on top of that, we do even more completely free. That's the top link in the description down below. Make sure you go check that out. I appreciate you for watching. Talk soon. Peace.