Youth Basketballers Should Focus on the Fundementals

Do you remember what you had been taught while growing up studying the sport of basketball? The basic foundations of the game, the different tactics and set plays?

Basketball Basics that haven’t changed:

  • Force the ball into the corner and baseline
  • Run while crossing your feet when playing defense
  • Dribble push the ball towards the basket as the first option

Basketball is this exciting sport and for the last 100 odd years, since Dr. Naismith invented this game, many trends and styles have found their way to a very simple game.

It is not to say that basketball fads are a poor stain on the reputation of the game, but similar to the uniforms and hairstyles adopted by the players and replicated in youth basketball uniforms and dress choices, the sport of basketball has had it’s share of adjustments only to discover that it always comes back to the simple act of placing the ball within the hoop more times than your competitor.

Most parents training basketball now, likely would have discovered a speedy spot on the bench for allowing the player they had been guarding drive into the baseline. These days, it’s typical for coaches to highlight forcing the participant to the corner and baseline on protection. WOW, what a switch. I can still hear my Dad crying – “do not give up the BASELINE!”. Now it’s typical for coaches to shout “no center, get up high and push baseline”. This trend/change in doctrine, I predict, will again alter later on. We do not all have a 7-foot tall players rotating to assist on such a baseline drive.

How about this one, shield the ball by running with the participant you are guarding. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? This is a true procedure of protection being educated now. What happened to some fantastic defensive posture with your broom stick between your knees and also a step/slide activity???

Still another basketball trend is that the current dribble drive offense which has taken basketball attacks and flipped it upside down in the past couple of decades. This attack highlights the DRIBBLE and DRIVE into the basket (assumption is that this really is the toughest thing to protect) with very little if any emphasis or focus on ball screens, screen aways, or ball passes until a dribble drive is tried. I am able to let you know that the children like to play in such a manner, but at a junor basketball educational level, this can be precisely opposite of what we attempt to educate. We teach the children to grab and set triple threat position, intend to shoot first, then drive or pass. We encourage ball screens and want the children to screen off to pick different players who are available. We need them to create the initial simple pass to the first open participant, and cut into the basket following the pass.

I use 4 and 3 button suit jackets to operate Daily, however I had a Leisure suit growing up. However, the match, such as the suit jackets and sublimated basketball uniforms, always appear to return to the conventional 2 button.

As we teach the youth to play basketball, then let us bear in mind the new trends and style of this sport, but let us concentrate on the sound principles ff shooting, passing, and ball handling – the two button suit jacket – and prepare the children to have the ability to adapt in any manner later on.

Social media and the music industry.

  Although live music has been big business for the entertainment industry for well over one hundred years, there has never been as many progressive changes as we have witnessed in the past decade or two. The most obvious being the advantages of the internet (including social media) and the ability to share not only the music itself but also news of up and coming artists, tours, and other music related news and facts.

If you had a band or ran a record label/ touring company in the 1990’s/ early 2000’s and didn’t adapt to the online/technology changes that were slowly being introduced, there is a good chance you went out of business or at least lost a lot of potential business.
To put on a small to mid-sized show on a limited budget twenty years ago you needed to incorporate both a grassroots style marketing/ advertising campaign (such as having a team of staff posting up flyers to promote the gig) and good networking connections with people in the radio and print media industries, and that was just to ensure potential punters knew about the show. Unless you had good ticket sales, you had no idea how many people would turn up.

Things changed significantly with the introduction of the internet. For starters, you no longer need a significant sized marketing budget, you just need to harness the power of social media platforms such as Facebook. They not only alert potential punters to the show and allow the promoter to see how many people are interested but can also include a link for people to purchase tickets directly online with the tap of a button, allowing people who don’t have access to ticket retailers the opportunity to buy them.

Youtube is also a very powerful tool when promoting new music to potential fans who would otherwise never have heard (or even heard of) the artist(s). This makes Youtube very useful in promoting not only new acts but also lets people know when their favorite acts have released new music. Best of all it is completely free to use. All you need is access to the internet. Gone are the days of having to pay radio stations to play your songs, if you build up a reliable following online, you are pretty much guaranteed to have people hear your music.

It doesn’t stop there either. Other forms of social media can also help promote new music or acts. In the past few years, Instagram has also become a popular way to boost musician’s profiles.

If you have a small marketing budget, setting up a well-designed website is a great way of promoting yourself and your music to the general public. On it, you can feature not only news and photos but also videos, music and even include links for people to purchase things such as records/CDs and merchandise.

There is no way of predicting where the music industry will head in the future, but you can guarantee that the internet (and social media in particular) will play a massive part in it.