LEARNING NOT TO FORCE THE BALL

One of the things good players sometimes loose sight of, is their ability to influence the play of their teammates.

Good players sometimes look at their teammates and think "I'm the best scoring option of the five on the court, therefore I'm taking the shots." Although that may be true, it hurts your team in three ways:

#1 it kills the movement of your teams offense. When you look for your shots first, pretty soon your teammates begin to think you won't pass the ball and they stop working hard to get open.

#2 when a good player takes the majority of the shots, they obviously draw defensive attention, sometimes double or triple teams. But while it may feel good to know that a player can beat double teams, players that do that aren't very smart, nor are they 'team players.' When a player is being double-teamed, their four remaining teammates are being covered by only three defenders. That means one teammate is wide-open. Don't keep forcing the ball into defensive pressure or mismatches... pass to the open teammate.

#3 Lastly, when a player takes the majority of the shots on a team, and refuses to pass to other teammates and get them involved in the offense, they should expect their teammates to look at them with some anger and frustration. They should expect to hear the word "ball hog" whispered among the rest of the team. And for good reason.

The way to avoid these problems is to learn to recognize "when" you are being double-teamed and know your teammates strengths & weaknesses and work to get them the ball in situations that play to their strengths.

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