3 on 3 - Small Sided Game to Grow the Game

The video above from Brian McCormick emphasizes the benefits of playing more 3 on 3 to develop your players.  This video focuses on developing youth basketball players, but the benefits can definitely be seen with your more experienced varsity and college players as well.  Geno Auriemma once said that basketball is just a game of 1 on 1, 2 on 2, and 3 on 3 situations.  Creating 3 on 3 games in your practices and part of your skill development gets players more meaningful touches helping them stay more engaged, thus helping them improve quicker.

We like to incorporate different actions that we use in our offense and different actions of the teams that we will play against when we play 3 on 3 in practice.  If we are playing a team that uses the UCLA hi-post action, we will play 3 on 3 and start with a pass to the wing, UCLA cut and then play live, emphasizing guarding the actions how we plan to guard it in games.  We like to use DHO into ball-screens, so we play a lot of 3 on 3 games using that action into live.  It really teaches our kids how to get open when the defense knows what they are going to do, and how to read the defense to turn small advantages into big advantages.

Whether you are a youth coach trying to teach the game and getting kids to fall in love with this great sport, or a varsity high school coach competing for a state championship, incorporating 3 on 3 games into your practices can really help your players and teams grow.