European Method: In-Season Practice Day

The one real practice of a two-game week, built the way EuroLeague head coaches build it. It opens with ten minutes of passing drills whose rules change without warning, so concentration is the first skill trained. The stretch comes after the ball work and belongs to the conditioning coach. Then guards and bigs run the same individual series at two baskets, every player runs the ball-screen reads he runs every day, the full-court threes end in a box-out, and three-on-two plus one goes for ten minutes. The half court is a close-out shell with the team's rules. The last block is five on five with the five-chances rule, where the defense earns its way to the ball, plus a few possessions of press, zone press, and trap so nothing in the game is new. Pairs shooting and free throws close it, and the young players stay. The whole day is capped at three hours including the weight room, and film does not count against it. I learned this skeleton from the in-season practice Željko Obradović ran on camera for FIBA's coaching library and from Dimitris Itoudis's preseason session in the same series; the five-chances rule is Obradović's, from his Eurohoops interview. Watch both clinics if you want to see the drills run.