Dribbling with Touch
by Sidney Goldstein Copyright © 2004

On Dec 9, 2004, at 11:33 PM, Daniel Freeman wrote:
You say that you can teach anyone to be a good dribbler. Do you teach dribbling with the finger tips or the finger pads?
Yours in basketball, Dan Freeman

Daniel:
Nice to hear from you.
And yes, dribbling is the easiest ball skill to teach. Anyone can be a good dribbler if you use the proper methods as described in my books and videos. However, teaching improperly yields nothing.
In teaching anything mechanical always overemphasize, in this case forcing players to dribble on the parts of the hand that controls the ball. Under emphasis yields no improvement. However, the "Touch" part of dribbling, like the touch part of shooting and passing, needs to be practiced separately from the actual dribble. For example, if you see a player dribbling with too much hand contact, fingers and palm rather that finger ends, then you need to work on touch drills. Just telling the player to dribble with more fingertip or pad contact is worthless. Players dribble this way because they are not accustomed to contacting the ball properly. Give them the practice contacting the ball properly, then they will incorporate this into their dribbling as well as their passing and shooting.
Best.
Sidney Goldstein

Your comments are welcome.
Sidney Goldstein, author of The Basketball Coach's Bible and The Basketball Player's Bible, has successfully coached both men's and women's teams over a period of 15 years.