Skill equals confidence. Players who are skilled are more confident than players who aren’t skilled. This is simple but hard to achieve. This is because the level of skill required to build the confidence necessary to play basketball is significant. 

Knowing this and understanding that playing vs. pressure is one of the most difficult things to develop confident and skilled players on the importance of spending time on handling pressure becomes clear. This is particularly true at the youth level where a player’s experience can be hindered by their inability to handle pressure.

There are two components to developing your player’s ability to handle pressure:

• Individual Skills
• Team Concepts

This course will outline ideas to improve both a player’s individual skills and their application of those skills in team concepts.

A combination of any of these drills and challenges can be used in any phase of basketball training. Player development requires players to be put in game-like situations so that they can apply their skills. When it comes to handling pressure we feel that “hard first instruction” is necessary for players to develop game applicable skills.