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Click here to see the video: Basketball Coach's Corner: Practice Philosophy

Coach Bill Thom: We've talked about a lot of individual drills, now we're going to take the team concept and team practice. I've had the luxury of coaching college kids all the way down to rec leagues, and I know facilities vary from one level to the other. I've worked where I've had a number of assistants with me, and I've worked where I've been in the gym with 15 players and just myself.

So, with that in mind, I'm going to try to give you the scenario with the 15 players and one coach, because that's a worst-case scenario. So, if you fall into that category, this hopefully will give you a lot of help and direction.

One of the things I like to do is write down what I want to do on a practice plan, be it my rec team or my high school team. I always carry a practice plan that I just keep in my shorts or in my pocket; that helps me keep on track. You want to keep on task, it's just like a teacher with a lesson plan. I think it's important that you spend five minutes, probably no more than 10, on any given drill. We like to move through it – it keeps the attention of the kids involved.

We will vary our drills, so if we have an hour, I'll try to do drills where we keep all the kids moving and involved. I don't want five kids on the court doing the drill, and then bringing out five more if I can help it. I want to incorporate drills that are active, that are fun, that are applicable to what we're going to do in the game. We never practice anything that isn't applicable to what we want to do in a game situation. Try to make the drills fun, and also fundamentally sound.

One important lesson I learned early in my career – with regards to teaching plays, or teaching players how to play. I started out, and I had a lot of great plays, and I inherited a team that was pretty skilled. After my third year, a lot of the kids didn't have fundamental background, and I realized it that it's not about teaching the plays. It's about teaching kids how to play: how to use an inside pivot foot, how to use correct technique when making layups, how to move defensively, how to box out.

So, if you teach them the basics, it really doesn't matter what the other team's doing. You don't need to teach a lot of different offenses, patterns, plays – they'll have the basis to be able to attack whatever defense is thrown up against them.