Ultimate Basketball Drill

Played like indoor Ultimate Frisbee, Ultimate Basketball is a great end-of-practice drill to simulate running fastbreak sets, moving without the ball, and keeping the tempo high.

There is no dribbling, fouling, or traveling. If the ball touches the floor it immediately goes over to the other team, which immediately goes the other way. A team scores one point when a player receives a pass with both feet inside the scoring area. You can have the scoring area be the area beyond the free-throw line extended or any other area you choose.

This is a tremendous pass-and-catch drill that requires players to cut quickly, and strategically move into unguarded areas. Players quickly learn that long “Hail Mary” passes rarely work. Typically, to be successful, a team must throw a series of shorter passes and work their way down the court.

The typical “lines” drill that coaches often run at the end of practices end with kids leaving practice unhappy. I always run this drill at the end of practice. Kids forget that they are running and excitedly sprint up and down the court in competing for points. This is another drill in which I have never had a team (boys or girls) that didn’t love this drill.

You can run this game/drill to a certain total of points or a set time. You can have the losing team run as many laps as the number of points a team loses by. This makes the game/drill motivating until the end because it is to the losing team’s benefit to play hard to the end. To lose by fewer points is to have to run fewer laps.

You can divide the team into as many groups as you want. You can divide your team into two groups. You can divide your team into three groups and rotate teams in, based on a set time of rotation.