1. Introduction
This guidebook contains basic ideas and philosophies for strategically playing basketball. These ideas come from coaches and players from around the world, including the NBA and WNBA. These are only some ideas and strategies - there are hundreds of strategies, tactics, and philosophies, and many are changing over time. If you do not agree with something, please question it! Never take the answer as 100% right until you fully understand it, it is proven to work for you, and you feel comfortable with it. Hopefully these ideas will help, and will lead to more ideas created on your own. We welcome all discussion and feedback, and can be contacted on WeChat or email at basketball@norlha.com.
The goal of this guidebook is to provide a step-by-step framework, breaking the game down into its core components, developing a strong base of basketball strategy knowledge. We hope that anyone, even with minimal basketball experience, can start at the beginning and work their way through to develop this strong base.
The format is in “question and answer”. If you’d like, you may ask yourself the question presented, and think of your own answers before reading ours. Or if you are coaching, you may ask the team the question and compile their answers before explaining ours. We welcome answers other than the ones we have put down. Once the philosophy is established for the particular subject being taught, we then provide team skills drills that will help solidify the understanding of that subject in practice. We also provide individual skills drills that can be practiced by each player on their own, or can be incorporated into a training session.
In this way, we hope to treat this like an educational setting; first the theory is learned in the classroom (using this guide), then it is practiced in the laboratory (the basketball court with team skills drills), with additional homework on one’s own (individual skills drills), with final tests (games and tournaments you participate in). We hope you enjoy!
