Basketball Tryouts - What Coaches Want to See

Putting together a basketball team is not the easiest of tasks for any coach at any level. Unless you are in the enviable position to recruit during the off season - and most of us aren’t - then you open up basketball tryouts at the beginning of every season without really knowing what to expect. Might be a good session, might be a bad session.

Sure, you likely have good knowledge of the skills and abilities of returning players, but you’ll also have positions to fill - maybe a lot of positions depending on your turnover from last year. Which means you have a lot of new faces that you’ll need to evaluate within a couple of practices so you can pick the best team possible and get started on your pre-season practices.

So what do you look for in basketball tryouts? How do you choose twelve players from the 30 or 40 or more that show up on the first day of tryouts? How do you spot the talent, the players that will not only perform well but be able to perform well together?

Here are three things every coach should be looking for during basketball tryouts:

1. Hustle and Conditioning. Players need to work hard - if they aren’t working hard at tryouts, they won’t work hard during the season. It’s difficult enough to teach players that want to learn - no one wants to waste time trying to force a player to learn who isn’t willing to work at it.

And as far as conditioning goes, players need to come to you in shape. They will get in much better shape during the pre-season, because that is a major focus of the first few weeks. But they need to be in decent physical condition at the beginning, because you can bet your opponents will be. If you need to spend your pre-season just getting players to the conditioning level that your opponents were at to begin with, you’ll be run off the court every game.

2. Aggression. Players need to want the ball. They need to dive for loose balls, go up relentlessly for the rebounds until they finally get the ball in their hands, move hard to the open spot. They can’t wait in the corner hoping the defense will give them an opening - they need to make their own openings. They need to be ball hungry.

3. Attitude. Basketball is a team game, and everyone on the team needs to improve that team. Nothing will destroy a team faster than negativity and individuality. Good team players will be positive in their actions and words and approach the game in a team-oriented fashion - they will look to pass as well as shoot, set picks to get others free as well as move to get themselves free, give up a lower percentage shot to pass to someone in better position.

Notice I haven’t mentioned skills. Are they important? Of course they are, but I would consider natural athletic ability to be more important than specific basketball skills, and I would consider neither of these as important as the three qualities mentioned above. Skills can be taught, especially to players who have these qualities. But I have had highly skilled players on my team that just pulled the team apart because of their bad attitudes or lax approach to the game.

Ideally, you will have twelve highly skilled and athletic players to choose, all of whom work relentlessly to improve, hustle non-stop, are aggressive on offense and defense, and demonstrate unflagging support and loyalty to the team as a whole. In reality, this is rarely the case.

Choose players that meet as many of these criteria as possible, with emphasis on the three qualities listed above - a player with these three qualities can be taught and will be a positive addition to the team; without these qualities, even players with great skills will not contribute to making a great team.

For more ideas on what to look for in basketball tryouts, as well as a general practice plan for running tryout sessions, check out Basketball Tryouts.