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 Welcome |
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BACKGROUND TO BEE BALL
Basketball is a team game. At the same time, it is a showcase for individual talent and skill.
At its best, basketball is like jazz. While all members of the group play the same song, each member, in turn, is free to improvise on the basic melody.
Playing as a team involves being organized. At any particular moment during play, whether on offence or defence, each player on the court should know where to be and what to do, where each teammate is and what his/her job is, where the opposing players are and what they are doing.
Without this knowledge, players cannot co-ordinate their movement and actions, nor make decisions collectively.
While being organized, individuals with talent and skill should be free to improvise, that is, to be imaginative, creative, and spontaneous.
Because youngsters love to play, they are eager to learn. They will find joy and satisfaction as they realize how much they are learning.
Because the most effective way to learn is to play, I developed Bee Ball to help boys and girls under 13 to learn team basketball, while playing.
To accommodate their physical abilities, the basket is lower (the lower edge of the rim is 8 1/2 ft, above the court), the ball is smaller (mini or biddy, size #5), and the court is smaller (no more than 75 ft. long). With the lower basket and smaller ball, they can more easily learn the technically-sound movement patterns for shooting, passing, and dribbling.
Playing on a court that is better-proportioned to their size and strength allows them, for example, to execute a pass the length of the court.
A Bee Ball team consists of 4 rather than 5 players. Thus, without compromising the demands of team basketball, the complexity of what is to be learned is lessened. Furthermore, having fewer players on the court provides more space and more opportunity for each player to handle the ball.
Bee Ball is based on a conceptual approach to basketball. For a detailed examination of this approach and to its application to the 5-on-5 game, go to the Links on the Welcome Page and click on Conceptual Basketball or go to www.eteamz.com/conceptualbasketball in your URL.
NOTE: The information that follows focuses primarily on helping boys and girls to be organized, that is, to play as a team. To play as a team, the players must learn to integrate and co-ordinate their movement,
actions, and decision-making.
The Bee Ball framework, therefore, does not address the other equally important aspects of play: offensive and defensive individual skills, such as shooting, screening, and guarding a player with or without the ball.
Vic Pruden
ABOUT BEE BALL
Bee Ball - A Developmental Game
Because Bee Ball is a developmental game, the emphasis is on teaching youngsters how to play, not managing them to win.
Coaches should also encourage them to play with enthusiasm and intensity. Equally important is helping them to develop the ability to temper their enthusiasm with intelligent decision-making. Thus, the players' creed for Bee Ball is Play Hard, Play Smart.
Emphasizing Team Play
Although the primary focus of Bee Ball is to help boys and girls learn to play as a team, they will also learn the various individual and one-on-one offensive and defensive skills which are integral to effective team play.
To play as a team, youngsters have to learn a conceptual framework, that is, a mental picture of how play is organized. Teammates share this mental picture. Sharing it makes it possible for them to integrate and co-ordinate their decision-making. For example, teammates without the ball will know which of them has priority to receive a pass, and will, as a result, be ready to receive it, when the player with the ball is ready to pass.
A Building-Block Approach
To make it easier for young players to learn, Bee Ball has three progressive levels of play. As players demonstrate proficiency at one level, they move on to the next. This approach also applies to each level of play.
The front-court level of play is a passing game in the front court in which initially the rules related to travelling are loosened, defensive pressure is restricted, and dribbling is limited.
The outlet level of play is a passing game involving the entire court. The rules related to travelling, defensive pressure, and dribbling are the same as in the front-court level of play.
The full-court level of play is a full-court transition game in which the rules of high school basketball apply.
FRAMEWORK COMPONENTS
An Overview
The conceptual frameworks for all three levels of play, front-court, outlet, and full-court, include the following components. These components are parts of the overall mental picture which teammates share to help them play effectively as a team, learning, in particular, to integrate and co-ordinate their decision-making.
The court grid is the basketball court divided into sections: the front court, mid-court, and the back court. The entire court is the full court. The full court is also divided along its length into halves and into three lanes of equal width.
Sets are formations of positions. In Bee Ball, each formation has four positions. There are offensive and defensive sets.
Entries are the different ways in which players occupy positions in a set.
Tasks, which are assigned to each position, are all those things a player can do when occupying a position, in particular, play options, such as shooting, passing, and cutting.
Sequencing is the priority assigned to each task at any given moment of play. For example, because a player can advance the ball more quickly with a pass than a dribble, a pass option is normally sequenced before a dribble option, particularly in full-court play.
Cues are external signals which help players know what to do next. For example, a defensive rebound cues transition from offence to defence for the team that shot and missed, and from defence to offence for the team that got the defensive rebound.
Decision-making is a process which involves perceiving, keying, reading, and selecting.
*perceiving - Players should be attentive, that is, fully aware of what is happening on the court. This perceptual ability requires them to have a broad external focus which allows them to see the entire court in front of them.
*keying - Keying is knowing when and where to look to pick up cues. For example, when initiating a pass, a player should key on the opponents who are in a position to block the passing lane, not on the receiver.
*reading - The process of perceiving cues is called reading. For example, keying on the defence allows a passer to read what the defence is doing. What the defence does determines whether or not the passer executes the pass.
*selecting - Selecting which task to execute is based on a simple yes/no decision. As a player initiates the task which is sequenced first, he/she has a yes/no choice. If yes, the player executes it. If no, then he/she goes through the same procedure with the second play option, and so on. This procedure of moving from one sequenced task to another is called checking off.
The rules of the game are an important component of the conceptual framework. The rules for each level of play are explained in the corresponding section.
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