[announcer] Television Development of Michigan State College, in cooperation with Continuing Education Service and the Department of Athletics presents the Spartan Sports Clinic, featuring the head basketball coach at Michigan State, Pete Newell, along with your college station Sports Director, Bob Shackleton. This program is presented during the winter months to better acquaint you with the fundamentals and skills of the game of basketball, to give you an understanding, thus making the games more enjoyable when watching them. And now here is the College Station Sports Director, Bob Shackleton. [Bob Shackleton] Hello there everybody, and welcome once again to our Spartan Sport Clinic on basketball. Well this week, we're going to turn our attention to the fundamentals and the mechanics connected with the art of dribbling the basketball. And so Pete,  I'd like to ask you first a little bit about the evolution of the dribble in the game of basketball. And I imagine there are a few rule changes in the past few years. [Pete Newell] Well Bob, basketball and dribbling have been synonymous I guess since its very inception. I don't believe that in its early days that the dribbling skills were as far advanced as they are right now, but we've always had great dribblers in the game. It goes back a long way, Nat Holman, Davey Banks, Hank Luisetti, that's not too far back. We have a fellow now, Marquis Haynes of the Harlem... Harlem Globetrotters, that is considered to be one of the finest dribblers in the game. But we find now in basketball that all boys are proficient in dribbling. It used to be that you did have your individuals that could dribble, but it wasn't a team, you may say, a team endeavor. There weren't the demands upon each man on the team to dribble, as there are right now. [Bob Shackleton] Actually, I think as far as I can remember right now, it's about the only sport that's played with a ball, that you can't move the ball without carrying it. I mean, basketball, that you have to dribble the ball. Well, you do. It used to be back in the early days that you could dribble a ball, stop, and dribble it again. And that constitutes a violation, which means loss of ball now in basketball. You can dribble the ball three or four or a dozen times, but when you come to the end of that dribble now, you're not allowed to dribble it again. You've lost that ability. You see in basketball, when you have the ball, there are three things you can do, Bob. You can dribble, you can pass, or you can shoot. And we want the boys now in basketball to constitute quite a threat to have these skills of dribbling so that they're able to better compensate their skills of shooting and passing. [Bob Shackleton] What would you say would be the, say, three or four fundamental types of dribbling styles? [Pete Newell] Well, we have a crossover dribble. We have a change of direction. now here is a crossover. Uh, the boy is simply going from his right to his left hand, it's a change of direction-type movement. But that was a change of pace. These are all advanced skills of basketball. This is the change of direction. He fakes a change one way and goes the other. This he crosses over from his right to his left hand. And this one, as I say, is a very advanced form of a change of pace. They're all high skills of basketball. [Bob Shackleton] Well, I think we ought to talk something about the basic fundamentals, the basic mechanics that are connected with the art of good dribbling. [Pete Newell] Well, we have these basic mechanics possibly we should go into before we go into these more advanced skills. But a boy dribbling a basketball must have a good base, a good sound firm base. And that means he should be in a flex knee position. He has to carry that weight low so he's able to get that quick movement. We want the boy to be able to dribble the ball with his fingertips, and we want his eyes up. He should always encompass the court, be able to see a defensive man coming to him, be able to see a man that possibly is free on the court. We also want to avoid dribbling to protect the ball. He should always keep the rule of having his body between the man, the defensive man, and the ball. And if he adheres to these type of rules, I think that he'll be a very, very sound fundamental dribbler. [Bob Shackleton] I would imagine that being in a cross position will give you a lot better body balance all the time too. [Pete Newell] Oh yes, we... all parts of the game we we want the boy with or without the ball to be low. You notice how low he is there. He's able to move, good control of himself and the ball. You notice it's a low dribble. Very very important in dribbling that you have a low dribble. You have good control of the ball. That's a very very slow crossover uh taken at a slow speed. Now that's a change of pace again. Uh, he decoys that defensive man into him and then he accelerates himself and goes right by him. Now, here he is dribbling the ball with a man in front of him. Here he is with a man at the side. You notice he's got his body between that ball and the defensive man. [Bob Shackleton] I think it'd be very valuable and worthwhile, Pete, to talk about some of the poorer techniques connected with dribbling, too. Point them up, at least. [Pete Newell] We have a lot of poorer habits of dribbling. The one that I think predominates more than anything else is a boy gets in the habit of dribbling a ball without reason. We call it the one -bounce dribble. When a boy does that, he, as I say, loses a third of his offensive motion, and he is only two-thirds of a ball player. It's a substitute many times for poor balance. Boys have a tendency many times to dribble the ball high. When they dribble the ball high, their body position is high. They haven't good control over the ball, or they don't have good control over their body. Many times, boys are uncertain with the ball. They just dribble the ball with their right hand, and they'll forget their left hand. When that happens, a boy has not the confidence in his dribbling ability, and he has a tendency to lose the ball in a tight circumstance. If he can dribble with both his left and his right hand, he has more confidence in his ability to progress that ball, and the defense respects him that much more. [Bob Shackleton] It's quite easy to pick up that particular phase, too. I mean, when a boy can only go one way and defense against them rather easily. [Pete Newell] Sure. Well, the scouts, when they scout a team, they look first for that, put the way the boy likes to go, and they overplay him for it. Now, these are bad habits. You notice the boy has got a high base now. He's dribbling the ball high, which means he hasn't got as good control over it, and his eyes were on the ball. It's very important that your eyes are up off the ball. Because if you have your eyes on the ball, you can't see that quick movement of a defensive man. [Bob Shackleton] We've talked about dribbling as referring to the individual. I think maybe we ought to talk about some of the advantages and the disadvantages as it affects the team as a whole. [Pete Newell] Well, we do have some very definite disadvantages in the dribble regarding the team. And I'd say again the most predominant one was the dribbling of one individual to the detriment of the other four men. And he dribbles the ball all over, he stagnates his teammates, and you lose your team unity, your team coordination. We find that we can't dribble a ball against certain types of defense. For instance, the zone defense is a type of a defense that will make a dribble a poor part of your game. It's practically useless. [Bob Shackleton] Useless. [Pete Newell] It is absolutely useless. But there are advantages, many advantages from a team standpoint. You have to progress the ball many times up the court with a dribble. You get close-in shots with a dribble. That is, you progress the ball into a higher percentage shooting area. You use it as a part of your fast break down at the end of the court, usually to set up a man going in for a shot. You use it as part of your stall. Very, very important that your boys are able to dribble because if they can't dribble, they can't stall the ball properly. There are many, many team advantages of the dribble ball. [Bob Shackleton] I imagine that even the centers and everybody else today has to know how to dribble that basketball, has to be every all five men. [Pete Newell] Well, that is the difference between present basketball and I'd say basketball back 20-25 years ago You had your outstanding outstanding dribblers in, but you didn't have the...the five men out there in the court that could dribble a ball with, you may say, equal adeptness. Now we want everybody to dribble. We want our centers as well as our forwards and guards to be able to finesse themselves, and be able to go by their opponents. Now I'll show you here three different type of shots just set up from a dribbling sequence. That was an outside shot, a two-handed set off a dribbling motion. Here's a boy coming down the court. He sees he doesn't have a drive-in so brings the ball out. Now the same movement has started, and here's a boy going all the way into the basket. And it resulted in an easy basket in under the basket. Now here's the same movement uh setting up another type of shot. You notice it's a dribbling sequence movement. Now that that is the jump shot we've talked about on a previous program. Now you asked me about the center. There's a center executing what we call a reverse turn. Reverse dribble turn. Now here he is he looks at the basket and he goes by his man. Now that's the center the one that you were asking about, and you can see how important it is that he's able to drive that defensive man and to go into the basket for that good shot. Here he is outside. Again, he goes all the way into the basket. Now I... I feel that all players should be able to dribble that ball. That is one of the skills that we talked about, the change of direction. Here is a crossover dribble, and that boy by crossing over from one hand to his other was able to protect the ball and also set up a teammate for a good shot. Here's a boy executing a quick stop and the result was a nice easy shot under the basket. [Bob Shackleton] Well yeah, a moment ago you mentioned the dribble was good as far as a stall was concerned. It was a definite advantage when you're ahead two or three points in the ballgame and you want to keep possession of that ball. There, I imagine, would be a pretty good example of why everybody should be a good dribbler, because doesn't everybody participate in a stall-type defense? [Pete Newell] Well, they should, and if they don't, I don't know what kind of a stall it would be. You know, it's very hard in basketball to get a lead, and you find many times it's much harder to keep it. And we want in a stall sequence for a boy to every boy on the team to be able to get out there and share it, share the burden of keeping that ball. So we want all five men. We want all five men to be able to dribble that ball as part of the stall. But the stall is one part of basketball where you must contain the dribble. If you can't dribble, you're gonna have a hard time protecting a lead and uh holding a team off that is aggressively playing it now you see here uh bob lee this is a an actual game condition here this is a latter part of a game where we're just hanging on for dear lives trying to protect a one or a two point lead and we know in a stall that uh the only way that you can effectively stall is by all men being able to handle the ball, dribble the ball. He must have been pretty low there to get tied up like that too, a bad dribble situation. He made a mistake of judgment there. He started dribbling toward a teammate, and that resulted in a tied-up ball. All the men, as I say, partake in this endeavor, and they all have to be confident and adept at hamming that ball on the dribble. You know, in this particular phase of the game, the small man comes into his own. This boy here is very small, but yet he's a very important part of the stall sequence. That time he set up an opponent for an easy layup shot. You notice how low he is? At that time, he was almost knocked off balance and still had good control of the ball. You'll notice also, Bob, as I say, that these boys dribble with their left hand and their right hand. The boys should be able to progress that ball both ways. You only dribble for a definite purpose, and you start dribbling just for, you may say, poor balance, you're going to get into trouble. They don't start dribbling until that defensive man starts to close them. [Bob Shackleton] A lot of pressure on that offensive team there right now, too. Good ball handling, good dribbling. [Pete Newell] It's pretty hard to protect a lead out there for any length of time, but yet you feel that this is the best way, the only way to ensure yourself of a win when you've got a little lead. Now, I'd like in closing, Bob, to just enclose a few tips to the younger element that may be listening in regards dribbling. I'd say first that a boy should learn to dribble with his eyes up. He should always encompass a part with those eyes. Another very important thing in dribbling is it is being able to dribble with both hands, being able to go to your right and to your left. And boys that are starting to play basketball now they want to be good players. I'd practice these certain things that I've stated. [Bob Shackleton] Going right along with dribbling, the next thing of course would be body balance and ball control, ball handling. So be with us at this same time next week for the next edition of the Spartan Sports Clinic. [announcer] The Spartan Sports Clinic returns again next week over the same station, with more inside information and behind-the -scenes activity in collegiate basketball. Featured today was Michigan State's head basketball coach, Pete Newell, along with your college station Sports Director, Bob Shackleton. Don't forget, next week at this same time for the next edition of the Spartan Sports Clinic. This has been a video recording by Michigan State College Television.