by Juan Leer

Created on: January 22, 2007   Last Updated: February 22, 2007

The first thing to teach them is to have fun. If they're having fun they're going to like playing, be more eager to learn, and just remain in good health because they're getting physical exercise. So that's the most important thing for a young child just starting out.

If you want to teach them to be successful, you have to start out with the fundamentals. Kids want to go right out and just shoot 3-pointers and do a bunch of fancy moves, but they're never going to learn and really be successful if that's all that they're working on.

So start small. Dribbling is what you do the most as a basketball player, so work on teaching kids to dribble well with both hands. There are a variety of drills out there to help in this area, and just mix it up and keep the drills fun and they'll put more effort into it.

Next is just close range shooting. It may seem trivial to work on layups all the time, but if you can't shoot those there's no point in going out any further. If you're able to dribble with both hands and make layups with both hands, you're way ahead of the game. If you can have fun while doing it, well perfect.

So the two best tips I have for teaching kids to play basketball is for them to have fun and learn the fundamentals. If they can get those things down, everything else comes a lot easier.

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