Faith coach teaches players Mavs’ game-winning shot
MARBLE FALLS — If Faith Academy boys basketball coach John Berkman needed an illustration on ball handlers keeping the ball low and swinging it to the side as they take a step and dribble toward the basket, it happened in Game 2 of the NBA Finals on June 2.
That’s how Dirk Nowitzski scored the winning layup against Chris Bosh and the Miami Heat in the Dallas Mavericks’ 95-93 win.
The Dallas forward scored by holding the ball low and taking a giant step and dribbling to seal off Bosh and drive to the basket.
Hours earlier, Berkman was going over the same move in The Fire Pit on the Faith campus with 19 campers.
And while many of them didn’t particularly enjoy that portion of the session, Berkman said he chose to include it for a reason.
"I’ve noticed in my personal coaching experience that so many kids forget about the fundamentals," he said. "They want to make the big shots, they want to shoot it from half court and do all that fancy stuff. What they don’t understand is you have to be able to do all the fundamentals first where you can get to that kind of stuff."
But the camp included lots of fun, too. He also used five-second, four-second and three-second shooting drills in which players had to dribble from a free-throw line and shoot at the opposite basket before time expired. If a player made the shot, they moved on to the next round with one less second.
It’s one of the most competitive drills Berkman instituted as well as one of the most useful because athletes had to dribble, stop, square up and shoot.
"Everybody likes to have fun by shooting that last-second shot," he said. "Anytime the clock runs down, there’s always kids wanting to shoot that last-second shot. Part of it is it’s a lot of fun, a contest, an elimination game, but the other part is it teaches them how long five seconds, four seconds, three seconds really is on a basketball floor when you can dribble the whole length of the floor in five seconds, instead of trying to stop and shoot it from half court."
All in all, the coach said he was pleased with the players’ desire to learn as much as possible.
"We have a pretty good mixture of what our schedule is from the ball-handling stuff to the one-on-one moves to trying to mix in some of the games," he said. "You try to mix it in just right. They tend to take in the other fundamental things that are not as fun a little bit more."