Basketball Camps

Featuring some of the leading professional coaches and players, the Better Basketball DVD instructional set provides valuable advice for young athletes aspiring to the next level. Organized by Rick Torbett, who has coached professionally for decades, the DVDs feature an array of stars including Jason Kidd, Chauncey Billups and J.J. Redick covering a wide variety of techniques.

Each DVD in the set offers a comprehensive take on a particular skill set, ranging from Shooting to Ball Handling, Defense, Passing and Post Positioning. Unlike many instructional sets, Torbett focused on fundamental skills rather than flashy highlight reel plays, which are all-too-common in street ball videos. For serious students of the game, you will appreciate the use of analysis, ranging from positioning to angles to serious conditioning drills. These techniques emerged based upon Torbett’s work with champion coaches such as Bill Self and Nancy Liberman.

Importantly, when the tapes show game footage, they do so in the context of education, rather than entertainment. As a result, the series provides a useful learning tool for students at nearly every level. To supplement training and workouts, the videos help players to better understand the game through development of fundamental understanding. Each video has been professionally produced to offer high quality production techniques, making them easy to follow and logical in progression. One of the drawbacks to the series, however, is that it doesn’t provide broad enough coverage to the different styles and defenses a player is likely to face across different leagues, so coaches will have to supplement the material with their own input. Additionally, it may be hard to integrate the lessons into daily practice without constant viewing or reminders of the techniques. Still, the videos are among the best on the market, and will work well when supplementing a more integrated approach to teaching the sport. Here’s a preview of the zone video: