Every coach has run a drill because it’s the drill they grew up doing, the drill in a book that looked interesting, or the drill everyone else in the league seems to run. There’s nothing inherently wrong with borrowing drills from other sources — most good practice plans draw on a wide range of influences. The problem arises when a drill earns a permanent spot in practice without anyone ever asking the most important question: what is this actually teaching, and does my team need it?

Every Drill Should Answer a Specific Question

A purposeful drill exists to solve a specific problem or build a specific skill your team genuinely needs. Before running any drill, a coach should be able to answer, in one clear sentence, what that drill is teaching and why it matters for this particular team, at this particular point in the season. If you can’t answer that question clearly, the drill probably doesn’t belong in your plan, no matter how well-known or traditional it is.

This sounds obvious, but in practice, many coaches run drills on autopilot — because it’s “what you do” at this point in the practice, or because it’s always been part of the program’s practice plan, inherited from a previous coach or copied from a clinic years ago without much scrutiny since.

The Cost of Purposeless Drills

Every minute spent on a drill that isn’t targeting a genuine team need is a minute not spent on something that is. This cost compounds over a season. A team that runs the same traditional layup line every single practice, regardless of whether finishing at the rim is actually a weakness, is sacrificing practice time that could go toward an area of real need — perhaps defensive rotations, perhaps shot selection, perhaps ball security. Purposeless drills aren’t harmful in isolation, but they represent an ongoing opportunity cost that adds up significantly by the end of a season.

There’s also a player experience cost. Players, especially older or more experienced ones, can sense when a drill feels like it’s just filling time rather than building toward something specific. This can quietly erode engagement and trust in the practice plan overall, even if players can’t articulate exactly why a given drill feels pointless.

Diagnose Before You Design

Purposeful practice planning starts with an honest diagnosis of what your team actually needs, not what drills you happen to know or enjoy running. This means watching film, if available, or simply paying close attention during scrimmages and games to identify recurring problems: a specific defensive rotation that consistently breaks down, a tendency to turn the ball over under ball pressure, a pattern of settling for early jump shots instead of attacking a closeout. These diagnosed needs should directly shape which drills make it into your practice plan.

Without this diagnostic step, practice planning becomes reactive and generic rather than targeted, and teams end up spending equal time on strengths and weaknesses rather than concentrating effort where it’s actually needed.

Match the Drill to the Actual Weakness

It’s not enough to identify a general area of need — the specific drill chosen needs to genuinely address the specific mechanism behind that weakness. If your team’s defensive rotations are breaking down because of poor communication rather than positioning, a drill focused purely on footwork and positioning won’t fix the underlying issue, even if it’s a well-designed drill in general. Take the time to identify not just what’s going wrong, but why, and choose or design drills that target that specific root cause.

Revisit Your Practice Plan Library Regularly

Most coaches accumulate a personal library of go-to drills over years of coaching, and it’s worth periodically revisiting that library with a critical eye rather than assuming every drill still deserves its place. A drill that was perfect for a previous team’s specific needs might not serve this year’s roster at all. Set aside time, ideally before the season starts and again at a few points throughout, to honestly evaluate whether each drill in your regular rotation is still solving a genuine current problem.

Purposeful Doesn’t Mean Rigid

Purposeful drill selection doesn’t mean every single drill needs an elaborate justification or that fun, lower-stakes activities have no place in practice. Team bonding activities, fun competitive games, and lighter moments all serve a real purpose too — building chemistry, managing fatigue, and keeping players engaged over a long season. The key distinction is intentionality: even a fun activity should be included because it’s serving a genuine purpose (team morale, active recovery, a mental break) rather than simply filling time because nobody thought about what should happen next.

Communicate the Purpose to Players

When players understand why a drill exists and what it’s meant to build, they tend to engage with more focus and intensity than when a drill feels arbitrary. A brief explanation — “we’re running this because our closeouts have been too aggressive and leading to blow-bys, and this drill is going to fix that specific habit” — takes ten seconds and meaningfully improves buy-in compared to simply announcing the next drill without context.

Purposeful Planning Requires Ongoing Evaluation

A drill that’s purposeful at the start of the season may become less relevant as the team improves in that specific area, and a new weakness may emerge that requires a different focus. Purposeful practice planning is not a one-time exercise but an ongoing process of diagnosing, addressing, and reevaluating throughout the season. Build in regular checkpoints, whether that’s after every few games or at consistent intervals, to reassess whether your current drill selection still matches your team’s most pressing needs.

The Bottom Line

Purposeful drills are the difference between a practice plan that develops a team efficiently and one that simply fills time. Every drill in your plan should have a clear, specific answer to the question of what it’s teaching and why your team needs it right now. This requires honest diagnosis of your team’s actual weaknesses, careful matching of drills to the root causes behind those weaknesses, and a willingness to revisit and update your drill library as your team’s needs evolve. Coaches who build this discipline into their planning process consistently get more development out of the same amount of practice time than those who don’t.