Improve Your Ability To Finish At The Rim With The Corner Finishing Drill

This finishing drill will improve players' conditioning, agility, dribbling, confidence, ability to make lay ups off a baseline drive, and finish near the basket.
The video below is an excerpt from our 30 Competitive Game-Like Skill Building Drills.

The offense and defense begin in a back to back position under the basket. On the whistle, offense and defense go around the cones and go to the basket. With reps and persistence, players learn how to finish at a high percentage and gain confidence.

Variation - Move defensive cone closer This simumlates a situation where the offensive player has to figure out a way to finish when the help defense arrives early. This can be accomplished via side steps, floaters, runners, jump stops, reverse lay ups, etc.

More Variations

1. Play "make it take it". If the offensive player scores the basket, they get to go one more time (max of two shots in a row). Otherwise, they take one shot and go to end of line. One of the biggest benefits to "make it take it" is that players get different matchups almost every time through the line.
2. Instead of blowing a whistle, let the offensive player initiate the drill. Defense starts when they see the offense move. You can also let players in back of the line say "go".
3. Move cone so help defense comes from wing
4. Move cone so help defense comes from top
5. Limit players to certain moves (ex: floater, one foot lay up, or power lay up only)

Points of Emphasis

• No hard fouls. Light contact is fine, but we do not want our shooters hitting the deck in this drill. Defense can go for a block, but do not go hard into the body.
• Make sure you are switching sides after a few reps in all of the finishing drills to get your players accustomed to attacking from both sides of the floor.
• Work to get to the basket.
• Eyes on the rim when finishing.