About junior.basketball

Why this exists

It started as a personal project. After attending the Basketball Victoria Association coaching course, I transcribed all nine seasons of the Talking Split podcast and turned the content into practical resources I could use on a Saturday with my under-12s. The resources grew. The project grew. And it felt wrong to keep it to myself.

Coaching the youngest age groups is where most coaching careers begin, and it's the level that gets the least specific help. Courses are generic, advice is often recycled from senior basketball, and the weekend coach is left to work it out alone. This site is an attempt to close a little of that gap.

How I coach

A note on the lens behind all of this, since it shapes what gets made. I coach process over outcome: I'd rather a player stay touch-distance from their opponent and get beaten than run a memorised play and learn nothing. One is a decision they can repeat; the other is a result. Mistakes are information, not failure, and I try to judge the decision, not whether the shot went in.

Sessions lean on game-like reps and decision-making over static drills, and the off-court standards are simple: play hard, respect the game and the officials, win and lose the same way. It's the same standard I hold the resources on this site to.

What you'll find here

Two libraries of free coaching guides, distilled from hours of coaching material, plus session plans and original work built the same way, for the weekend coach's next session:

• The Talking Split Library: drawn from nine seasons of the Talking Split podcast (produced by Basketball Victoria): the unofficial book, coaching under-12s, trials, parent communication, session plan templates, and more.
• The Basketball Podcast Library: synthesised from 225 episodes of The Basketball Podcast, featuring NBA, WNBA, EuroLeague, NBL and youth coaches across 15+ countries: pick & roll, shooting, transition, culture, mental performance, and more.
• Session Plans: complete sessions from under-10 to under-16, one skill each, adapted from recorded coaching clinics and credited on every plan, with a court diagram for every block and an A4 sheet to print.
• Original work: written directly for the junior coach: Connected Basketball, a coaching method for developing better decision-makers; Game Flow, a free tool that finds the runs and scoring droughts in a PlayHQ play-by-play; the Rotation Planner, a free tool that builds an equal-time substitution sheet you can print for the bench; and the Player Edge Questionnaire, a free printable that helps you start the season by learning what each player brings.
• Built from the guides: made here, but drawn from the guides and clinics above and credited as such: the Interactive Playbooks, which step through ball-screen, off-ball and transition plays on a court diagram; a Season Plan, a free printable with a pre-season checklist, a master plan and a team culture page; a Player Development Plan, a free tool to check where a player is, get a six-week plan, and print a handout for the player and parent; and the Session Builder, which puts a training night together from a template and the session plans.
• Built from published playbooks: the Offence Reads: thirty short reads for the half court (cuts, screens, handoffs, the post, zones, out-of-bounds plays and spacing), each stepped through on a court diagram with the defender who gives you the cue. They are made here, distilled from published coaching playbooks that were curated and reviewed by Ravi Sundram, and come with a short guide, Reading Elite Playbooks as a Junior Coach.

You can browse all the guides here.

How it's made

Every guide follows the same method: take publicly available coaching material, study it, and reframe it through one lens: what does this mean for an Australian junior or domestic coach's next session? The content is global and local; the intent is always the same. It's original synthesis and commentary, with full credit to the people whose work it draws on. You can see exactly where everything comes from on the Sources & attribution page.

The original work above follows a different path: it's written directly for the junior coach rather than reframed from someone else's material. The session plans, playbooks, Offence Reads, Season Plan, Player Development Plan and Session Builder are made here, but built from the guides, clinics and published coaching playbooks, so they credit their sources on the page and on the Sources page. All of it holds to the same standard: free, credited where it draws on anything, and built for the weekend coach's next session.

I also use AI to help with this site. It helps me draft the pages and build the tools, and I choose what goes on the site and review it before it's published. The ideas belong to the coaches credited on each page. How they're framed for the junior coach, and any mistakes, are mine.

Free, always

Everything here is free. No sign-up, no paywall, no ads. The only thing you can do is download what's useful and use it. If you'd like a heads-up when new resources land, there's an optional email list on the home page, but it's never required to access anything.

Who it's for

Most kids who play junior basketball will never play professionally. They're the 98%, and they matter just as much as the 2% in the pathway. This site is for the coaches who serve them: the volunteers and weekend coaches who turn up, often after a full week of work, to give a group of kids a reason to love the game and come back next week. If that's you, you're doing the most important work in the sport, and this is here to help.