Thursday, November 30, 2006

This is why you work on your ball handling hard all summer long!

And this is why you practice and work hard all summer long on your ball handling! So you can come out do moves like this!

Christmas shopping, free shipping this holiday season!

Here is a great offer that we can not let you pass up! That's right it's free shipping This holiday season! This past money started what was called the "Cyber Monday", which is talking about how much shopping online will be done this Christmas season! So don't miss out on this and so many more offers we will be starting very soon! So come back and visit us and our homepage at Sacred Hoops

eastbay.com

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

basketball fantasy is KG really worth it these days!

Kevin Garnett – More Minutes / More Shots

The Minnesota Timberwolves was out of running for the playoffs last year and Kevin Garnett is saying he wants out if no changes take place. They had their run of problems last year with a couple of injuries, the Ricky Davis-Wally Szczerbiak trade, but it is no excuse for management or Garnett himself, KG is already in his prime and he still has not much to show for his career. Read more...

Friday, November 24, 2006

Work on your speed and agility this winter!

SportSpecific.com -If you looking for speed and agility workouts, how to increase your quickness, or speed strength workouts. Look no more...his is one of the best programs out there to this day. If your serious about speed and agility workouts, how to increase your quickness, and/or speed strength workouts. This is a must sign up for program. Don't tell your self I am going sign up later, don't put it off another day. Trust me, I have been there with the excuses, but today is the day that you need to start working on speed and agility workouts, how to increase your quickness, and/or speed strength workouts. And this is the best place out there on how to increase your quickness, speed and agility workouts, and speed strength workouts . So don't put it off any longer!





Check out more conditioning equipment here



basketball condition
drills

how to increase your quickness

Core strength training

Core strength training is a must these days in basketball. Core strength training involves working your entire core section (all abdominals and back), but the key is strengthen in a way that gives you complete body control, total body balance, and complete body strength.

Core strength training programs are really all about body control, body balance, and when it really comes down to it all it's just all about BALANCE! Though, your bodies balance must cames from the core of your body. It's your abs and back that is core behind you having body control and balance.

It is the core of your body that connects your upper body to your lower body. But it is much more than just an "connection" that you don't have to worry much about. Just take a minute and think about the all motions made by a NBA player or just any basketball player in a typical basketball game:

- Leaping up while being pushed from behind to grab a rebound
- Reaching for a loose balls on the floor
- Twist side to side to grab passes or rebounds
- Power dribble while backing down your opponent with complete total body balance
- A tie up when trying to twist and take the ball out of an opponent hands

When you really start looking at the game of basketball most of the action on the court, involves your core (abdominals and/or back). This is why it's so important to give this part of yourself (your core), proper attention, and the proper training.

Though, it's not just going through the motions of strengthening your core body, it's a specific type of training that has a wider effect. The stats show us by having a stronger core, you actually give yourself better overall body balance, and better overall body strength. A strong core allows your upper body work properly with your lower body, in balance, rather than in a separate fashion. Which with a stronger core, can in return help prevent injuries that could happened from an unbalanced body.

Core strength training involves training many different muscle groups all at once, while at the same time, working on the total body balance:

Core strength training uses exercise balls, BRT (Burst Resistance Training) Professional Exercise Balls, or Stability Balls!!
Exercise balls, BRT (Burst Resistance Training) Professional Exercise Balls, or Stability Ball with DVD are all great ways to train your core, train for balance, and strength your core muscle group. Doing any regular exercise such as dumbbell bench press, military press, leg lifts, wall squats, and crunches using the exercise ball help strengthen your core, and build body balance. This type of core strength training helps train your muscles, but also overall total body balance and movement.

Let's try to give you the full picture here: let's say you backing down your opponent while power dribbling with your back to the basket and the defender on your back. Think about how many multiple actions are going on while all this happening on the court all at the same time, but no action really is isolated. So your dribbling the ball hard using your arm (using your abdominals, forearms, biceps, triceps, shoulder muscles, etc.) you should be getting low backing into you opponent almost like a squat position (now your using things, hips, calves, and lower back). You should also be making some what contact with your back again your defender which he should be giving you a good resistant to not get to the basket so he is pushing back probably right at your core body. That's a lot of different actions happening all at one time. And you need to have complete body control, balance, and strength all working together to get the goal accomplished of scoring while backing down your defender.

No movement in any sport led alone the game of basketball is a complete isolation of one muscle, so it makes sense to train muscles game like. The traditional way of lifting weights were to focus on large muscle groups in a way of isolation (not true isolation, but an effort at isolation nonetheless). Core strength training, and body-balance training takes the new effective approach, and for good reason.

Train using Medicine Ball
medicine balls give you even more game like core strength training. While using medicine balls to do crunches, squats, and other stability core strength training



Train using BOSU balance trainers
BOSU Balance Trainer(seen in the video above) is an outstanding balance, stability and agility trainer and currently one of the most popular fitness accessories available. BOSU Balance Trainerare great piece of core strength training equipment for the same reasons they force you to work out on total body balance (and all the above reasons).

BOSU trainers
can be used for such things as doing:
- Quickness/agility footwork drills
- Push-ups
- Bicep curls
- Squats
- Medicine ball drills
- Crunches and other abdominal exercises

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

basketball shoes special!

If your looking for this Christmas some new basketball shoes you have to check out this awesome special!

Check it out today!!

eastbay.com

Friday, November 17, 2006

Sacred Hoops Store

Come check out today Sacred Hoops Store! We have everything you can think for your Christmas shopping, christmas shopping lists, any athletic christmas gifts you can think of. Rather you wanting to purchase your christmas ideas, christmas basketball gifts, or anything christmas check this out today!

Check out our new store!

And even have some really hot Christmas promotions going on right now! Even more christmas ideas!

Should the USA Team rely on Playoff hardened players?

Thie great article was kindly offered to us by Hans Uy, to see the fill stats and listing of everything of this great article check it out at http://www.82games.com/uy1.htm! Great work again Hans Uy!


Team USA finished a respectable 3rd in this year’s FIBA World Basketball Championships amid expectations of them winning the gold. I believe the team had what it take to win the gold, but came up short in the experience department. Studying the past USA teams starting from the 1992 Dream Team, one can see a declining trend in the playoff experience of players being sent to the Olympics and FIBA tournaments, this is of course aside from the fact that other countries around the world are catching up with the USA in terms of talent.

The selection indeed valued raw talent and athleticism as valuable criteria, team chemistry (strength of Europe and South American teams) also equally important, but unfortunately, the experience part did not come through this year as several more experienced players opted out of the competition, namely Kobe Bryant and Chauncey Billups. Another unfortunate fact was that the selection committee had chosen a representative from each of the championship teams since 2000 (not sure if this is coincidental), but all of them missed this year’s tournament (Bryant, Billups, Bowen).
Although the original Dream Team did not encounter any close games, experience is often a factor when it came to clutch/crunch time situations. The main players that were captains during this year’s version of team USA combined for 77 games of playoff experience (w/ Wade having 50). From the 1992 team, Jordan alone had 92 games, Bird 164, Magic 186.

You might argue that having most of them selected to the team could’ve made it a clash of egos, but statistics show that playoff experience does have an effect on how Team USA performs. The table below is a roundup of playoff experience totals of each Team USA starting from the 1992 Dream Team up to this year’s FIBA team. Player totals were computed up to when they played on that year’s tournament. As you can see, the Orig Dream Team and Dream Team II which overwhelmed opponents was clearly much more experience when it came to Finals and Playoffs experience.


There is no direct correlation subtracting experience of minor players, as you can also remove Brad Miller and Antawn Jamison’s (12 and 9 minutes/game respectively) playoff experience from this year’s team to come up with a lower number.

But in conclusion, since 1992 when US basketball realized it would take professional players to win it at the world stage, it takes proven and consistent winners to be able to come up with the Gold in the Olympics or the FIBA Worlds.

The 1992 Team no question is full of proven and consistent winners. The 1996 team had big proven winners in their prime, Hakeem, Stockton, Malone, Barkley, Pippen, as well as emerging hall of famer in Shaquille O’Neal and pre-injury Grant Hill and Penny Hardaway, both touted to be the next leaders of the league in the mold of Jordan and Magic.

Team experience level dived starting the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Although they did finish a solid 8-0 with a gold medal during those games, they were not as dominant as the previous 2 teams and were led by emerging superstars Garnett, Carter, Mourning, Kidd and veteran Gary Payton. With only 401 combined playoff games to vouch for, Team USA won by more than 15 points in only 3 games, with two games winning only by single digits (nail biter games vs Lithuania 85-83 and 85-76). Closest game during the 1996 Atlanta Games was a 102-71 trashing of Croatia and they won the final vs Yugoslavia by 26 points.

With the 2002 FIBA games, Reggie Miller who had the most playoff experience only played in 6 of the team’s 9 games, starting in only 3. The 2000 and 2002 teams had very close numbers on the table above. Something to note on the 2000 batch is their leaders are future possible hall-of-famers (Garnett, Carter, Mourning, Kidd and veteran Gary Payton). From the 2002 batch, only Reggie Miller, Ben Wallace and Marion have been consistent all-stars/superstars. Other players such as Jermaine O’Neal, Pierce, Antonio Davis, Finley and Brand are all-stars, but hall-of-fame status is a big question mark, even for the case of Marion.

Although they were able to snag the 2004 Olympics bronze medal, only Duncan (82), Iverson (57) and Richard Jefferson (51) had more than 20 playoff games under their resumes. The 2000 Olympics Champs had 6 players with 20 or more.

The tournaments they joined during 1992 and 1996 were no-contest tournaments, their opponents then were so much in awe they were posing for pictures during game time! In the previous four Team USAs, other teams were already questioning the composition of the team. If they can’t even get to the playoffs consistently in the NBA, how can they expect to dominate and win it all in the world championships and the Olympics?

I understand the program of Jerry Colangelo’s plan is to win the 2008 Olympics. But as I’ve said, I believe they could’ve won the 2006 FIBA Championships along with 2008 with the correct mix of talent, teamwork and experience. It’s easier said than done, as unplanned matters usually get in the way – players declining, injuries.

Time will fill in the missing crucial factors by the 2008 Olympics. By 2008, the current tri-captain of Wade, Melo and Lebron should’ve gained more than 60-100 playoff games combined, and possibly giving solid playoff experience to Brand, Howard, Paul as well as whoever will be in that team. Add to the fact that Bryant and Billups might be available, and the US team will surely be the team to beat in 2008.


Hans is an IT professional in Manila, Philippines and a long time fanatic of NBA and NBA statisticcs. He got hooked to NBA statistics in playing NBA fantasy sports for the past 7 years, oftentimes being accused of cheating by his league-mates of exploiting system deficiencies. You can reach him through email at hansjuy @ gmail.com.

Saturday, November 11, 2006

Check out the new NBA ball and NBA Stacked Hoody...

NovHot_Spalding Ball




Read what mark cuban said about these nba ball Mark Cuban has gotten so fired up about the whole things he has even decided to put a part two to the new nba ball! check it out here!




NBA Stacked Hoody...






Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Top ten things to be practicing and improve on each day!

It's that time again with hard work, hard wood floors, and the spell of basketball is in the air and it's everywhere! We have some of the top ten ideas that you as a player needs to be taking into this upcoming season. You need to be improving each and every day at all of these!

1. BE IN SHAPE!!!

2. Be on time, be ready to go, and be attentive

3. Be respectful to all...to your players, your coach, the refs, parents, and etc

4. Make as many hustle plays as possible, dive on the floor, finish every sprint hard.

5. Work on the "opposite" fundamentals...bigs should be doing ball handling, "smalls" should be doing post moves...helps with a better all round game and let's you in on the other side's secrets/perspectives

6. Work on being a leader...huddle people up, encourage

7. TALK! the whole time...picking out who is open, calling out mismatches, chatting it up on defensive, compliments...um, leave the "your mother's a _____" out, they may not like that!

8. Choose to have the right attitude going into every practice, drills, and game.

9. Work on even in practice going game speed all the time! Game like cuts, game like screens, game like shots. Even in practice drills, individual drills, and etc

10. Have fun, keep learning, and again have fun!

Bank Shot Basics or Backboard Basics

Bank Shot Basics or Backboard Basics

Here are some keys to be thinking of when teaching or practicing the backboard shot or also some call it a bank shot.

1. Remember to shoot the ball making contac jus inside the white box above the rim.

2. This is very key and basic, and a lot of players get this wrong. The shot needs to be hitting the white box on the downward flight of the ball. More and more younger players are trying shoot the ball just aim for the box, but it's imporant to arc the shot so that it's on the downward flight. A good rule for this is if a lot of your shots are coming hard off the backboard and hitting the far side of the rim, or missing completely and going to the weak side. Then you really need to practicing the downward arc hitting the inside part of the white box.

3. Make your follow-through point (which we suggest would be your index finger) is aiming not on the rim, but on the target that your shooting at which is the just inside the white box. This helps your shot with a high follow through procducing a high arc shott of the backboard.

4. Remember that every lay to 10 feet out should ALWAYS be a bank shot! This will help you not getting yelled at by your coach. This also, should be instilled into a player so they will not be in the air shooting and deciding which shot this is going to be a bank shot or regular straight shot. While the backboard does absorb some energy transferred to the ball off a hard drive to the basket, the shot still should be "kissed softly off the glass" as much as possible.

5. Remember it's still all about shooters touch, so don't be trying to shoot it very hard off the backboard, but a simple, soft kiss of the glass will due wonders!

6. Post players should use a bank shot when they know they will be recieving a hard foul or just about any foul down low. The bank shot has better percentage of going in even when you get pushed, fouled, or the ball gets tipped.

Friday, November 03, 2006

bank shot advantages, advantages of using a bank shot

Some advantages of using a bank shot or shooting off the glass

- The bank shot is know to be a higher percentage shot! Stats shows us, and the numbers don't lie.

- The bank shot is a good choice of shot while in traffic, driving hard to the hole, and a beautiful soft kiss of the glass over the big man. That's just flat out tough!

- The bank shot gives players the option to drive harder to the hole, while still havinga high percentage to finish with a score. What do we mean by this? Well, a given player that is driving extremely hard to hole it's a hard move to drive hard and with all that energy to explode up and shoot a soft shot. With a bank shot you are given more of the chance to drive hard and then still shoot a better and higher percentage bank shoot.

- Once the shot hits the backboard a player is not allowed to touch it again, unless your playing under FIBA rules.

- The bank shot gives the offensive player a different target and helps players sometimes get shoots off that they normally could not because the defends hand are straight up in a player face or just straight up.

- When doing a reverse or using the opposite side of the basket but still shooting a bank shoot. Though, this helps the player get more shots off while using basket as a partial shield and less block shots!

- Bank shots are a must for post players. Especially it can be difficult when completing making a quick pivot in the post. So when a big man is making his strong move it's a much higher percentage shot to kiss it off the glass.

- Bank shot also allows guards to drive hard and shoot a high arcing bank shot over a big man with his arms fulling extended or a big shot blocker. Notice how many of the NBA's great guards use the glass on penetration into the shot blocking zone near the basket.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Value of Time - this will help you value life, time, friends, family and etc! What's it really worth to you?

With basketball right around the corner! We know a lot of coaches, players, fans, husbands, parents, and the list goes on. We just wanted to share a little story to help put in perspective of what it's all really about! A lot of hours spent in the gym, practicing, lifting weights, or just watching game fil, or maybe it's just watching your favorite NBA team on tv! Here is some thought for you!

Value of Time - this will help you value life, time, friends, family and etc! What's it really worth to you?


Imagine there is a bank that credits your account each morning with $86,400.
It carries over no balance from day to day.
Every evening deletes whatever part of the balance you failed to use
during the day.
What would you do? Draw out every cent, of course!
Each of us has such a bank. Its name is TIME.
Every morning, it credits you with 86,400 seconds.
Every night it writes off, as lost, whatever of this you have failed
to invest to good purpose.
It carries over no balance.
It allows no overdraft.
Each day it opens a new account for you.
Each night it burns the remains of the day.
If you fail to use the day's deposits, the loss is yours.
There is no going back. There is no drawing against the "tomorrow".
You must live in the present on today's deposits.
Invest it so as to get from it the utmost in health, happiness and success!
The clock is running. Make the most of today.
To realize the value of ONE YEAR, ask a student who failed a grade.
To realize the value of ONE MONTH, ask a mother who gave birth to a
pre-mature baby.
To realize the value of ONE WEEK, ask the editor of a weekly newspaper.
To realize the value of ONE DAY, ask a daily wage laborer with kids to feed.
To realize the value of ONE HOUR, ask the lovers who are waiting to meet.
To realize the value of ONE MINUTE, ask a person who missed the train.
To realize the value of ONE SECOND, ask a person who just avoided an accident.
To realize the value of ONE MILLI-SECOND, ask the person who won a
silver medal in the Olympics.
Treasure every moment that you have! And treasure it more because you
shared it with someone special, special enough to spend your time.
And remember that time waits for no one.
Yesterday is history.
Tomorrow a mystery.
Today is a gift.
That's why it's called the present!