My team has a terrible habit of catching the ball and immediately wasting their dribble. It’s a habit that has carried over from the youth level. I have tried multiple drills to try and correct but have had no luck. Anyone have drills or advice to help correct this problem? I have run out of ideas to get them to catch the ball, pivot, and notice what the defense is giving them before they put the ball on the floor.

This is a very common problem. Here are a few things we do to solve the problem (it takes time):

- Emphasize it constantly. When scrimmaging I often blow whistle and yell freeze. Then might ask, what did you see when you started dribbling? Usually they have no idea. Then we teach when to use and when not to use dribble.

- We teach... if you're open shoot, if you have driving lane for lay up, otherwise if defense is in good position... pass the ball. We want players to have an idea of what they will do before they catch the ball and make a decision in less than 1 second. Here's a really simple drill that allows us to teach the basic concept. We don't use it much but to introduce the concept I think it helps.
https://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/play.asp?id=8120

- No dribble drills in practice. You can play half or full court. 3v3, 4v4, or 5v5. We do this often. Teaches players to get open, use pivots, and improve passing.

- 3 dribble limit drills in practice. This is pretty effective to get players playing how you want. If they have an open lane you want them to get the lay up and it should be no problem to get there in 3 dribbles. Otherwise they should be passing or using a quick dribble to create a passing angle.

- You can also tell certain players they can't dribble in games (until they learn their lesson ) or even apply the no dribble rule in games. We usually let the PG dribble up and then nobody is allowed to dribble.

- Motion rule. Whenever you catch the ball near the top of the key look to reverse the ball immediately. Sometimes this rule can help.

Also in practice you can enforce the rule:
- turnover if you do not dribble with purpose (it is up to you to blow the whistle and yell turnover when they dribble without purpose)