BASKETBALL DEFENSE

Defense and free-throws win basketball games, most of the time.  Incentives for defensive effort work like magic.  My starting 5 are always the 5 players on the team with the best defensive effort in practice!  A "game ball" goes to the defensive player-of-the-game.  At the end of the season the "Defense MVP" goes to the player with the most defense game balls.  Using this approach has provided surprising side-effects.  My teams are actually savvier and tougher offensive players (picks, etc.), and the "team" transition efficiency from offense to defense, and from defense to offense is astounding.  We also "press" the entire game.  We practice man-to-man press and zone press.  We practice flowing seamlessly from man press to zone press and back again.  Expending this "team" effort on defense pays off in another surprising way, the team's ability to understand, implement, and revise offensive strategies. 

A suffocating overall defensive effort provides a team with an inordinate amount of fast-break opportunities.  Fast-break opportunities provide a team with an inordinate amount of turn over opportunities because great defense, by default, creates an up tempo game; players from both teams are frequently out-of-position which can result in confusion.  Fast-break offense is mostly one-on-one, pick-and-roll, and give-and-go.  It is fortuitous that these three offensive strategies morph into 99 percent of all half-court offenses.  Learning and practicing how to convert fast-break opportunities into scoring opportunities allows a team to simultaneously learn and practice defending the one-on-one, pick-and-roll, and give-and-go offenses. 

Our defense to fast-break offense practices, are often run at game speed.  This helps during games because this pace doesn't feel foreign or frantic.  Also each and every athlete is forced to play at each and every position on the court, daily, in practice.  By keeping the offense simple (one-on-one, pick-and-roll, and give-and-go) and consistent all over the court players never feel out of position or unable to recognize what's going on around them.  When the entire team knows how to function at each individual position (guard, center, forward) by default they know what to expect from their teammates, no matter where on the court they find themselves.

Great defense takes an offense out of its rhythm, its comfort zone.  A stifling defense rattles an offensive basketball team individually and collectively.  As a team, at any level of competition, if an offense never becomes comfortable it never becomes effective.

I'm telling you, basketball is a simple game.  An offense designed around one-on-one, pick-and-roll, and give-and-go basketball, and a defense designed to defend a one-on-one, pick-and-roll, and give-and-go game. 

Defense and free-throws win basketball games, most of the time.