Coaching,Youth,Basketball,Why, sports Coaching Youth Basketball: Why Teach Man Defense?

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There are a lot of reasonsto teach zone defense.  What I want toshow readers here is how, by using man-to-man techniques while deploying zonedefense, you can make your defense so much stronger and effective.When starting out teachingdefense, particularly at youth age levels, the basics necessarily requireteaching man skills and techniques.  Thiswill include, and incorporate later into dynamic capabilities for individualdefensive play, stance, sliding and movement, followed by 1-on-1on-the-ball and off-the-ball techniques and rules.Logic and good teachingprocedure would use plateaus of learning, moving fromindividual lessons to1-on-1, then 2-on-2, and so on, until reaching full team execution ofman-to-man defense.  It does no good toteach the team game before a child has been introduced to and hopefullymastered well enough the individual aspects of defense.  When every player can play both on-the-balland off-the-ball, the rules used in teaching these techniques will easily leadright into teaching team defense.  It’sbasically already been done at this point, because with five players followingtheir individual on- and off-ball rules, they’ve got the basic structure forthe team defense. Now it’s just a matter of teaching how to play and beeffective as a group. It’s very difficult to teach(read virtually impossible) zone defense in this same manner.  Zone defense doesn’t lend itself toindividual teaching and plateau building before arriving at the team game.  We coaches pretty much across the boardinstall a 5-man set to begin teaching zone defense and we pretty much all teacha similar structure—regardless of the zone set (1-2-2, 1-3-1, 2-1-2,etc.).  We teach five men facing the ballin the set we’re using, and having backs turned on offensive players who may bebehind the defense and away from the ball. Of course, let’s not forget the age-old declamations for players to gettheir “arms up”, and to slide laterally, in unison. More advanced zone defensiveteaching will incorporate many techniques and stunts to raise effectiveness andefficacy of the zone, but right now I’m appealing to the coach who uses zonedefense because:  They don’t know how to effectively teach man defense;They really like zone defense and don’t want to play man;The team is big, therefore zone really serves to pack the middle, or other reasons of strategy;They think teaching zone defense is the easiest way to teach defense.No matter what the teamindividual attributes—big, small, slow, quick—starting the teaching of defensewith individual man techniques will improve a player’s understanding of defenseand his/her performance on defense.  Atall levels of instruction, we must teach the individual before we teach theteam, and this just can’t happen by starting right off with teaching zonedefense.In man defense, we should beteaching how to slide effectively to block an offensive player’s path.  This is not a lateral slide with the feeteven.  This slide always will have thefoot closest to the offensive player forward--pushing—while the foot in thedirection of the offensive movement will be back and reaching.  When our offensive player has the ball, wehave learned how to playon the ball.  Good man-defenseteaching will include teaching the defender to play between the ball and thebasket and how to maintain this position. We should also have taught how to play in help defense when playingoff-the-ball, playing off our own man while at the same time being in aposition to help the player who is playing on the ball.  This one-and-a-half man philosophy is thebackbone and strength of a zone.  It’s aprimary reason for teaching zone defense—to be able to close down any directroute to the basket.  The other thingsmentioned earlier in this paragraph, when utilized in teaching zone, will makeuse of a zone more effective.If you are willing toconcede a new paradigm for teaching zone defense, where five players facing theball, attempting to move synchronously with arms extended overhead, gives wayto a more man-defense look but employs the power of a zone, you are ready formy challenge.The big challenge is inaltering what is commonly taught in zone defense to using what I teach whenteaching zone.  I teach “triangle defense” inman-to-man.  If this is taught in zone,you will see how any zone set can be automatically and easily upgraded to avirtual “denial defense”.“Triangle Defense” goes backto the precepts taught early on in man defense. These are the setting up of triangles between the ball, the offensiveplayer being guarded (no matter where on the floor) and the basket.  The #1 rule for defending the player with theball is to maintain a position describing “ball-me-basket”.  Any player off-the-ball, and depending ontheir offensive player’s proximity to the ball, will describe triangles of “ball-me-man” and“man-me-basket”.  The latter rules,incorporating two triangles, are the crux of what I teach in both defensiveforms.  When a defender is following thetriangle rules, (s)he is in help mode and at the same time having vision ontheir man.  This is accomplished byconstantly moving the feet adjusting to the offensive payer’s movement, nothaving to turn the head to hold vision on the man.  Using this in team zone defense will allow adefender to never have their back turned on a player in their zone. At the sametime the closest defender to the ball is ready to come together with theon-ball defender to stop penetration.  Asin man defense, the players nearest the ball should be in over-play on theirmen so as to deny an easy pass inside.  Eitherplaying directly in front of the offensive player or else being right up to thepotential receiver of a pass, with an arm and leg extended across the passinglane.  (In man defense, if the ball wasat the wing and there was an offensive player at the low-post, the low postdefender would be playing denial with their body tight to the offensiveplayer’s and the ball side arm and leg across the front of the offensiveplayer’s body.  Same thing in zone.)Here’s something a littleradical.  If there is a defender with noone in his/her zone, then obviously another zone is over-loaded.  The player without someone in their zone actslike a “free safety” in football—searching for the mismatch elsewhere and readyto blitz toward the weaker area, or anywhere else, when needed.I hope you can see that withthe defenders constantly changing the placement of their feet, the look of thedefense is also changing.  There is noinstance of five defenders facing the ball with offensive players being freebehind the defense.  We can stilladmonish players to hold their arms up to discourage over the top passes, butwhy, when we don’t do it in man defense? If defenders have been taught well in man principles, the most importantarm is the one in the passing lane between the ball and the defender’sman.  The inside chest or bounce pass ismore a threat than the skip pass over the top of the defense to the other sideof the floor.  When a defender for thebackside of the defense is in their triangle, they can see both the position ofany player behind them and the player with the ball thus cutting down on anysurprise skip pass.  The game revolvesaround the ball, so I teach watching the ball. When vision is held constant on the ball by all five defenders, they canreact quickly to whatever is done with the ball, whether it’s a pass, dribbleor shot.Communication between theback-side defenders and front-side defenders about movement of offensiveplayers coming toward the ball is a crucial teaching area.  How far to accompany an offensive playermoving toward the ball is a coaching decision, but if we treat off-ballmovement such as flashes, meeting the player and cutting off their flash, thedefense will be very tight.Try this.  Incorporate man principles into your zonedefense the same as you incorporate zone (off-the-ball) principles in welltaught man defense.  Teach theseprinciples in both defensive forms and you will have added immeasurablestrength to both.There are several articlesand products I have created to help learn the basic teaching of defense.  These have been highlighted within thisarticle and can be found at my website, www.Top-Basketball-Coaching.com.