Basketball--Team Defense

These are some questions that you can use to develop a defensive system and to tweak the system so that it fits your changes in personnel and the changes in your opponents' personnel from year to year

Philosophy

• Defensive Adjustments for a team or an Individual?
• Scouting or System?
• Do we want to have any "junk" in our system?
• What are the strengths of our players and how can we best utilize those strengths while hiding their weaknesses?
• What is the optimal number of possessions per game for this group?
• Can we defend for that number of possessions at that pace?
• How is our ability compared to the best teams in our region of the state tournament? our conference? our area?
• How do we need to play to advance as far as possible in the state tournament?
  
• What is our depth like?
• How does our depth affect our style and pace of play?
• What will our substitution pattern be?
  

• How many players are we going to send to the offensive glass?
• Do we need to add any rules that will improve our conversion?
• Do we like the drills we have to teach conversion defense?

Man Defense

• What hurt us most last year defensively?
• How do we defend dribble penetration better?
• What screening actions created problems for us?
• Where do we want to pick up the dribbler?
• How do we want to defend the post?
• How do we want to defend ball screens?

• How much zone do we want to play?
• Would it help us to have an even front and odd front zone so we can attack them both offensively during practice?
• Do we want to be able to trap out of our zone defenses?
• How do we best teach rebounding out of our zone?
  

• How much do we want to play it?
• How big are our trappers?
• How do we want to rotate out of the trap?
• Do we want to stay in the trap or go "one and done"?
• When do we want to look to play it - dead balls, FT's, end of half...
• Do we have a better trapping line-up than others?
  

• How much do we want to use the press?
• When do we want to press?
• How aggressive do we want to be with our press?
• Do we have a better pressing line-up than others? Who are our best trappers?
• Do we deny the point guard back once they pass out of the trap?
  

• Do we want to play strictly man?
• Do we want to trap the inbound pass?
• How do we want our inbound defender to play UOOB and SOOB?

• Who would be our best denial defender?
• Does any team on our schedule potentially warrant a special defensive tactic?