COACH'S CORNER JULY 2, 1998
DEFENSE MADE SIMPLER

Back to basketball.

Did you ever have a kid who was so slow they couldn't guard their shadow? It didn't matter what you did. You drill them at defensive slides endlessly in practice. You assigned them the slowest, clumsiest kid on the other team and they made the kid look like Michael Jordan. Take heart, coaches, the situation is not hopeless. There are at least four things you can do to vastly improve the effectiveness of individual defense. I will tackle them in the next few weeks.

Defensive slides just gets you started. We forget that the offensive player has a built in advantage because they know where they are going and the defense does not. Here are some tricks to make up for the offensive player's natural head start.

1. Teach foot quickness. Not just defensive slides, but foot quickness. Defense is built from the feet up, and most of the time, a novice's feet are just too slow to play effective defense. It takes only 2 minutes of practice time to teach the feet to be quicker and can pay tremendous dividends.

Two easy drills: do "fire feet", where the kids stutter on the pads of their feet from times ranging from 10 to 30 seconds. Make the team start low and stay low. Work them hard. The second is "lane touches". The kids do defensive slides across the paint and touch one hand outside the lane line each time they slide through. Set demanding goals: aim for 8 touches in 10 seconds. Make each player improve every time they do the drill. Space the drills throughout practice for a change of pace. E-mail me for more suggestions.

2. Play smarter. Kids usually can't react quickly enough to the offensive players' movements, even when their defensive footwork may be OK. But if the defense can dictate where the offensive player goes, you solve half the problem. For starters, take away half of the offensive player's options. Force the player to dribble to the side of the court you pick. How? If you line your back foot up with the offensive player's belt buckle, 9 times out of ten the offensive player will dribble in the direction of your back foot. Some coaches say to line up your nose with the offensive player's opposite shoulder. Automatically, your kids don't have to guess anymore which way the player with the ball is going.

A fun drill for teaching this is called "1 on 1 cutthroat". The defender passes the ball from under the basket to a player on the wing or at the top of the key. The drill starts when the defender runs out and touches the ball. Offense gets three dribbles; defense must set his or her feet properly to force the offense toward the corner and away from the middle of the floor. I award 3 points to the offense for getting to the middle of the court; 3 points to the defense for forcing to the corner; 1 point for a basket. Each pair plays four times, alternating offense and defense. Losers run; winners of each pair play each other.

But what happens if your kids still get beat? Tune in next week.
©Adrienne Larkin