The objective of a defensive strategy is pretty standard across sports. But we’re going to break down some basic basketball defensive strategies for you here. Introduce friction against opposing play. Force your opponent towards those behaviors which benefit your game. Shut down scoring.
We’re not trying to put together a comprehensive manual here. Each of the topics covered is worthy of a whole lot of focused study and practice on its own. Our goal is to lay out some of the rough concepts that will help the average fan better understand basketball logic as it is employed on the court. This article isn’t going to set you up to coach Division I or any division for that matter, but it will help you see the game a little differently and get into the minds of players and coaches as they make decisions on the court. Studying defense can really open up a new appreciation of this beautiful game.
Talking any kind of strategy though can get out of control real quick (take a look at my basketball defense translator if you’re new to the topic). If you’re not familiar with basketball offense, I do recommend getting a basic understanding before jumping into defense, just to get an idea of what you’re defending against. This post on horns set basketball is actually a great introduction. Horns set is a common enough feature of modern basketball that an understanding of it forms a great starting base for an understanding of basketball strategy.
There’s no magic framework for any activity that is worth doing. But there is an accepted framework for understanding basketball defensive strategy and we can break it down into some key concepts.
A defensive strategy should flex to match the court. There are always going to be mismatches in the skill and size of the players in the mix. Certain strategies can help a defense exploit these mismatches.
Half Court vs. Full Court Defense in Basketball
Whether or not to apply full court pressure is going to influence a lot of other choices on the court so it bares considering early. Are you applying a full push across the court, or trying to consolidate friction around the basket?
A half court strategy consolidates defensive pressure on the defensive side of the court. When the ball changes hands, defenders fall back to their side of the court and coverage is initiated systematically when the opposing team crosses the half court line. This style of play can help conserve energy on the court and it can encourage a more organized and systematic use of space.
A full court strategy stresses defense across the floor, coverage often beginning as soon as the ball changes possession. It can be demoralizing to an offense facing an uphill battle just to get the ball anywhere near the strike zone. It can also be exhausting to a defense. For this reason, full court strategies are often reserved for those clutch moments towards the end of the game.
There are plenty of parallels between the two strategies but the core objectives are shifted, so decision making shifts accordingly.
Man to Man vs. Zone Defense in Basketball
Another core decision in structuring a basketball defense is whether to match a defender against a specific player or a specific region on the court. Considering that an offense will often place certain types of players in certain regions of the court, the two setups can sometimes look quite similar, but the devil is in the details here.
With a man to man setup, each defensive player is assigned to an opposing offensive player. You can see how this would make sense. Even at elite levels, something like height can be a huge factor in what position you’re likely to play. Guarding somebody with a significant wingspan or height advantage can be frustrating, so the idea here is to set the right matchups. Of course, the offense will always be working to break this up and push mismatches to their own advantage.
With a zone setup, defenders are assigned to regions of the court. In a way, this enables the defense to take greater control of play. With man to man coverage, you’re adapting defense dynamically around the movement of the offense. With a zone system, you can setup your barrier and force the offense to penetrate.
There’s a scene in Hoosiers when Gene Hackman is getting grilled by the local yokels about his basketball strategy and they’re insisting that a zone defense is the way their team plays and the way they ought to play moving forward. Gene is in town to shake things up, and he’s not about to have any part of it, so he takes his leave. It is made clear that Hackman has no regard for a limited zone strategy.
I don’t blame Gene Hackman. While a zone defense is effective for learning, it does tend to be rigid and easily exploited. While it may serve its purpose, you really want to stress fundamentals and building the IQ of your team as a whole to read and react to whatever it may be that the offense is throwing at them.
On the other hand, it’s not infrequent that I hear someone suggest that a zone strategy has no business in the modern NBA. The theory goes that players are just too well-developed and too smart to not exploit the limitations of a zone-style defense. And then a couple of days go by and a high-level NBA team gets absolutely destroyed by a simple zone.
On-Ball vs. Off-Ball Defense in Basketball
Now that we’ve covered some basic concepts that will dictate how your defenders are placed on the court, we can take a look at some concepts that influence players individually.
An on-ball defender is guarding the offensive player who is holding the ball. They are responsible for making sure that every pass, dribble, and shot comes with a risk of turnover. You’re trying to wear down your opposing player and isolate opportunities as they evolve around you.
An off-ball defender has the luxury of not having to guard against direct scoring. But the off-ball player you’re guarding can move around the floor a lot more effectively. The strategy then revolves around pressuring your matchup away from opportune positions on the court and cutting off passes. Your opponent wants to cut across the court into a position where they can receive a pass and get off a clean shot. You want to block their path.
Where the Ball Wants to Be
Speaking of clean shots, let’s take a look at a couple of diagrams that do a great job of summing up where a defender does not want the ball to be. Thanks go to @_jphwang on Twitter and this great VisualNoise.io breakdown on NBA shooting.
this visualization illustrates where shots are taken on the NBA floor.
We can see some strong trends here. There’s a clear tendency to take shots that are head-on to the basket. Directly under the basket is a clear hot zone. The 3 point line encourages a secondary hot zone but those shots are concentrated in line with the basket and at the wings where the distance is 21″ shorter than at the top. This should make it pretty clear where the offense wants the ball to go, and thus the holes that the defense wants to plug.
This diagram may vary across different leagues. I’d venture a guess that as shooting accuracy drops off with less skilled leagues, you’d see shots consolidate around the basket. NCAA mens and womens leagues, and the WNBA maintain closer 3-point lines to mitigate this effect.
But we can also combine that information with the shot percentage by distance.
Accuracy drops off quick. As a defender, you can clearly see that a successful pass under the basket is going to enable a high-probability shot. Additionally, letting an opponent get a pass to the 3-point line for a decent shot attempt is going to offer about the same chance of success with an extra point as anything more than 5 ft from the basket. This all points towards pressuring the ball away from the center line, and the 3-point line while protecting the basket.
Defending those hot zones means both keeping your opponent out of them and cutting off passing routes to them. A single successful pass can rearrange the entire floor. So while you’re guarding against a direct pass, you’re also maintaining awareness of secondary routes.
Defensive Plays
If you’re a coach, you definitely wanna look like you’re doing things. That brings us into the obscure world of play calling where generally some combination of numbers is intended to direct defensive activity. I get it, but it does seem a little like farting in the wind to me. Still, it’s worth breaking it down.
For the most part, plays follow on from zone defense. As I mentioned, it’s a little tougher to run a systematic strategy out of man-to-man coverage.
Decoding Plays
There are a couple of clues we can get from the name. It’s useful to cover these clues so you can apply them to further understanding.
First we have the number series. A number series in a defensive play reference will typically refer to player positioning. I wish there was some accepted direction on the court in which the numbering was interpreted, but it seems that is not the case. We just know that probably there is one player somewhere, then 2 players in a different somewhere, and 2 more players further on in whatever direction we seem to be headed. I don’t make up the rules.
Then we have the terms…
A ‘press’ in basketball just points to a concerted effort to apply friction to opposing play. Now I suppose this description could pretty easily apply to any defensive maneuver, but here it just means a little extra effort towards producing friction. With a press we’re going all out on hounding the offense. This style of defense will push the pace of the game and force turnovers.
On occasion, a play will reference the portion of the court on which it is applied: half-court 3/4 court, full court. This simply indicates how much of the court is occupied by a given formation.
A zone will often indicate a half-court formation, but it mostly indicates a more static movement. While a press often flexes around a strategy, a zone usually enforces strict adherence to a region of the court.