Start With Defense
Most coaches I’ve been around can talk offense all day, but not nearly enough time is spent on defense. The reality is this: a large portion of your offensive success can be built by playing great defense—especially when you teach your team how to run in transition and create clear triggers.
The beauty of defense is how much ownership you have over it. Your defensive philosophy can be shaped to match how you want to play on offense. The principles you emphasize on that end should directly feed into what you want to become as a team.
Here’s an example of what I like to run. Defensively, our focus is pressure. We want to speed the offense up, force them to make decisions, and play reactionary basketball. With this style, I’m comfortable knowing we’ll get beat at times and give up an easy basket. The tradeoff is worth it. Aggressive defense leads to a higher turnover rate, and those turnovers turn into fast-break opportunities for us.
Because of that, we dedicate practice time to playing with an advantage on offense—specifically scoring in 2-on-1 situations and making quick reads.
Our structure is built from the ground up: defense → transition offense → secondary break → half-court offense → set plays.
I love talking defense, and there’s a lot more we can dive into. If you’re interested in defensive concepts and how they connect to offense, let me know.
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Start With Defense
