Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Defensive Basketball Drills and Advice

By Phil Canter

Everyone has heard the "Offense sells tickets, but defense wins championships," but is it true? Of course it is true, because to win you need to play defense. You do not know from night to night if your shot is going to go in, but you defense will always be there. That just takes hard work and practice.

So why are people not practicing defense. It will separate them from your competition. It is because they are either too flashy or do not know how to practice defense. That is what these individual defensive drills will help you with. They will make you the player that your coach loves and always puts on the other teams best offensive player.

Building quickness drills:

Lines-Jump side to side and back and forth over the half court line or any line with one foot at a time and then both feet at a time. Go as fast as you can. You want little quick jumps.

.Dots- In this drills, make 5 dots. Have 4 in a square and 1 in the middle so that they will look like an x. Do every combo jumping dot to dot on them. Do this with each foot or both feet.

Bounding- This drill trains you to bound on defense and not just run everywhere. Start this drill out on one foot and then jump as far as you can in a random direction an another direction landing on your other foot. Keep on doing this, but only do it for a short period of time. You are wanting to train your muscles to be explosive so go hard for a short amount of time.

Game Situations

Shuffle- Use the push slide step technique, and never overlap your feet. The push slid step technique is push with one leg, then slide the other one next to it, and then step back to where you started. It is that simple. To do this, go from the end of the lane to the other while staying in your defensive stance. Your defensive stance is having one hand inches from the ground and one hand up in someone face. The one hand up is to be distracting the player ready to block his shot or get a hand in the face while the low hand is being pesky and is the hand preventing the crossover ready to steal the ball and therefore making the playing you are guarding to go the direction you want him to go while making him uncomfortable.

Closing Out- Start on the baseline and put a cone at the three point line as an imaginary person. Run at it and then shuffle when you get close with your but down and hands up being ready for the shot and drive. Make sure you do this like it is a game or you will be sloppy in the game like you are right now while practicing.

Shuffle Drill- To do this, you must shuffle along the a wall in a defensive stance. While doing that, pass a ball along the wall. Remember technique in all of these basketball drills because it is so very important. It is what separates good defenders from great ones.

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