• You must SHOW a guy how important defense is.  You educate him.
  • Defense is not a variable.  It’s a constant.  Defense has to be deeply embedded in your attitude.  It is something you can do well every time—both the individual and the team.  A good defensive player plays good defense almost all the time.  Shooting is a variable; 50 percent of the time you miss.
  • There is a technical part and a life part to defensive play.  The life part consists of three things that must be very prominent in good defense: courage, intelligence, and energy.  If you have a good dose of heart, head, and legs working for you, you can become a good defensive player.  If your legs tire out, you heart surrenders and you won’t move your legs.  When you’re tired, do you have the courage to fight through screens?
  • If you don’t use your head, you’re in trouble: Defense starts by asking yourself how you guard the man with the ball.  What are your attributes as an athlete?  Do you move your legs?  Can he shoot?  Does he go right, left?  Does he have an outside shot?  Even if you’re a little slow, you can be a good defensive player as long as you have these attributes to compensate.  A guy like Larry Bird, who was a little slow, had these attributes and played excellent team defense.
  • Defense is stance and intensity- everyone can be a good defensive player.
  • Teach high hands and low knees on defense.
  • Bob Ligouri believes that jumping to the ball is probably the most under-taught defensive skill, yet.
  • Teach defenders to leave their feet only when the shooter does.
  • Basketball analyst Hubie Brown believes that if you do not have a good shot-blocker on your team, then you must emphasize taking charges and making good defensive rotations.
  • Dick DeVenzio uses this rule when instructing players about their defensive stance: “Make sure your head is always lower than the head of the guy you are guarding.”
  • If someone takes a charge, sprint from wherever you are and pick them up.
  • Stay wide(with arms) in defensive stance
Defensive Thoughts
  • Come up with one defining motto for the year.
  • They communicate like teenagers with unlimited cell minutes
  • Defense is consistent. You should not have an off day.
  • There is selfish defense just as there is selfish offense
  • You can go 100mph on defense and only 22mph on offense. Give them fits on both ends. On defense you harass them and demoralize them and on offense you make then play defense by being patient and getting the best shoe, a high %, wide open one.” (Dr. Tom Davis)
  • In order to have a good defense, teamwork is essential.  The term teamwork is usually applied to passing the ball on offense, but it’s also the basis for good team defense.  All five guys have to HELP each other.  This concept of working together and helping together builds confidence that you can play your man aggressively and feel secure there will always be a teammate there to support you if you happen to get beat.
  • Former St. Louis University and UNLV coach, Charlie Spoonhour, teaches his guards in transition defense to slow the ball and push it wide.
  • Coach Tim Floyd breaks his defense down into three parts: (1) Stop the transition, (2) Take away the designed offense, and (3) Limit opponent to just one shot.
  • Transition defense is your primary defense.
  • Designate who gets back on “D”
  • Versus baseline out of bounds 3-2 zone--Make them throw over the top.  This way you don’t have to spend time preparing to defend them. 
  • 2-2-1 zone press is not designed to take the ball away from the opposition nearly as much as to force them into mental and physical errors on which we hope to capitalize.
  • Zone “D” has to only be better than their zone “O”
  • A bad zone is better than a bad M-M
  • More upsets with zone than M-M
  • Any defender that gets beat by the dribbler must realize that the help he receives is temporary.  How quickly he recovers is vital to his team’s overall defense.
  • Red Holzman believed that hard-nosed defense not only won big games, but also, and more importantly, forced players to develop solidity as a team.