Basketball Defense: Keeping Out of the Red Zone

Defense is often an overlooked skill in higher levels of basketball with the focus on scoring and “me.”  As an old grumpy coach, I feel this is a mistake.  Solid defensive play leads to a number of things for a basketball team.  First, it limits the other team’s ability to score, which improves our chance to win.  Second, it has a psychological effect on the other team.  Third, it has a positive psychological effect on our team.  Fourth, it increases the amount of time that our team has the ball – increasing our chances to score.  In other words, it’s really important.

Having said that, defense is a team effort.  This is one of the major reasons it’s not emphasized at higher levels, that and the entertainment value from scoring a lot of points.  Good defense requires a philosophy, an emphasis in practice, individual skills, communication, and knowledge of the athlete’s role in various situations.

This article is going to discuss a fundamental philosophy about defense.  Namely: keep the ball out of the red zone.  The red zone (see the image below) is a point that moves from half court to the baseline and is basically a large rectangle that includes the key.  Nothing good happens if the ball is allowed in the red zone.

As a defense, our goal has to be to keep the ball out of the red zone and pushing it to the corners or to the sidelines.  Our first goal is to push the ball to the corners, but if we can’t do that then we want it to go to the sidelines.  The reason is that for an offense, nothing good happens at the corners or at the sidelines.  One step back and the ball has been turned over, so we want to push the ball to a point on the court where it is in the defense’s favor and then we want to create a situation where the ball will be turned over. The image below shows where we would prefer to push the ball rather than have it in the red zone.

How is this done?  This will be covered in future posts, but this is done through a combination of aggressive defense against the dribble, man-to-man defense that denies passes, and aggressive helpside defense that keeps the ball away from the other players.