Youth Basketball Defense: Adjusting to the Player on Offense

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Sean Hobson, and right now we're talking about buying into being a good defender, and the things that you need to do to be the best defensive player, that you can possibly be. First thing is, you need to know the guy that you're playing, you need to know him inside and out. You need to do either scouting reports, or just check in and ask other people that have played him, and try to figure out something about him. If you don't know anything about the player that you're guarding going into the game, try to find out things as the game goes along. One of the first things that you need to know about your defender, is he fast, or is he slow? If this guy is playing defense on this point guard and he's very quick, and he can go by him, what this guy needs to do is, go ahead take a dribble. What this guy has got to make sure and do is exactly what Zack did right there, he's got to play back off him a little bit, give him a little space, so he doesn't go by, if he plays defense right up on him and this guy's quick, he's going to go right by him, and he's going to go in and score. So, the first thing you need to know is, is this guy fast, or slow. If he's slower, then Zack can play up on him a little bit tighter, cause he knows that he's not going to go around him and he's going to make it hard on him. The other thing that Zack needs to pick up is, is this guy a right, or a left handed dribbler. If he's a right handed, right dominated dribbler, he likes to go to the right side, how are we going to play him? Good! We're going to play defense to his left side. What we're going to do is we're going to take our outside foot, on his outside foot and make him go that direction. Obviously, if he's a left handed player, then we want to force him to go to the right side. So, there's a couple of different things that you can do, on your defender by learning who they are, and learning how to play them, that will make you a much better defender."