Youth Basketball Defense: Defensive Stance

Video Transcript

"Hi. This is Sean Hobson. And what we're talking about right now are the basic fundamentals in order to become a good defender. The first part about being a good defender is obviously having a good stance. So once our defender gets in a good stance we're ready to go. We're ready to play defense now. The second step is we've got to figure out what we're going to do with our hands and the proper way to use our hands in a defensive stance. Now what we always tell our players is: You never want to reach in and slap from the top. Every time you use your hands defensively and you come in and you're swatting from the top, almost every time, even if you get all ball, the officials are going to call foul if you slap from the top, because most of the time if you, we'll show you, get in your defensive stance. He slaps from the top, most of the time he's coming through my hands or over my arms. So he's going to draw the foul. What we want him to do instead is use his hands to pop the ball up from underneath if I'm standing there from it. If he comes from underneath most of the time the officials will not see that. Show them what it looks like. Okay? See? He's popping from below. He's trying to steal the ball. That's exactly what's going to happen. If you pop the ball from underneath what you're trying to do is you're trying to actually get that ball to come up and hit the person in the face and then you can take the ball from them and they're not there. That's exactly what you want to happen. So when you're using your hands on defense never come from the top. Instead always come from the bottom. And that's a good step to be making you the best defensive player you can be."