I have taken over a program Varsity Boys and am dealing with the guys not having good defensive skills. any suggestions as to how i can try to get their attitude about defense?

Good question. I don't think there are any tricks when it comes to this and the solution is really simple...

Emphasize defense every day in practice.

If you talk about defense every day and emphasize it in practice, you're players will pick up on it. It won't happen overnight, but after about a week you should see attitudes changing fairly quickly.

Here are a few snippets from our man to man defense ebook (http://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/pr/mandefense.html) that might help you.

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Here are a few tips that will help you effectively emphasize defense:

• Tell your players at the first team meeting that you know who two of the starters are! Tell your players, “The first starter will be our best defensive player. And our second starter will be our second best defensive player.” (That will get their attention!!!)

• Talk about defense every day.

• Start each practice with defensive drills. It’s generally most effective to start with your most important drills. This also sends you a message to your players about what’s important to you.

• Spend plenty of time working on defense.

• Talk about defense during games.

• Continually sell your team on the benefits of defense. Give them quotes from other great coaches. Give them examples. Tell stories.

• You must follow through. If these are the things you say, you must do it.

• Run drills that reward defensive performance. For example, give points when the defense gets stops, takes charges, and so on. If you preach defense but spend most of your time practicing offensive stuff and only reward players for scoring, they won’t believe the words coming out of your mouth about the importance of defense.

THE IMPORTANCE OF DEFENSE

Defense is one of the most important things you can teach as a basketball coach. All the successful NBA and college coaches are always talking about defense. Teams that win championships consistently have a good defense. Not only do they keep the number of total points low, but the opponent has low shooting percentage.

If you look at the 2008 NBA Finals, the Boston Celtics had one of the best defenses in the league. As a result, the Celtics shut down the high-powered Los Angeles Lakers and won the NBA title.

In the 2008 Olympics, the USA basketball team had a dominating defense leading in most of the major defensive statistical categories. As a result, they won the Olympics. If you think that their half-court offense was the reason they won, you are mistaken. If you watched any of their games, you quickly realized that their defense was their offense.

When you think about it, almost every championship basketball team at the college and professional level had a great man to man defense...

Just look at the last 5 NBA champions and their Points Allowed per Game:

* 2008 Boston Celtics - 2nd in Regular Season, 2nd in Playoffs
* 2007 San Antonio Spurs - 1st in Regular Season, 6th in Playoffs
* 2006 Miami Heat - 2nd in Playoffs
* 2005 San Antonio Spurs - 1st in Regular Season 4th in Playoffs,
* 2004 Detroit Pistons - 1st in Regular Season, 1st in Playoffs

Now look at their Opponents PPP (Points per Possession):

* 2008 Boston Celtics - 2nd in Regular Season, 2nd in Playoffs
* 2007 San Antonio Spurs - 1st in Regular Season, 4th in Playoffs
* 2006 Miami Heat - 10th in regular season, 2nd in Playoffs
* 2005 San Antonio Spurs - 3rd in Regular Season, 2nd in Playoffs
* 2004 Detroit Pistons - 1st in Regular Season, 1st in Playoffs

And if you look at the offensive statistics for each of these championship teams, NONE of them were at the top. Surprisingly, they were usually in the middle of the pack.

Thanks- i started doing this a.m. at our 6 am practice. Our practice consisted of approx 1 hr on defensive drills 4 on 4 with 2 baseline players having the defense react to the open person then reacting back along with some 5 on 5 with defense getting 1 point for every stop and the only way to get points was to score to be able to get to play defense. This worked very well because at the end of the practice the team that had lost 2 times was totally upset that they had lost. I am going to contiue to do these drills at every practice. when they were making mistakes in the 4 on 4 reaction drill i owuld stop and tell them what was wrong then restart the drill again. Not one player complained and they all worked hard. Still need ot work on our defensive positioning on weak side help. Anys uggestins of some quotes from other coaches?

thanks for your response and the drills on your website.

Coach Pikka

As for -- Still need ot work on our defensive positioning on weak side help. Any suggestins of some quotes from other coaches?

We told our players to have their butts to the end line and point their fingers at their man and the ball, that way they are forced to see both.

We wanted them on the center line of the floor.... I think that you might want them at least one to two steps in the lane anyway. That way they can still close out and defend the skip pass.

Ken