Drills for pick and roll defense

Hi everyone!

What drills do you use for pick and roll defense?

What intensity do you run it at?

How long of a segment of practice does it take up and how many times a week do you practice it?

Brian Sass

We generally practice defending ball screens every other practice. The drill I most often use is 3on3 ball screens. You just play 3on3 and the offensive players are supposed to ball screen and try to score constantly. Turns into an all around defensive positioning drill while emphasizing ball screens.

I usually keep the same team on offense for about 5 minutes. But you can alternate possession and turn it into a half court game if teams are matched up evenly.

We have not run other drills yet but I see that we need to. Sometimes when teams run 1-4 ucla cuts and then ball screens it catches us off guard because they are not used to it. So moving forward, if I can figure out a simple enough way to teach my players to do it, I might run a ucla ball screen continuity so the defense can practice against that. I think it will work but haven't run through the sequence on a piece of paper yet to make sure it will work.

Thanks Jeff,

I've seen Roy Williams use a 3 on 3 that is very good for teaching defense of the UCLA cut. They line up with a point, wing at FT line extended, and post. They keep the drill line at just off the lane line (no change of sides). They run those spots and they can only down-screen (wing to post), back-screen (post to wing) and UCLA screen (post to point). The ball needs to move, and I don't think I ever saw them go "Live" trying to score. They were just working REALLY hard to get to coverages, fight through screens, and get to the ball.

Thanks for your input. How long do you spend on pick and roll with that 3 on 3 in your practices?

Brian Sass

Thanks for the drill idea. We have 14 players and generally spend about 15 minutes on it. If we split into two groups, it would go faster. But I am alone. So rotating takes a little while. Sometimes we do 4on4 ball screen too but some defenders can hide and don't get as many reps when doing that.