Coaching Youth Basketball: Why Teach Man Defense?

Teaching man-to-man principles and techniques, starting with a basic stance, then movement, then playing on-the-ball and off-the-ball, before even considering teaching zone defense just makes sense. You have to start with the basics. Man defense is the basic.

There are a lot of reasons to teach zone defense. What I want to show readers here is how, by using man-to-man techniques while deploying zone defense, you can make your defense so much stronger and effective.

When starting out teaching defense, particularly at youth age levels, the basics necessarily require teaching man skills and techniques. This will include, and incorporate later into dynamic capabilities for individual defensive play, stance, sliding and movement, followed by 1-on-1 on-the-ball and off-the-ball techniques and rules.

Logic and good teaching procedure would use plateaus of learning, moving from individual lessons to 1-on-1, then 2-on-2, and so on, until reaching full team execution of man-to-man defense. It does no good to teach the team game before a child has been introduced to and hopefully mastered well enough the individual aspects of defense. When every player can play both on-the-ball and off-the-ball, the rules used in teaching these techniques will easily lead right into teaching team defense. It’s basically already been done at this point, because with five players following their individual on- and off-ball rules, they’ve got the basic structure for the team defense. Now it’s just a matter of teaching how to play and be effective as a group.

For the rest of the article, go to www.Top-Basketball-Coaching.com/whyteachmanD

There are several articles and products, listed below, which I have created to help learn the basic teaching of defense. These can also be found at my website, www.Top-Basketball-Coaching.com.

Teaching Individual Defense, Part I

http://www.top-basketball-coaching.com/September_2006.html

Teaching Individual Defense, Part II

http://www.top-basketball-coaching.com/October_2006.html

Defending The Dribble Entry

http://www.top-basketball-coaching.com/November1_2006.html

Video: Teaching Individual Defense

https://freeiq.com/teachingindividualdefense

Ebook: Teaching Individual Defense

https://freeiq.com/ebookteachingindividualdefense