Play D with your Feet

A defensive principle that we teach is to "play defense with our feet, not our hands." In the case of defending the dribbler bringing the ball up the court, we believe that if the defender aggressively moves his feet and gets his body into the path of the dribbler, causing him to "turn" (which basically means doing anything that he wasn't planning on doing before the defender impeded his progress) enough times, that the chances are high that the ball handler will "give" the defender the ball. So there is no need to "reach", which causes fouls and opportunities for the defender to get beaten to the basket. The defender needs only to wait for the ball handler to make a mistake. Then he can accept the gift and go the other way to score.


Austin Crown (#2 white) shows us how this is done in this clip. After cutting the dribbler's path off with aggressive defense, the ball handler loses control of the ball after attempting to dribble the ball behind his back. Crown is then able to grab the ball and go score a layup on the first defensive possession of the new year.