Friday, March 12, 2010

TO FORCE THE BALL MIDDLE OR BASELINE?


This is a great debate among a lot of coaches. Do we force the ball to the middle or to the baseline? I find that most mens coaches want to force it to the middle, while most womens coaches choose to force it to the baseline. I was always taught to force the ball to the baseline becasue that is where all of your help is. Of course everyone has their own philosophy and what works best for them. We could debate the two forever. Here is a comparison of the two:

To Force Middle or to Force Baseline that is the Question...on defense a coach
must choose between "fanning" the ball to the outside or "funneling" the ball to the middle of the floor.

Why would a coach want to force the basketball baseline?

• To take advantage of superior speed and athleticism against 60% of your opponents and 80% of your league/district opponents
• To take advantage of your superior bench and force them to play more players
• To take them out of running their set plays and make them make plays instead
• To force an up tempo game
• To force turnovers for easy points
• To keep the ball on one side of floor so that you know where your help is coming from
• To keep the ball out of the most difficult place to defend (Middle; where is your help?)
• To keep your players aggressive and with an attack mentality
• Less reliance on learning how to defend all the various screening/cutting situations because you are not letting them reverse the ball and run sets
• Your kids only have to learn one rotation on the baseline

Why would a coach want to keep the ball off the baseline?

• To keep your players out of foul trouble
• To limit the play of your bench
• To prevent dribble penetration of a more athletic/talented team
• To prevent easy post entry to the post from the wing
• To force the opponent to run plays and out execute your defense
• To stop easy scoring opportunities because of poor rotation
• To limit offensive rebounds because of rotations on defense to stop the drive
• To contain the basketball and make players shoot contested jump shots
• No longer have to teach deny-help-recovery and instead teach recovery because the defender always starts in help (not denying passes)

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