Teaching Defense with Small Sided Games

This year I've been trying to be a better defensive coach. In light of that I've really bucked down and done a lot of the "boring" drills that I felt make up good defenders. Zig zag dribbling, partner closeouts, positioning drills, etc. My guys hated it and while they didn't fight me on doing them, you could see on our defensive days (we alternate offense and defense days to get a lot of stuff in) the intensity wasn't there. We tried running, we talked about it, but nothing seemed to work. All they said was that they hated the days because they were boring.

I read a lot of Brain McCormick this fall and his stuff centers around small sided games to teach instead of drills. I bought into this and was doing a lot with offense, but not so much with defense. So this week I started to play small sided, competitive games with a defensive focus instead of doing breakdown drills. The result was a smashing success! The guys played harder and did improve on the skills I was looking for while playing. Below is an example of drills I did and the game I replaced it with.



Drill 1: Partner Dribble No Middle
-Partners with one ball, one partner dribbles from wing to guard while the defender cuts him off. The offense dribbles back to the wing with the player guarding him. Go back and fourth 5x and switch.
Drill 2: No Split
-Group of 4 - 2 offense and 2 defense. Offense on the guard and wing, guard drives, the wing comes up and helps. Guard kicks to wing, wing recovers and forces baseline drive to the X.
Game Replacing These Drills: 3 on 3 3/4 Court No Middle
-Play 3 on 3 with a point, wing, and corner player. The offense has from the sideline to opposite laneline to work. Defense has to keep the offense from scoring and going to the middle. If the offense drove to the middle it was 3 pushups each time. If a driver split the help it was 5 pushups each time. The teams kept track of points and the losers ran at the end. Really focused on not letting them dribble middle, not getting split on the help, talking, and being in good position.



Now that's not to say I abandon all the drills. I still use transition drills, shell drill variations, etc. But these games have opened my eyes a little bit in terms of teaching defense.