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All posts for the month September, 2012
On defense, when you need to pick up a dribbler and help a team- mate who is being beaten, remember to pick up or help across from your man, not up from him. This is simply done, if your man stays outside or merely stands still while you are helping. But if the man you are guarding is a good player, he will try to get behind you, down low for a pass over your head. Your job, even though you must help, is to stay across from your man, so that you can recover and get a hand in his face if the ball is thrown to him.
If you move across to help and your man moves down toward the basket, then you must move down toward the basket in order to stay across from your man. Don’t permit your man to get behind you and receive a pass over your head. Help-defense does not require that you stop a penetrator’s jump shot. (You cannot expect to stop every shot on the court, regardless of how good you are.) Help-defense does require you to get in the penetrator’s way and stop his layup. Therefore, you move into the penetrator’s path as quickly as possible, and you stop him as far out as you can while still staying across from your man (or down lower than your man, never higher or “up,” which allows a pass over your head to the basket).
As long as you remember to keep your man in your sight while you help, you will be in good position. If you lose sight of your man, you are suddenly “up”, not “across”, and you will have to get back fast.
From Dick’s book Stuff
“FAT” is a made-up word for “Fake And Threaten.” This is the kind of defense you need to use when you are not guarding the ball but the ball is being dribbled toward you, or when you are trying to stop a fast break and hoping to get the dribbler to commit himself. You might also use FAT defense in a zone, while you are trying to guard two men, or when you want to guard a man inside but give a man outside the impres-
sion that you will not let him shoot.
FAT can be anything that indicates to the player with the ball that you
are about to do something that you are not really about to do. Defensive players usually play too passively. A good defensive player must learn to stay with his man while still making fakes and threatening the ball and getting the ball to commit.
FAT should help you to remember that a good defender is not content just to run back on defense alongside his man. Get back and face the ball, and be prepared to fake and threaten the ball to discourage a pass or a penetration. Defense cannot be played passively if you want to win.
From Dick’s book Stuff
I hope that you aren’t one of those guys walking around thinking you give 100%. Because you don’t. You loaf. Everyone loafs. And the guys that come closest to giving 100% know this better than the others. No one gives 100%. There are so many things you can do in a basketball game, so many opportunities to help out a bit more on defense or to overplay a bit more, or to run back faster or block out better…the list is endless.
Good players know after a game, even a game in which they played well according to the papers, that they could have done more, could have hustled better, could have made a few more things happen if only they hadn’t rested at the wrong time, if only they had put out just a little more.
It is not simply a matter of conditioning. Of course, good players are going to be in good condition. A good coach gets even mediocre players in condition. It is simply that you can always do more.
Your only chance to approach your potential is to strive constantly to do more—always with a nagging sense of inadequacy, of having loafed and failed. Satisfied players are rarely good ones.
From Dick’s book Stuff
