My Take

[OrangeAl]

Not surprising that a team switching to a new defense will take some time before it gets sophisticated. It's not like Red came with an aggressive scheme in his back pocket.

 

[billsin01]

Gonna have to wait one more night though.

Ah yes. Good point. Lol

 

[tbonezone]

Aggressive man defense isn't necessarily quality man defense,

i want to see at least one guard in the backcourt putting pressure on the ball.
no more free walk ups. we have enuf minutes, fouls and fresh legs to spread around and make life much, much more difficult advancing the ball this season.

 

[OrangeinDC]

I remember our first scrimmages when I coached. Each one got markedly better. I anticipate the same for this team. Everyone is just running around doing basic defense and offense. You continue to fine tune and lock in defensively and eventually learn to play to your strengths on offense. They will come up with offensive sets through their motion that gets the shots you want and from whom. This will also allow better offensive rebounding chances. This is the time of year where you have everything going through your head that you feel you still need to put in place. I’m sure Red’s head is swimming right now. Out of bounds situations under the basket, on the wing, and inbounding against pressure. How do we want to defend these situations; end of game situations, secondary breaks, attacks against all kind of full court pressure, etc. He also needs to think how teams will play to stop his better players. Red will continue to adjust after every time they play a game. Figure out your base and go from there. Last night was a good start. It really helps when you have options.

Really good post. It's the sausage making of a team/coach/season.

 

[OrangeinDC]

Yeah, this is how I see it too. Whether you’re playing man or zone, good defense these days is all 5 guys on a string working together. Last night looked a lot more like 5 guys all trying to play solid defense individually. Maybe that was intentional given the stakes and the opponent but it wasn’t super exciting based on that.

Hitting gold with man to man defense is also finding a ball hawking, on-ball, space eating defender. I think we have possibly 4 of those, which means man to man is going be different for us if we do it right. Right now we look exactly like you said. I also believe this team has the players to switch on everything 1-4, hedging ball handlers. Understanding how to rotate and still keep help D principles will be important.

 

[OrangeinDC]

the average bloke gets tunnel vision and starts complaining that so-and-so is not a good man defender. The team athleticism is more than adequate, but the fact is even great athletes can and will get beat off the dribble in isolation. It will come down to coaching these guys up to play team defense. I am a little concerned by what I saw out there. They’ve had a few weeks of practice so I don’t know that we can use the “it’s early” excuse and assume red is still installing the defensive playbook. My fear is this will be red’s myopic version of man-to-man. And unfortunately this is the risk we take on when we hire a first time head coach.

Spot on!

 

[OrangeinDC]

i want to see at least one guard in the backcourt putting pressure on the ball.
no more free walk ups. we have enuf minutes, fouls and fresh legs to spread around and make life much, much more difficult advancing the ball this season.

Agree..