Shell Drill: Transition

Shell Drill Seres: Transition

After your team develops some fundamental understanding of half-court man to man defensive principles and demonstrates that understanding consistently in your shell work, you can begin to emulate game conditions by adding in a transition component.

For review, it might be beneficial to create a checklist of the half court defensive fundamentals we’re covered so far:

Defensive Fundamentals covered In The Shell Drill - so far:

• When defending one pass away - we defend in an on-the line, up the line position. My personal preference is that my defenders play this position in an open stance rather than in a closed stance with their back to the ball and an arm in the passing lane. We widen the gap - moving away from the man and up the line towards the ball - as the offensive player moves away from the basket. We close the gap as the offensive player moves towards the basket, so that we are making contact with the man in the basket area.
• When defending two or more passes away, the defender slides off into the lane in an open stance with vision of the ball and the man. Useful key phrases for teaching proper help positioning include, “Pistols!” - reminds the defense to point to the ball and the man; “Head on a Swivel” - reminds the defender to be aware and to scan back and forth from the ball and man while playing help position (though we want to defend in a shallow triangle position so we can see both the man and the ball without having to turn our head)
• Jump to the ball - make defensive positioning adjustments while the ball is in the air - waiting until after a pass has been completed to to adjust defensive position is too reactive ( as opposed to being active ) and can get players into foul trouble.
• We bump cutters - anyone coming to the ball (from the weakside or on a basket cut) is met by their defender’s arm bar.
• We help early - to the point of bluffing towards the ball - Late help results in defenders swiping at the ball as the ballhandler gets into the lane - giving up a shot in the paint and needless fouls.
• On-ball defenders influence the ball to the sideline - but their primary responsibility is always to contain the ball. Influencing sideline=good defense. Getting beat baseline=time for a substitution.
• Help defenders should meet the ball outside of the lane.
• Help the Helper - As a general rule, we sink to towards the baseline - in a team rotation - to provide coverage for any player that helps defend the drive. This is an important point - most coaches - myself included - prefer to influence towards the baseline in our man to man defense. If you are going to do this, be aware that when you are forced to rotate and help, it has to be a team rotation - more so than if you influence the ball to the middle in your defense.

Adding in transition by allowing the team that starts the drill one defense incorporates 2 critical defensive components: rebounding and conversion. Roughly 1/3 of any game is spent in transition - so it is important to include it into your practice situations as often as possible.

Still, it is important to use the shell drill to teach proper defensive fundamentals. We are constantly going back over basic components of the shell drill - at ALL times. We never progress to the point where we only run the transition component so that the practice time turns into a series of short scrimmages. Many Coaches will often say that the shell drill serves no purpose unless both teams are going at each other full-tilt. Ultra competitive practices should always be the goal - but the shell drill’s value lies in its versatility at teaching the nuances of man to man defense - not it’s ability to look just like a scrimmage. If you are struggling with one area of your man to man defense, use the shell to break it down and fix the problem.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

Other Defensive Basketball Drills