Objectives of the press

When teaching a new concept I think there are four important steps to go through with your team:

1. Explain the objectives.
2. Set a set of global rules that define the concept; i.e. what should be observed when anything else fails.
3. Explain the rational behind the rules.
4. Break the concept into smaller sub-concepts that could be drilled in isolation.

In this post I will try to define the objectives of our press defense:

1. Put pressure on the other team to force a mistake: we are not trying to steal the ball from the ball handler, we will only attack the player with the ball when we see a very clear chance of getting the ball without faulting or at the end of the game if we are trying to come back in the score. Our main objective is to force the other team to make a mistake. Mistakes can come in several forms: violations, ofensive charges, passes out of bounds, intercepted passes, 8 second violations or even 24 second violations.
2. Put pressure on the other team to change their ofense: most teams we play against are prepared man to man and zone ofenses, but they hardly train against defenses bases on traps or jumping to the ball. By pressing we are forcing them to react to something they most likely haven't trained and thus we take the teams out of practiced routines.
3. Put pressure on the other team to change the game pace: making the defense more agressive, forcing tunrovers or getting steals may lead to a change in the speed of the game, we can use to our convenience if we think we need to go from a low tempo to a high tempo kind of game.

Motivations for the press

We've been working the man defense in our team for the last couple of years. I must say that we are not the faster team in the league, so we based the man defense in staying close to the basket, doing very long helps to prevent easy baskets after being beaten in the 1on1 and securing the defensive transition.

In our league the perimeter shooting percentages are not very high, so the main two goals for the defense have been to prevent shots close to the basket and to secure the defensive rebound.

For the last two seasons we have been the second team with less received points in the league and this is in part due to the fact that we don't allow easy baskets but I have to admit that this is also because we play down-tempo so our games don't go to high scores.

This season I want to have a way to change the pace of the game, as I said we are not a very fast team so we don't take a lot of advantage from the fast break, so I want to break the tempo from the defense. My goal is to score extra 15 to 20 points per game after steals or turnovers.

Obviously press defenses have a component of gambling in them and it is possible that we allow a few easy baskets per game if the press is broken. My objective is to limit the damage to 6 points per game.