I’ve been reading a lot about the defenses of the “final four” teams that were in the NFL playoffs. Have often thought that basketball coaches should study football coaches from an organizational, practice planning, film watching and philosophy of defense standpoint.
All four of the final play off teams talked about the importance of defense. They talked about how they teach and believe in “swarming to the ball” when defending an opponent. This concept of “swarming to the ball” can carry weight even for our defenses in basketball.
We are so help conscious and rebound conscious in our system that “swarming to the ball” makes a lot of sense. When we go to help, we need to show the ballhandler that we have all lanes shut down and that there’s no way he will be able to get into the lane on us. This is big for us as one of our goals defensively is “no paint.”
When rebounding the ball, if all of our guys would “swarm” to the ball, chances are we would eliminate a lot of offensive rebounds by our opponent. Another of our goals is to “finish our defense” with the rebound. In both instances the word “swarm” makes it more of a team thing where every player has to be alert and responsible for stopping the ball and finishing our defensive possession.
Just some food for thought!
