1/6-1/12/13 Coaches Tip of the Week

How to cheat on 3 point shooting defense.

Closing out on 3 point shots gotten from dribble penetration is something that coaches work on.

Back when the 3 point shot came into high school basketball in 1987-88 my team ws working on closing out the open 3 point shooters on help side defense on dribble penetration.

We always forced the ball to the middle of the court no matter where the dribble penetration was.

We also, always knew who had helpside defense because it was the next closest defender to the dribbler.

We were not having difficulty in stopping the dribble penetration with the helpside defense, but we were having trouble recovering in time to close out the 3 point shooters.

All except one of my players who was doing a great job helping stopping the dribble penetration and geting out in time recovering to close out the 3 shooter to stop his/her shot attempt.

I watched him each and everytime he did this in the drill we were using.

I couldn’t figutre out how he did it where the other players could not close out in time.

So I blew the whistle and stopped the drill and I asked him, how he was doing thois successfully, as he was no quicker with his feet then any of the other players, in fact he might have been a step slower.

He said: Coach I watch the dribbler’s not dribbling hand and as soon as the dribbler starts to raise that non shooting hand to pick up the dribble, I leave and that gives me the estra time to close out my man at the 3 point line.

So we worked on this and soon all of our playeras could do this. We did not have much trouble closing out the 3 point shooter because we drove the ball to the middle of the court and the helpside defender always knew who he/she was and we left the dribbler as soon as the dribbler started to raise his non dribbling hand to pick up his dribble.

YOU HAVE GOT TO LEAVE AS SOOIN AS THAT NON DRIBBLING HAND STARTS TO RAISE UP. Teams never caught onto this little trick…Try it, it works

I learned something that day from that player.