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Man to Man Defense Basics

The diagrams you will see here, and on the ensuing pages, are for the purpose of giving you a general idea of the M2M basketball defense. As in all of the drills and diagrams we show, the ones you will see here will only show the basic movement of the defense relative to one side of the court. However, the principles will be the same regardless of what side of the court the ball is pass to, or what area of the court the ball is at at any given time.

It is well-known that there are other areas on the court which must be guarded as well, and that the options and movement of the defense will undoubtedly have to be adjusted from time to time depending on the nature of the game or specific situations.

If you are concerned with this, then you should take a look at the actual M2M drills we have which will cover some of those scenario's you might encounter, as well as help you teach your players how to defend specific movements from any are of the court.

Man to Man Defense: Basic Set

Most, not all, of the offensive sets that you will see at a youth level will be very similar to what you see in the above diagram.

We show our defense working against a 3-2 set offense for this reason. It is simply the most common set most teams will run across.

Here the ball has been brought across around the center court area as is the case in most situations. Ignore the line of the pass shown for this diagram, as it is only there to show you where we will be playing from in the next sequence.

You have a two guards(wings, etc.) set up on the perimeter, with two forwards down low. We know that this may not be the case always. You might face a team who begins with a Hi-Low look to their offense, or maybe two forwards and a center inside. But for the sake of simplicity we have chosen to show it in this way.

Notice how the defenders are positioned as the ball crosses mid-court. Since D1(Defender #1) is playing the dribbler you can see that his/her main focus is to stay between the ball-handler and the goal.

Next if you will take a look at D2, and D3, you will see how they are not exactly between their man and the goal, but rather are off a step or so to the ball side of their player. This is how it should be. This allows them to be in a good position to help on the ball handler in response to a drive, as well as be in a position to recover if the ball is passed to the person they are supposed to be guarding. They are shown, not in between their man and the ball, but are instead dropped back a step or two. Unless you are attempting to deny the pass in the first place this is how your defenders should look. That way they are still in a place where they can keep their man in front of them, and be able to prohibit an unfortunate back-door play.

Now we look at our D4, and D5. From the position the ball is in we can tell that neither of them are playing between their man and goal either. But if the ball is so far away why would they not help off farther? The answer to this is that because of the position that the Offensive forwards have taken on the low-post make it impossible for them to move off to far from their player. If they were to pull off too far toward the ball this would allow for the PG to possibly toss the ball over their head for an easy bucket. Therefore they must play their man in a way that allows them to guard the lane as well as their player so close to the goal. They are positioned to the inside of their man because this will at least keep the offensive player forced to receive the pass on the outside of them keeping them a bit further from the goal.

Moving on to our next diagram we will show the position your defense should be in if the ball is in the general area of the wing.

Move on to Man to Man Defense Basics 2: Wing Area

SBI!