4.2: Defending Early Offense

Chapter 4: Defense

The coverages of 4.3 applied before the defense is set: getting level on the drag, switching the double drag, chasing the delay handoff, and matching up on the run.

No new terms introduced. No diagrams.

Lecture 4.1 ended with the defense back but back badly: cross-matched, its big still arriving, its assignments improvised. Early offense is the attack on that state, and it is built around one player the retreating defense has not accounted for, the trailer stepping into a ball screen while his own defender is still ten feet behind him. This lecture is about the four or five seconds in which a defense is neither in transition nor set, and about the fact that it has no coverages of its own for them. It borrows the coverages of lecture 4.3 and runs them early, with less time and fewer bodies, and the whole skill is in the borrowing.

There are no new terms in this lecture, on purpose. Everything here is a coverage from 4.3 or a rotation from 4.4, applied to an action from 3.2. Section 1 is the drag screen and the one rule that defends it. Section 2 is the double drag and why the answer is usually a switch. Section 3 is the delay and its handoffs. Section 4 is the problem underneath all three, matching up on the run.

1 Get level on the drag

The drag screen works because the screener’s defender is behind the play. The trailer arrives at the arc a step before his man, sets the screen, and for that step the coverage does not exist: the big cannot drop, hedge or switch from ten feet behind the screen. So the defense’s first rule is not a coverage at all. It is that the big sprints to get level with the screen before it is set, and the coverage is whatever he can play once he is there (Figure 1).

Early offense up the right side of the floor. The handler, 1, has the ball just outside the arc on the right. The trailing big, 5, runs in from behind the play toward the middle to set a drag screen, drawn as a bar on the middle side of the handler's defender, level with the handler. The handler's defender, x1, has jumped to the high side of the handler, between him and the screen, labeled no middle just above him, so the dribble goes down and to the right, toward the sideline. The screener's defender, x5, who was behind the play on the right, sprints down the right side, labeled sprint level beside his arrow. That arrow ends level with the screen and the handler. A second arrow carries him on down to the line of the drive, a few feet past where the drive ends, so the drive heads straight at him. The label down the sideline sits just below the end of the drive, on its inside. 2 and 3 are in the corners and 4 is on the left wing, each with a defender who got back.
Figure 1: Defending the drag. The trailer arrives to screen while his defender is still behind the play. The defender sprints to get level with the screen; the guard jumps to the high side of the handler and takes away the middle, so the drive goes down the sideline toward the arriving big rather than into the open lane.

Once level, the usual choice is to ice it. A drag is almost always set on the side of the floor the ball came up, with the screen angled toward the middle, and the middle is where the retreating defense is thinnest. The handler’s defender jumps to the high side and sends the dribble down the sideline, the big arrives below the screen at the level of the drive, and the drag has been turned into a one-man baseline drive into a defender. The alternative, when the big has arrived early enough, is a drop, which gives up the pull-up the drag is usually looking for anyway.

Assignment
The screener’s defender sprints level with the screen before it is set. The guard jumps to the high side and forces the handler down the sideline, away from the middle. The big plays the drive from below.
Concedes
The baseline pull-up, and the pop if the trailer steps back after his unused screen.
Requires
A big who sprints back on every possession and a guard who knows the middle is closed before the screen arrives. Effort first, then a coverage.
Beaten by
The drag screen set a step earlier than the big can get level; the pop by the trailer when the guard has committed to the sideline; and the double drag, which adds a second screener the big cannot be level with.
Coverage 1: Level first, then ice: the drag is beaten by arriving, not by a coverage.

2 Switch the double drag

The double drag adds a second trailer, and the two screens in a row are set for the handler by two bigs whose defenders are both arriving late. Getting level with two screens is not possible for one defender, and the second screen is usually the one the handler uses, so a big who gets level with the first has committed to the wrong one. Most defenses answer the double drag with a switch: the first screener’s defender takes the handler as he comes off, and everyone behind him takes the next man. Two switches in two seconds, and the handler has a big in front of him while the two trailers roll and pop against guards.

That produces the mismatch the offense wanted, a guard on a rolling big, and it produces it a full second before the scram switch of lecture 4.5 can fix it. The defense’s bet is that a mismatch at the rim guarded by a guard who is at least there is better than a handler turning the corner into an empty lane. Against a double drag, the alternative to switching is usually a layup.

Assignment
Switch every screen in the double drag as it is set. The defender nearest the handler takes him; the guard whose man just screened takes the screener. Fix the match-ups on the next pass.
Concedes
A mismatch at the rim, a guard on the rolling big, for the length of the possession or until the scram switch.
Requires
Five players who switch on a word and do not argue about who has whom until the ball is dead.
Beaten by
The double drag with a pop by the second screener, which asks the guard who switched onto him to close out to a big at the arc; and the early seal by the first roller on the guard who switched onto him.
Coverage 2: Switch the double drag: two screens, two trades, and a mismatch preferred to a layup.

3 Chase the delay

The delay is the slowest of the early actions and the hardest to defend, because it is patient. The big has the ball at the top, the guards run off him in dribble handoffs, and the defense that has just sprinted back has to guard a screening action that does not start until it is set. The handoff is a screen with the ball in it, and the on-ball defender’s choice is the same as at any screen: chase over the top and stay attached, or go under and concede the shot.

Against a shooter the defense chases, and the big’s defender plays the handoff the way he would play a drop: back a step, between the ball and the rim, so that the guard coming off the handoff meets him before the rim and the chasing defender has time to recover. Against a non-shooter the defense goes under and dares the pull-up. And against the guard who is the whole offense, the defense uses the top-lock of lecture 4.4 before the handoff happens: his defender stands between him and the big, denies him the path to the ball, and gives him only the backdoor cut into the big’s defender.

Assignment
The guard’s defender chases the handoff over the top against a shooter and goes under against a non-shooter. The big’s defender plays the handoff as a drop, a step back, between the ball and the rim.
Concedes
The pull-up after the handoff going under, and the drive for a step going over.
Requires
A guard who fights through a handoff set by a big, and a big who does not step up at the ball, which is what the handoff is trying to make him do.
Beaten by
The delay’s own continuity: the second and third handoff, run until a defender chases wrong; the zoom, a pin-down straight into the handoff; and the ghost screen when the big fakes the handoff and slips.
Coverage 3: Chase the delay: over on a shooter, under on a driver, and the big stays back.

4 Matching up on the run

Underneath the three actions is the problem lecture 4.1 left open. The defense that got back protected the rim first and stopped the ball second, and it matched up third, by taking the nearest man. Early offense is run against that third step: the drag is set by the trailer nobody has yet, and the double drag by two of them. The defensive rule that makes the coverages above possible is that every retreating defender calls his man as he arrives, so that the trailer has a name attached to him before he has set the screen. A defense that arrives silent is a defense that guards the drag with nobody.

The cross-match from 4.1 is the other half. When a wing has taken the opposing big at the rim and the defensive big has taken a guard on the perimeter, the drag screen that follows puts the wrong coverage on the floor: a wing playing drop against a big’s roll, a big chasing a guard over a screen. The defense either lives with it for one action or fixes it on the run with a switch, and the scram switch of lecture 4.5 exists for exactly this. Early offense is the offense’s attempt to use the defense’s improvised match-ups before they are repaired, and defending it is the art of repairing them while the ball is live.

The idea to carry into lecture 4.3 is that every answer in this lecture borrowed a coverage from the half court and ran it with less time. The next lecture sets out those coverages properly, one card each, against the ball screen the defense has had time to see coming.