YBCA

What age? It is hard t develop decision-making skills in an individual workout. However, you can practice reading a defender in 1v1 situations.

For instance, let's say that you work on a ball handling move and a finish, like a crossover and a lay-up. Instruct the player to imagine his defender on each move – rather than learning the move like rote memorization, each move should be different and individualized based on the player's imagination.

Next, rather than player making a move against air or against a chair, stand in front and play dumby defense. Teach the player what to read: I teach players to read the defenders body position in relation to the ball. Frame these decisions in the form of an “if, then” statement:

• If the defender commits to the ball, cross over.
• If the defender plays the inside shoulder, accelerate with a straight-line drive.
• If the defender plays straight-up (nose to nose), use a hesitation move or an in-n-out move to create a straight-line drive.

Then, you play one of these three ways and evaluate his decision-making based on the way that you play him.

In a small group workout, play 1v1 and focus on the decision-making, not necessarily the execution of the skill or result of theplay. Did the player attack the right direction? Did he take the right shot?

I have more ideas in my book, Developing Basketball Intelligence.

No, the lead shoulder shouldn't matter as much. However, most coaches teach players to attack the top foot, so the original writing from DBI took that into consideration. Attacking the top foot (lead shoulder) should only matter if the defender is playing straight up – in that case, you can use a move like an in-n-out to create your drive line or attack the top foot to force him to switch his hips to recover.

Yes, I agree. Most coaches teach players to attack the top foot to force them to switch their hips. But, this forces the ball handler to make a move earlier or to make a sharper cut, which is also slower. As a defender, I want to force the player to change directions; I do not want to allow a straight-line drive. Therefore, as an offensive player, I want to attck with the straight-line whenever possible and use the crossover only as a counter when the straight-line is clearly taken away.

Most of the time, when a defender shows a clear top foot, they are susceptible to the drive at their back foot because they are giving away the angle to the basket.

It does depend slightly on court location too: if I'm attacking at the right elbow and the defender plays me straight up, a crossover might provide a better angle to the basket than trying to make an in-n-out and go around the defender to the right.

From a defensive perspective, I would say we spend more time on this than on any other part of defense and it shows. Teams just can't turn the corner against us and offensively, we're getting better at turning the corner and creating our angle to the basket.