Poker and Post Defense

Playing poker with people tends to be fairly telling about their personalities. Who is playing the percentages, who is betting aggressively early, who is playing tight, who is bullying, etc? One of the most important elements of the game is recognizing and understanding your opponent. You look for "tells" and watch how they play certain situations to make decisions later.

When we look at the game of basketball coaches try to find common elements to identify the way teams and coaches do things by picking out certain traits.

One of the things I key in on as a coach is what the other team does to defend posts. In my experience, almost to a team:

-If they play behind they think they are bigger. stronger and can bullying us off spots. They play tough contain to pressure m2m and try to make individual stops, and make you shoot contested shots over the primary defender. Rotation is likely to be help late at the rim or edge of the key with shot blocker.

- If they play 1/2 or 3/4 around high side they are a team that funnels to help in the middle or influences non dominant. They will probably help across  (more hands in the middle) allowing you to skip and trying to recover. They will active wing defenders and want their bigs to stay at home.

- If they 1/2 or 3/4 around low side then they are a ball pressure to contain team influencing sideline and baseline and will probably double down if the post catches. They will also help earlier and rotate by dropping down. They tend to be more team oriented defensively with athletic active bigs.

- If they front the basketball, they are probably a high ball pressure team. Relying on early traps/help on baseline penetration and with combination rotations to cover passing lanes and traps. They are probably undersized and fast.

It sounds silly but its true. Same as you read the player guarding the screener when attacking with screens, I look at the way teams defend post play to determine their defensive philosophy and what we want to do. I'm sure teams do the same to us.

What they should see when they look at our post defense:

- Post defenders should be full front. I arm length's away (measured by a locked out inside arm fist first into the high hip). Low stance with active feet and outside hand up as high as possible. If teams try to seal or lock it down we simply give ground out. On a reverse we have enough space with the arm's length to step or sprint free without getting pinned.

Why do we defend this way:


- We are a ball pressure team looking to force traps/run and jumps so this technique keeps us closer to the ball, prevents any pass except a lob into an immediate trap and gives us the space we need to sprint free in rotations without getting locked/pinned.

I know that a lot of coaches worry about the lob, reverses or rebounding when fronting. I respect their feeling but disagree. The lob and reverse are both taken away with good on ball pressure to make the ball bounce. I've never really felt like is has hurt us on the boards but we tend to hit and go with all five anyway so our activity level either works for us or not regardless of positioning.

FYI in poker I also bet almost anything and will go all in much more often then anyone else in the game pushing the pace. Your personality is your personality, I guess.