Three Pillars to Applying Defensive Pressure on the Basketball Court

• By Grant Young

Applying pressure during basketball defense throughout games is vital for a team’s success for several reasons. 

First, it can disrupt the opposing team's offensive rhythm and flow, making it difficult for them to run their plays effectively. By pressuring the ball handler and denying easy passing lanes, the defensive team can force turnovers and create scoring opportunities in transition. 

Additionally, defensive pressure can wear down the opposing team both physically and mentally. Constant pressure forces the opposing players to work harder to get open and make plays, leading to fatigue and potential mistakes. This can also lead to frustration and impatience, causing the opposing team to rush their shots and make poor decisions. 

Not to mention that applying defensive pressure can help set the tone for the game and establish a sense of urgency and intensity for the entire team. It can energize the defensive players and the crowd, creating momentum that can swing the game in favor of the defensive team. 

All of these reasons indicate why applying pressure on defense in basketball is a fundamental strategy for disrupting the opposing team's offense, creating scoring opportunities, and establishing a competitive edge on the court.

Yet, turning your basketball team into a stalwart, pressure-based defensive force is easier said than done. When an undisciplined or under-coached team tries to apply pressure, mistakes can often get made, which will lead to easy baskets on the other end. This is why knowing how to teach pressure-centric defense is even more important than deciding to do so in the first place. 

And Joe Golding is among basketball’s elite in teaching this tactic. 

Coach Golding was appointed the 20th head coach in UTEP (University of Texas at El Paso) men’s basketball history on April 13, 2021. This came after Coach Golding led Abilene Christian to the NCAA Tournament in two of his final three seasons with the program and an upset win over third-seed Texas in the 2021 "Big Dance". 

Coach Golding’s ‘Joe Golding/ Brette Tanner - ACU Pressure Defense’ course explains how culture can be built on the foundation of playing hard, along with the core defensive drills from 1-1 all the way up to 4-4 to build a team defense built on intense ball pressure, quick rotations, and communication on the floor.

Building A Culture

When building a defense, Coach Golding explains that, first and foremost, players need to understand what’s important to a team. So before you start worrying about tactics on the court, coaches should decide what their team’s core cultural pillars will be that they can return to and which their players should abide by. 

In addition, coaches can’t expect their teams to become good at pressure-based defense if they don’t commit time to it. There should be portions of every practice that are dedicated to defense; especially pressure-based defense because it relies on timing, consistency, and good conditioning in order to execute well during games. Coach Golding notes that, in the first month of practices every season, the first hour of every single practice is dedicated to defense. 

Plus, watching film with your team (even if it’s just practice film) is crucial to playing good pressure-based defense, so your players can have a visual representation of what they’re doing right and wrong during any given play. And as a coach, being able to point it out to them in real-time will serve as immediate feedback that will be extremely beneficial for not just that player, but for the entire team. 

Finally, a coach needs to speak their team’s defensive mindset and success into existence. Saying aloud that you’re going to have the best defensive team in your league or conference every day, in front of your players, is the best way to get them to believe it, which will then get them to commit to becoming that. 

Our Principles

While Coach Golding admits that at the beginning of every season, every team should be saying that they’re going to be the hardest-working team in the country. While this will obviously be untrue for the vast majority of teams, the point is that setting a standard of hard work should be paramount to every coaching staff. 

Another vital aspect of Coach Golding’s defense is that his team can’t give up the middle drive. While this may be different for every team’s philosophy, a guard driving into the middle of the paint puts pressure on a defense, which runs contrary to the pressure-based defense Coach Golding wants to run. 

He also wants to put hard pressure on the wings to dissuade three-point attempts and also emphasize rotating hard and often, to keep pressure on the opponent to keep the ball moving and find the open player. 

Another reason Coach Golding wants to keep shooters off of the three-point line is because more pressure on them means more dribbling, and more dribbling means more mistakes (which leads to points). 

Rotate and Help

Because applying pressure in defense also lends itself to making occasional mistakes in the name of aggression, pressure-based defensive teams must be also elite at rotating. 

Coach Golding explains that to improve his team’s defensive rotations, he runs the shell drill at least three times per week. 

While there are many variations of the shell drill, the essential premise is that it involves organizing four defenders around the key area while one offensive player stands at the center. This player will pass the ball around the wings, facilitating different rotations between the defenders depending on where the ball is at. 

The main goal of the shell drill is to facilitate communication between defenders and get the game-like repetitions that these defenders might face in a game.