Hold Your Man To 20% WORSE Shooting - How To Become A Better Defender (Defensive Tips)

Just ride me, baby. What's up, guys? Coach Ethan here and today I wanted to make a video about playing better on ball defense. This is a question that I get a lot from players who want to know how they can become a better defender, become a lockdown defender and be able to get more playing time because of how elite they are in the defensive end. Now, things you need to understand about playing defense is that a lot of it comes down to how hard you're willing to play and how smart you are. If you're elite at both of those two things, you can be a great defender. Aside from those two things, let's talk about a couple other things that can really help you on the defensive end. The first thing to understand is that you want to make sure you play disciplined on defense. Now what this means is that you always go to the right spot and you always do the right things when you get to those spots. For example, when you guard the ball, never jump for shot fakes, never jump at pass fakes, always make sure you stay disciplined and you don't gamble unless you're absolutely sure that you can come up with the play you need to make. I see a lot of players who are in good defensive position and easily take themselves out of the play because they jump at a shot fake and overall just become undisciplined playing defense. If you want to be a great on ball defender, stay disciplined and make the player you're guarding earn their points. This leads into my second point. You want to make sure that you can test every shot. This does not mean that you need to block every shot. In fact, for most of you, unless you're a shot blocker, you shouldn't be going for many blocks. What you should be doing is making sure that you make every shot difficult for the players that you're guarding. What this means is that instead of jumping to try and block a jump shot, get a hand in their face that is harder for them to see. Just contest the shot. That's a little tip right there. A lot of people think that when you go out to close out on a jump shot, you should put your hand and try and block the ball. But really, if you put your hand in their face and try and deter their vision, you're going to have a lot of success closing out on people and you're going to be really, really good at closing out. Guys are going to miss a lot of times when you do that. And that goes back to again, you being disciplined on defense, making sure that you aren't jumping, you're staying on your feet but at the same time you're closing out. Because what you don't want to do is go close out to somebody and jump out out of the play, then hit you with a shot fake and then easily get to the basket or have a one drill pull up wide open because you weren't disciplined on defense, make sure you stay disciplined and contest every shot. There's a study done on five different college basketball games amongst elite college basketball teams where a coach compared contested shots to non contested shots and what percentage of them missed. And what he realized is that 58.4% of shots that were not contested went in, but only 36% of shots that were contested went in. That means that if you do a good job of contesting shots Notice I said contesting, not blocking. If you do a good job contesting shots, you can hold opponents to over 20% worse shooting. If you just contest shots, that right there can take you from being a bad defender to a good defender. Just if you get good at contesting shots. If you guys enjoyed this video, go ahead and leave a like and subscribe as well. I want all you guys right now to click the link in my description and join our private basketball training group where I'm giving you guys personal coaching from me, free workouts and a ton of exclusive content you're not going to get anywhere else. So like I said, hit that link in my Description below. It's 100% free and I'll see you guys in there. Like I said before, if you guys enjoyed the video, go ahead and subscribe. Hit this little black button right here to make it easy. I really appreciate it guys and drop a comment for me. Let me know what you guys want to see next. That's it for me guys. Peace.