How to Actually Read the Defense (Step-by-Step)

This is going to be the ultimate guide to reading the defense like a pro. I'm going to give you everything you need, step by step. That's going to help you to go out, be confident, make consistently good decisions, and see way better results in your games. If you want to be a great offensive player, it all starts with your ability to read the defense. All the skills, shooting, ball handling, that stuff matters. But if you don't understand how to apply it, then it really doesn't matter very much. And you're probably going to be really frustrated with your lack of results, with your inconsistency, and you're going to be really frustrated with all the work that you're putting in on the court not showing itself in games. But when you commit to becoming a high IQ player and learning how to read the defense, the game slows down. It becomes way easier, and you start to be able to anticipate. And that ability to anticipate what's going to happen on the court is a skill that the best players have. And so if you can develop it, it's going to change everything for you. Now we break it down to its most basic. There's two different times where you need to be able to read the defense. First being without the ball and then with the ball. We're going to start without the ball because I refer to that as the 95, because 95% of the time, you're not going to have the ball in your hand. So it's crucial that you can read the defense in these moments. Now, when we look at reading the defense without the ball in your hands, there's really two different times that this is going to happen. It can either be within an action or it can be not within an action. So when we talk about reading the defense not in an action, this just means that you're not setting a screen, you're not coming off of a screen. You're not really doing anything except kind of just standing there on the perimeter. This is where you have to be able to read your defender while they're playing Help defense. The first thing you have to understand is that if you see your defender's back while they're in, help attack the basket. That's got to be like the motto that you. You have. I see their back attack. So all that means that if your defender, if you can see their back, it means that they don't know where you are. So if you cut to the basket, you're probably going to be open. This is what I call a basket. Cut trigger just means that something that you see that triggers you to immediately make a basket cut, and the first one is when you see your defenders back. The next one is going to be whenever the ball gets to the opposite mid post or low block. So if you're on the right wing, the ball gets to the low midpost or low left block. That means you're going to make a cut from that opposite side. And a lot of times you're going to be open because all the defensive focus goes to that left block, that left mid post. You'll start to score some easy buckets in your games if you look for opportunities to cut to the basket. Specifically looking for the back of your defensive defended when they're in help or when the ball gets to that opposite low side. The other aspect of reading the defense, when you don't have the ball in your hands, you're not in an action, is relocating. This is going to happen whenever your teammate drives, usually from the other side of the floor. And we want to relocate so that you create a passing lane for your teammate to give you the ball because your defender is playing help. And usually they're trying to keep a straight line between you and whoever has the ball so that if they throw a pass, they can maybe get a hand on it. So that means that when your teammate drives, in order to take advantage of that, you need to relocate either up or down in order to make sure that your defender can't play the passing lane. That's how you get yourself open for catch and shoot threes or for another drive. Now we talk about reading the defense when you're in an action. So you don't have the ball in your hands, but you're in an action now. And the most common action is going to be an off ball screen, also called a pin down and away screen. Whatever. Any offense that you're in, you probably run these probably pretty often. And when it comes to these, all about reading how the defense actually guards it. So someone that comes and sets a screen for you, there's a few different ways that they can guard it. And we want to have a solution to each of those coverages. The first way that they might guard it is they might chase you over the screen. You're coming over the screen and they're chasing you, they're right behind you. That's when you want to tight curl the basket because they're going to be trailing you. And a lot of times that will free you up for a potential layup. The next way they can Guard it is, they can go under the screen. When they go under the screen, you want to flare out to the perimeter because that's going to give you either space for a shot or it's going to lead to a closeout for you to attack. And either way it's going to create an opportunity for you to do something with the basketball. The next way that they can guard it is with what's called a top lock. This just means that they're kind of playing so that you can't go over the screen or you can't use the screen, or sometimes they just start to anticipate or they go through the motions and they just almost try and beat you over top of screen. That's when you want to go back to a cut to take advantage of that. And then the other way that they can guard it is by switching it. And when they switch that off ball screen, the screener wants to slip to the basket right away because a lot of times they're going to be open. And if you're coming off of that screen, you want to stay out on the perimeter to give that screener space to slip. So if you understand that there's four ways that that a defense can guard an off ball screen, and you understand the solution to each of those coverages, you're going to be able to score way more in this action. Now, going to one of the points that I just made right there. If you're the screener, there's two things that you really need to know. The first is the concept of one to perimeter and one to basket. All of that means that when you set that off ball screen, whatever the player that you set the screen for does, you need to do the opposite. So if they come off that screen and go out to the perimeter, you've got to dive to the basket. If they tight curl it and go to the basket, you've got to pop out to the perimeter. What this does is it forces the defense to guard two levels and it's really hard for defense to consistently do that. So that might mean that your teammate tight curls it and they bring your defender to and help and you pop out, you're wide open for a three or your teammate flares out to the perimeter and the defense gets lazy and you dive to the basket and all of a sudden you're wide open now. And the second thing you need to know as a screener in that pin down situation is that if you hear a switch call or you know that a switch is happening, be prepared to Slip to the basket, because again, you can catch them right before that mesh point when they actually switch. And if you slip early enough, you're going to be wide open, be able to get layups, you want to get kick out, to really make an impact just by hunting opportunity to slip when you know that they're switching. So now let's talk about how to read the defense. When you have the ball in your hands. The first thing that you have to understand is what your goal is when you're on offense. And the number one goal for every player should be to create or attack advantages. Advantages are just situations in which you or your team has the upper hand in some way. There's a few different types of advantages. We have what's called a momentum advantage, which just means that your defender is closing out to you. And that momentum that they're bringing towards you to take away the shot, slow themselves down and not get beat is really, really hard to do. And it's when they're at their most vulnerable. So we want to look to attack that momentum whenever we can. Another advantage is a size or an athleticism mismatch. So you get someone switched on to you who's smaller, or your teammate gets somebody switched on them who's smaller or you get somebody switch on to you who's not as athletic or not as fast, not as good. On defense, we want to hunt matchup advantages that we have as well. Then the other advantage that we want to look to attack is numbers advantages. So specifically, whenever we can get the defense to have to guard one guy with two players, whenever we can get two to guard one, we create a numbers advantage. And it just means that somebody in the offense is going to be open. So let's start with just like the most basic situation. When you catch the ball, do I shoot, do I drive or do I pass? That's a question that I get asked all the time from players. And it really is simple. When you look at it in the right framework, the first thing that you have to know is that you want to have a shoot first mindset. Now you want to have this, because when you have that shoot first mindset, it makes everything a lot easier for a couple of reasons. First of all, if the defense knows you're willing to shoot the ball from three when you catch it, if you're open, they have to close out to you, which is going to create more of those momentum advantages that we talked about already. Also, even if you're not a great shooter, just by showing the defense you're willing to take that three, they might have to close out to you more in that game. And that's going to open up maybe what you're better at, if you're a better driver or whatever. And the third reason why having a shoot first mindset is so crucial is because it's going to actually allow you to make more of your shots because you're going to shoot them with decisiveness and with confidence. And that is going to lead to you making a higher percentage of your shots. That's why it's so important for you to develop your ability as a shooter. And you just spend the majority of your time in your workouts training that ability. So, so now that we have that mindset, when you're open, shoot the ball. Now, let's say you catch the ball and you don't have an open shot. Well, that's when we know we're going to have a momentum advantage to attack because the closeout is taking away the shot. There's not a lot of space. So we want to attack that momentum by either ripping through or jabbing going. When you do this and you get by your initial defender by attacking their momentum, you force the help defense to rotate over and guard you, which creates a numbers advantage, which we talked about. So now you have two players who are responsible for guarding you. Meaning if you don't have a finish at the basket, somebody on the other side of the floor is going to be open for a kick out. That answers a really big question that I get from players all the time, which is how do I read the help defense? It's very simple. You get by your initial defender and help rotates over and focuses on you. And now means that you've created a numbers advantage. So if you can't finish it, that means you're going to have a teammate on a kick out or on a cut coming from the other side. And that's the decision that you make, is to make that pass. Now, let's say you catch the ball, you don't have an open shot and you don't love the drive. Maybe you the player that's guarding you is a really good defender or there's good gap help one away or the help is really loaded up and you don't like the drive either. That's when you have to make the very simple decision to pass the basketball. But you want to pass it quickly. And when you move the ball immediately, you don't just want to stand, you want to get to the next action. So that could mean going to set another away screen for somebody else. Because now what that's going to do is it's going to create another opportunity for the defense to have to make a decision on how they're going to guard this. And if the offense plays it right, then we create another advantage for ourselves. Now this situation, we just walked through that decision to shoot, driver, pass. We want to make that in what's called a 0.5 decision. So when you catch the ball, you have half a second to decide am I shooting it, am I driving it or am I moving it? This is because the defense is at their most vulnerable when you first catch the ball, because your defender is closing out momentum like we talked about. But also the rest of the defense is rotating. And so there's a chance that somebody's messed up, somebody doesn't know where they're supposed to be, somebody lost their guy. And so we want to make that point five decision quickly. So we have to get really good at making that decision to shoot, drive or pass right away. And the third area we'll talk about when it comes to reading the defense is in ball screen situations. So this is like another different type of action, but now it's with the ball in your hands and there's a few ways that the defense can guard this. And so again, we want to have a solution to any coverage we might see. Now a lot of this is actually very similar to how they would guard an off ball screenshot. So the first way that they might guard it is by going over. And when they do that, we want to make one defender guard two again. So I come off of that screen and I see that the screeners defender is there in what we call drop coverage. And you're essentially just going to let them make the decision for you. Either they're going to stop your drive and your teammate's going to be open on a roll or on a pop, or they're going to recover back to your teammate and you're going to be open for a pull up or to get all the way to the rim. The next way that they can guard a ball screen is by going under. And we have a couple of different options here. First of all, if they play under, we can just shoot the three. If there's enough space for it and you're a good shooter that you can take that three. But we also don't have to do that. We can do what's called flipping the ball screen. They play under and we flip the screen. All that that means is that the screener just turns and screens the other way. So you went, you went, they played under. We turn and flip the screen, you go back the other direction. And now it's harder for them to go under it again because you're a little bit closer. So a lot of times we can force them to actually go over on the next one. And that leads us back to that initial making one guard two like we just talked about right there. So being able to flip that screen when you see the defender play under is a really great way to take advantage of it as well. The third way that they can guard a ball screen is by switching. And when they do this, we have two options here. Either we can hit the screener on the slip, so there's going to slip right away, just like we talked about with an off ball screen. But also when they switch, it may create a mismatch for us. So another advantage to look at, so it could be for you, you come off the screen now you have someone maybe who's slower than you that you can attack, or they switch somebody smaller onto the screener and you want to look to get them on, to hit them on a post up right there. That's how we take advantage of the defense when they switch in a ball screen. And the fourth way that we'll talk about with how somebody can guard a ball screen is with what's called a blitz or a double. And they're just going to send the screeners, defender and your defender to try and trap you. So right here we have a couple options as well. Again, probably the most common options, we're just going to hit the screener on like a short roll or on a slip because we know that we're going to bring two with us. We've again created numbers advantage. We've gotten two to guard one. We're just going to get the ball right to the screener. And now it's a four on three for our team. But also if the screener's defender maybe is a little bit slower or they're late, you can bounce around them and go towards the middle of the floor. And now we've created numbers advantage as well, getting downhill. Lastly, I want to mention three quick things that high IQ players do. And if you do these things, it's going to lead to immediate results. You're going to play a lot better and more consistently. The first thing is winning the first three steps in transition. So when you're on defense, your team pulls a board, you have to make it your goal to take the fastest three steps towards half court in comparison to everybody else on the floor. When you do this, you're going to get out ahead in transition a lot more. You're going to steal easy points by doing that. The second thing is crashing the offensive boards, especially if you're a guard. I think a lot of times guards don't realize how many opportunities you can get because there's so many threes that are taken in, so many long rebounds. So if you're a guard or a wing player and you look to crash the offensive boards more often, you're going to steal easy rebounds and a lot of times easy points just by doing that as well. And then the third thing is setting the tone early with an outside shot. And I just want to reiterate this, I kind of mentioned this earlier, but when you take a three point shot early on, even if it's not something that you're great at, you don't really want to do that very often. It's going to change the way that the defense views you and has to guard you because they know that you're willing to take that shot. And so now they're going to close out even harder to you, opening up that momentum advantage for you to attack. And that's how we get downhill, create numbers, advantages, get to the rim for finishes, kick outs, all that sort of stuff that leads to success and good offense. Now if you want even more stuff that's going to help you to read the game at a high level, become a high IQ player and just find more success on the court. I have a free basketball IQ masterclasses linked down below in the description and it's an hour long and it's going to help you to score more points, create more consistently, play with way more confidence, develop some of the mindsets that go into being a great player. And it's one of the best things that I've ever created. You can get it completely free down below, so make sure you check that out. Hopefully this video helped you out. Appreciate you for watching. Talk soon. Peace.