How To Guard Players Who Are Quicker Than You

The game of basketball favors guys who are quick. But no matter how quick you are, there's going to come a point in time where you're going to face a guy who's quicker than you and is really going to be a challenge for you defensively. In this video, we're going to take a look at Klay Thompson vs. Kyrie Irving in the 2017 NBA Finals. Now, obviously, Kyrie Irving, with the ball in his hands, is one of the quickest players in the NBA. And while Klay Thompson is a good athlete, he has nowhere near the same quickness that Kyrie Irving does. But despite giving up quickness, Klay Thompson held Kyrie Irving to 17 of 42 shooting, which is 40.4%. And when Kyrie Irving was guarded by anybody else in the series, he went 41 for 81, which is over 50% shooting. Now, Kyrie still had a great series, but there's some things we can take from the defense that Klay played on him that's going to help you when you're playing as guys who are quicker than you. Let's get into it. One of the first keys when it comes to playing against a guy who might be quicker than you is trying to dictate one side for him to go to to. Since they already have the quickness advantage over you, you want to try and take away as many other advantages as you can. If you play him straight up and let him choose which side to go to, that's another thing he can take advantage of because you're not going to know which side he's going to choose. You can determine this based on your defensive scheme. So if your team chooses to play guys to the baseline or put them to the middle, that can determine which way you force your man. Or maybe you force your guy to his weak hands or you know he likes to score going to his left, so you force him to his right or vice versa. On this play right here, Klay knows that he has helped to his midd. So the scheme dictates that he's going to force Kyrie to the middle right there, which is going to lead him directly into the hill for a contested shot. In this clip right here, Klay does the same thing, jumps up high to force Kyrie to go left. And because David west is in help, Kyrie has to settle for a tough jump shot. And on this play right here, we see Klay turn and take away Kyrie's option to go to the middle, forcing him to stay on the baseline, which leads him into A difficult, contested shot. Your goal as the defender should be to try to make the play of your guarding as predictable as possible, because if you're able to predict what he does, he can use his speed less to his advantage. Now, let's talk about this subtle little trick, which is using your inside hand to guide the player you're guarding. This isn't a hand check. You basically are just trying to keep contact with that guy using the inside hand. And this does a couple of different things. First of all, by creating contact and remaining attached to that guy, a lot of times that guy is going to subconsciously slow down as they brace for contact and feel that arm on them. Also, using the inside arm can, a lot of times guide them to take wider angles and make it easier for you to prevent them from getting all the way to the basket. This is something you have to be very subtle about. You can't extend your arm and you can't outright block them from moving with that arm. But a lot of times, if you just create a little bit of contact there, reps will let it go, and it'll help you to guard guys who might be a little bit quicker than you. Now, obviously, playing against a guy is quicker than you, there's going to be times where he's going to get a step on you. Klei does a great job of getting his hands up early. Whether it's on a drive, as you'll see in this clip, or if he's giving up space on a jump shot. This just adds a little bit more of a contest to whatever shot he's going for, which can be the difference between them getting an easy look and them completely missing the shot. Now, right here, what we'll see from Klay Thompson is really a more general tip. When defending shooters. Instead of trying to block the ball every time on our contest, we can just get a hand in their face to try and block their vision. And a lot of times that's going to be more effective than going for a block. If you aren't close enough or you're giving up height and you aren't able to block the shot like you see in this clip right here. The better option is just to try and throw off their vision, which is going to make it much more difficult for them to hit the shot. But here's the important thing to remember. No matter how good you are as a defender, if you're playing against a great offensive player, you're going to get scored on. There's no getting around this. So you need to be prepared to handle that. Just like how you need to have a short memory offensively if you miss a shot. You also need to have a short memory defensively if you get scored on just because he hits a tough shot or he has a great move on you that makes you look bad, you can't let that destroy your confidence. You have to come back on the floor every single time and believe that you're going to get the stop no matter how good that player is. If you guys enjoyed this video, make sure you drop a Like and subscribe. Make sure you guys follow me on Instagram @visiondrivenbasketball for more content. And I just started a TikTok as well at Vision Driven Basketball, so go check that out as well. If you guys are interested in any of my online programs, the link for that is going to be in the description below. You can also grab my free Elite Perimeter score workout down there as well. You want to be able to work on some of those skills to become a great scorer on the perimeter? Go ahead and grab that completely free. I'll talk to you guys soon. Peace.