We don’t like our help to hide. In other words, we want our help to be active and vocal. We want the offense to know that there is help in the paint. We want to discourage drives and lobs into the post. We want to convey a look of a crowded lane area. The goal is to be in good enough position that the offense doesn’t test the help. Good defense has help if needed but a great defense defends in such a way that the help is rarely tested because they defend the ball properly and the offense sees the helpside already in position.Another part of our helpside philosophy is to have aggressive help. We tell our team “they can never help too soon.” We want the help to stop the basketball before it gets to the lane. The terminology we use is to “escape the paint to help.”
We will occasionally trap out of our help. One such situation is when we get beat on the side and the ball is driven baseline to the block. We want to escape the paint to help and this is an automatic trap situation. The helper will come out and stop the ball while the defender on the ball will recover and form the trap. We believe this is a great technique that if properly formed, will discourage teams from driving baseline even if they do have a driving lane available.
