Defensive mistakes and How to Prevent them ft. Coach Chris

Written by: Chris Hungerford

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Time to read 4 min

We all know that the Golden State Warriors have one of the best offenses that game has ever seen, and it is not a shame if you can't guard all of their sets. But if you want to have a slight chance of beating them, you must reduce unforced errors to a minimum. There is so little that you can do to prevent Steph or Klay from hitting those deep threes, or those Durant pull-ups, but hay... let's make an effort, let's try to be close on every position, put your hand in a face. Do not let them shoot from wide-open spots.


The Hoopsking team chose some of the most common mistakes made on defense, that can be seen on every level of basketball, and we asked our Coach C to help us help you understand what are important things when playing defense.

No communication

Here we have a double-screen action for Klay, and the screeners are Steph first and Zaza second. JR actually knows this setup and he is making an effort to try to go over the second screen and to deny a pass in the corner. But, as the first screen went on, Kyrie who was guarding Steph made a switch, so we had 2 players chasing Klay and Steph was left alone in the weak side corner. KD saw this and he just climbed up the court to create more space for James to cover, because now he was guarding 2 players. Teach players not to lose focus, to communicate, and to help one another. The open shot created in this set was not the result of the offensive quality, but the lack of defensive awareness.

Who is guarding who

Here we see the moment where both JR and Kyrie lost vision of Steph.


In this second situation, we have LeBron Guarding KD, we have JR on Klay and we have Love on Zaza.

James and JR

So, again, Klay went towards the paint area using Zaza as a screener, so naturally, James switched, but as we are going to see in the next picture, JR didn`t stay on KD.

No communication No 2

I heard one time that Coach Chris said: "Look, they play bad defense but they are talking and it does not look that bad." And it is the truth. It all starts with the communication. So, the first thing that you need to teach your players is to communicate, then the positioning in defense, then movement. Things like switching, evading screens, and bumping are advanced stuff that demand basics to be learned by heart.


Let us take a look at the video:

Here on Hoopsking, we have the Nation's best coaches teaching defense. We have Mike Krzyzewski, Jerry Petitgoue, Chris Hungerford, Jamie Angeli, and Dave Robbins and they all reveal their thoughts on playing defense just for you. Click on the link below and become a better coach now:

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We all know that the Golden State Warriors have one of the best offenses that game has ever seen, and it is not a shame if you can't guard all of their sets. But if you want to have a slight chance of beating them, you must reduce unforced errors to a minimum. There is so little that you can do to prevent Steph or Klay from hitting those deep threes, or those Durant pull-ups, but hay... let's make an effort, let's try to be close on every position, put your hand in a face. Do not let them shoot from wide-open spots.


The Hoopsking team chose some of the most common mistakes made on defense, that can be seen on every level of basketball, and we asked our Coach C to help us help you understand what are important things when playing defense.

Here we have a double-screen action for Klay, and the screeners are Steph first and Zaza second. JR actually knows this setup and he is making an effort to try to go over the second screen and to deny a pass in the corner. But, as the first screen went on, Kyrie who was guarding Steph made a switch, so we had 2 players chasing Klay and Steph was left alone in the weak side corner. KD saw this and he just climbed up the court to create more space for James to cover, because now he was guarding 2 players. Teach players not to lose focus, to communicate, and to help one another. The open shot created in this set was not the result of the offensive quality, but the lack of defensive awareness.

I heard one time that Coach Chris said: "Look, they play bad defense but they are talking and it does not look that bad." And it is the truth. It all starts with the communication. So, the first thing that you need to teach your players is to communicate, then the positioning in defense, then movement. Things like switching, evading screens, and bumping are advanced stuff that demand basics to be learned by heart.


We all know that the Golden State Warriors have one of the best offenses that game has ever seen, and it is not a shame if you can't guard all of their sets. But if you want to have a slight chance of beating them, you must reduce unforced errors to a minimum. There is so little that you can do to prevent Steph or Klay from hitting those deep threes, or those Durant pull-ups, but hay... let's make an effort, let's try to be close on every position, put your hand in a face. Do not let them shoot from wide-open spots.


The Hoopsking team chose some of the most common mistakes made on defense, that can be seen on every level of basketball, and we asked our Coach C to help us help you understand what are important things when playing defense.


prevent defensive mistake