Ball Screen's Defense: Deny - Special

Some time ago, one of my friends, George Dikeoulakos (Greek Women’s National Team’s Assistant Coach, and Athinaikos’ Head Coach) talked me about a slightly different way of defending the ball screen situations.

It’s a modification of the classic "deny" defense, in which the ball defender denies the way towards the screen, and the screener’s defender stops the penetration). They used to run this new defense with their National Team (as we will see in the second video) and I started studying it. Afterwards I’ve watched some teams using it, and now I bring it to you.

The main difference between the “classic” option and the “new” one is that in the new option, the screener’s defender will be close to his player (avoiding pop – receive – shoot situations) and it will be the help side’s inside player’s defender the one who will stop penetrations. Help side is really important here as there will be a small player taking care of the second help.

It's also a good work to develop to react to the screener's defender possible mistakes in the "classic" deny defense.

Let’s take a look at the images from the Greeks and then we will see a very similar situation from the Denver Nuggets.