Taking the 4 Person Off the Ball


Some teams will try and beat our diamond pressure by applying more offensive pressure in the backcourt, as we see in diagrams 22 and 23. They will do so by bringing a third person towards the ball in the middle of the floor. As we stated earlier, we cannot allow an inbounds pass to enter the lane area. We will counter this offensive strategy by taking our 4 person off of the ball and putting him into the lane, where X4 will deny any pass into the lane. Then, when the ball is inbounded, we are still in our diamond pressure. X2 and X4 will trap the left side, X3 and X4 will trap the right side, X1 has the next pass up the floor out of the trap and X5 has basket responsibility.

At times we may take the 4 person off of the ball just to give our opponents a different look, forcing them to make another decision.