The team you’re playing against has the ball and broke through your T defense press and is now barreling down the court to score against you. What do you do? Drop into the Key.
Let’s Drop in.
Today is focused entirely on the traditional Key defense, with three defenders in the Key and one Chaser. We’ll go through the overall philosophy of the defensive setup and the role of each person.
Above you’ll see Ye Olde Standard Key setup, with three defenders in the Key, and the one player outside the key, known as the Chase. In this setup, looking from left to right you have your 4 man role, your 1, a slight gap, and your 3. The Chase is typically your 2 man role, although depending how your team wants to run it, it can also be your 3 or 4.
Note that at any point the mirror image holds true.
Assuming the 2 is the Chase, the ideal set up has the 1 offset towards the 4, which adds strength to a side that is weaker by default. This leaves the 3 on a bit of an island, so that’s why you want your Chase to be lined up in front of that gap when the play is initially set up. This works to balance the power distribution throughout the key and take away any obvious weak spot in the defense.
Now let’s look at the primary responsibilities for each of these roles.
Here’s the bottom line, for the two corner roles (the 3 and 4 in this setup), their primary job is to protect the corners. If your team gets scored on in the middle, it’s everyone’s fault, but if your team gets scored on in a corner, then it’s that corner defender’s fault. It’s harsh but that’s how important these roles are, proper defense of the corners allows the Middle person and the Chase to successfully do their jobs.
The Middle person, almost always your 1, has the most responsibility on the court, and especially in the Key. They are the….key….to making this work (sorry). They have to make sure everyone knows what’s going on and they have to make sure they’re never taking themselves out of position
They have to try to maintain a small gap between themselves and the 4, they have to monitor the larger gap between themselves and the 3 and be ready to close it if necessary, they have to watch the gap between themselves and the Chase, they have to watch where the Chase is relative to them, and they have to keep an eye on what the opposing team as a whole is doing.
That may sound like a lot of work, because it is. If you’re a 1 and feel uncomfortable about that, you maybe should’ve thought about that before having all that function.
The Chase, the 2 in this instance, has the distinction of having the largest area to cover. Further, this role can differ by being an “active chase” or a “passive chase” that depends on how much this person moves around and what their defensive focus is. For this, let’s go middle-of-the-road and say they’re a slightly active Chase.
The Chase must be cognizant and reactive to what the opposing team is doing and has to adjust accordingly. They have to be in constant communication with the Middle person to make sure neither of them gets out of position, or that they both don’t double-commit defense.
An important note is that the Chase has to make sure they don’t get taken out of position, or go too far from “home.” The Chase should work to, if they’re active and moving around, cycle back to their starting position regularly as a means of forcing themselves to not go too far away. If it takes you too long to get back to your starting position, and in a real game you’ll figure out how long is too long pretty quick, you know you’re traveling too far.
Now let’s add some offense to this court.
For this, we must define what the “Ball” and the “Post” are. The Ball is the person who is the primarily the ball handler and is initially carrying the ball as they engage the Key defense. The Post is the person who is the most likely to be the one to receive a pass from the ball handler. This person usually travels in parallel with the Ball and will attack the key around the same time. The Post will be looking to dive into the key, box out a defender (post up on them) and set themselves up to receive the pass. For our diagrams, the Ball will be Green and the Post will be Yellow.
As a note: for this, the offense will not be running any real strategic play, let’s just assume they’re an inexperienced and unsophisticated D3 team.
The relationship between the 1 and the 2 (Middle and Chase) is crucial. Their communication and movement can make or break a Key defense.
Assuming the offensive positioning depicted here, with the corners having dedicated offense near them. The key becomes a very small zone-man-match setup. With the Corners matching with the offensive players in their respective corners, and the 1 and 2 matching with the others.
This is where communication is extremely important: the 1 and 2 need to communicate with each other as to which person they will be focusing on initially for the defense. This is dictated by the Chase, they will commit to, and say, either “Ball” or “Post”, and set up to defend against that person. The Middle should audibly respond a confirmation and say who they’re defending too.
For example, the offensive team is coming in, by the time they hit the 3-point-arc, the chaser says “Ball” and moves to better meet that person. The Middle immediately says “Post” and sets themselves up to defend against the Post, knowing that the Post will attack un-checked because the Chase will not be defending against them.
The Middle must realize that the chase cannot, and should not be forced to, commit defense to more than one person. Once the Chase commits their defense, the Middle needs to be ready for their defensive match.
From here, the Middle and Chase can switch who they’re defending against, so long as it’s a safe opportunity to do so and there is clear communication.
Lets take this moment to remember an important rule: at no point can there be four defenders in the key.
The Middle and Chase are in the unique situation that they can easily change positions with each other inside the key. This, too, must be very clearly communicated between the two of them, to avoid a penalty.
If the Middle is leaving the Key, they need to communicate that with the rest of the team. If the Chase then decides to drop into the Key, that needs to be communicated as well. All movement, changing of zones, rotation through positions, should be vocalized to teammates.
That’s the basics for the initial Key setup. There will be further deep-dives on alternative ways to set up Key defenses, and how to beat the Key defense on offense, in the future.
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