Piggybacking on our 'defense wins' post earlier

A while back we posted an article with the premise that whichever team plays the best overall defense in the WAC this season will win the conference. The 800-pound gorilla in that post was the improvement the Boston Celtics -- the defending world champions -- made in defensive effort.

Piggybacking on that post, here's some additional material about defensive play.

David Wharton
Los Angerles Times
November 29, 2008

It is true that the UCLA basketball team spent much of this week trying to improve its flow on offense. It is true the Bruins worked on passing and cutting without the ball.

But this is still a Ben Howland squad, which means that defense takes center stage.

"I think we're struggling defensively right now," center Alfred Aboya said. "That won't get you anywhere."

The 13th-ranked Bruins, who face Florida International at home this afternoon, have allowed opponents to shoot 45% from the floor, a few percentage points higher than last season. Not good enough to satisfy their coach.

Howland was particularly concerned about the last minutes of his team's loss to Michigan in New York, when the Bruins found some rhythm on offense but failed to get enough defensive stops.

So this week, swingman Michael Roll said, the team worked on "step-sliding on defense, keeping your man in front of you, a lot of box-out drills, help rotation. Just a lot of basics..."

...Senior point guard Darren Collison also figures it might take a while for the freshmen on the team to appreciate the effort and intensity required to play good defense.

"I know I didn't when I was a freshman," he said...

Go here for the full article.

Here's another article, this one featuring the Los Angeles Lakers, and a new emphasis on defensive play. The return of Andrew Bynum has certainly aided the improvement but it's been a team effort.

Putting the Lakers on defensive overload
Mike Bresnahan
Los Angeles Times
November 28, 2008

It was a given that the Lakers would score gobs of points this season, but Coach Phil Jackson wanted to put a stop to all the points being dropped on them (the team's defensive rank last season: 18th).

So Jackson gathered his coaches before training camp and told them he was appointing a defensive coach, something he hadn't done in his previous 18 years of coaching in the NBA.

"We didn't want to announce it and make a big deal about it like Boston did with their guy," Jackson said. "But Kurt [Rambis] is real good at this and he's willing..."

...The players have eaten it up, finding an appetite for steals (a league-best 10.4 a game) and blocked shots (6.2 a game, sixth-best in the league) that matches their zest for alley-oop dunks and three-on-one breaks.

"The thought process is that you want to win a championship. In order to beat a Boston, you've got to be a better defensive team than Boston," Kobe Bryant said. "If you want to hoist that trophy at the end of the year, we've got to be a great defensive team. That's the only way to get it done..."

The article concludes with this, "Perhaps Jackson summed it up best: "What I like to see is our defense consistently being the hallmark of what we do."