A B-Ball story (sort of) for Scaeagles.

[Moonliner]

I read this and thought of you.

Ranadivé was puzzled by the way Americans played basketball. He is from Mumbai. He grew up with cricket and soccer. He would never forget the first time he saw a basketball game. He thought it was mindless. Team A would score and then immediately retreat to its own end of the court. Team B would inbound the ball and dribble it into Team A’s end, where Team A was patiently waiting. Then the process would reverse itself. A basketball court was ninety-four feet long. But most of the time a team defended only about twenty-four feet of that, conceding the other seventy feet.

[scaeagles]

Differing perspectives are always interesting. Of course, his experience was rather limited in what he saw....of course all 94 feet (84 in high school) are defended depending on the game situation.

[Ghoulish Delight]

There's also the fact that, yes, a 48 minute full court press against teams that have not prepared for it can be effective. But as a long term strategy against teams that know it's coming and bother to prpare, it's easy to compensate for and would not take long to be broken.

[scaeagles]

Indeed. And using full court pressure off and on keeps other teams off balance. Pressure can be used to slow tempo or force tempo, exploit speed advantages and neutralize height disadvantages, take advantage of superios conditioning, and different types of pressure look to exploit different areas of weakness in play. It is very difficult to prepare for the various types of presses that can be used.