Zone offense

     Zone defense is an effective way to disrupt the offense and force opponents to take bad shots and make turnovers. Often it's used to change the pace of the game, to get some stops on defense.

     In Latvian Basketball league team Barons/LDz plays it for whole game. At the begining of the season, they wasn't able to find the right defense to win games, so they stuck to zone defense. Key game after which they started to play zone, was loss to the BK Latvijas Universitate, in that game they played man to man defense and allowed 109 points, game went to double overtime! Since that game they play zone defense and they allow 87.75 points per game in LBL. In this period in Latvian league they've won 2 games, against Jelgava and Liepaja, also beated Valmiera in BBL. Barons/LDz is ranked in 9th place with 5/14 record in LBL!

     I'm gonna show some set plays against zone defense from Jurmala/Fenikss, that was used against Barons/LDz.

     Very good alley-oop play to use after time-outs and also during the game. If it's played correctly, it gets the players going, just like every other effective play.

     And second play is pick and roll action, playing against the two guards in front, and taking advantage of how they are defending!

     And here are two different options of execution of this play.

     If your team has to face a strong zone defense you can use these plays to take advantage of the defense. Also very important is offenseive rebounding and second shots, it's one of the zone defense's disadvantages. Be aggressive.

Thanks for reading. Coach Rozlapa!