Help rotations
 | 1 At any age level, defending dribble penetration is hard, especially if your team denies perimeter passes. When the on-ball defender gets beat, other defenders must rotate to cut off the drive and prevent easy passes to open attackers. Here attacker 3 has the ball on the wing, defenders X1 and X2 are in help positions since they are defending attackers who are two or more perimeter passes from the ball. At the Novice and Atom levels, X1 and X2 must be outside the 3-second area. |
 | 2 1) Rotation to help If 3 drives baseline, offensively 2 sinks to the baseline on the weakside (baseline drive, baseline drift), 4 fills behind the drive, giving 3 a bail-out pass. 1 will stay at 45 degrees on the weakside (shown), or move above the ball (90 degrees). Defensively, low weakside X2 rotates to cut off the drive, high weakside X1 covers down (drops) to take away an easy pass to 2, X4 stays with 4. X2 is the helper, X1 helps the helper, getting down to ball level (the ball tells you where to play defence). If 3 penetrates on a middle drive, X2 is again the help (basket protection), and X1 covers down. In 5 on 5 with a low-post attacker, optionally his defender is not involved in help (stays with the low post), and help rotation is the same. To drill help rotations, optionally replace 4 with an unguarded coach, who passes to 3. |
 | 3 2) Rotations from help a) Help and recover All defenders recover to their own checks. This can happen when 3 picks up the dribble (shown), or makes a pass out of a double-team. Intentional double-teams are not allowed at the Novice and Atom levels, so X2 or X3 must rotate out when X2 cuts off the drive. |
 | 4 b) Beaten defender has leftovers Help defender X2 stays with the ball (he's between the ball and the basket), beaten defender X3 rotates out to find the open attacker. Here cover-down defender X1 stays with 2 (who is close to the basket), so X3 takes 1. This can happen when X2 cuts off the drive (required for Novice and Atom), or when 3 makes a pass (shown). Basically X2 switched to 3 and X1 switched to 2 on the help rotation. |
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