In my opinion, regardless of what type of half court defense you play, you can’t be a great defensive team without being a great defensive conversion team so that you don’t allow easy baskets in transition.
Here are a couple of conversion drills that you might consider adding to your defensive portion of your team’s drills book.
These drills came from Maine Men’s Assistant Zak Boisvert’s PickandPop.net site.
I have a link at the bottom of this post to the pdf that these two drills came from that show his 10 favorite defensive conversion drills.
I have always called going from offense to defense “conversion” and going from defense to offense “transition” just to make our communication and teaching clear for our players.
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55 Line Conversion Defensive Drill
Two teams of 5 players line up 10 feet off the half court line facing each other. Coach is at mid court with the basketball.
Coach can throw to either team.
When a player catches the ball, his team attacks the defense.
The player opposite the player who caught the ball must go touch the lane (giving the offense a 5 on 4 advantage, then convert back to defense.
Rim Runner Conversion Defensive Drill
Red on Offense, Black on Defense.
Defense has a 6th player at the opposite end under their offensive basket, simulating a rim runner.
When black gets possession of the ball, they can throw the long pass to force red to sprint back to defense.
You can put x6 on the wings if you are preparing for a team that throws ahead to the wing.
You can also start off with only 4 black defenders and the 5th as the rim runner under the opposite basket.
If you would like to see all 10 of Zak’s favorite defensive conversion drills, click this link: Defensive Conversion Drills
