Keith Dambrot: My Favorite Drills for Basketball Practice

This type of emphasis on team defense is what Keith Dambrot has hung his hat on as a coach and is something that he has consistently done throughout his career – building solid defensive teams that can guard any action.

From his days of coaching LeBron James in high school, to the times he spent leading Akron University, where he guided them to twelve 20-plus win seasons, to becoming the head coach at Duquesne University, Coach Dambrot has consistently built defensive minded teams.  

In this on-the-court instructional coaching video, you will receive a first-hand lesson in how Coach Dambrot builds his defense every day in practice. 

Warm-up Drills, Defensive Fundamentals

Jumping right into defensive drills often sets the tone for a team’s practices and workouts. Coach Dambrot explains the importance of emphasizing defense early.  

In a drill called ‘2-Icing-The-Ball-Screen Drill,’ players are not only shown working on defending the screen and forcing the ball to the outside, but Coach Dambrot also provides coaching points that show how to beat a team that is icing or downing the ball screen. In this drill, offensive players must get moving early and work on their pocket passing and attacking the rim.  It’s an excellent warm-up drill to simultaneously work on guarding the ball early and also attacking the basket against one of the popular defenses in today’s game. 

From defensive close-outs to wall-ups to off ball defense and post defense building your fundamentals on defense are where games are won and lost. If your style of defense is reliant on putting pressure on the ball handler, you and your players will love Coach Dambrot’s next section on build-up drills. 

In the ‘Closeout Progression Drill,’ Coach Dambrot shows how players should work on their stance and getting to the ball early. Additional points of emphasis include players working on the fundamentals of closing out and forcing baseline to take away elbow and middle drives.  

Next, Coach Dambrot demonstrates the ‘Central Michigan Drill,’ in which players are placed into a closeout and are taught using the first step to judge whether or not help is needed. 

Other drills in this section include the ‘Deny-the-Wing Drill’ (where players are focused on technique and how to move as the wing moves to deny any ball reversal), the ‘Help-and-Recover Drill’ (an important aspect of team defense, especially when players stunt and recover to not help out of the corner) and the ‘Post-Defense Drill,’ (where guards work on digging the ball out of the post and forcing the post player into a decision where he or she must kick the ball out of the post). 

All of these fundamental drills are critical components to building a solid half-court defense. 

Defending Screens and Actions, Outnumbered Defense 

Most motion offenses possess several types of screens or actions you must defend simultaneously. To combat this, Coach Dambrot showcases the ‘Box-Screening Drill,’ a highly effective drill where players learn how to defend different actions out of a box setup. This continuous screening drill is great to get a lot of repetitions for players so that they build defensive muscle-memory and know exactly what to do when an offense utilizes down screens.

Coach Dambrot also shows how you can also include flare screens and stagger screens to help players build their vision off the basketball. Additionally, this is also a great drill to build confidence in your players ability to guard off the ball.  You can also teach players how to defend flex action, double staggered screens and Princeton cuts using this same 4-on-4 setup. Coach Dambrot goes through specific techniques used to defend each action, as well as helping you learn the principles of defending each of the actions. 

Using drills that feature outnumbered situations helps your team anticipate and protect the paint. By leaving the furthest player open, defensive players must focus on helping the on-the-ball defender as they overplay to their help-side defense. By guarding the next guy in line, players are focused on guarding the ball and loading to the ball instead of guarding air. Coach Dambrot shows off a great drill for teaching players how to protect the paint in ball-screen situations, transition defense or any gamble situations.

Defense wins championships. Building a solid fundamental defense is key to any top program in the country. In this must-watch instructional video, Coach Dambrot takes you through an array of drills that can help you build the foundation of team defense. 

From on-the-ball, 1-on-1 defense, to help-side defense, to defending actions as a team, Coach Dambrot covers it all in this valuable defensive drills video. 

Customer Review: 5 Out of 5 Stars. ‘Coach Dambrot’s breakdown defensive drills are super easy to teach and will help build your principles on defense!’

66 minutes. 2023.