Have you ever noticed that help and recover breaks down whenever you do not have better athletes? For most of us, that is the entire season, but for some, it occurs after winning 25 games and then reaching post-season play. If sliding was the fastest way to move from place to place, Olympic sprinters would slide sideways. More athletic teams can afford to slide on defense until they meet better athletes. Why not build a better defense based on sprinting from place to place?

SWARM Defense: Why is it better?

Here is why I created and SWARM and why I believe it works better ...

1. I observed that sliding was slower than sprinting so asking less athletic players to slilde on defense magnified their lack of quickness and that gap got greater when you play better teams to the point of futility.
2. Players that are less athletic cannot play in front of players that understand triple threat or they will be ineffective unless superior athletically.
3. Asking players to both help and recover left them between a "rock and a hard place", if they were guarding a player with perimeter shooting skills.
4. Players only pressure when they know help will come 100% of the time.
5. My own shooters, a stop watch and five years of statistics showed that closing out from a PACK position was the same statistically (FG%) as shooting with no defense.
6. True trapping defenses do not provide an advantage versus good teams if you trap on the catch but only if you trap the dribble to stop it but holding the trap allows skilled team to play 4 on 3 on the pass out.

So I created a system that ...

1. Has players Force the ball by being high hip to defeat Triple Threat ... asking less athletic players to simple guide the ball in a paticular direction ...
2. Has a preset help double that does not recover back to that player ....
3. Asks players to sprint not slide causing turnovers by defeating drive and kick ...
4. Vary who helps and how we rotate based on three concepts and keyed by the offensive set ...
5. Help doubling the dribble then rematching three ways to insure that the dribbler now passer in unsure of where to look first ... also, minimizing the need to play 4 on 3 and doubling our number of live ball turnovers created ....

You do the Math ...

1. the average time it takes for a shooter to get a shot off in a spot from the wing to the corner is less the time it takes from the help point to recovery point ...
2. since it is both shorter and quicker (less than the time it takes to shoot) to rotate a sprinting player out ...
3. Why do we continue to make our players do what is mathematically impossible and urge them to give 110% when it can only be done when we are superior athletes?
4. Why do we ask them to both help and recover? Why not ask them to do one or the other well?
5. If sliding was really faster, they would slide side ways in track and field! To maximize your defensive speed it should be designed as a series of short sprints forward.

Here is what I did as a junior college coach in order to test this theory of rotation versus PACK. This is the research that my theories are based on.

1. I recorded shooting percentages three way in all shooting drills every day for five full seasons.
   1. With no distracter just shooting ...
   2. With a distracter closing from stationary help sprinting out on the catch putting a hand in the face ... like PACK
   3. With a distracter rotating out in a sprint from the next spot and putting a hand in the face ... SWARM
2. I wish that I had kept the results but at the time it was for me only and I did not expect to defend it. I expected to keep it a secret.
   1. Shooting percentage was identical long term with no distraction or recover only with rotation which allows earlier sprint ... my shooters told me that only rotation effected the speed of the shot
   2. To back this up, I timed it live and in drills. I had assistants time it (three different ones) with the same results.
   3. In games, it was not just field goal % defense for two or three but rotation allows you to get to shooters early enough to run them off the line or spot and create "tweeners" that most coaches agree are most difficult.
3. We forced 30 turnovers a game and 17 steals for four straight years (over 100 games). Three point % defense around 23% and overall around 35%.
4. I would be interested in hearing your critique of these "tests" of both concepts. I did assume that sprinting from help is better than sliding or sprinting in and out so I completely agree with PACK over help and recover. If I was not SWARMing, I would be playing PACK.
5. We were middle of a 14 team league athletically.