Basketball often times is considered a simple game with the winning team having a higher score after competing for a pre-defined amount of time.  But what is often missed are the underlying offensive and defensive strategies and, most importantly, how to judge their effectiveness. 

Defensive Strategies
Although scoring is exciting, fun to watch, and fun to do; defense is a key to winning basketball games and championships.  Most team have one primary defense that is played more than half the time, but will change it seamlessly at random to exploit a specific player match up or keep the other team off guard.  The two main styles of defense are man-to-man (or pressure) defense and a zone defense.

In a man-to-man defense, each player is assigned the responsibility to guard a particular offensive player.  The player guards the offensive player wherever they go on the court.  Man-to-man defense is effective against a strong outside shooting team and simplifies the rebounding block-out assignments.

On the other hand, a zone defense is used to stop inside scoring as multiple players can surround the ball once it gets inside the paint area.  In a zone defense, each player defends a specific area on the court and adjusts depending on where the offensive players are standing and the location of the ball.

Sometimes teams run a combination of zone and man-to-man.  These combination defenses include match-up zone defenses as well as the specialized defenses such as box-and-one, and triangle-and-two.  The key element of a combination defense is that some members of the defense play man-to-man while other team members play a zone style of defense.  The combination defenses are typically used to put pressure on one or two offensive players while providing the collapsing inside defensive swarm on the tall players near the basket.

Offensive Strategies
Offensive basketball strategies include designed plays and rules based movements based on the current location of the ball and behavior of the player with the ball (these are typically grouped together under the motion offense term).  Teams with athletic and fast players want to play a fast paced game that takes advantage of their speed in the open court. Teams with taller players can excel in a half court offense to take advantage of their height with designed plays.

Passing is the key to any good offense that forces the defense to move and make adjustments.  The ball can be passed faster and more effectively than it can be dribbled.  After several good passes, an offensive player will get open for a good shot.

Another staple of any good offense is the pick-and-roll.  This is where one offensive player will stand in the way of a player's defender (pick the defender) and then after the offensive player goes by rolls to the basket.  This causes defensive confusion by forcing two defenders to make the simultaneous decision about which offensive player to defend.  Each defensive player must decide to guard the one with the ball or the one that set the pick.

Measuring Success
Coaches need to measure the success of their offensive and defensive strategies in order to improve their teams effectiveness at winning games.  In 1959, Frank McGuire wrote the first book, Defensive Basketball, where a successful collegiate and professional coach describe a technique to measure the success of their offensive and defensive strategies.  Coach Dean Smith updated this measure and published it in his 1982 book, Multiple Offense and Defense.  He used his metric to determine the average number of points scored for each possession of the ball by a team during the game.

Using a very simple definition of possession as the number of times the offense brings the ball over the middle court line, the typical collegiate team averages about 55 possessions per game and the average high school team around 40.  Most coaches know how many points per game their team is required to score to win most of their games.  Divide the number of points required to win the game by the number of offensive possessions for each team and you have the basis for a metric to measure a team's offensive and defensive strategies.

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