Sporting News, The: Can you handle the pressure?

With the playoffs about a week away, get ready to hear one of the most repeated axioms in sports: Defense wins championships. While certainly true, in the NBA that could be expanded to: Pressure defense wins championships.

A basic primer on turning up the heat will help you understand the role of pressure defense.

The primary objective of pressure defense is to take the offense out of its comfort zone. You can do this by speeding up the pace of the game, preventing a team from getting into its halfcourt sets and taking valuable time off the shot clock. When a player is under duress, he's more likely to make a mistake. Even if the pressure does not lead directly to a turnover, it can make the offense force up a bad shot. Even if a player under pressure makes a good pass, the ball might end up with the offense's fourth or fifth option. You'd rather have the fifth-best player trying to score than the best player.

One way to put on the pressure is by trapping. Dozens of decisions factor into trapping. You might trap a player as soon as he touches the hall. You might trap off pick-and-roll plays. You might trap only when the ball goes into a certain area of the court. You might trap after a timeout or after a made basket. A good time to trap is when you have a chance at surprising the offense. Catch the offensive players off-guard, and it's going to be tougher for them to run their offense and get the shot they want.

A team is more likely to trap a post player or one who has the ball in the corner or along the sideline rather than a point guard at the top of the key. When you trap a player out top, you're putting two defenders on one man who may be 25 feet from the basket. That leaves the defense with three players protecting the basket against four offensive players. Those are not the odds you want.

Whenever a team traps, it is gambling. Double-team one player, and if the offense has the right spacing, another player is going to be open. The offense's goal is to swing the ball around to the open man for a shot or a direct drive to the basket; the defense has to rotate its players quickly enough to get to the open man as soon as he catches it. The rotating players must know the strengths and weaknesses of the players they're rotating to.

Fullcourt pressure usually is not going to work in the NBA for prolonged periods. Coaches are well-prepared, and players usually are too skilled to let a fullcourt press fluster them for long. Also, employing fullcourt pressure is very fatiguing for the defense.

Trapping is the most common way to apply pressure, but it's not the only way. You also can apply pressure by taking players out of their comfort zones, keeping them out of areas where they prefer to operate--for example, pushing shooters out of their range, getting post players to shoot jumpers and forcing jump shooters to drive. All the while, though, you must protect the heart of the defense, the painted area.

Lakers assistant coach Kurt Rambis can be heard on The James Brown Show Mondays from 10 a.m.-noon ET on Sporting News Radio. E-mail him at krambis@sportingnews.com.