Avoiding 3-person follies

[Scrapper1]

Originally Posted by packersowner

What does that mean? I hear people say this all of the time.

If you're the C, it often means that the ball has probably settled on the side of the court opposite from you. This means most of the players and the ball are outside of your primary area of responsibility. You may have the tendency to relax.

But you still have lots of responsibility. You're responsible for screens, for cutters, for 3-seconds, for the post player on the opposite block who curls away from the Lead. In NCAA, you have responsibility to "help" on RA plays if the Lead has a player control foul. You have dual responsibility for the shot clock. You have weak-side rebounding and BI/GT responsibility. In transition, you have primary responsibility for everything between the 3-point arcs.

If the ball is on your side, but the Lead hasn't rotated yet, take the primary defender all the way to the basket. Have a whistle, but don't signal if there's a crash. You have secondary responsibility for end line out-of-bounds calls if the Lead is screened.

As I said, have a whistle, but don't give a signal if there is a crash in the paint. On run-of-the-mill fouls, if we have a double-whistle, I prefer to have the C take it to the table; mostly just to keep him/her involved. But don't give that preliminary signal, just to be safe.