I have been told the ball-line defense was invented or established before the advent of the 3pt shot. IF so, it makes you wonder why you would doube anyone but Jared Sullinger in the big ten to leave a wide open three. Yes he kicks it diagonally and maybe one more pass.
First of all, zone defense was invented long before the advent of the 3pt era. That does not necessarily render zone defense useless, though.
No matter how one slices it, ball line defense, to me, is a zone defense despite its somewhat exotic name. How often do we hear that a good zone often behaves like man to man? Ball line defense is a zone defense systematically mimicking man to man with the zone dynamically shifting to ball position and movement. In so doing, perimeter defenders need to play it a lot like man to man as defending the perimeter with max help when the ball is fed inside.
The most effective defense against long ball is man to man. Ball line defense, as far as I know, incorporates the spirit of it along the perimeter. However, in the past two seasons, we did not have enough good man to man perimeter defenders, which resulted in many wide open opportunities for our opponents.
Now, suppose that we minimize doubling up inside in order to stretch our 3 pt defense. It would mean that we would be playing more or less man to man with limited help. It would help to defend the perimeter. But, when we don’t have good perimeter defenders to begin with, it’s anyone’s guess how effective our perimeter defense may be in the half assed man to man scheme. At the same time, the man to man would weaken our interior defense. In other words, the emphasis on the perimeter comes at the expense of interior defense with no guarantee of a significant improvement on the perimeter. (Tubby, after losing Nolen in 2009-2010, actually chose to go with a no-frill conventional zone defense, though he threw in man to man here and there, as it would be meaningless to go with ball line defense when there was no reliable man to man perimeter defender.)
This season may be different. If we do have enough good perimeter defenders, ball line defense would be more effective against long balls than it had been in the past two seasons (because the perimeter defenders play it as if they do man to man). If we don't, we will have a similar problem.
However, that does not mean that we should go with man to man with limite help to defend the perimeter a bit better whenever our opponents gets open shots from behind the arc. When we do not have personnel to play man to man effectively, we should go with man to man if and only if 3pt shots become a critical threat (opponents make them at a rate that kills us).
BTW, some may argue that with TM and Ralph, we do not need to double up inside. If we do that, our opponents will make shots inside at a higher % and can more easily attack the bigs with their wings and interior men and get them in foul trouble. There will always be a trade-off. Furthermore, if our perimeter players are not good man to man defenders, it is very possible that we are going to bleed defensively both inside and on the perimeter without improving the perimeter defense in a meaningful way.
If long balls are truly crippling us, then we need to bite the bullet. But, the stats suggest that long balls were not crippling us to that point last season. As far as this season is concerned, we just need to wait and see how things go in order to bring up our 3 pt defense in any meaningful way.
Again, I am not suggesting that there may be no problem with our 3 pt defense or that ball line defense/Tubby’s defensive philosophy be beyond criticism.
