Basketball Statistics Blog

Basketball Statistician's Digest: The Illegal Defense in the NBA

Illegal Defense: A rather nebulous NBA rule that was called irregularly. It's designed to prevent the use of the zone defense, today legal in the NBA, it was more like a 3-second violation for the defense, in which no defender can stay in the lane for more than, well, 3 seconds. If you were on defense and were not aggressively guarding someone, you could not spend more than 3 seconds in the key at a time.

The term Illegal Defense has replaced Zone Defense in NBA usage. The rule now in place, supported by guidelines, defines approved coverage by defensive players and teams. Violations of these rules and guidelines will be noted as Illegal Defense.

Photograph: eHow.com

a. Illegal defenses which violate the rules and accepted guidelines set forth are not permitted in the NBA.

b. When the offensive team is in its backcourt with the ball, no illegal defense violation may occur.

The illegal defense guidelines needed to be eliminated because they have become problematic. They are problematic for our fans, who don't understand the rule.

They are problematic for the officials, who admittedly have had difficulty administering the rule. And finally, the teams have used the guidelines in a way that produces isolation basketball. Teams identify areas on the floor that they can use to their advantage in a given offensive matchup and this produces a real sameness of play amongst a lot of the teams. With isolation Basketball, a lot of NBA teams began standing around.

There is little player movement, there is little ball movement, and there is a decreasing amount of fastbreak opportunities. These developments began with the misuse of the illegal defense guidelines and therefore they needed to be eliminated. By eliminating them, the desired result is to get a game that once again is based on passing, cutting, player movement, and ball movement. A game that hopefully produces fastbreak opportunities because that is the way our game should be played.

This topic is resumed in the eBA Basketball Statistics Analysis System
at the eBA Encyclopedia > eBA System

You must be logged in to read or post a comment. Register

tags:  basketball  ~  statistician's digest   ~  basketball analysis  ~  statistics  ~  illegal defense
visit:  eBA Portal  ~  eBA Forums  ~  eBA Encyclopedia  ~  eBA Clinics