Basketball as a sport has some important rules and principles that have a deep impact of strategy.
Due to the rules of protecting the technical abilities of the offensive player, and in particular the shooter, the defensive strategies will not be aimed directly in limiting the offensive players opportunity to finish.
The main target is to limit the type of shot you allow. This means that defence try to take away high percentage shots and plays. Pressure is a key factor, but high pressure also give high risk. High risk for fouling and high risk of the offensive player being able to take advantage of the pressure (ex, angling, fly-bys etc).
Pressure can be applied playing tight defence on ball, but its not limited to that. Pressure can be passing lanes presence, deny-defence, fronting of posts, zone-rotations, double teams, pinning and angling. In addition pressure can be applied by communication.
However pressure is applied a good defensive strategy should be coherent, so that a defence will be solid even if primary and secondary line of the defence will be broken down.
My defence is a low-risk pressure on the ball. The simple reason for this is that we do not want a break-down on the primary action of the defence = stopping the ball. This also give us a low-reward in this part of defence. We do not create early turn-overs. However we also do not create any rotations early in the defence.
