Charge!

Taking a charge can be a scary thing to do if you don't know how to do it right. You might have a big player coming at you in full speed attacking the basket and you could get hurt if you get in his way. How do you succesfully take a charge and how can you minimize getting hurt?

I like the principles of charge-taking that Mano Watsa of PGC Basketball teaches. I'll give you two of them:

1. The closer the ballhandler gets the lower you're gonna get
If you take that fall with a straight body it will be a long fall. If you get lower as the ballhandler approaches you, even bending your knees, you will have a shorter fall and already be closer to the ground.

2. Protect your body with a firm forearm
You want to protect your upper and lower body with flexed and firm forearms that will take the first contact. Keep it tight and strong.

I also think it's important to take the charge outside of the lane if you can. Don't give the ballhandler access to the lane.

Teach it to the kids
I highly reccommend drilling charge-taking if you're coaching youth players. From my experience they love it and they have lots of fun with it. The players can go in groups of two and take turns doing it.

Natural Pitch Charge Drill
I like the time-collapsing drills of the Read & React Offense and if I can work on charges while working on other things at the same time then that's what I want to do. So I wan't to make charge-taking as the emphasis in the Natural Pitch drill for dribble penetration Circle Movement. While our emphasis right now is charge-taking the players will also be working on other aspects of player development: shooting, moving without the ball (reads and reactions), defensive position away from the ball, attacking from triple attack position etc.

1 drives right (north-south) to the goal, 3 circle moves one spot to the right to the corner. x2 is guarding 3 in a gap position.

x2 gets in position to take the charge. 1 uses the ball to push the defender down to the floor, then pitches the ball to 3 who shoots.

Rotation: drive - shot - defense - drive

This is of course not the only way you can drill charges. You can put a defender on the ballhandler instead to take the charge. You can add charge-taking to any action/layer of the read & react that has to do with dribble penetration: post slides and baseline drives. Even taking a charge on a player without the ball, like a basket cutter, is something interesting to explore.