I’m sure the original author on the Blazers’ blog, regarding playing basketball defense, will bring it up in his part 2, but another really important facet of fighting games is making your opponent think he can control space so that he does his thing, but then actually setting him up so you control space. One great example is the fireball trap that Ryu possesses; contrary to what the uninformed believe, Ryu players actually want to not be fullscreen when they’re chucking fireballs; they want to be at the range where if you jump in, they can hit you with a dragon punch; that puts risk into their fireball game, but also means now they can lure the opponents into jumping over a fake fireball so they can dragon punch them. That’s why a lot of high level SF2 matches involve Ryu players whiffing a lotta standing fierce punches at midrange; they’re not actually screwing up the fireball motion; just trying to fake the opponent into jumping. Another example is to make your opponent think they can sweep you at max range, then back up ever so slightly so it misses, and then sweeping him as he is in recovery of his whiffed sweep (otherwise known as footsies). Your first goal in fighting games is to control space; shut down your opponent’s abilities to control space, and impose your ability to control space. Make your opponent scared, afraid to press buttons, and then in that moment of hesitation, you can do things you usually won’t be allowed to do; in the SF2 games, once you controlled the footsie game, and your opponent became afraid of pressing buttons at midrange, you could use that moment of hesitation to close in and do a 2-way mixup game, which would do more damage than standing at midrange playing the footsie game; as Ryu/Ken, you could throw them, or dragon punch. As Zangief, you could 360 throw or sweep. Etc. Once that happened, go back to the footsie game, and try to dominate again until you get another opportunity to do another mixup game, rinse and repeat.

It’s kinda how I play my help defense on the basketball court. Many of you might be surprised to hear me say this, but I actually don’t consider myself that good of a help defender (I would rate myself like a B-) in terms of blocks and the whole vertical game, because I don’t gamble a lot; I think Bob is the best help defender in that regard during pickup (of course, Bob has the luxury of coming from behind more than I do, but I still think he’s much better than me, because he gambles a lot more than me, but his success rate is still high). But I consider myself very good as a lock-down defender, and use that to my advantage in helping. So the way I gamble for blocks as a help defender is that I stay on my man as long as possible until I know the opponent is going to shoot, then come over very quickly and try to block the shot; many times I don’t come over at all. Done this way, I don’t get that many blocks. But it also prevents the opponent from dishing off the ball to the person I’m guarding, and usually ends up with them shooting the ball with me coming over; for me, I believe it’s better to come over later than earlier; come over earlier, and you’ll get burned with a pass everytime; when I first started playing at Terman Park, I used to gamble like crazy, come over super early, and I would pay the price everytime; my man would always be open and hit with a pass. But if you come over late, you might not get the ball, but they’ll usually never pass because they are almost finished with their shooting motion, and still get slightly distracted by your wingspan and jumping, especially if your height and wingspan relative to the people you play with makes you a big man. IE, make them think they can control space their way, give them an open lane to the hoop and don’t come over, make them “stick out that sweep,” and then shut it down at the last moment by your space control. So my help defense is a lot like how you play footsies in fighting games; I hover between that “too late” and “just in time” timing when coming over; you don’t think I control that particular area of space, but I do.

On that regard, you will notice a lotta times when somebody slashes into the lane, I’m one of the last people getting there to help; it’s not because I don’t know they’re coming, but it’s because of this principle of helping that I’ve got. I’ve got my back turned towards them, arms raised to prevent a pass to the man I’m guarding, but I’m really trying to make my body language look like I can’t see them at all, while my peripheral vision is totally on them, and judging distance and timing, judging when or if I can gamble, Not to mention I know everybody else has already crowded the paint, so I don’t need to go over just yet. :D

Look, it’s not that I don’t like getting blocks when playing basketball; I HEART them. They make playing defense fun. But it’s more important that you put yourself in position to get maybe 3 blocks in an afternoon, but safely alter 10 more, than it is to get 10 blocks, but leave your man open 30 times. Or something like that. Bill Russell once said something to the attitude that it’s not about trying to block every shot, but making your opponent think you might block every shot. My help defense school of thought is like 180 degrees different than his; I’m trying to make my opponent think I might never block his shot.

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On other notes, a lotta things the BlazersBlog article talked about I’ve heard before (not just the controlling space part), but it was good to hear them reemphasized again. Like the mentality thing; one of Dennis Rodman’s quotes from his book describing his attitude on defense was essentially “I used to look at the guy I was guarding and think, f... this, I just decided something; you ain’t getting s....” When I get into a really serious shut-down mode playing pickup basketball, my intensity inside is very similar; “I am not giving you anything today,” or the like.

Also, I think I’ve realized beforehand that offense beats defense too because offense is dictating, and defense is anticipating; I don’t think reacting is a good word choice for defense (though it can be for offense); the difference between anticipating and reacting is that you need to think ahead that so-and-so move is what the offense is going to do. Reacting on defense would mean you could just go on autopilot and whatever the opponent did and you saw, you countered clean. That is b/c in fighting games, most people need to anticipate said move to counter it; ie, bait it. The really scary players are those who can REACT to said move; they only need to see it, not guess when it’s going to come out. So they never have to tire themselves out second-guessing whether the move is going to come; if it comes, BOOM they got it.

Anyways, though offense is supposed to beat defense, defense is still more important than offense because it’s consistent; offense isn’t. This also is consistent both in team sports, and fighting games. You can’t be offensive all day; it just doesn’t work; some days you’ll just roll over your opponents and you won’t need to defend, other days nothing will work. But your defense is going to be there regardless. I used to believe if your defense was tops, you could have a junk of an offense and still win. That’s not true; your offense still needs to not be suspect, and this game is still won by who scored more points than the other team; even if you many to somehow deny your opponents to 0 pts, if you scored nothing as well, you don’t win. BUT, your offense doesn’t need to be tops if your defense is. IE, a team with solid offense, but great defense wins over a team with great offense but solid defense most of the time. I mean, you need not to look any further than the 2008 NBA Finals; that was a great example of a solid offense, great defense team (Celtics) vs a great offense, solid defense team (Lakers). 2004 Finals was also a good example, with the Pistons being that defensive-minded team, and the Lakers being that offensive-minded team.