Welcome to the hours. I am Tyler. I'm joined by my friend Mark. We're excited to spend some hours with you to continue to help you come more of a savvy coach. And as always, we're going to dive right in to the big question. Mark, I'm going to ask it to you first. When your team has a bad game, how do you respond?
I've learned first response should not be an overreaction, especially post game. So my response post game and I would try not to get too high or low. Good game, bad game. Keep it really, really short. 30 seconds or less. Thank them for their effort.
And say, look, we'll, we'll get back after tomorrow. You know, tomorrow is another day either lose or you learn or you win or you learn. So I wanted to always watch the film first and see if what I saw live is affirmed by what I saw in film or are we making emotional, if we have emotional response or emotional decision.
I would start by just, hey, did we play hard enough? Right? Like, was it a lack of execution? Was it a lack of effort? So I'd look for that first. Second, the way I would approach practice going forward is if there was maybe an execution issue where if we're constituting a bad game of we took really bad shots, did our opponent force us into those or were those self inflicted where little selfish or poor vision, we're going to be able to do that.
We weren't turning fives into sevens or nines. That would help me direct my focus. I think oftentimes a novice coach will have a bad game and immediately start thinking about the next game and all of their prep goes to the next game.
So we always want to clean up our deficiencies from the previous game. I heard this and I've started to use this terminology as well in terms of practice planning. It's you have your marathon goals, your medium distant goals and your sprint goals, your marathon goals to me or your transition defense or offense, how you get nines or eliminate nines, how you get sevens, eliminate sevens, and then the stuff either your opponent runs. How do you cover that?
And then the stuff that you run. Those are your marathon goals. You should always be working on those every single day. Your medium distance goals are, hey, we recognize zone offense needs to be better given last night. We were very poor against zone offense.
Or we're playing, you know, three out of our next four opponents play zone. Let's make that kind of our two week. We got to really start hitting this hard.
And then our sprint goals are when we leave practice today, we've got to be better at this. So if there was a glaring issue from the previous night, that might become a sprint goal where we're still going to work on our marathon goals.
We're still going to work on our medium distant goals. But when we leave this 90 minute session, we've got to show improvement or we got to make sure that we're prioritizing this phase of the game.
Yeah, all resonates, all very practical. I'm going to do a role play with you here in a moment. But let me attempt to summarize what you just said and apply it to how a savvy coach responds and what a savvy coach's approach would be to a bad game.
When in doubt, zoom out. Whenever you're close to something, you can only see part of the picture and you get easily distracted by things that don't matter.
The further away you get from things, you see the principles, you see the through lines, you see the big issues. Most coaches fixate on small things after a bad game at the expense of the big things.
Think of a picture, right? If you're really, really close to it, right? You're going to see the fuzzy edges and those fuzzy edges can frustrate you.
But you get really, really far away and it doesn't look nearly as bad. I think about a painting that your kid makes, right? Or that I would make for that matter.
So I think that's what you gave were some great examples of the different types of goals that you have. They get you back to your principles.
So let's do a quick role play. And maybe if I can role play with you real quick, Mark, and this would be an example of how I would work with a coach after a bad game.
So let's say that you're coming off of a bad game. Let me ask you a couple of questions.
Tell me this. Does what we did poorly matter in this? Did we have a poor offensive game, poor defensive game, or just a poor game in general?
No, you can pick. Whatever you did poorly, it doesn't matter. We're going to get there. Yeah. So you had a poor game in some way. Let's go ahead and dive into it a little bit.
All right, Mark, what did you guys do poorly? What frustrated you?
We did not guard the ball well. We gave up way too many straight line drives, took really, really bad shots, and then in the second half just wheels fell off.
Nothing could go right. Effort was poor. Attitude's got bad. So all around just terrible night.
Got it. Well, let's determine if any of that matters. Mark, what were your goals that you intended to measure going into the game?
Oh, we wanted to out rebound our opponent.
Let me just interrupt you real quick, Mark. Did you actually have clear goals that you communicated to your players and your assistant coaches going into the game that you intended to measure?
Not outside of the normal stuff that we measure on the bench.
Okay, got it. And so what are the normal things that your team measures on the bench?
And you can't give me more than three right now.
Possession chart, which basically measures our shot selection for us and our opponent.
Turnovers, which is in the possession chart and then rebounding. So those three things. Shot selection, turnovers, and rebounds.
Beautiful. So now that we've identified that those are your big themes, those are your marathon goals for your season,
when you say that you had a bad game and you share all these things that frustrated you, how many of those things or which of those things that frustrated you actually fall into those three things that you're measuring?
The shot selection, just one.
Cool. So I would just encourage you, Mark, and again, you know, for everyone listening, we're role playing here.
What I would actually do with a coach is, and we all have blind spots as coaches and we get really frustrated by things.
But I think the first step to do the things that Mark already suggested that you do is when in doubt, zoom out.
Zoom out to your marathon goals. Your marathon goals must have measurements attached to them.
You are very clear about what you're measuring going into games.
And often, even what we just kind of described in this role play, because Mark's worked with, you know, so many coaches himself on all this stuff as well,
is when we list the things that frustrate us, chances are not all of them, less than all of them fall in to these things that you're measuring.
And so if it's outside of what you're measuring, my first suggestion to you would be flush it. Just flush it.
Flush the frustration and flush all of the time and injury you're going to put into trying to fix it.
Because if you start chasing your tail with things that are outside your marathon goals, then all of a sudden you're going to sacrifice the things that you said are most important to you
for things that seemed frustrating in the moment or at the time.
Because chances are the thing that frustrates you in that game is probably just an aspect of the matchup of that night.
And if you spend a lot of time on that thing, it probably won't necessarily translate into the next game because it wouldn't be a problem in the next game anyway.
So that's kind of the goal I was trying to get to of the exercise.
And you know, thank you, Mark, for playing that game with me. Most of the things that frustrate you after a bad game are not aligned with your marathon goals and therefore you shouldn't even bother with them.
Mark, do you think that most coaches could improve clarifying what they're measuring going into games?
Absolutely.
Absolutely. One thing we would do and encourage coaches to do is just establish, really be their victory, right, or success criteria for that game.
And have it really, if you're a coach that does a scouting or forward a game plan and you have keys to winning the game, make those measurable.
And that should be what you're actually measuring for that game. That is your victory for the game.
Let's say we're playing against a team and we say we really have to prioritize rebounding.
Could we get more specific and say like keys to win, rebounding?
Okay, well, if this team, like I'm thinking of a team that we used to play, they were easy to prepare for because they didn't do a whole lot, but very difficult to win because they did what they did really well.
They shot a lot of threes and so that means there was a lot of long rebounds and they would relentlessly pursue those long rebounds.
They really athletic. They didn't get anybody back and would just say, we're going to shoot it and go get it.
And it's difficult to play against people and outlier.
So instead of a key to winning is to be rebounding, it would be like, what do we have to do to get perimeter rebounds, you know, like more perimeter blockouts.
We've got to match their intensity.
Whatever that is, that should be what we're measuring.
And I'll say one more thing.
If that is the key to winning the game, we shouldn't talk about anything else during the game until we have that covered.
So first time out, we can't talk about, hey, we've got to be in, you know, we got to stay in the corners.
It's like, hey, if this is the key to winning the game, we don't talk about anything else until that is covered.
Yeah. And in, in, in let's help you right now with an exercise.
So savvy is a series of four lenses that we believe you can apply to most situations in order to see things more clearly.
So specifically on this S simplicity, simplify the outcome that you want.
Like what, what, what is a marathon goal?
Improve our rebounding.
Okay. That's a marathon goal for us this season when in doubt, zoom out.
Right. So we're not going to be distracted by things outside of that adversity.
Okay. What are the obstacles and challenges that are keeping us from improving our rebounding?
Right. That's how we then identify where we can improve.
So what's the adversity being a good rebounding team was holding us back.
Right. Victory.
Now this is where we define success criteria.
This is what Mark just talked about.
Right. Simplicity is improve rebounding adversity is what's keeping us.
Victory is how can we actually overcome those obstacles?
What's the process when we define our success, it's process and not outcome based.
What's the process that we are going to commit to an implement?
That's how we define the victory that's going to allow us to improve in that area.
Identity.
When we focus on the victory to the exclusion of all else, when we are speaking the same language about it,
and when we improve it as a habit, that's when it becomes part of the identity that we are creating as a team or as a coach, as an individual.
And then we just apply this savvy process over and over and over again to refine or to address a new outcome.
So really savvy is not just a coaching mindset.
It's also an applicable process that you can put that you can apply to any time that you have a bad game.
So let me give you all a quick example.
Actually just pulled this up.
These are my pregame notes for this last weekend.
We defined five victories for our team and I only played seven games in a showcase over this last weekend.
And every aspect of feedback before, during and after the game, we attempted imperfectly,
but we really attempted to go into these five buckets.
This is what our savvy process was.
One, on defense, we wanted to make every catch a dribble.
Most teams that we play, the only way they score, the way they score on us most often and most efficiently was off the catch threes.
And so that was a pain point that we were trying to address, that we're trying to address as a marathon goal, that every catch is going to be a dribble.
No one shoots off the catch threes against us.
And so that was one thing that we were coaching, measuring, and at the end of each game, how did we do it this thing?
Two, only the wall helps on drives.
We didn't want to have any help from the perimeter.
We didn't want to turn around and leave our player, no help from the gap, no help from the snipe.
Only the wall makes every dribble a pass.
Three, from the gap, we always have a skirmish.
From the gap, we have a tendency in the gap to just stand and watch, or we have a tendency from the gap to go in and commit to the ball, bringing two to the ball.
Gap equals skirmish.
Number four, turn small dominos into big dominos.
We didn't want to try it because what was happening was small dominos were turning into shots.
So our goal was no, when we have a small domino, we just want to try to get a bigger domino.
And that being our goal, instead of the goal being to shoot the basketball.
And then our last goal, and this could apply to rebounding, loose basketballs, whatever, we want to be quick to the basketball.
Across one through five, we want to be quick to the ball, right? Not slow to the ball.
So that was it. Those were our five things.
That's what we focused on simply before the game.
That's what we addressed as our obstacles and challenges, how are we not doing this during the game?
And that's what then we measured after the game. How do we do these five things?
And by the end of the weekend, it became more of our identity.
We improved to those five things.
And so we won some games, we lost some games.
We ended up losing to Caitlin Clark's old AAU team, all IO attack, and what was essentially the championship game.
We had the two best records. It was a showcase.
But what was cool is by the end of it, everyone felt really good, even in that loss, felt really good, because we improved on our journey toward these five things.
And the more you as a coach can really define these marathon goals and us moving forward on this journey as our victory, then your team will start to embrace that as well.
And you'll eliminate, like Mark said, you'll eliminate these like frustrations after a bad game, because a lot of times frustrations after a bad game just means you're too attached to the outcome.
And then that's when you get too high or too low.
But when everyone can just be like, man, do we move forward on our journey? You can still feel good about it.
And so that's what we would encourage you to do after a bad game.
Yeah, that's really, really good.
I'll just reiterate, like to attach to the outcome.
I've had so many conversations with coaches and sometimes those coaches on our own staff that after we'd lose a game, they were really, really upset.
Like just lowest of the low.
But before the game, we were all in a grudge of, gosh, we're going to have to play our absolute best to win this game.
Like this, this is going to be a really big challenge.
This is going to be really difficult.
They're better than us in a lot of phases.
And then we lose and it's like the sky is falling.
It's like, Hey, not that I'm okay.
I don't enjoy losing, but at the same time, I think we're very attached to the outcome.
And I'm going to start to throw these mailbag questions to you, but like that's exactly like this.
This all I would attack team hadn't lost in two years.
Like, we'd have to play our absolute best to beat them.
And I'll share this with everyone as well, because I think many coaches could identify with this.
They were a really good team.
They were at an eight the entire game with their energy, their positivity, their execution, everything.
They were at an eight the entire game.
Our team got up to an eight and a half early.
We're up about four points in the first quarter, but then they went on a run and we went to a five and they went up about 15.
And during that run, every step back three, their little mini Caitlin Clark hit where every layup that we missed led to significant frustration because of how attached our team was to the scoreboard.
It magnified their run.
At halftime, we came back.
We refocused on our five things.
We focused on, Hey, this is a journey.
Don't be attached to the scoreboard.
And then we went back to an eight and ended up winning the second half.
So losing the game by eight to 10.
And like great teams can stay at an eight, whereas poor teams might hit an eight, but they have more dips down to a five.
And that's, go ahead.
Yeah, I was going to say just can't sustain it.
Now, in a lot of the conversations, again, that we've had with coaches and I felt this too is it's like, gosh, we were so close.
We were with them with two quarters and then the wheels came off.
It's like, yeah, like that's what we're showing is that you can play at an eight for two quarters.
Now the next goal would be, can we get that to three quarters and so on?
No, no, that's really good.
And I think what we would like you to understand coaches is that you're not alone.
It's not like, ah, the wheels fell off for our team.
Like that's how every team loses.
It's not like, oh my gosh, I can't with the wheels keep off.
No, like that's the winning teams that doesn't happen and losing teams that does happen and everything's linked.
So often we think like, oh, we're mentally weak or we don't execute or what?
No, no, like it's an adversarial game.
Right.
So like when an opponent does things that are good, it's going to be bad for us.
And so a lot of times we get really, really frustrated with our team without recognizing that it's a lot of times it's less about what you do and more about what the other team is doing.
And so you don't need to read too much into it or overreact.
Like you said at the very beginning over what's going to happen is going to happen nine times out of 10.
Nine times out of 10, you know, the team that's going to win is going to win.
The team that's going to lose is going to lose nine times out of 10.
We're on a journey to be that winning team over the long term.
There's very little you can do over the course of the game or within one week to actually change what's going to happen.
That's what's both beautiful and frustrating about basketball.
That's why there are so few upsets at the highest levels of basketball.
And that's why Vegas makes so much money.
Okay, let's go into some mailbag stuff.
First, celebrate our community with asking great questions in the mailbag.
As always, we prioritize the questions from our grow members.
First, we'd love to have you as a grow member because then we'll answer both on our consulting calls as well as giving you direct video feedback and prioritizing here.
You drive what we talk about.
So let's dive in.
Mark, I'm going to ask you this first one here and I think that this one we're going to both really enjoy.
How much trash talking do you allow in practice and when do you stop it if ever?
I like it to be really competitive.
I think if things are a little chippy, I think that's probably a good thing.
When I would stop it is if it's completely distracting us from what we're trying to accomplish.
So if that becomes the focus, then I'm probably going to address it because then it gets to the point where it's just like diminishing returns.
To a certain extent, it's driving our competitiveness, which is what we want. Kids are invested.
And then when it starts to dip and it's like, okay, well, now we're playing a lot of one on one because these two players are going at it.
So anytime it takes away from team play or our objective, that's when I'm going to address it.
Good.
The only thing I will add is coach your team.
Your team is different year to year. Your team is different than somebody else's team.
You're a different coach. Coach your team.
It would be foolish of us to say, always allow this or don't allow that.
Every team has its own personality. Every coach has their own personality.
And so I think Mark, what you shared is like a great principle to determine where your team needs to be at.
Okay. Next one.
Checking for blind spots.
So the question was this.
I recently took a new job this summer.
I'm seeking advice about our style of play.
We've been able to implement some full court man defense and attacking man-man offense.
But I'm not sure that we can go as all out on our defense after misses.
I think our player enjoys it.
We're focused on the mindset of creating pressure on defense while also putting pressure on our opponent's defense with our offense.
Race and space, speed and attack, the aggressive defensively.
Here's this question.
So what blind spots are you looking for?
When I implement a new system like this, I think it's key that it's new.
And how have you been able to align all of your workouts, practices, fall leagues to get the most out of this system and align your player development?
So that's really a two-part question.
First off, maybe we'll just dial it in.
What blind spots would you suggest coaches consider when they implement a new style like this, which is a faster, more aggressive style, which we teach here at Savvy?
What blind spots, what concerns might a coach need to look out for?
I would even say not even might a coach look for because these are just tried and true.
Like you said, with the losing part, your problems are not unique to you as a coach.
So coaches all around the world experience the same problems or potential blind spots.
When running a system like this, two things immediately stood out to me is one, shot selection.
If you don't have a system for shot selection, it's going to become an issue because it's, John wouldn't correct me if I butcher this, but be quick, but don't hurry, right?
It was his quote, I find, especially if this is a new system and it's a big change from what you've done in the past or this is a coach at a new program, maybe they were more set play driven, more half court driven.
Now we're playing the full court.
Shot selection will be an issue if we're emphasizing pace.
We want our first shot, paint touch action in the first seven seconds.
Then definitely going to be an issue.
Let's have a system for measurement.
Second thing would be offensively, does it turn into too much one on one?
So we lack ball movement.
We lack player movement.
It turns into put my head down and dribble to the rim whenever we're neutral.
Or do we go east-west and it's neutral drive in the dribble handoff, neutral drive dribble handoff where we get that dribble weave.
Oftentimes coaches will get caught up into that in like December, January.
That is when they start saying, okay, all we do is play one on one.
I think we need to either abandon this and go back to what we were doing or start running some more set plays and they're looking for answers.
And the way that we would address that would be introduce different families of actions.
Another series to where you get a great balance of the play makes the score, you know, the play scores versus the player scores either in space or in dominoes.
All right, I'm going to add, did you have one more?
No, I'll flip it back to you.
What do you think?
And this is going to be specific because both of those were offense a little bit more.
Okay, sorry.
I have an offensive one as well.
You want to go defense first or should I do the offense first?
You go offense and we'll get one more quick offensive one.
Then we'll flip to the blind spots for this sort of more aggressive pressuring defense.
The last one on offense is lack of stops on offense.
So when players play faster, they become all gas, no breaks.
And they at the end of their drives, at the end of their races, they tend to make too quick of decisions off balance in the air off of one foot.
And so lack of playing under control at the end of their race is probably the most common additional blind spot to the ones that you said.
Yeah, 100% agree.
Glad you had that one.
In fact, I spoke at a clinic yesterday, a coach came with a question and that was my answer.
It was actually the root cause of his pain point was not what he was thinking.
His was more of, how do I play with my player coming out of the corner?
When do they come out of the corner?
I'm like, well, it's kind of the emergency pass there.
If you can't stop, that's going to be your root cause of the issue that you're running into.
So yeah, really, really good.
Glad you came up with that one.
Let's flip it to defense for this one.
We're playing a pressing system.
It's an attacking, which I love, right?
I think the goal of defense should be to win the ball back, not contest a shot.
I make the comparison, the soccer all the time is like, no soccer team just lets the other team shoot and says, like, hey, we have a goalie there, right?
Like it's the goalie's job to stop it.
It's all of our job to stop shots, right?
So we don't allow shots.
Similar to what you were talking about, your savvy team this weekend.
So I love that we're attacking.
We attack with the ball, without the ball.
However, I think when you're implementing a pressing or an aggressive defense in the full court, starting with trapping could be a blind spot.
I would start with your base defense built upon stunning or skirmishing there to apply almost the same amount of pressure.
You get the same results with your in rotation less.
Some of the, if you're in the community, you can see some of the teams that he has taken his pressing system from, one of which I'm really close with.
This coach will say, man, everybody labels us as a pressing team, which is very true.
We press 100% of the game, but we probably trap 10% of the game most of the time.
So blind spot would be starting with pressing.
I would say, you know, we're starting too far advanced and skipping the basics.
And then second thing would be if you're going to play fast offensively, if you're going to play fast defensively, you could find that your players are in foul trouble more because your possessions, you know, let's say we increase possessions by 15 in a game because we're playing fast.
What's 15 more opportunities to foul? So I think a built-in advantage would be to play your best players less than the first half, have the opposing coach enter an arena that he's not familiar with.
His best player plays the same amount of minutes and goes into the second half with three fouls, goes into the fourth quarter with four fouls, and your guys are a little bit more rested and have, yeah, and they're not in foul trouble.
Nice. And I think maybe we can do the same thing where I pop in the third blind spot of a more aggressive defense as well.
The third blind spot is this hunt passes, not dribbles.
Most players when they turn up the pressure and they think, oh, I need now to go for steals on the ball, either as the on-ball defender or the next to the ball defender.
I think this is related a little bit to the trapping.
And so they might be more enthusiastic to leave their player to go try and steal the ball from the ball handler.
Really our goal in trying to speed up the offense, put them into the areas on the floor where we think we're going to have an advantage, is we actually want to try to instead force them to make off-balance rushed passes with limited vision, which allow us to steal passes.
And this is also, it's funny, everything's related to high linkage system, fouls as well.
The more you try to steal dribbles or steal the ball from the hands of a ball handler, that does expose you more fouls, more reaching fouls.
You don't commit nearly fouls at nearly as high of a rate when you try to shoot gaps and steal passes.
And so it allows us to still try to win possessions and force turnovers, but not by stealing the ball from the ball handlers.
So a hunt pass is not dribble to be a third blind spot early on when you're implementing a more pressure defense.
A couple of things I love about that, because I experienced this as well.
My pet peeve in coaching is when we foul 80 feet away from the basket going for a steal.
Goal of the on-ball defenders, like you said, speed them up into a poor decision, off-balance pass, off-target pass.
And you are doing this, you're communicating this with sticky language.
That's hunt passes, not dribble.
So if I foul 80 feet away from the basket and Tyler looks at me and says, hey, we hunt passes.
I could almost fill in the blanks of like, yeah, not dribbles.
So yeah, I love that. That's great third edition there.
Beautiful. Okay, let's rapid fire.
This is 24-second shot clock on the answer.
We each have 24 seconds to answer no more.
Percentage-wise, how often do you call a player action when it's not a true dead ball, but it's like, you know, start of a quarter or sidelines out of Allen, something like that.
So I guess I personally would call it true dead ball, but a dead ball. How often do you call an action?
Okay, I would say 24-second shot clock limit yourself to one only call sets on dead balls.
That's going to be about a third of the game anyway.
I would just say as needed, I wouldn't, if I'm going to limit, put the constraint on myself that I'm only calling sets actions.
I'm only joy sticking on dead balls. That's going to be my opportunity.
I would look for a trend. Did we take bad shots? Do we have empty possessions?
Or maybe our personnel is not as strong offensively, so we might have to joystick a little bit more.
Yeah, and mine would be nearly always until my racket takes over. So very, very similar.
Okay, next one. What are you learning right now? What are you currently learning about from my guy Brady Bomber, who coaches at my alma mater, Linden Christian High School, Hooper in his own right as well?
What are you learning about right now, Mark?
My reading, I'm reading a book, Arte. It is a compilation of tons of books on the pursuit of excellence.
Most of my reading is on being a better leader, a better communicator, like a better teammate.
I have not read a basketball book in a very long time. I usually get my basketball fix from various podcasts, talking with you.
And what I'm diving into basketball is just NBA Summer League. Love watching Summer League because it's on during the day and it doesn't have to be in the evening when I watch.
I also love to follow players coming from college to pro, but really what gets me peaks my interest is the amount of time they have to install systems.
So they have to keep it really, really simple. They have like four or five practices before playing in Summer League.
So love watching them play. If you're watching Summer League, the Pacers ran a pretty cool five out offense last time I watched them play.
Oh, nice. Good. Because I was going to ask what's what's one thing people should look for in Summer League? I have not gotten to watching Summer League.
Yeah, I'll say this. Let's say we got offensive rebound. We got 20 more seconds on the shot clock.
Either either like watching individual players in Summer League or just systems, right?
Wooder teams running and I find NBA fans usually just follow players wherever LeBron's playing. I'm going to be a fan of them.
So I think Summer League gives you a really good blend.
Also, this could be a bonus question maybe for next week.
The jump from college to Summer League is huge and watching the Summer League games, the jump from Summer League talent or level of players to NBA might be even bigger.
It's amazing watching the like even my wife was watching. She knows very little about basketball.
She's like, only two of these players are any good.
Just fun to learn.
I'm glad she can see that because so many so many fans think the college basketball is better than NBA basketball.
Absolutely not. So yeah, I like following standout players from college, see how they mesh in, but more so just like watching what their running system was.
Yeah. Okay. I'll just answer this very quickly.
I am learning about marketing and quiz funnels right now.
So yeah, I just I'm learning more about business and how to clearly communicate, clearly communicate to a lot of people and not just one person.
I'd say I also am learning how to tell the truth.
And that's more in relationally and the people that I get to be around and pour into and mentor and lead.
Learning how to tell the truth. I think great leaders tell the truth, but they tell the truth from a place of absolute care and love.
And it doesn't matter if you only feel the care and love.
The person you're telling the truth to has to believe that you care and love them before they can hear the truth.
So learning how to do that because it's really, really hard.
And I'm not great at it yet.
Yeah. And I think to relate that to coaches listening, your players want to be told the truth, but it's the way that you tell them exactly what Tyler said.
Absolutely.
Okay. 24 second shot clock on this last one for you.
We'll pull it up here.
Okay.
You have an underperforming player 24 seconds.
24 seconds, you have an underperforming player. What do you do?
Hopefully we have a system for one on one meetings would lead with questions and some or sometimes that let's just say they're underperforming and they're getting frustrated.
I might just say, Hey, Tyler, man, you seem frustrated and just let them talk.
See what's on his mind.
That way we can maybe find the root cause.
And then players can be coached differently. Maybe this player needs to be challenged. Maybe this player needs to be hugged.
Yeah. So just know your players how they need to be coached, but also give them a chance to communicate why they might be struggling.
Mm hmm. Yeah. Good.
I'll answer it a little bit differently. I think both are really good.
If a player is underperforming, simplify, simplify their role, simplify what they should focus on and simplify what you're asking them to do.
That's usually why they're struggling is because they're doing a little bit too much.
And I would say get in the gym with them.
Just a one on one.
You and you and you and him, you and her getting the gym, spend some time on whatever that role clarity is, but probably the time spent would probably give them a little bit more confidence as well.
Yeah. Beautiful.
Okay. Let's let's transition here to I'm just going to run through bones today. We'll move. We'll move forward before defense to next week is a little bit more in depth.
So there's been a lot of questions about ball handling and player development and player workouts.
And so for me, bones is just like a framework of things that we're going to work through in ball handling.
And we actually have a YouTube video coming out in about a week of our bones ball handling.
And here's just the five things of bones.
B O N E S bones is an acronym.
So B when we're working with ball handling, we want players to break the floor really dribbling harder leads to ball handling touch and development mistakes are a sign of growth.
So we want players to really dribble from the shoulder and not from the hip and not with their arm.
It allows them to put more force on the basketball and teaches them to control the basketball.
So one, we want to break the floor no matter what we're doing action development, you know, reading, a defender, whatever, B break the floor.
Oh, we want players to learn to drill outside of their body.
So they show a defender a foot and not the ball.
And most young developing players are drilling out in front of their body, exposing the ball to the defense and it forces them to play fast because when you're exposing the ball, you're constantly trying to get away from the defense.
Whereas when you learn to drill outside your body and you show the defender a foot, you can slow down because you're protecting the ball from the defense.
So that's what the O is constantly learning to play in the pocket outside of your body.
The end is how we actually explode and go fast with the ball in stands for nose over toes.
So when we're stopped, we want our nose between our feet when we explode, we're going to drive our nose to the ground, get our nose out over the feet.
That posture change is what develops starts and stops nose over toes start nose between toes stops.
So that's how we learn to dribble with pace and learn to change our pace a little bit.
E eyes, we want to make sure that whenever our noses between our toes, our eyes are scanning.
And so that's kind of a trigger for our eyes to peek and scan.
I'd say an imperfect teaching is eyes up, eyes up, eyes up.
No, you actually don't have your eyes up all the time in the game of basketball.
You watch the best ball handlers, their eyes are going to the defense or eyes are going to the ball when they have to control and then their eyes peek and scan.
So when do we want to scan the floor and map the floor?
That's when we are stopped and have in pocket in the dribble.
We have our eyes scanning and their eyes go down when we attack that it's inevitable.
So we want to change our eyes from those two positions and just kind of get triggers pocket eyes up.
And then beyond ES is going to be our starts and stops.
And this is where we actually work on the issue that we address when you start to play fast is can we actually stop at the end of the dribble with our protection plans?
If we're going to teach someone to dribble, we need to teach them how and when to stop dribbling or to stop attacking.
And so the first one of that is stride stops.
We have many, many protection plans that we teach, but I believe that your protection plan must be a part of any ball handling progression.
How do you end your dribble?
And so that's the progression of bones that we would apply to if you're teaching like a bulldog or a roll cross dribble move or if you're teaching how you're coming off of a screen or if you're teaching how you're hunting the smile.
Any of it I would go through those progressions.
Let's try to break the floor a little bit, get it outside our body.
Let's get our nose of our toes when we start.
Let's make sure that we get our eyes when we stop and how do we end our dribble.
So that would be our bones ball handling.
And I think you can apply that to any drill that you're going to be working on.
All right, Mark, we'll have you take this one.
What is one way you can that our coaches could use their assistance better in practice?
Establish a lead coach and a support coach for every single drill.
And I would encourage coaches to have their assistance be the lead coach more than they probably already are.
And maybe I'll say that from my own experience.
I find you have coaches that are really good at delegating or handing over ownership and then your micromanagers that dominate the majority of practice.
So role of the lead coach, you set up the drill, you explain the drill and you're the only coach that stops the drill or the game.
And oftentimes I would tell the players what we're stopping for.
So if I was the lead coach, I'm not going to give them more than three things.
Once we get and then before we get going, I'm going to say, look, the only thing we're going to stop it for are spacing errors.
That way they know the primary focus of this game offensively would be spacing.
Lead coach, the only one that stops it, I would also say if you're worried, your assistant coach will stop it too much.
Say, look, we're going to play this game. We're playing, you know, five on five to five by ones and twos.
You're only allowed to stop it three times.
Kind of give them only three time out. So they're a little bit more selective.
Every other coach in the gym is a support coach.
They can give buzzwords, sticky language reminders to players and look for opportunities to have one-on-one conversations on the side.
So once we sub or if maybe an inexperienced player say, hey, look, watch Tyler here.
Look how he's holding the corner to increase functional space for our Racker here.
And then also all coaches should be moving around the gym, talking with multiple players, one-on-one conversations, but also getting different perspectives, different angles at the floor where they're watching practice from.
So good.
Mark, you've really influenced my language and even intentionality in lead coach and support coach, always designating that has been so helpful.
Three additional benefits to you as the head coach, not being the lead coach more often in practice.
One, the obvious one, you're going to develop your staff more.
Just put him in those situations.
You will develop your staff more, which is a.
What he was just saying, you're going to see different things as the head coach.
If you're not the lead coach is you will have a built-in system to zoom out and to change your perspective.
So it almost goes back to the big question of your post game and how you would handle your post game by zooming out first.
If you have trouble zooming out, maybe you're only maybe you're more of a defensive coach.
So you struggle to see the offensive side of it, then I would designate yourself as support coach, give you a system for zooming out and see different things.
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