Why Basketball Coaches Should Have A Coaching Mentor with Mike MacKay

This is the Transforming Basketball Podcast, and I'm your host, Alex Sarama. This is the podcast where we help coaches and practitioners change the way we think about basketball performance. Our goal is to create the ultimate resource to help make sense of how contemporary skill acquisition ideas can be applied within the basketball world.

Throughout the podcast, we'll unpack how an ecological dynamics framework alters our perspective If you're ready to join us in our quest to transform the basketball world, then this is the podcast for you. Welcome back to the Transforming Basketball podcast. Delighted to be joined by Mike McKay today.

I can easily say Mike has been my biggest influence in how I coach today and how I view basketball. Mike's been much more than a mentor to me and someone who has really, I'd say, changed my perspective as a coach, not just in basketball but also on life too.

So Mike, I want to say a big thanks for joining me today.

Well, thanks for having me because it's, uh, as you know me, I just love talking the game and, and I think that's how we, we get better. I mean, you know, use some of, some of my ideas, but you've expanded on, you've grown them, and then I've got to go, whoa, I like that, and then I put another twist on it and And that's how we keep growing.

You know, it's just like you plant a little seed, but then it just blossoms out. And that's what I really enjoy. So thank you for taking the game and keep growing it yourself.

Well, thank you, Mike. That's your favorite— your famous, sorry, ABCs, which I just introduced here at London Lions last week. So my first question, Mike, to you is you've been incredibly generous with your time helping me and, you know, scores of other coaches all over the world over the last few years, but I think this concept of a coaching mentor, it's not really something that I think is that prevalent.

There's not much talk about it. But what would you— what do you consider as an effective mentor, you know, within this space?

Well, I think I've talked to you about this before, but to me there's 5 levels of a mentor. And the most important thing is to know what type of mentor you need at what stage of your development. So the first one is a consultant, and basically a consultant just watches And says, hey, here's what I saw.

Take it or leave it. And then a lot of times, especially when you're first starting coaching, it's sometimes you need that person, just an external eye who comes in and just says, whoa, I never even thought about those things. But it's not much of a dialogue.

It's just, here's my observations from my perspective. The second one is more of a trainer where you pick a certain thing that you're going to work on. Maybe it's your use of external language in your feedback versus internal. So we really, we plan it out.

We would go and practice it. They would observe you, make you do a debrief on it. But there's a very specific thing you're trying to train. The 3rd level is a role model. And again, the mentor may be the actual role model, or, hey, I suggest you go watch Coach X coach and really listen to what they're— how they're using feedback.

They guide you into who the role model should be. The 4th one is more what I call a facilitator. And that's more, I help you with time management. Maybe I'm helping you with practice planning, your season plan, more kind of around the administration and the planning part.

And then the final one is the one I enjoy the most, which is the coach, which is I don't tell you anything. I just ask you questions. And then you'll have the person say, oh, that was one of the best conversations I ever had.

And I'm like, well, I never asked. I never really said anything. I just kept asking you questions. But the problem is if you get the wrong person at the wrong time, it's very frustrating. So if you have a very experienced coach And I come in as a consultant.

It's like, who does this guy think he is telling me what to do? I mean, I've been coaching for 30 years and he just tells me all these things I now got to do. But then on the other one, you have the new coach.

I thought this guy was supposed to be the best coach. All he does is ask me questions. He never tells me anything. Why don't you just tell me what to do? It'd be a whole lot easier. So it's finding that match. And, and I would say that it's never just one of those.

It's kind of like the blending, the art. But I'm always conscious of trying to figure out what that person needs. And I think that's important for the mentee also, is really trying to figure out what you need. But again, you don't know what you don't know as a novice.

You think you know it all. You just finished playing and you played for a coach and, oh, I can do this. And you think you know everything. And that's, that's just normal.

Yeah.

So, so sometimes there is, you gotta take the advice of some other people. I think you need to work on this and you may have to actually put them in that that role a little bit. So I think that's important, is getting the match and then the agreement ahead of time on how we're going to go about this process.

Love it. So following in— following on from that, Mike, I think for me it's even looking at your clinics on YouTube from 10 years ago, they're cutting edge even in 2023. And a huge part of my growth was when I watched every single one of your clinics on YouTube, and we're going to put the links to those actually when we release this, but, you know, you really think differently as a coach and in your role now as a director of high performance for women's basketball.

If I'm—

Manager.

Manager. You know, what's inspired you to really think differently and move beyond many of the traditional ideas which dominate the basketball world, whether it's in high performance in regard to like a front office type role or coaching?

Well, always been a lifelong learner. Like, that to me, I guess get fascinated by learning. And I love going deeper into things and the why. Why is that working? Why that? And I've always loved too, it's just different coaches from different sports or different sports.

I mean, I coached Canadian football, track and field, jumps coach, you know, basketball. But I mean, as a phys ed teacher, coached all sports and always borrowing ideas from other sports. But more importantly, I love to be called a teacher. That's I am.

I'm a teacher, teacher-coach, and I enjoy trying to find ways to make that person learn. So I'm also fascinated by how we learn. And so much of the advances, I would say, in coaching of basketball is all around cognitive load, how we are different, short-term, long-term memory, how people actually learn, you know, the different types of feedback, what's more effective.

And I think that that's always fascinated. And then taking that stuff And blending it in with the basketball or blending in whatever it is. And then getting in the laboratory, like I've always had a laboratory. So right now I'm doing junior academy, which is 12 and 13-year-old girls.

I just finished on the weekend. And I don't think anybody realizes how much experimenting I do in my labs. And I'm actually fortunate now that I don't have a performance team. I'm not worried about the scoreboard. I don't have to worry about playing time and all those fun parts of the game, which I know I can do.

I'm not saying I don't like, but I get to really experiment with things. And then I just love, oh, change this a little more, that a little less of this. You know, that was the Goldilocks, you know, too much, too little, just right.

And keep experimenting till you find what's the just right. And then I love just seeing, like I say, the smiles on the players' faces and that's it, that works. And then having the courage to be able to do that instead of saying, no, I got to do this.

So I'll give you an example. I was doing the clinic in Sweden and I actually was Trying some new, if you want to call them drills, I don't call them drills, that I've never done before. I didn't tell anybody that because the people around the clinic would have been like, oh my goodness, what's he doing?

I'm brave enough that I'm going to go out there and just see how it goes. And I know if it goes off the rails, that's actually good because that's chaos and we're all learning from that and how we just put it back on the rails and away we go.

So it's that ability to trust that the experimental process is great. That's where you learn your best stuff.

That's awesome, Mike. That made me think one of the best memories I have is going through practice planning process with you. Where I got to really, you know, listen to your ideas as to how you went about it. I think it was the IPP in Saskatchewan years ago.

And, you know, you had your journal out, uh, your fountain pen, and we were just talking, you were going through it, and then did the same in Belgium. And that was a really interesting process for me. Could you just speak a little bit about how you go about this?

Because it's so different to the copy-paste kind of mentality that's widespread within basketball.

Well, to me it's what problem do we want to solve today? Well, that's the most important. What is it that the end of this practice we're going to be better at? And I've always liked— Sefu is a good friend of mine, you know Sefu, but he uses the track analogy and I love the track analogy of, are we thinking about the marathon?

Something that we want to be better in end of the year, 2 years' time? Is it the middle distance? You know, 800 meters to 1,500 that we need to be better at the end of the month? Of course, it's the sprint. Something we got better at for at the end of the practice or today.

And I think you always got to be thinking of, okay, these are things for the long term. This is something midterm. And this is like, we got to get better at this now, like by the end of this drill. And always just picking out, again, the other one I think is understanding, like we call it the rule of 3, but there's only going to be about 3 things that we're going to really accomplish today.

And really being sure that that's going to be in not just one drill, it's going to be layered or distributed. If you use the terms they use. Distribute throughout the entire practice. So we keep coming back to it. And then again, thinking about what's the challenge that I want these players to have?

At what level is the challenge? And again, I'm much bigger on the whole. Like, let's start with the whole and see where they are. Instead of the old days, we'd always start at the simplest thing and then we'd build up and then we get you to let you play at the end.

Well, today it's like, I don't have time for that. I'll be honest, I don't have time. Let's just find out where they are. And it's amazing what players can do if you put the right challenge in and just step back and let them try it.

And then you start to say, okay, what are they struggling with? Well, it's their positioning. Okay, well, let's work better on their position. Oh no, it's their, their vision. They're not actually seeing the right position. Oh no, it's actually they don't have the biomechanical— all their passes are coming from here.

We need to get free up there. Okay. Well, those are all going to be different solutions or constraints, we would now call them. To do that. But to me, it's just a little journey we're going on with the players. It's for me to have that courage, like, no, I see the problem right now.

Let's add this in to see how they handle it and see if it helps them learn it. The issue I run into now is where I'm doing a lot of these mass— so I've got 43 young, you know, 12, 13-year-olds. I can't coach all 43.

So I've got to coach my coaches or coach the coaches, or they're not my coaches, the coaches on how to do this sort of stuff. Because it's— if I try to coach all 43, it's just not going to work. So it's coaching the coaches to understand, here's the key thing we're looking at, and here's the key things you need to do to help load or deload it.

Here's the next steps. So that's kind of the process I go through.

That's great, great intel. So transformational coaching is a big area, Mike, and this is— I think the more I've gone down this route with the CLA, the more transformational coaching is, it's synonymous with using, I think, a CLA approach. But you've really helped me understand the importance of transformational leadership.

And not just that, but actually look practically what that means. So first question, Mike, is how would you define, you know, transformational coaching to a coach maybe hearing this term for the first time?

Well, I'll be honest, I, I use Jean Côté's, um, you know, he's a professor at Queen's University here in Canada. I use his 4 things because I think it's very clear, and then I just expand on it and make it more real life.

So the first one is a transformational coach inspires their athletes. But the number one way we inspire people is by believing in them. And I think we let down on our athletes is when we don't play them. And I'm not espousing that it has to be equal playing time.

I think equal is not fair. I don't think people say, well, it's not fair, I didn't get the same. No. It's what you deserve or what you earn. But I do have to show that I believe in you. The other part of believing in something is always using what I call affirmations or assurances.

Sorry. So I'm very direct with people, you know, like, this is what we're doing and I know you can do it. I believe in you. So that assurance is so powerful at the end of your statements.

Right.

And players know that. They know that when you believe in them by how you, how you speak to them, you know, like, we can get this done. I'm going to help you. I've seen you do that in the past. Those kind of things are important.

And then the little thumbs up you give, you got this, you know, all those little what you do, what you say, and what you show. All those things are important. You've got to think those through. But if you're always like, they know, you didn't say a word, but your body showed them that you don't believe in them.

All those kind of things. The second one is a role model. It sounds simple, but again, as I just said, I don't think sometimes we really think through how we, again, what we're doing and what we're showing. And then the showing one is, I used to say that, oh, what's it going to look like, sound like, feel like?

I now talk more about what you're going to do, what you're going to say, and what you're going to show. By showing, it means what's the feeling you want to create? Because I think people always struggle with that one. What does it feel like?

But what's your body language going to show? You know, I got the stern, you know, my wrinkles in my forehead and a frown. I guarantee you the feeling is going to be, oh my goodness, coach is in a bad mood today. We all better do what he wants.

But that's not maybe what they need, but that's what I'm showing. You know, what's your tone of your voice? Is it sarcastic? Is it confident? What's your body language like? Are you standing in a power pose? You stand in a depressed pose, you know, and then what's your movement?

How are you moving? And again, it's helping players understand those things too. But you being a role model is so important for players, especially coaches. I always talk about in the storm of the game, if your body language is showing fear, hesitance, frustration, it's like captain of the ship.

It's like, oh my goodness, we're all going to drown. Of course, the captain of the ship is like, hey, we've been here before and we know what to do. That's so important. The third one is challenge the athletes. And a lot of coaches think they challenge them because they make them run hard.

We compete in every drill and I get on them. Yeah, that's part of it, pushing people out of their comfort zones. But the most important challenge is challenging them to think. And that comes from asking questions, but listening to their answers. And honoring their answers.

And it's also the level of questioning. Most coaches start off by asking, you know, I was, you know, meaning Bloom's Taxonomy, they ask knowledge questions. Okay, what should you do in this situation? No, that's wrong. No, that's wrong. No. Yes, you should be sprinting.

Okay, that's a knowledge question. And all you're trying to do is get them to tell you back what you already know. To me, the best questions are you don't know the answer to it, or pretend you don't know and listen to their answers.

And then use your agree, build, and challenge, or deeper, to get them to expand. Part of the issue under challenge them too is you have to grow players' vocabulary. I think vocabulary is very, very important for clarity. So we're putting our words on the same thing at the same time.

Like the word spacing right now to me is the same as the word box out. It's too—

Generic.

Vague.

Agree.

So I talk now about, I call it SPPPV. So there's spacing, which is the G. Think of that as the GPS, where you are on the court in relation to something. The positioning is the angle you're on. P is the next P is your posture.

Are you bent with flexed hips? You know, are you standing up straight? And then there's also your placement. What are you doing with your arms and your hands in your stance, positioning, posture? And then the V is what are you saying when you're there?

Your verbal. So like when somebody says, oh, look at our spacing. I go, whoa, whoa, what are you talking about? What are you talking about? But the more I could do that, like if I start to say to my junior academy players now, hey, what's your positioning?

They know it's not to where they're standing, it's how they're angled to see. You know, if I say, what's your placement right now? They know, oh, my hands. Are they up? Are they out? Are they down? Are we shocking? Are we mirroring? Are we mirroring with one hand, shocking with the other?

All those little things are important. And then the final part of a transformational coach is, is treating them as an individual. Instead of, these are my rookies, okay, this is the seniors, or they're the 2004s. No, this is Alex, and this is who Alex is, and Alex lives here, and Alex has, you know, a dog and a cat and this.

And you're really getting to know the person as an individual and treat them as individuals. And that's why I say, like, when I was in Sweden, the first thing I did was learn all the names of the players who were demonstrating. And so as soon as the thing's starting, I can say their names.

Ebba.

Was one of the names. I said, remember Ebba, Ebba, go here. And then I turned to the coaches. I said, like, what do you notice here? And one of the, it was one of the female coaches said, well, you know all their names.

I said, yeah. I said, is that important? Sure it is. And then I talked, and that led me into coaching people, not players. Instead of, hey you, or, you know, I've seen coaches start giving players nicknames at these clinics, like, hey Blondie, hey 54, hey you big guy, get over here.

No, they're people. And so that to me is the key. And then the next part I've added on to this on my own is all about the leadership, right? And you know, the 4 levels of leadership is how we develop them as leaders or future leaders, you know, leading themselves, giving energy to the group, knowing your role and accepting role acceptance, and then leading.

But the big other big one I'm now using is regenerative leadership. It's a big buzzword. And I really love blending in transformation and regenerative. Regenerative leadership really talks about 3 things. One is love diversity, seek out diversity. That's diversity of people, diversity of ideas.

Like, seek out diversity and embrace it, include it, right? But the second one is we need to align on our values, our purpose, and our vision. Like, it's no sense having all this diversity, but yet half the group is trying to go over here and the other half's going here.

We have to align on what we're trying to achieve. And the key to what the leader does is creates the environment where that diversity and alignment happens. And that's not easy.

The first time I saw you use names in the clinic, Mike, was London. And obviously, you know, I do that in all my coaching clinics now, and it's all because of you. It's so powerful. And it's not just— yes, of course it's easier for skill acquisition in terms of how we communicate with the players, but then The real underpinning, like you said, is it like you always say, we're not coaching basketball, we're coaching people who play basketball.

And that's something I, you know, one of the many things I've taken from you. So as well as using names, Mike, what would some practical applications be maybe of a coach who's trying to adopt more of a transformational approach versus transactional?

Well, the use of questions is very powerful. And again, ask questions you don't know the answer to, and then asking the questions And using your ABCs. So like when you first start using questions, players are taught through schools, what does the coach want?

Or what does teacher want? So in the junior academy, okay, what can we do? I introduce ICE, intensity, concentration. Okay. Let's do an ICE check. Where are we at right now? Oh, our concentration's at a— or energy. Let's use the energy one. Oh, our energy.

Oh, we're at a 5.

Okay.

Well, could we bring it up? Bring it up. What can we do to improve our energy? We need to communicate better. That's fluff. I said, no, no, that's fluffy. Build. I don't understand this communicate. I come from Mars. I have no idea. What does, what does that look like?

Sound like? What are you actually going to say? And now they're like, oh, because they're used to just repeating back something they heard a coach say. And forcing them to think and be okay with the quiet because that's when the thinking's occurring. And being okay with an answer that's wacky or out there.

And then the biggest one is you got to tell your coaches, don't be answering the questions. That's the biggest problem because they want to answer all the questions. But that's when you know it's a good one because you got them engaged and they're all getting excited about it.

So to me, the use of questions— now it's not like, oh, stop questions, stop questions. It's knowing when, but it's also knowing when to just be okay with mistakes. The other one that I think I'm big on now, Alex, and this is— Victor's a master at this— is Not letting players stop the drills.

If you think of most practices, like let's say we're doing a 1-on-1, as soon as the shot goes up and there's a drill, those 2 walk off, 2 others walk on. Why did you stop? Well, the drill's over. No, this is the game.

What would you do next? What's next? Oh, you needed to do a breakout dribble, or you need to throw an outlet, or you need to get back on defense, or you need to jam the ball. For the extra 2 to 3 seconds, it's golden for what it's teaching players as far as Next play, next play, next play, next best action.

NBA, next best action. And it really challenges you as a coach is how do I, how long do I let them go? But you can tell players who've been taught next best action because, man, they're competing all the time because they just always are next play, next play, next play instead of, oh, done, walk the end of the line.

And then, you know, we have this thought that, oh, when we get to the game, we'll be able to put all these pieces together. It doesn't work that way.

Not—

It can. No, I'm not saying it can't because We've done it in the past, but this is one of the values of coaching in a national team program or going in and doing a clinic. I got 2 hours to get these players to play, or I got 4 practices.

Carly, you know, goes on and wins a bronze medal at the World. She had 5 practices before we go. Everything was 5-on-5 except a few pre-practice individual shooting type stuff. But everything was pretty 5-on-5 except, like I say, some shooting things. Because we just don't have time to do all these little breakdown drills.

And, you know, you got to get to play the game and teach through the game. Yeah.

Definitely. That's a good reminder just for me on the NBA's next best actions, because I think we get it in trips naturally. And that's one of the things I took from you, where instead of doing these transition drills, we literally just add trips to any activity.

But just especially on those one-on-ones, I think that's actually something I've forgotten about recently. Just instead of finishing a one-on-one, just something like a breakout dribble to the half line or having to pass to another player. There's so much you can do.

Well, here's what Victor's good at too, and I love these drills now. So, you know, my idea of rebounding and landing like a quarterback or taking the ball out of bounds like a quarterback inbounds. Like one of the things with young women is if they don't play a sport where there's a throwing action, they struggle to throw.

Everything's a push. And to think that they're going to discover that— this is some things with constraints where it's beautiful in theory, but you have to be able to understand how you have to practically apply it is Not every player is going to discover everything in that 5-minute drill.

So sometimes I got to plant some seeds in there that maybe sprout the thing I needed to discover. And a lot of it sometimes with younger players is their biomechanical movements, just because they're not getting it. So we do quickly, just let's practice throwing like a football, throw long.

Okay. Like 30 seconds. Now we do 3 players in a line. First player tosses, goes, starts to run outlet. Second player tries to tip it in. They love to do that. Try to tip it in. The 3rd player plays. If it goes in, take it out of bounds.

If not, outlet it. The 2nd player, after they shot it, they're filling the other side outlet. And now there's all kinds of possible things to do on who they can outlet to inbounding. But as soon as we throw the outlet, I want the other player to pass.

And now they come 2-on-1 back at this end at the person who was the outlet. They're playing a 2-on-1. So I'm getting a 2-on-1, I'm getting passing on outlet, but I'm getting some quick long passes, which is something they struggle with. And it's fun.

Yeah, absolutely. But I've snuck— I've hidden the veggies in the spaghetti sauce. Everybody thinks, oh, why are you doing all— well, look, I've gotten proper inbounding technique. I've gotten proper how to jump and tip or play a ball high, and it's right. I've gotten how to get out to an outlet.

I've got how to quickly change direction and how to throw a long pass off a push. And now we got a decision on 2-on-1 and got a player who's had to work on not fouling. All that, 10-second drill.

The biggest thing for me, Mike, from that is how The one-size-fits-all approach is just so, like you said, some players are going to really struggle to find, and that's individual constraints, action capabilities, you know, to make that long pass could be really challenging.

And that's where we have to move beyond this one drill for everyone, right? And really start, like you said, plant the seeds. How could we change this for one player? Maybe in their IPP, they have something different to open up their degrees of freedom and learn to throw in different ways.

Yeah. Yeah. And again, it's— you pull that player off the side, maybe just that one player. Hey, let's just throw through long passes to me. No, no, make sure— try stepping with your left foot. Doesn't constrain coaching. Doesn't mean I can't coach. It doesn't mean I always have to come up with, oh, how do I turn this into a game?

And sometimes it's just take that player aside and just say, try stepping with this. Or I go and stand beside them and make them sure they have to throw it within tight within their body. Like if I'm a player who shoots with a low release, Just go stand in front of her and make her shoot over top of you.

That's the constraint, right?

That's the thing for me. It's exploration versus instruct on one thing. And you're, you're just getting them to explore different things and see what they like and what works.

I was in the gym with Victor yesterday morning and we were just, we're going out to BC. So we're preparing our clinic and a lot of it was just exploring how do we open up the players on some of their dribbling? And some of the things we came up with, like, wow, this is going to be awesome.

I said, I can't wait for this clinic, Victor. It's going to be really good. Because again, we're using getting younger players to explore, but giving them the right challenge that makes them go outside their comfort zone. Most players, everything's so tight in front of them, but how do we now start to get them to explore getting the ball away from the body to pass and to dribble, right?

How are you going to explore those kinds of things?

I love it.

And again, like, I'm doing a lot on the cylinders now because I think that's a very important part of the game, but I give them some guidelines on the rules, but I say, now you've got to explore within you how you use that.

Because, you know, you get some people big, strong, solid, how they take on, brace, and seal can be different than a little tiny player. But the elements are there. It's the same as in a shot. I don't think there's one shot, but there's always a preliminary action, backswing force generation through a high release point, right?

That's in everybody's shot, but everybody's shot looks different. Same as a take on, brace, and seal. There's certain elements. There's a take on, there's a brace, and there's a seal. But everybody's is going to be a little different to fit who they are and the situation.

So if I'm take-on, brace and seal to box out a crashing Dennis Rodman, that's a whole lot different than if I'm doing a take-on, brace and seal against a Shaq who's planted down in the low block. Totally different type of take-on, brace and seal, but the elements are all there.

Yeah, it's just the role of constraints. And that's the thing, you know, sometimes the problem when we're just teaching like box outs. I was thinking about this last week, Mike, where Coaches have taught box outs for years, but it's like, it doesn't make sense because when we look at rebounding, you know, you might have to scrum someone under the basket.

Sometimes you might just have to come get the ball. I think especially in the men's game, sometimes just coming above the rim and getting it. And if you've got take-ons, and it's just, it's so complex. We can't have one technique we're teaching and think that it's going to apply every time.

And again, a lot of it goes into, you know, PVAAP, positioning, vision, anticipation. So if I'm in a good position to track and I can track where the rebound's going, that's going to determine a lot. Yeah. If I track, I can get there before anybody else, go get it.

But if I'm saying like, eh, that may not come to me, but that player there is tracking to go get the ball, I better get in front of their, in their line of path, right? You know, so, but to make sure everybody always does the classic, the ball falls on the floor, then somebody comes around, steals and put it in.

Mike, I want to move on to guided defense. Just, I think this is a really interesting one, especially because we've got a lot of professional coaches who are trying to engage with these ideas now. And I think this is where guided can be so useful in those environments.

And obviously, absolutely in youth environments too, and player dev team practices. But I think it's a great way to use the CLA and have things representative in a practice without necessarily having to be going live 3-on-3, live 1-on-1, you know, and obviously there's different ways we can use guided.

So.

Yeah.

Could you just outline to the coaches, you know, what Guided Defense is and where you've taken it? It's very good how you do it.

The first thing is, let's go back. I'll go to Phase A. We used to call it Phase A, and that's now called on-air. So this weekend with the Junior Academy, again, 10, 12, and 13-year-old girls. Now granted, these are the best in Ontario, so they're pretty good, but they're still 12 and 13-year-olds.

So of course, if I had to let the majority of coaches, what would they do? They would do on-air layups. Right? And here's all the on-air layups we're going to do. Well, what did I do? The first thing I taught was, okay, we're going to learn how to play defense.

So we worked on— I call it the T position. So I'm pretending I just made— you know how we're teaching now? I've just made contact on you on the dribble with my shield because I can't extend. I'm not allowed. That's a foul now, the cylinder.

So I've made my shield and I've got the dribble and you've teed me up and you're taking contact on your sternum and you're walling up. So we taught walling up defense, and now when the offense starts, you, you're live. Now you can get in front, you run with them, but you're learning to wall up.

Yeah, so external cues like skyscraper and—

Yeah, right. So all these external cues, we practiced the defense, but you know what I was really practicing? Finishes on offense. Did I say that?

The veggies and the spaghetti sauce, as you say.

I didn't say that, but I've learned over time is if I'm coaching offense, I really have to do more coaching of the defense because I need the defense to challenge my offense to make it actually see the thing they're going to see in the game.

But if I had said, okay, we're working on different finishes and give them a guide, 12-year-old girls will really struggle to give a guide.

They will.

They will. And then, so now do I have to go in as a coach? No, I'm, I'm 63 now. I'm sorry, I can't do the guides like I used to. I used to be, you know, I'd say 3 years ago I could still do some pretty good guides.

Now I'm afraid even these little 12-year-olds are going to run me over. So I'm not. And I think it also, as a coach, if you're doing all the guides, you're not actually observing enough to see what's going on. So the first thing I would say, Alex, is we try to do now what I call script it.

So I'm scripting the defense and that you're following exactly— this is what we want you to do. Then we will go to the guide. So the second thing we taught was, okay, now I'm more on a wedge hip to hip. So now we're side by side.

Before we were in a T, right? A T. Now we're side by side with hips, but my hands are up and now I'm wedging you with my hips and I got to get in front and we're both in a sprinting set. This is kind of like fighting through a ball screen.

And there's that time just when I'm hip to hip with you and now you're trying to turn the corner and I'm wedging through with my hips. And now it gives me totally different finishes, gives me totally different situations for the offense and defense.

So then we were doing dynamic one-on-one. We taught, okay, defense, you've got to end up in a shade right, or you've got to end up in a shade left. Now you choose which one you're in, or the coach helps the players mix it up.

So now the offense is seeing different things.

Yeah.

Or we're working on ball screen scripted. Hey, we're blacking, which is a trap. We're trapping it, or we're gonna switch over, or we're gonna switch under. Whatever, whatever way we're gonna, you know, drop coverage, whatever you're— we're gonna ice it, whatever you— we script it, but then we give them 2 or 3 and then they guide it and mix it up.

Now your offense has to think.

And I'd love it too when you could script something like a coverage and you could say to your offense, 3 reps, it's the same coverage, but 3 different— find 3 different solutions to solve this problem.

Yeah. Right. And then by coaching the defense, again, my offense has to get better. The old days, we would always just coach the offense and the defense, and then you'd, you know, get mad at your defense because they were messing— the hardest thing to run is your stuff against your team because they know all what you're doing.

But you go to the game and then they never played defense like you did, so your offense didn't know what to do.

The biggest question, Mike, I get is how can you have— let's maybe take an example. Let's say we're doing some guided stuff with one-on-ones and we want to do some finishing and we want to have an offensive player play against some different coverages— we can use the word coverage on a finish, like where, using your terms, it could be bump the hip, it could be wall up, it could be run through, whatever.

If we don't have coaches who can play defense representatively, a lot of pro coaches struggle, I think, to get pro players giving the guides. Have you noticed that too? Is there any way we can overcome it?

Yeah, simple. KYP— know your players. Know your players. Who's the quick guy? Hey, go in here, guard him. Who's the slow guy? Oh, I'm going to give you a bigger advantage. Now, instead of a T, I'm going to make an L. You've got an advantage.

Play. Hey, hand, hand, like hands, hands. You got to play with your hands down. Like, that's just being creative and knowing, know your players and know what's the situation I need. And how does that advantage that you're trying to work on— oh, is he driving it and it's the help defender that's causing the problem, or is it his own player?

So again, is it his finish against help, or is it finish against his player? Right? Is it a big guy he's finishing in, a small guy? Is it a guy always getting in front? Right. And then sometimes, I mean, I'll go right from the 0-1-2 with no dribble.

Like you're just working on the 0-1-2 part.

Yeah.

You know, but that's still constrained. I just taken away the dribble part, but we've worked on, we've already picked it. Now you just gotta work on what you're doing on your 1-2. I mean, it's, you know, and I think once somebody sees it, they're like, oh, and I think this is the problem right now.

Too much right now is just in words. It's written. And let's be honest, for a lot of people, they need to see the clip.

Yeah.

And I think that's what you're good at. I think that's always been, I think my strength is, is taking complex things from a research paper and in my brain saying, okay, well, that means this to me and I can make it do this.

And that simplifies it down for people. And actually, what's it going to do? What's it going to actually, what are they actually going to do? What are they actually going to say? What are they actually going to show? And then people, oh yeah, I can do that.

So Mike, I wanted to end the podcast with some of my favorite Mike McKay mannerisms. over the last 7 years or so that I picked up. I wanted to take your 30-second rule, you know, to describe, obviously, coaches who aren't familiar, being able to— it's obviously not always possible, but when you can, being able to describe an activity, you know, within 30 seconds and get the players going.

So we're going to try and see if we can do these within 30-second bursts. And I've just got, I've got a few prepared here.

Okay.

So the first one, Mike, is leadership voice.

Well, leadership voice is what you're going to say and the tone. And I'll always do the one where the players— where you have to be loud. And I'll yell, like, I'll yell, no, no. So it's finding the tone that shows confidence. Okay.

Love it. Just did that yesterday in my practice, you know, in a debrief. Really simple. Players aren't speaking in a leadership voice. Just, can you speak in a leadership voice? And the same on defensive coverages. So important. We've touched on a few of these, Mike, but no problem to go through them again.

ABCDs.

Agree, build, challenge, and deeper. I had somebody recently in a tweet call it disagree. I would never use disagree. We want challenges. Challenge means I have another way of looking at it. Here's another thought, or, and here's my reason why. Deeper is what's that going to look like in the future, maybe in life, in a practice, in a game.

Very, very important. Very, very important.

Love it.

No fluff. Build on it. No fluff. Keep building. Keep going. Give me more.

We've got TLC next.

Teaching, learning, and competing. A teaching drill, stop it at any time to work on the point of emphasis. Ask questions, get their positioning correct. A learning drill is coach on the fly. Don't stop the drill or the activity. Coach on the fly. Use your good external cues.

And then a competing drill is just like the game. We got to referee it. There's got to be a timeout, and you only get your 50 seconds. You don't get 3 hours in there to— you don't get unlimited timeouts, what coaches will always try to do.

Because you have to learn how to coach too. You have to learn how to coach in those soundbites or those time constraints.

Will Weaver added a really, really good build point on that, Mike, in Paris when we had sea activities and practice. He just called it like a real road environment. And that I really liked.

Yeah, the storm. You're playing in the storm. Get noise in the gym. Like pump up the music, pump up crowd noise. You have to coach from the coaching box. Like this idea that I can always go and position myself. That was big when, remember, we were going to play in Belgium, you know, or in Japan or Spain.

You've got to learn to coach from where you're coaching, and you better have hand signals or call-overs because they're not going to hear you. Nope.

We got last 2, Mike, and you've mentioned this one already. It's our ICE checks.

So intensity, concentration, and energy. And to me, that's an old Jack Donahue, and I just build it. He used to call it enthusiasm, but I turned it into energy. And the intensity is more The compete factor. But again, it's how hard. And again, the players to understand that it's not always 100%.

And I actually have a little tire gauge now that I pretend I stick it in my head and the gauge moves. And I say, we can measure this, you know, where should we be? And then there's also then concentration is where should we be putting our attention, put our attention on the right thing at the right time.

And then energy is just that giving to the group. And we just talk a lot about what is it we can do, and especially the subs. But it's also holding each other accountable and being remind, encourage, praise, and breakdown conversations too.

That's just one of the things I've really been emphasizing with our coaches here, Mike. When we have subs in practice, you know, maybe we're doing something with trips and we got some players waiting, just they're all using their leadership voice to give energy to the group and they're using our language if there's something that, you know, they could talk about.

And it's, it's a great example.

Well, that was my whole thing. That was my whole thing with Junior Academy was setting the tone of our ice. And getting the feeling in the gym. And it was amazing when you get these 43 young women really giving the energy, goes up.

Absolutely.

And Mike, it wouldn't be— wouldn't be able to do this miniseries without the last one, P-VAD.

Oh, P-VAD. It's the one thing I wish I had remembered and known younger. And that is where you're positioning your angle, your head, where your head is, where your position improves your vision, which improves your ability to anticipate What your decision is going to be.

And it's so important. I hear, oh, we're working on a decision-making drill and there's no defense. Well, what's an action-perception coupling? Like, if they can't see something, then there's no decision. Yes, in 5-on-0s, there is a perception of where my teammates and I am making decisions.

There is— like, I get that. That is still part of it, but they're still not getting the full picture without defense.

That's it. It's not a functional perception-action coupling. Exactly. So Mike, whether knowingly or unknowingly, I think you've had a huge influence on everything I'm now doing at Transforming Basketball. So I think a lot of coaches will be able to see that now after really listening to this.

So I just want to say a big thank you to you for all the help you've given me personally, and really grateful for our relationship and everything you've done. So thank you.

Um, I'm looking forward to the day we get back on the court together.

So am I. I can't wait.

Synergies. Synergies occur when that happens.

Oh, I can't wait. We gotta make it happen sometime over the next year.

Okay.

Mike, thank you.

Take care.

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