Paul Cortes0:07
I just said, hey, look guys, I'm really excited to get in the gym with you. And just to let you know, we're going to be using the CLA this season, and this is what the CLA is. And then it's putting you guys in game situations and developing your decision-making and, and teaching you how to think for yourselves so that we could become creative players rather than robots out there on the court.
Paul Cortes0:29
And I think our adaptability is what really won us that we could play different defenses all season long.
George Vaz0:45
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Transforming Basketball podcast. On today's episode, we have Paul Cortez, Paul, in his first year fully adopting the constraints-led approach, led the International School of San Francisco to their first ever state championship. Today, Paul is going to share with us how he adapted and adopted the CLA and what led to his success.
George Vaz1:09
Paul, welcome to the show.
Paul Cortes1:11
Yeah, thank you for having me. And first of all, it's an honor to be here. There's been so many coaches over the years that I've learned from, whether it's in person or People I've never met on podcasts such as this that I've tried to get insights from.
Paul Cortes1:23
So to be here is an amazing experience and I'm happy to give back. And if any coach learns even a fraction of what I've learned, it takes a little something away from this conversation. It feels like I'm giving back. Thank you for having me.
George Vaz1:35
Amazing. Thank you, Paul. Obviously, congratulations first and foremost. Winning at any level is really hard to do. Just how was it? Take us through like the rewind of your season. If you had to look back now, how was it applying the CLA? Just the overall season?
Paul Cortes1:49
The first thing is I just had an incredible group of kids. And I think it probably needs to be said that we as coaches get so caught up in what offense we're running or what defense we're running or what approach we're going to take, so to speak.
Paul Cortes2:02
But it really starts with the kids first. And I had a bunch of guys who loved each other, who ran through a brick wall for each other. And that's what makes all this possible. You know, you could have the best offense, defense, the best theoretical approach in the world.
Paul Cortes2:16
It's really the kids who make it happen. I'm really happy that we won the whole thing, but mostly I'm happy for them because there's no group that deserves it more than they deserve it based on the work they put in and how much they cared about our team and what we do.
George Vaz2:31
Oh, amazing. And how did you first hear about the CLA? Because you spoke about other coaches that have influenced you. So where did that first come across to you? And then how did you start implementing it? Like, was it just straight away first day of practice or even before the first day of practice where you held a meeting?
George Vaz2:48
Or did you kind of like, oh, we're going to start a little bit here, then next week we'll add a bit more. So how was that process as well?
Paul Cortes2:55
Well, I mean, for me as a coach, it's been a gradual process that's been kind of taking place over the years. And when I first started out, I literally was going through like textbooks of basketball fundamentals and there would be a chapter on passing, a chapter on footwork and pivoting, and I would try to learn all that.
Paul Cortes3:12
And then figure out what are the best drills to teach the players these fundamentals. And then it was what are the best plays that they could run that they have to use these fundamentals. And that to me was great coaching. And that's kind of the traditional model of coaching.
Paul Cortes3:25
I still believe you can be very successful doing that. But my eyes didn't really get open that there was maybe more to it to that until I came across Brian McCormick, who's been a big influence of mine. And he was really the first coach that I came across who challenged So traditional norms, who sought out different ways to look at research, to look at what experts in different fields were saying, that kids actually learn one way.
Paul Cortes3:51
And the way that a lot of coaches are doing things don't necessarily align with the way that people learn. And the one book I think that really had a big impact on me is Developing Basketball Intelligence that he wrote. And in that book, he kind of goes through his How do you teach court vision?
Paul Cortes4:08
That's something kids are just born with, something that some players have and some don't, or can you actually teach it? And he finds that you can teach it. It involves putting them in small-sided games and putting them in game situations as much as possible in practice where they have to process what's going on in front of them, where they have to see a defender, where they have to see a teammate, and then make the right decision.
Paul Cortes4:30
So from that, I started using kind of a games approach to coaching. And using more small-sided games than drills where they're standing in line and there's no defender. And we started adding defense to every drill, started adding teammates to every drill. And from there, I kind of throughout the years started learning about the constraints-led approach, which is different than the games approach because it's not just I'm going to put them in this game and then they'll naturally learn everything they need to learn.
Paul Cortes4:57
And that's not true because you could be in a game and you only play to your strengths. And you don't necessarily get better at your weaknesses. And the constraints approach sort of forces you, and it puts constraints on you where maybe as a player, you're right-hand dominant, but we're doing this one-on-one drill that forces you to use your left hand.
Paul Cortes5:14
Or the constraint might be that you're not allowed to dribble. So we're working on our passing, and then eventually we have to make a certain kind of cut. So you're doing all these things that's more specific rather than just putting them in a broad game where they're left to fend for themselves.
Paul Cortes5:28
That's been the evolution. And part of that was Transforming Basketball and the amazing website you guys have. And you put it all together. And I said, I really like what you guys are doing and let's go all in. So that's what we did starting in the offseason.
Paul Cortes5:41
And we did it all summer long. We did it all preseason long and hasn't been smooth sailing all the way through, but it ended in the way we all hoped it would end.
George Vaz5:49
And like you said, you've been doing this for a long time coming, but that first practice or that first week of practices, how did they take it? Did they ask any questions? Did they like it? What was their initial reaction?
Paul Cortes6:01
It really was the first practice of the summer when we had our June summer period. And I kind of texted the players beforehand and then I said, hey, look, this is the way that we're going to do things in practice. The first response that we got was a lot of players hearting the message, kind of what it was explaining.
Paul Cortes6:18
Like I sent a short video of what it's all about and kind of explaining it. And They were excited about it.
George Vaz6:24
Sorry, Paul, just to cut you off. What was that short message that you sent? What did that contain? Can you give us like, oh, we're going to— everything's going to have a decision now, no more cones or whatever. So what did that message—
Paul Cortes6:36
I just said, hey, look, guys, I'm really excited to get in the gym with you. And just to let you know, we're going to be using the CLA this season. And this is what the CLA is. And it's putting you guys in game situations and developing your decision-making and Teaching you how to think for yourselves, so that we could become creative players rather than robots out there on the court.
Paul Cortes6:56
And I think that's something that human nature that speaks to every person because the number one driver of motivation studies have shown is autonomy. Is people feeling like they're not being micromanaged, feeling like they have the freedom to make decisions and to make things happen.
Paul Cortes7:14
And we let the guys know from the very beginning we were going to put them in those situations, and we wanted them. to be the primary drivers of what was happening on the court, not the coaches.
George Vaz7:26
That's amazing. And now I want to like take the hood off, so to speak, really get into like what you guys did from a basketball standpoint. Firstly, I want to ask you if you could share any activities that you guys really love, like this one we're doing it every day or every week.
George Vaz7:43
What are some of your favorite activities before we get into your triggers, your set plays, and things like that?
Paul Cortes7:48
I'm going to kind of juxtapose the way we used to do things in a normal practice as it unfolds, the changes that we made. First, in the beginning, instead of a dynamic warmup, which is how we started a lot of our practices in the past, we would do some kind of tag game.
Paul Cortes8:02
And then we would call that a warmup game. So whether it's dribble tag or passing tag, just different, some kind of game, or maybe we, we have a football in the game, we have a tennis ball or whatever it is to sort of activate their brains and activate their bodies as a start of practice.
Paul Cortes8:17
And from right away, we're making decisions. There's nothing that we're doing that doesn't involve decision-making. In past practices, we would do a guard post breakdown where we split the guys up and there's 5 or 6 people in a line and the coach says, okay, now we're going to do this move or we're going to do that move.
Paul Cortes8:34
So we got rid of that and we said, this season we're going to work on finishing one-on-one to start pretty much every practice. And we would put constraints. So you're only allowed to finish with your left hand or you're only allowed to finish off 2 feet.
Paul Cortes8:47
And in 10 minutes, we would maybe do 7 to 8 constraints, different one every minute or 2, constantly changing partners. In the past, we would do shooting after finishing. We put them in shooting drill, we do partner shooting. You shoot mid-range for 1 minute and then you switch with your partner and he shoots, and then you shoot a 3 for 1 minute and you switch.
Paul Cortes9:05
This season, we wanted to embrace repetition without repetition. So we did differential shooting where every shot you take is different.
Paul Cortes9:12
than the one before. Our favorite was short, medium, long, where you have to shoot a close shot, then you have to shoot a mid-range shot, and then you have to shoot a 3-point shot, and now you're back shooting the close shot. And we would make it competitive and a point system, and 1 for the close shot, 2 for the mid-range, 3 for the 3-point shot.
Paul Cortes9:32
And then we would go into, from there, our small-sided games. Half-court 4-on-3, I think, was really the best thing that we did all season long. It was the simplest thing that we did, but it's just advantage basketball. Yeah. You know, and making plays and applying our principles.
Paul Cortes9:46
And we found that when we went practices without doing the 4-on-3, we didn't play as well the next game. And then we went back to doing it and we would play great the next game. So it just became more and more of a staple as the season went along.
George Vaz9:57
And that 4-on-3, I think it really, you can work on everything because you're working on advantage situations, but you can also work like, say you can call turnover for maybe a behavior you want to see. So maybe you're focusing on push-pull-hold, right? So that they, their off-ball reactions are on point.
George Vaz10:13
Or maybe you're trying to work on 0-second decisions. So you could focus more on that. I'm a big fan of the 4-on-3 and 5-on-4, just any kind of advantage situations.
Paul Cortes10:22
It was great for us. And we would do it many different ways. And if we had the full court, we would go 4-on-3 and then we would go 3-on-4 in the other direction and then 4-on-3 on the way back. really working on different advantages and disadvantages and how to play out of that.
Paul Cortes10:37
And that in turn made our offense and defense so much more effective because we just learned how to play through advantages and how to defend when we're at a disadvantage. And I just think that's basketball. So it's not the plays you run, but it is how you play with advantages.
George Vaz10:52
We had a guest on recently, Simon Schroth. He's a football coach or a soccer coach in Germany. And he was saying how when he puts his players in these 3-on-4 disadvantaged positions, He found that they learned a little bit more of how to defend.
George Vaz11:06
So now you have to defend the basket and pick up the ball and zone up with that other person to make the offense's shot the least efficient they can in that disadvantaged situation. I think it's super interesting that you can do both the offense and the defense with a drill like that.
George Vaz11:22
And so let's talk about now your triggers. What were some triggers that you used? What were some of the things you emphasized while teaching the triggers?
Paul Cortes11:29
The first trigger that we got into was a get, the pass, and then run behind for a standstill handoff type of situation. And we started drilling that in the practice. And I took this from Transforming Basketball and from Alex and his All Access Practice series of 10 practices was the first thing that I looked at.
Paul Cortes11:48
And even though he says don't be a copy-paste coach, we just kind of copied what he was doing in the beginning because it was new to me and it was new to us. So.
Paul Cortes11:56
Even though I've always believed in this kind of thing of how to put it all together, it was new. So a lot of our practices early on were just looking at his practice plan that he provides on the website. And we modified it more and more as the season went along, kind of made it our own.
Paul Cortes12:11
But in the beginning, it was Alex's stuff that we were doing. We did ball screens, we did dribble handoffs. So we started off with the 2-man triggers and we said, we want to get really good at those first. And then we started putting them together, forming what we call combo triggers.
Paul Cortes12:27
So that might be a pistol, which is get followed by a flare screen, more zoom action, which is a down screen and dribble handoffs. So now it's more 3-man combo triggers later in the season. And then finally, in the second half of the season, we made a shift where we went to more of the off-ball triggers and we started doing more wides and flares instead of the on-ball stuff.
Paul Cortes12:50
which we felt was needed because our best player was just getting double teamed. He was getting trapped and we were having a hard time. So getting him off ball and getting the ball moving side to side was an adjustment that we made. And those wides and flares were the most effective thing for us.
Paul Cortes13:06
So I think every team is different and it's an experiment as the season goes along of what trigger can be the most effective for your team.
George Vaz13:14
Yeah, it's an interesting point you just brought up. If you have your main ball handler Always handling in the pick and roll or running gets. And then if the defense adjusts and double teams that, you know, that player, let's think about putting them in off-ball screens.
George Vaz13:28
Now, 2 things. Now they're learning how to play off-ball, but then you're also involving another playmaker, another ball handler to make plays. So like, not only can you find the best player for a potential scoring opportunity, but that ball handler can also reject to create a different advantage if the affordance is there as well.
George Vaz13:45
And Paul, let's move forward then. So you talked about triggers. Let's talk about your set plays now. You talked about combo triggers, which I gotta steal that one. That's pretty fun. But now talking about set plays, can you talk a little bit just how your team ran the set plays and what it looked like?
Paul Cortes14:01
Yeah. The conceptual offense, the, one of the principles behind it is you don't call set plays unless it's a dead ball. And so we're trying to let the players play. We really tried to do that. The first half of the season, but we found that we had a lot of young players on the team, and our two best players were seniors, and we had a very hard schedule.
Paul Cortes14:21
So in order for us to settle each other down and sort of get more stable, we started running some more set plays in the second half of the season, and we ran a fair amount of horn sets. And I broke the rule, so to speak, sometimes of only doing it on dead balls, but I tried to.
Paul Cortes14:37
If our offense was flowing and We were doing a really good job in our motion, our conceptual offense, then I wouldn't call as many. But if we were struggling, then I would start calling them a little bit more, and then I would go back to the motion later in the game.
Paul Cortes14:50
So we ran 5 different horn sets, and 2 of them were ball screen oriented horn sets, and 3 of them were passing oriented horn sets where we throw it to the elbow, we get different actions out of it. We ran, I think, maybe 5 or 6 ball screen type of sets, whether it's the regular fist pick and roll, a double fist pick and roll where we're involving a second guy, an empty pick and roll where we're clearing the corner out.
Paul Cortes15:15
We ran sometimes a stack pick and roll where we're back screening the screener and a few different other ones, just playing with the spacings. And then we would also run— our gets weren't as effective early in the season because like I said, they were really jamming up our point guard, our best players.
Paul Cortes15:32
But we started running it later in the season as a set. So we would just call it Georgia. And that just meant we were running a get. We were throwing the ball to the trailer and it was starting with the get. So we would do that a few teams a game.
Paul Cortes15:43
If we called Chicago, that was a zoom action. We were throwing it to the trailer, we would down screen and we would just dribble handoff off it. So we did have about 14 to 15 sets by the end of the season that we were running.
Paul Cortes15:55
And that's probably more than I wanted to.
Paul Cortes15:57
I think as we run the conceptual offense for multiple years, because this was the first year, we'll be able to call them less and less. But we did turn to it more later in the season.
Speaker C16:11
Hi, Coach. A brief interruption from the podcast to remind you of the Transforming Basketball Summer Camp taking place by the beachside in Roseto, Italy. This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience for players and coaches alike. The boys' week will run The camp will be run from the 27th of July to the 2nd of August, with the girls' week from the 3rd to the 10th of August.
Speaker C16:35
As a coach, you'll be able to spend a week with Alex Sarama and other Transforming clinicians, observing up to 6 hours of camp practices each day. Each evening, coach development workshops will take place to consolidate what you learnt in the day. For just €850, your participation in the camp, as well as 6 nights accommodation and 3 meals per day at a 4-star hotel, will be covered.
Speaker C16:58
The hotel is right on the beach, allowing you to combine an incredible basketball experience along with your summer holiday. Head to our website and click the events tab to learn more. Coaches go completely free if they send 4 players or more to the camp.
Speaker C17:14
Now, back to the rest of the podcast.
George Vaz17:22
Yeah, I think that's the challenge as well, isn't it? Like, the fact that you had this success in this one— in one year, and you've managed to win state championship. It just shows how driven you were by using the CLA, but also like sometimes you have to maybe break the rules.
George Vaz17:37
But in order to break the rules, I think it's important to know the rules. Like, as you said, we want to call the sets on dead balls, on ref touches, but sometimes the busy schedule, the constraints that you had to deal with as a coach, you had to just step in there and maybe do what was best for your team at that time.
George Vaz17:54
And then, so let's talk about defense now. Let's switch over to the other side of the ball. What was your base defense like? Is there anything that you can share with us that you did to disrupt the other team?
Paul Cortes18:05
Yeah, I mean, this is all part of the fun of coaching is what your plan is at the start of the season in the offseason isn't necessarily the way that it works out. So we said in the offseason, we're going to be a pressing team.
Paul Cortes18:18
We have a lot of fast guys. Our center can run the floor like a gazelle and he can tomahawk dunk. And shoot 3s. And, you know, he's faster than every center we've had. And we have a bunch of guards who are dynamic. So we said, we're going to press, or we're really going to get up in teams.
Paul Cortes18:32
And we would play a box, Vance-Wahlberg press, where we're running and jumping and chasing and trapping out of a 2-2-1, and then falling back into man. And that's the way we wanted to play. But then we found— talk about constraint, coach, but we had a very hard schedule in the preseason.
Paul Cortes18:49
And I did that on purpose because our league, we felt like we were probably going to win our league and we would get 9 or 10 wins in our league, which did happen. So we wanted to challenge ourselves. And it'd be, we're a small D5 school and it's just hard to press when we're playing D1, D2 schools in the preseason, bigger, stronger, more athletic than we are.
Paul Cortes19:10
We started going more half-court man and we had a hard time guarding them in the half-court as well. So there was a debate between me and my assistants because one of my assistants has a 2-1-2 zone that he runs and he put that in and that became our most effective defense because a lot of teams haven't seen it.
Paul Cortes19:28
So he would argue that we need to make the, the 2-1-2 our main defense. And I would say, no, no, we need to keep working on our man-to-man. And we would go back and forth all season long. And the reality is we were both right.
Paul Cortes19:40
We wouldn't have won it all without that zone because it won us many games in NorCal and in state. But we also had to turn to man-to-man at key points in North Carolina State. And it was depending on the opponent, depending on the situation.
Paul Cortes19:54
And I think our adaptability is what really won us, that we could play different defenses all season long. And then really in the second half of the state championship, it was that box press that we put in in the offseason and that we went away from.
Paul Cortes20:08
And we went to it in the second half. And then I think we went on a 19-nothing run in the third quarter.
Paul Cortes20:13
We were down at halftime. That really won us the championship. So it just goes to show you that you have to have different weapons at your disposal throughout the season.
George Vaz20:21
And not only for the team success, but I also think to challenge the players, right?
Paul Cortes20:26
Yeah. Not only doing these different defenses, but learning how to go against them. And that made us a lot more effective is that we knew how to go against the man-to-man. We knew how to go against the zones. We knew how to go against the press.
Paul Cortes20:38
And as the season went along, our turnovers went down and they got lower and lower. And our assists went up and they got higher and higher. And a lot of that was due to our playing different defenses and learning how to go against different defenses.
George Vaz20:49
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's, it's like when you scout different teams, I think it's such a cool thing to, when you use the CLA, you can create the same game that you're using to practice both offense and defense. But let's say it's a 2-on-2, or let's just go 5-on-5 middle pick and roll.
George Vaz21:03
We call it a rub. The defense is in switch, right? Because that's how you play defense. But now if you're playing against a team that's in show, you can just switch up the defense. Or maybe the defense, the other team you're going against has the help defender go right into the middle of the paint to clog the paint.
George Vaz21:17
So then you can switch up how your team plays defense too, so the players can learn, but then also to prepare for the next team instead of doing intensive scouting. But yeah, before we move on, could you talk about how you spoke about your senior, who's obviously your best player?
George Vaz21:31
He had some amazing games I saw just from looking up on X, dropped 60 points one game.
George Vaz21:37
Amazing talent. So what did you do? You mentioned already off-ball screens, getting him off the ball, but what kind of things did you do to help him get more space to attack?
Paul Cortes21:47
Yeah, because every team, and one team was so kind to share their scouting report after we beat them in playoffs, and their first line in their scouting report was all 5 players guarding number 3. And that was Connor, our point guard. And it's sort of when you watch the Golden State Warriors and you watch Steph Curry and it's just, they're picking them up.
Paul Cortes22:06
Right at half court, or they're trying to get the ball out of his hands. They're trapping him and they're trying to get him frustrated and force our other players to beat them instead of him beating them, especially when the word got out that he scored 63 points in a game.
Paul Cortes22:18
So just tension got even more and more fierce. And what we found was last season when he was a junior, the same thing happened in our season-ending loss. They just hot trapped him every time he crossed half court. And we froze up and other guys were like unsure of themselves and they tried to be aggressive, but they didn't really know how.
Paul Cortes22:41
So we made it a mission this offseason that when inevitably teams were going to trap Connor, we needed everyone else to be ready to step up and to understand how to attack and where to attack when they trapped him. So that was something we worked on all offseason.
Paul Cortes22:57
We worked on all season long. And in the first game of postseason play, the other team was in a box and one, and we were ready for it and we just shredded it. And then in any time in the postseason, we're team trap, Connor, he would make the right pass and someone else would attack and then they would just make the right play.
Paul Cortes23:17
And I think we averaged over 65 points a game in the postseason. And that's with the heavy attention on him. And he still scored 25 points a game. Wow. He was still amazing. It was who was going to score the other 40 points that led up to the 65, and our other guys did that.
Paul Cortes23:33
And I remember I was really proud of them for that.
George Vaz23:35
And it's like you said at the beginning, that 4-on-3 advantage game you like to play, and that just shows that your favorite game— guy gets trapped, you're in a 4-on-3 in a game, and the players are making the right reads.
Paul Cortes23:47
Yeah, now we're playing 4-on-3.
George Vaz23:49
So we talked about the success, and it's been really cool just to talk basketball and a little bit of your triggers and things like that. But I want to talk a little bit now about the challenges you faced. Maybe you had some setbacks early on in the season.
George Vaz24:01
I don't know, like any of the challenges you faced applying the CLA, maybe challenges that you thought were more challenge, like were more personal challenges and then challenges that other people looked at you and questioned what you were doing.
Paul Cortes24:13
Yeah. I mean, the first thing is we were in a horrible shooting slump. To start the season. We had our center shot, I think, 37% from 3 last season. And he had an amazing offseason of AAU where he was knocking down 3 after 3 after 3.
Paul Cortes24:29
He was 4 of his first 44 from 3 on the season. As a team, I think we were shooting like 15% from 3. Even Connor, our best point guard, he was shooting something around like 18% from 3.
Paul Cortes24:42
So we just could not make a shot. And we would look at the film and a lot of the time we were getting good shots and we were just missing them. And that was frustrating. So it was hard to pinpoint exactly why that occurred.
Paul Cortes24:54
And correlation doesn't always equal causation. So we didn't really know. It was our first time of using differential shooting. And I think that maybe our players weren't used to it, or we had to kind of go back to some traditional shooting drills just to see the ball go in the hoop and just to get our confidence up a little bit more.
Paul Cortes25:14
And then like 10 minutes later, We would do the differential stuff, or we'd do 2-on-1 shooting, we'd add a defender. But we had to scale back a little bit and try to get some more shots up without defense, without the constantly changing constraints in order to get our confidence up.
Paul Cortes25:29
To me, that's the biggest constraints you could deal with, how to get your kids confident. So there was that. And then there was the fact the other team were, like I said, just trapping and double-teaming Connor. And it was just, it made our triggers less effective because he's a score-first player.
Paul Cortes25:42
And he would try to make the right play and pass the ball. And then our other guys were timid and then they weren't aggressive or they would miss the shot when he did pass it. And then he would be like, okay, now I got to put the team on my back and he would force it.
Paul Cortes25:55
So it just led to a lot of frustration with the gets and the ball screens early in the season. And we got away from that and started going to more of the off-ball stuff. About halfway through the season, he said, you know what, we want to get more ball reversals.
Paul Cortes26:07
We want to get Wides and flares, and then open up driving lanes, and then we're attacking. That's when our offense really exploded once we started doing that.
George Vaz26:16
Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing. Last question I want to ask you before I let you get out of here is the recommended resources. I know you mentioned earlier Brian McCormick, obviously the Transforming membership and the resources we have there, but is there any other resources you would recommend coaches to check out?
Paul Cortes26:34
Yeah, I've always been a big reader since I was young. So when I first got into coaching, it was just try to find every book I can get, learn as much as I possibly can. So I actually have a few books here with me that are probably 4 of my 5 most recommended ones.
Paul Cortes26:49
And one of them I don't have with me, but I already mentioned with Developing Basketball Intelligence. I lost that in a move, so I'm going to buy it again. I'm happy to support Brian, so we'll purchase that one.
Paul Cortes26:59
One of the first coaches I studied was John Wooden. So I have his book right here. This is the book of Lifetime and Reflections on and Off the Court. And Coach Wooden was really about character and just being a good role model and having integrity.
Paul Cortes27:12
And that's something I've always tried to carry with all of my players that I've coached. And then the next one is Inside Out Coaching by Joe Ehrman. And he was a professional NFL football player who really talked about— he became disillusioned when he was a player by transactional coaches and coaches that he felt like were using him and didn't really care about him.
Paul Cortes27:34
And he juxtaposed that with transformational coaches, how you can build relationships with your players and transform players rather than trying to get something from them. And I think it's so fitting that this platform is called Transforming Basketball. I mean, it has to do with the transformational side of doing things.
Paul Cortes27:52
It's not just transforming the game, but it's transforming people. And that was a big part of it. The 3rd book I have is The Coach's Guide to Teaching by Doug Lemov. And he's primarily an education guy. He wrote Teach Like a Champion, which is one of the best education books out there about how to teach in a classroom.
Paul Cortes28:10
And this book he applied to coaching. And I just think there's so much in there that you can learn. And he talks about using the constraints-led approach in this book and using questioning instead of telling players what to do, asking them questions and how to effectively break things down for the players.
Paul Cortes28:26
And then the last one that I have is one you guys all know, and that's Transforming Basketball. And I think what's really cool about it is I've read so much and I've watched so many DVDs and gone through so many clinics, but it just kind of put it all together, put it all in one place of how you can use the CLA.
Paul Cortes28:43
I mean, the reason behind everything and then the methodology behind it. All in one book and all in one website. So I just think it's phenomenal what you guys do. And it's not only changed our program, but it's going to change a lot of programs in basketball.
George Vaz28:56
Yeah, for sure. I think you said it there, the importance of, like, regardless you guys won state, if you didn't win it, and going forward in the future, I think what stays is the relationships you build with the people, the players, the staff, the people around you.
George Vaz29:10
And I think that's X's and O's. We talked about the triggers, the defense. But I think something that really stays and something that you alluded to a little bit in each of those books is the transformational coaching and the relationships we build. Paul, thank you so much.
George Vaz29:24
Thank you for your curiosity and being a little bit vulnerable and letting people into what it was like this season applying the CLA. Transformative tip for you.
Paul Cortes29:33
If you could leave coaches with one piece of advice to transform their learning environment or something that they can apply in their next session, There's a phrase that right before the state championship, a reporter who was covering the game called me up and he said, what is your philosophy?
Paul Cortes29:49
And I never thought about it this way, but it's just a phrase popped in my mind. They asked that question and then I said it and I said, hey, this is actually what I'm all about and what I believe in. And first you got to teach them and then you got to trust them.
Paul Cortes30:03
You have to teach your players and you have to give them the tools to trust you. that they need to be successful. But then once you do give them those tools, you have to trust them out there. And I think anyone who's watched me coach sees that I'm not trying to overly control my players during a game.
Paul Cortes30:18
If it's not going well, I'll call a timeout and I'll tell them what I see and I'll try to pick my moment. But it's really them that's going to win us the game. And even I talked about us pressing in the second half.
Paul Cortes30:29
It was one of my players who said, Coach, I think we should be box, press them right now. And I said, okay, let's do it. And we did it and it worked. And if it didn't work, then we would have tried something else.
Paul Cortes30:39
We tried our best all season long to teach them and we really trusted them and they trusted us and they trusted each other. And that's really what it's all about. It's just trust. And when you do that, guys will run through a brick wall for each other.
Paul Cortes30:52
And that's what I feel made this season so special.
George Vaz30:55
Great stuff. Paul, thank you so much.
Paul Cortes30:57
Thank you for having me.
Podcast outro31:04
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Transforming Basketball Podcast. If you'd like to learn more about the work that we do, head to transformingbball.com to access our free resources and spread these ideas throughout the basketball world. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform.
Podcast outro31:24
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