How Basketball Coaches Can Implement Clear Principles of Play with Zico Coronel

This is the Transforming Basketball Podcast hosted by Alex Sarama. This is the podcast helping coaches and practitioners change the way we think about basketball performance. Our goal is to provide the ultimate resource for making sense of applying contemporary skill acquisition ideas within basketball.

Within this podcast, Alex and his guests unpack how an ecological dynamics framework Impacts our perspective of the game. If you're ready to join us in our quest to transform the basketball world, this is the podcast for you.

Welcome back to the Transforming Basketball Podcast. I'm joined today by 2 individuals who I think have had a huge influence on me, and this is why I wanted to do the podcast, to get them both at the same time on the podcast and just talk through some really interesting ideas.

And kind of look at how principles of play can really be enhanced and aligned with an ecological approach to skill acquisition. So with that said, it's great to have Zico Coronel and Adam Omiecinski on the show. Welcome, guys.

Thank you very much for having us.

Same. Thanks, Alex.

So, Zico, first question I want to fire over to you, man, and you've had a huge influence on me just looking at conceptual offense coverage solutions. And a bunch of other things. And this was a— we've had some really good text conversations over the last few weeks, and one of those we were speaking about when players forget principles of play and, you know, how we can go about practice approaches where we can help ensure that doesn't happen on a consistent basis when it comes to the game.

So could you just talk through kind of what you actually consider a principle of play when it comes to something such as a coverage solution? Because still, for a lot of coaches, I think just starting like with a super basic level, what is it we're actually going to be talking about today?

You probably classify them into principles of play more than I would. I wouldn't probably label it as that, but if you talk about a coverage solution, that would be my term that I would use to kind of encapsulate that package of principles of play, if you like.

So for me, there's knowing spacings. This is very important that it comes first. And then from this knowing spacings, there are very specific solutions to various coverages we may see. When we're talking about this, typically pick and roll, though it can also apply, and there's a lot of positive transfer between pick and roll coverage solutions and say a pin-down screen.

So against show, we would have this option and this option. Against drops, we would have these options, I guess, fitting in the principle of play family.

Awesome. Adam, could you just cover what, you know, when we're looking at principles of play, obviously Zico has kind of introduced the topic for us. Could you just build on that maybe and talk about from an ecological perspective, maybe how it differs to like a game model?

Within the basketball world?

I guess I honestly, like, even just hearing Zico talk about that, I like, I don't even see the game in those terms really anymore. Like, sure, yes, it helps to categorize and that way we can have a language to communicate in it, like pick and roll and versus like a pin down.

Or when you're talking about principles of play, I'm just thinking like, how do we create an advantage period? Like, that's essentially what we're trying to do within the pin down because again, like the only rules are the rules that are laid out in the FIBA rulebook or the high school rulebook or whatever.

And all we're just trying to do is disorganize the defense so we can create a spatial advantage for the offense and vice versa for the defense. So I don't even know if I answered your question there, but that's more or less just how I see it is like, I just see everything in terms of principles of play.

Is there a spatial advantage or is there some sort of advantage that threatens the defense where I can get off a shot? And vice versa for the defense and the offense.

So I think, no, I get it. I think the challenge here is how we look at coverage solutions from a sense where it's kind of a framework and it's really clear to players as to maybe what we're looking to do to create an advantage within a team's principles of play.

And this is how I view them, where they're principles, but maybe they're not absolute things, which maybe absolutely must happen every single time, because there's, like you said, Zico, there are some options, and it's not a case of— this is just how I'm viewing it— one thing that we're consistently looking to do every time, or an A or B type approach.

But then the challenge we have, Zico, is obviously players, especially at a pro level, when they're maybe new to this and forgetting certain coverage solutions. So how do you go about that, Zico? Just looking at something like a pick and roll, there are so many different options.

I guess the challenge is how can we ensure there's freedom where players are maybe aware of some of these different things that they could do to create an advantage versus maybe limiting them to just one or two highly specific things, if that makes sense?

I mean, there's obviously this— I guess in terms of, I would teach the spacing first, and then most likely we would start with shakes as our platform. So For me, shakes is corner, corner, field, high 45, and like an outside third pick and roll coming to the middle.

I think most people call this shakes. And then this would be our platform. And then we would start with a coverage, one aggressive coverage or one conservative coverage. And this may be very tied to what our predominant defense is going to be as to what we would start with.

with, but most likely it's either going to be against show or drops. And then let's say we started by teaching show, then we would teach our coverage solutions and the shake spacing versus show. And for me, there's 2 basic ones. There's what I call, along with Ross and some others now, messy pass.

And this is a pass to the 2-high, still in shakes. This is a head pass. Middle pick and roll. It's a backwards pass, but it's still to the two high, and this is to isolate the single side tag. So there's the messy pass, and then the messy receiver who should attack the catch.

They have a progression that I would kind of feel like I borrowed a little bit from maybe how quarterback learns in terms of. So the first look is at the what is now this. the strong side corner as the ball shifted sides of the floor.

Has that person got out of their help yet? A lot of times they were the initial low man or last man, however you classify it, and as the ball changes sides of the floor, they are late or lazy or out of stance or for whatever reason, and you can just quick swing it to the corner for catch and shoot or a closeout to attack.

Second look is at the backside corner defender. If they're in, which quite often they are because tend to be help-oriented, then you have skip. And if they are out, then you have high-low. So that— and I would consider that and shakes to be the 1A pass.

And then the 1B pass, not quite as much a priority, is the short roll pass. And if we throw short roll, I like cut and slide. But obviously a lot of teams can have success with those 2 people holding as well. And the 2 paired together, if they try to deny the Messi pass and you throw the short roll, then the person who is marking the corner normally is the last man, so they have to pick up the big catching on the short roll.

And then the person cutting off the corner, that's generally the 45 defender's responsibility to crack down or cut off that cut. If they've extended to deny the Messi pass, there's no way they're going to get down on the cut and slide. That's just too much distance for them to cover.

So The passer kind of has their priority 1, your priority 1B if you like. It's not— I mean, you could say it's 2, but that maybe gives it too much feeling of differentiation of importance. And then the 2 fit together for whichever way they play it.

And then we would play very similar principles against the show on middle pick and roll, but now I consider the 2 passes to be completely equivalent. And so on and so on. So it gets easier in the learning process for the players once they learn the first spacing, and they get that, the second spacing, there's lots of positive transfer, and so on and so on.

And then we would go through that process for the next coverage, and so on and so on, until hopefully, ideally, by the time you get to the first game. But you obviously will be still growing it as the season progresses. We know every conceivable coverage that we could see.

In great, great detail and can just dice the opposition up no matter what they do.

Great insights there, Zico. So thanks for sharing that. And a lot of those ideas, just in terms of punishing certain coverages, we use at College Prep. Adam, could you just speak maybe about the lens through which you view coverage solutions through an ecological perspective?

Maybe what would, like, what would be exactly the same? And maybe is there anything that would differ, I guess, like really trying to get players extremely focused on, I guess, this idea of like the quarterback analogy that Zico used in terms of knowing, I guess, what to look for.

I don't know how much I really would differ. Maybe I wouldn't. It's super tricky because again, we're not sitting in a practice here going through this and watching Zico actually do it. It's just, you make that messy pass during a shake pick and roll.

Obviously the first look is I want that person to be a threat. And so you're going to fixate your gaze. Towards the rim in some fashion, hopefully in a wide enough gaze where they actually pick up that information. So I don't even see it necessarily as sequential as like 1, 2.

And the way Zico described it as he talked, I'm like, okay, he's not saying it's easy. He was clearly saying it's not sequential. It's just like logically, like this may be open based off the pick and roll. It's just fixating your gaze and what is most advantageous position right now.

Where's the, where's the defense leaning and whatnot like that. So. As long as we were describing that, and like I said, I think at prep and stuff, I don't even know, certainly if I was in charge, I wouldn't even tell them like exactly what to do.

You would just constrain them to a specific, all right, this is the spacing we're going to start with. This is the defense of coverage on the pick and roll. We're going to play out of it. And based off what they do, then we're going to start manipulating constraints again, maybe to encourage that messy pass.

And then off that messy pass. How are they behaving there? So it's just constantly just tweaking the environment from an ecological aspect. Again, it comes back to that principle of play, just constantly hunting for advantages. I don't even know how useful that was, but—

No, it was, I was just wondering if you'd like speak about how even with a messy pass, different affordances like Zico mentioned will present themselves. Like, is it going to be the relay into the slip? Would it be the skip back to the single side, the swing swing?

And I think it's just really interesting for me because now I'm thinking about just all these things and coverage solutions more about through the lens of like an affordance and just how players are still going to be acting on some of these affordances in a different manner.

And I think this is the key thing, which I think is very difficult because it's like, and this is a question for you, Zeke, I want to phrase this clearly. If we know there's a messy past that we really have as a very kind of I'd say predominant principle of play that we know is going to punish an aggressive coverage.

How could we maybe still attune players to affordances to do things such as a reject, or maybe do something else such as we spoke about an example, maybe the single side defender is really overhelping and a throwback could easily start dominoes. So I guess it's like this delicate balance, right, where we really want them to look for the messy, but at the same time, maybe we don't want them to miss out on other obvious affordances if they exist.

That's it. And that's a tough continuum, right?

And the reject, almost without fail, that's been emphasized in every pick and roll. So they should be looking to reject. If they don't get a reject, then becomes a great setup. This is not always true because sometimes there's like a tactical setup to the pick and roll as opposed to a technical setup.

So for example, if you played wing to middle pick and roll, And you caught the ball in the middle and your defender had pinched down to help on the initial wing pick and roll, then that tactically has set up your middle pick and roll.

So if you go into a reject now, you're actually buying time for them to reattach and to defend. So you would just catch and rip unless some reason the timing was out, and then you'd have to gear up again and reject to get your setup.

So it's not every single time, but it's close to it. Setups, setups, setups. And the players will be hearing this frequently in everything that we do. Hopefully when they're by themselves over summer preparing, they're hearing your voice telling them, good setup, P, good setup, setups, setups.

And they start to self-teach, if you like, how to find the other things. I mean, a lot of times you're inheriting players that already have some ideas about what they want to do. And if they're very attuned to the same idea as you, then you maybe can more early start finding the other affordances.

However, if they're not attuned to how you want it done for the team very much at all, then you maybe have to be more stern.

Cool.

To get them to see the new option. Like, I had a player for 2 years who had come from a Serbian coach, very good coach who was really adamant about making the kickback pass against show and shake pick and roll. And so this was a very, very rigid habit that he had.

And because we wanted him to pass it the complete opposite way, Yeah. we are fighting all that prior learning. So we had to go really hard with trying to get him to make the messy pass just so he would do it and then see it be successful.

Whereas a player that was maybe more of a blank template, you weren't fighting that prior ingrained opposite habit. And of course there is more things like, and explaining it with a Messi and a short roll is kind of main things. But I mean, one of the players I've had for the last 2 years, 6'6 point guard, in reality he's making what I would call the maestro pass where he's making the direct pass to the roller.

Mm-hmm.

This is probably his most predominant pass. This is a pass that's much more available to him because he's 6'6 and very long and great vision and very good at defense with his eyes to open the pass he wants. Versus say the 6'1 Japanese point guard that we had with limited length, who trying to make a direct pass with the show directly to the roller or even to the short roller was very difficult for him.

Making the pass around the perimeter and just letting the, typically the foreman, make the next pass and play the 4-on-3 advantage was the best for his body type and skillset and so on.

Such a good practical example. I think, Adam, could you just speak to that? Because I think there's so much within that that we can connect to within like a constraint-led approach.

Well, I think that was like, now I actually feel comfortable within the podcast, to be honest with you, just because when we were first starting out there, it seemed very like rigid as far as, oh, we're starting out with shakes and let's just get to the messy pass.

And it's just like, well, there's endless opportunities here and it's always, it's going to be contextually sensitive. It's going to be individually sensitive. It's going to depend on the time of the game and what's available there. It's just, it's nice to just start out there.

And like how you were asking Zico about like making sure they're still attuning to certain things. It's, I think it, the delicate balance, there is no perfect template, because again, it's going to be each individual, but I think it is like giving them like doses of whatever they need.

It's going to be different for each person. So you have to watch the behavior and what they're doing and obviously just poke and prod them to nudge them towards more adaptable behaviors. But it's really starting out and then just emphasizing different things throughout the season based on who you're dealing with.

One player may need to hit the Maestro and need that exposure. Other may need a Messi, may need a Bingo. It's just You just have to constantly just poke and prod and just see what happens.

So on this note, something, Zico, you've spoken about is not surprising your teammates. And, you know, I think there's some different contexts that could be applied to, but just staying on this kind of topic of coverage solutions, I guess this is something I've been really learning about where less is more.

And I think a lot of coaches try and pack so much in, especially so early in the season. Whereas just having, maybe we're really emphasizing rejects, messy passes, and that's the pass ahead or behind if it's a middle pick and roll. And then the maestro pass, I think that's the pass to the roller.

That's what you call it, right, Zico? The maestro pass?

I would call like maestro roller, but you could like maestro skip, like basically any, basically direct pass from the ball handler to the, where they're basically making the assist pass as opposed to like Say like 2 quick passes beats the show. No, they're keeping it and they're making the one pass to beat the show.

Yeah, totally. So I think what's interesting about that is like those affordances would only maybe present themselves if the picket could create an advantage with a great angle of the pick and obviously getting underneath if they're switching in at speed to create dominoes and to create an advantage.

So a lot of these things are kind of They're nested and all occurring at the same time. But could you just speak, Zico, about practically how you go about starting the season where players can be more comfortable kind of knowing what these principles are, but without really overloading your players and putting in loads of coverage solutions where players might not know, you know, what is happening next and something surprising could be happening.

So for instance, just an example, maybe you're really emphasizing these messes and a player starts randomly ghost screening or flipping every pick. So maybe you could speak about that a little bit.

Before the season even started, I've used— I have a template and it has all the spacings that I intend us to play, and then it has all the different coverages, and then prevent and punish. And then it basically has like each spacing and coverage, how are we going to prevent that coverage?

And how we're going to punish that coverage. And this is, you know, single-side, 2-page document and very comprehensive and color-coded and pretty. And so that makes it very clear in my mind. And if there's any assistant coaches, this is the whole picture. This piece of paper doesn't go to the players.

And then from there, you may have already made some choices about which solutions are going to be part of our package and which ones are not. And this may be also related to your perception of the roster, your perception of the opponents that you're likely to see, the time that's available to you.

If you're going to have like a lot of time, then you might put a more comprehensive package because you're going to have time to teach more ways to do it. But if you have a short period of time, then maybe this team just needs one or two ways that they're extremely competent at.

And there's not going to be time for them to become extremely competent at 5 ways. And so then from there, then I would think about like, what's the most important spacing? And fake, I think, is a good platform for learning. It's probably a little easier too, partly because if you're playing against aggressive coverage, then the pass going ahead, I think, is— then the pass is going— there's parts that are easier.

It's easier because you're seeing it, and biomechanically it's probably easier.

Yeah.

But it's a little harder sometimes because you have to throw past the show as opposed to backwards where there's not so much pressure. So different player might think different one is harder. And then I like to show normally in preseason with my own defense to get the bigs working.

And it's easier to tone back to a more conservative coverage if you need to later than it is if you start with drop and then turns out later in the season you need to show.

Yeah.

And your bigs have been chilling all season and they're fat and slow and lazy, and now you ask them to show, they probably can't do it, and you probably are not attuned to rotating. So most likely we're going to probably learn to play against show first, just because we're also going to be building our habits as we learn our coverage solutions against show.

We're also learning how to— and shake. We're also learning how to defend shake and the rotations that need to be made. And then obviously the players are going to have things that they know. And so things like reject, call, this is very important in the building.

And we've probably done some like just 2-on-2 pick and roll tournaments to emphasize like the setups, the back pockets, the angles, sprinting into screens, all your like real ball handler and screener fundamentals. And why I say tournament, it's not always going to be true like this, but where you're trying to work on all your different pairings.

So here's your pick and roll ball handlers that you anticipate using during the season. And here's the predominant screeners. They need to build a relationship between them. So you might play like a short segment, whatever, to 5 points or whatever, quick with ball handler A, screener A, and then the next segment, okay, now A's with B and then A's with C.

So they might play 3 games and they're building those different relationships. And of course, then also playing against different pairings where they're building their defensive relationship. And this, I think, is important to play it as well because they probably can't articulate everything because a lot of it will be autonomous.

And so they won't necessarily know, but if they play against each other, they will start to learn like, ah, this guy likes to pass a lob pass. This this guy likes this angle, or this is the timing and the cadence that works. But they're not always able to articulate that because they're so far beyond the time where they maybe even understood it in that kind of way.

It's now just part of their habits, and they have to learn each other's and build that timing relationship. And then there would be priority within the coverage solutions. So like, say The reject and the setup. Maybe we talk about the bingo where you beat the defender between him and the screen before you use the screen, which is great against show because the big's out of position.

It doesn't really work against drops or any kind of conservative coverage, but this may not be a priority in teaching it. But if the player already knows it and does it, and you know that this is on your grand scheme, then you can One, maybe like, oh, it's a great bingo.

We call that a bingo, maybe because that player knows it, the other guys don't. But you're also trying to teach your language so that we're all using the same words and everyone's on the same page for it. But you're kind of planning throughout the season when might be the time to add the extra things.

And then obviously that whole package may not be available to all Players like we had a center who was quite limited in his ball skills. So if we were encountering ice or push coverage, then with him, gas— so the point guard or the ball handler goes hard in the direction that they want to ice him, to hope the ex-ball handler kind of overruns it.

He slams on the brake, they overrun it, and the big needs to be arriving right at that time. And now you have the middle. Well, gas break pick and roll is very good for this player because he's not the best at catching and handling and making passes.

So he's not going to get the ball here. He's just playing as a screener. So this is the solution for him. But we have another big who's like a very good ball player. So then we may go gas break throw and go with him.

So some players and partnerships would have different constraints because you might say, when you work with this player, we do not do gas break throw and go. That's not—

Yeah.

one you do with him. This is obviously talking professional basketball where these players are quite advanced in their development, and also the priority on winning and winning immediately is very high. If you had younger players, then I think there would be less chance, but not always, that you would say don't do this with player A because he's not good at it.

You may lean more towards giving that person the opportunity to build it. But not always. Sometimes, like, this might be step 7 and this player's still at step 2. And though you maybe hopefully get them to where they could play as the throw-and-go player and making all the decisions, but for now that's 5 steps ahead in the curriculum and they need to show maybe step 3, step 4 competency and slowly build it.

Sometimes a player that everyone wants to make them a pick-and-roll But they really struggle with their closeout decisions and they struggle with their domino decisions. So we probably wouldn't make this person a pick and roll player at this point because they still need to work out how to read a closeout, make the right decision.

And if they get closed out hard and then they beat that person off the dribble and now they're attacking in a domino situation, can they make the right decisions about when to finish or which pass to make? They need to be spending their time learning this and building mastery with these things, they start showing competence here.

Okay, now maybe we'll give you a second side trigger. And they— it's second side because the defense is a little scrambled, so it's a little easier for them. And they show competence there. Okay, now we maybe give you a primary pick and roll.

But this might take multiple seasons to build that progression too, especially if we're talking about elite level, like To show mastery at an elite level, it's not so easy. So it might take them 2/3 of a season just to get mastery of dominoes decisions against all the length and the rotations and difficulty that they may encounter at a high level.

So this may take 2, 3, 4 years, and some players may never get there and still are a great, great player. There's many guys in the NBA making $26, $35 million who are not pick and roll players, but they're great dominoes players and they play good defense.

Zico, there's loads of good stuff in there. I want to come back to how you finished talking about target players. But before that, Adam, is there anything within that that you would really like to build on that stands out? I thought it could be interesting to maybe talk about some constraint ideas for the 2-on-2 Zico spoke about.

But I obviously, I loved a lot about that. And I think just the idea of like different relationships, players playing with different people and anticipating what things they can do, whereas, you Compared to maybe what another pick and roll partner can't do. But maybe you could speak about that a little bit, Adam.

Well, I just like the fact that he's identifying early on, like, you want to spend time with these pick and roll partners. You know these guys are going to interact with each other. So yeah, they need to spend time playing with one another.

And then again, you're not going to— it's not a language thing of understanding them. It's a behavioral thing. It's attuning to what What kind of actions they're capable of and what they're comfortable with. And you're only going to get that through exposures and exposures and exposures in different variable circumstances against, like you said, different defenders and things of that nature.

And again, like, I think it was beautiful how we talked about simply constraining for a simple period of time. If something's too complex, then no, we're not going to touch that. You may get that again at different levels. Again, you don't want to overwhelm the individual.

Like, there's no sense in doing that. If you're like, there's no need to throw them in the deep end when there's a shallow end right there. So let them work in the shallow end and slowly get comfortable being exposed to the deeper end and more complex, more complex situations.

Again, this comes back to just simply learning itself. If you're failing every single time, there's nothing to learn because you're not understanding what success actually is. So once they actually start to experience success and it becomes to the point where it's, oh, I only achieve success, that's the marker where we need to increase the complexity and they need to encounter more difficult situations that they're not used to.

And that again will spark learning. And that's really what we're trying to do is get them to continuously become more adaptable in their situations.

Yeah.

I think going back, Zico, to how you finished that point you made a moment ago, I think there are 2 maybe misconceptions with, I guess, more of a conceptual offense approach or principles of play approach where there's not just kind of one pattern you are repeating in a very kind of regimented manner.

I think the first misconception is that you're not using sets. I think sets are a very valuable tool still within this framework, but I think we're using them maybe in a different way. But the second one you alluded to at the end, where it's not a free-for-all with anyone doing anything and every player being able to trigger, you know, maybe at the youth basketball, that could be a possibility.

But especially at the pro level, I think it's so important because when, like you said, if players are in possessions and they're not attuned to creating advantages out of coverage solutions, it's not a recipe for success. So could you just explain how you would introduce— I think you call it target players— how you would introduce that concept to a team?

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I mean, this is one that people debate, but when I've been a head coach, I've found the most success with just being like very upfront and not trying to sugarcoat it. Like, these are our target players, these are our whatever role players, non-targets.

You've probably had these discussions with them in constructing the team, so they signed the contract knowing how you envisaged their role would be. So they shouldn't be surprised they're not a target player, or they, they are, whatever. Most people probably want to be a target player.

So if you don't envisage them to be that, then you probably need to let them know that you envisage them as being someone who's a dominoes player. They, you know, use advantages that have been created by others and how that can be a great success for them.

And if they buy in, I mean, one player I had You know, he led the league 3-point percentage at 49% for the season and finished second in Defensive Player of the Year voting to one of our other players. And everyone said he had a great season, and he did.

But this was partly because he completely embraced, like, I'm not a target player, but I'm going to be an amazing 3-and-D wing. And this led to a great season for him. So, and some players want that. Like, they don't want the responsibility. It's kind of Cool Runnings, you know, the guy who was always the pushcart driver, but he's pretty ill-disciplined and he wants to be the driver.

And then they explain all the things that the driver has to do at Olympic bobsledding level and all the study and everything. And very quickly he's like, Therese is the driver. Like, I don't want to do all that. There's a lot of responsibility to be the target player on a high-level team.

Like, you have to know so much, you have to be able to do so much. And a lot of possessions are going to come down to you creating the advantage correctly and then putting the ball in the right place to exploit that advantage.

And this person has to be very prepared. If they have a bad game, then a lot is going to fall. Sets— so something that I learned with Dan Shamir and Modi Mayo, both extremely knowledgeable, great coaches, they very much had their play package.

You know, where they had in mind like, this is a shake pick and roll set, this is a middle pick and roll set, this is a catch and shoot, so on and so on. And then building on that, and that template that I talked about earlier would all be that, like, here's all our sets if we want shake pick and roll, bang.

Here's all our sets if we want middle pick and roll. Here's all the sets that we call if we want to punish the switch. Here's all the sets that we call if we want to prevent The show. And then do we want to pick and roll point guard set?

Here they all are, bang. So it's all linking up so that you've got it all organized. You can just already look, okay, we need to prevent the show set, shape pick and roll for point guard, bang. We either calling side 2 or up 4, bang, or whatever it may be.

And preseason and our individual workouts, which it might be skill work, it might be You know, limited games like the 2-on-2 tournament, and the team practices tends to be more 5-on-5. The teaching of the overall concept, we're first building the spacings and the coverage solutions.

And then, so for my '21 team, we spoke about— it wasn't until practice 21 that we put in our first set. And we put in this relatively complex set that I stole from And then very first position leads to middle pick and roll, and we're in show because we're practicing this in preseason, and we make the short roll, we get the cut and slide dime layup.

Not so great for our defense, but very, very good offensive set, especially given this is the first live rep they have of playing at 5-on-5. And why did they kind of fall into it being so good? Because they already were very proficient of 20 practices, and we're talking team practices, so maybe 40 practices when you take in all the individual work and all the other surrounding learning like video and so on and so on.

They really knew how to play middle pick and roll by that point. And they knew, show, we've got short roll, cut and slide. So all now with the set, they're just learning the pattern that leads to middle pick and roll. Bang, they get to the killer pick and roll.

And then it just falls naturally into the coverage solution. And I think one of the things is finding the balance, which is probably relevant because I said like learning the pattern is a lot of these sets. Like there's the kind of like the killer pick and roll, and then there's the buildup.

Hmm.

And one thing I've been thinking about is we've had these discussions. One of the things I think is easy to underestimate is how much even high-level players struggle with remembering the pattern. So Sometimes against a high-level defense especially, you're not necessarily going to shatter the ice on the first punch.

And by ice, I mean like literal ice, not the coverage.

Mm-hmm.

And so the first punch that is the ice— I'm sorry, cracks the ice. And it might be the second punch or even sometimes the third punch that shatters the ice. And so there may be affordances on the initial Part of the play that they have to learn how to find the balance of like, that's an affordance that leads to termination because it's gold.

That's, that's a layout. It's a great domino situation. This is an open catch-and-shoot 3 for a great player. It's something that exceeds the shot threshold, whatever you've deemed it to be for this group. Versus like, yes, that's an affordance. It's not gold. And we're not going to kind of break the set.

Or the pattern yet to go take that, but it's not a productive enough pathway. However, what it is, the cracking of the ice. And we know that if we continue with the pattern by design, that crack is going to leave them weak to deal with the second part or the third part of the pattern.

And when we get to that part, it's going to completely shatter the ice, and then we will have total gold. So that takes a little bit of learning, and some of this is experiential for the players to learn when the affordance is good enough that the set's over, and when the affordance is there but you don't have to take every affordance and you decline it because you have trust in your system and your design that there's going to be a better affordance 4 or 5 seconds later.

Um, and so that's an important part of the sets. And so that would be one. Obviously, we've discussed about implementation and things like that, where sometimes players finding the balance of taking affordances, and they do it— normally it's a young player, they do it, and everyone's like, not really trying to do this right now.

So you dribble off the first screen and go downhill, make the layup. We want you to definitely have that in mind. And so when they do this, you kind of have to Praise it because you're like, yes, we want you to be aggressive on that action and you had that downhill lapse, which is great.

However, we're doing this just to make sure that everyone knows the sequential pattern, uh, so that we, we can get to the end. Because some players, they're maybe not very good with sets, so someone says it's not a smart player, but they're very smart about understanding that if they jack it early in the set, no one will ever find out that they didn't know the rest of the play.

So, you know, you have to sometimes like, guys, we're running this to completion because we're gonna need that 1, 2, 3 design punches that all connect with each other to beat this defense that's very high level, that we're not expecting to get golden affordances just off the first part.

Like, they're too good to break like that all the time. Gonna need to build it up. And, you know, so you get ones where, say, We played against Sean Dennis, is a very good coach in Japan, and they had the set that we decided may as well be called Horns Unstoppable.

They called it this chess, but our guys made it look like the best player of all time. But it's very, very hard because even though we had scouted it extensively about like the corner shooter, he's clearing from the strong side to the weak side.

It looks innocuous. Don't be fooled. You have to stay engaged with here, stay attached. Like this is the key guy they're running this for, so don't help. There's this part we basically got this part correct, but then they would put the 5-man in a step-up screen and have a very good point guard coming downhill, pop that 5-man throwback to him, and then go into like a mash action on the other side for that original shooter coming out.

It's very, very difficult for the 5-man to do every job that that set requires him to do, and this is what the Challenging. And so their point guard would need to learn, like, as you come off that initial step up, like, if you can get past the X5 downhill and make a play on the rim, this is a great affordance that you should take.

But they're not really trying to run this play for him to come down and take like a pull-up jump shot. Like, if you have the big— has helped enough, that's prevented your downhill, throw it back to your 5-man and let's let the rest of this play out because we've got some great things coming.

So hopefully that kind of shows the connection between the sets, the spacings, then the coverage solutions, then the dominoes, but also how maybe we would view like affordances you should take and affordances you should decline because we trust there's better ones to come and why you might need it because good defenses don't just give you one screen or one trigger and it all breaks down.

Exactly. Adam, I don't know about you, but what Zico just alluded to, that's kind of exactly how I see sets through an ecological lens. And I think the biggest problem I have, guys, is how a lot of teams maybe— and obviously this, this isn't like the highest levels, but just from even good level European professional basketball— the problem is it's the sets are not being run to shatter the ICECO.

And I think it's because the players aren't even threatening maybe any part of They're not threatening those early kind of triggers within the set enough to shatter the ice because they're running it to literally just get to the end of the set. I think you see this a lot in NCAA basketball too.

I think that's what it's notorious for. And then you don't get that cascading effect which good execution creates and that separation that a good set would have. And that's probably the biggest issue I have with how a lot of set-based coaches are approaching it right now.

Do you agree on that, Adam? I saw you shaking your head.

Yeah, I think, and it's something I just kept thinking about, is like the implementation is like the biggest part. I mean, we talked about that in like the very first podcast, like with your conceptual offense, that's everything. Because again, like Zico stated with that pick and roll, when you're running the set, that initial one where you're just cracking the ice, it has to be a threat.

So if he actually can get downhill and scores it, you have to praise it. And if that keeps happening, And your defense really isn't shaping up, then you have to constrain your offense in order to prepare them and get them exposure to those other affordances down the line that will likely— that's what they're going to encounter during the games, or at least sometimes they're going to encounter them unless you got some dope ball handler and a great screener every single time.

That's simply what's going to happen. So again, it's, it's not necessarily saying, hey, don't do that. It's just for this time period, no, you're not going to do that because we want to explore this other area. I'm not saying don't do that in the game.

You wouldn't do that for like an entire practice, but you would just do it for certain segments. That way they actually get exposure to it. And the key being that, yes, you have to maintain that threat. And that is the issue that I always have with like complicated set pieces is that they, it becomes the tail wagging the dog more, more than the other way around where they're just trying to get to the end of the set as opposed to what is the set's intention to begin with.

And you're— that threat of that initial crack has to be there. Otherwise it's not, it's not gonna do anything anyways. It's not really a crack. So then you're just literally just doing it to do it.

That's exactly it. That's where it's within a conceptual offense. I mean, we ran sets last year, obviously at the right time, but it's like they're very effective. And I think it's— people can't just think it's an oversimplification of, you know, we're just gonna run simple triggers and actions like the whole game.

'Cause again, it's, you know, good defensive teams. It's not going to create dominoes consistently, most likely. Implementation. And we've spoken a little bit about it, but something I think we'd all really align on is if we are, you know, let's say we're doing a set and maybe it's a low stress practice day, especially at the pro level, obviously we've got to be, we've got load management concerns.

And I did a thread where I was speaking about, as opposed to, you know, avoiding, as opposed to doing 5-on-0, just adding 3 defenders.

Yeah.

And Zico, I think you raised a great point about how if doing that, it has to be very intentional with who those defenders are guarding. And we completely agree on that, because obviously if you're just having 3 defenders randomly running around within a set, it's going to make no sense.

And that would not be kind of purposeful manipulation of constraints in my perspective. So could you just talk to that, Zico, and how, you know, if we are looking to maybe just practice a bit more variably or tune players to different parts of a set, we've got to be very careful with how we're constraining the environment to make sure it actually leads to positive transfer versus negative.

I think, like, so we've obviously talked about, say, like, this is a shake pick and roll set. So if I was to add defense to our 5-on-0, which sometimes, like, we would literally do 5-on-0, but If we're going to add defense, then the killer pick and roll is going to be that shake pick and roll.

So the most important to the defender of the ball handler and the screener in that pick and roll, the most important defender is the screener's defender, because everyone's going to be looking at him to determine, is this an aggressive coverage in which I need to generally offer shorter passes for the ball handler, or is this a conservative coverage where we anticipate the ball handler is going to be able to get downhill, in which case I need to be creating space.

For him, everyone's reading X5, generally X5. And so putting this defender on, whether this is player, coach— normally coach if it's a pro situation and you're trying to manage load, but also because you can control their variability more with the pre-practice meeting. And this is what I want you guys to do, as opposed to burdening the players with an extra thing.

And then if we're in a situation where this is a very heavy schedule, And this is probably appearing for a specific opponent. So if this opponent plays, say they play drops, sometimes they switch, or they show— those are the 3 coverages that our research has shown and we anticipate seeing— then those 2 defenders may be showing those 3 coverages, and then the players need to be responding appropriately to those things.

So the 3rd defender may come in I guess if you were thinking like there's a predominant help defender that they need to be reading, and you would need to align that defender with the person who's going to end up in that place. This sometimes takes a little bit of understanding of your set because, you know, where everyone might be swirling around to get to the key pick and roll.

So that assistant coach needs to be either very good—

Yeah.

Or really, they should be able to do this. It shouldn't be considered to be very good. They understand a playbook and they know Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. But you may need to shift this person around, especially sometimes you're limited in the coaching personnel you have, and this person might be being really stretched here.

Like, really, they're the manager or something, and you're saying, hey, we need extra visual cue to read off. So, man, you're guarding Joe over here on the first play, mark him. This is not ideal. They're probably not going to show appropriate help. And I do think, like, there are times where I think that we had some really interesting discussions with our best player Last season, a very intellectual player, and one of the things he was talking about is that the coaches are not good enough to show accurate defense.

Yeah, and so he was saying like the affordances that he didn't use that word, but the affordances that you guys are presenting to me are not connected to what we're trying to really get out of this exercise because you guys are too slow and.

So on. And then, so he was like, I'm playing off of my imagination, basically no different than if we're doing 5-on-0. In fact, you guys are actually counterproductive because you sometimes are not showing what I need to see. And then also with a younger player we had, he was basically like, knew that we were trying to accomplish this, so he wasn't acting on the affordances that the coaches' defense were actually presenting to him, but he didn't have basketball IQ or the experience.

And he was actually getting in games and turning down affordances and seemed to be quite related to playing against the coaches. Whereas the more high IQ player was like more able to like, I understand what we're trying to do. So I'm really playing on imagination.

You guys are irrelevant. You've given me all kinds of things that I could do. That I know this is not point. Like, for example, we're trying to get through and know the flow, but he's like, I could just reject you every time. And so he's like, but I'm not doing that.

But he still had the ability to transfer that same situation, like in the game, see that affordance and take it. But we were seeing some negative transfers. So that is one, obviously, at the really high level, the players get better where coaches start.

being under real pressure to show the proper visual cues for the affordances that you want them to work on. Youth level, it's really easy, like, I'm going to do this, so that'll give you the bingo. But then, you know, Perrin Buford rips and you pick it and you're like, I've got this reject completely covered, and you slide and you cut it off perfectly.

Except you've done your slide and he's only about a third of the way through his reject and he just keeps going. And now Yeah, I wasn't trying to show him reject affordance here today. I wanted to work on a different one, but great job of blowing by me.

So that can sometimes present challenges. And then this obviously leads itself to using the players as the defense. And so sometimes we would play what we would call show us you know it, but it really should be probably not show us, like show everybody, show yourself, show your teammates.

Yeah.

And this would be like kind of like full-speed defense but not live. So you're not like— so you're kind of like pantomime, like showing that you will be swiping here, showing that you'll be doing this, but it's not live because, you know, like Japan, you play Saturday, Sunday, Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday, and this pattern just keeps repeating.

So once you get into the games portion of the season, like, you're just so cooked, especially your main players, that you just can't afford any extra load. So even though playing 5-on-5 live against players might be the best thing, or playing even against like constrained game might be the best thing in a vacuum, feel at least that you just can't afford any more load because you're barely getting through the games.

This obviously makes it difficult to pick these things. And so you're trying to find like, how do we get the appropriate learning But keeping the load extremely low. And then the other one is just like, probably is the injury risk really low? You talked about, I think, like, say like 30 minutes.

This obviously probably wouldn't be that long, but just using arbitrary numbers, 30 minutes against the coaches is— I think with 90 minutes against the coaches or 30 minutes against the players. And I think like one of the things you'd be thinking in that situation, why you may still not even play against the players, but only a third of the time would be— is that like you wanting zero injury risk.

And obviously, as soon as you go live, you're starting to introduce the potential that even a little ankle sprain the day before the game is catastrophic for this game. And so I do think that like those factors make it a little bit different discussion than it would be in preseason.

Or it would be with a team where, like a youth team, where a lot of times the games have a lower importance relative to the long-term development. And a lot of times I think the games, like in the New Zealand high school, for example, the way it's structured, you maybe start in February with your practices and maybe teams might start playing games late March, but the first, like, elimination games that could prevent you achieving your result goals for the season don't come till like August.

So there's a lot of games that you'll be playing that are just kind of like, this is a different form of improvement practice, but the result is not as critical, though obviously you want to win. And so therefore you might like, hey, the right thing for us is to practice hard And this turns out to be the day before a game, and the best thing for us to do is 5-on-5 live here, or to play versus guided defense but really hard.

This is the right thing, and we're going to risk that load because the game tomorrow is not so critical. So I think, like, having these different tools to pick from for the situation, it's valuable to have the tools to pick from, but I don't think it's exactly the same.

Discussion always because of some of those constraints of the situation.

I think it's such an interesting conversation because I mean, for youth coaches, it's so easy. You don't really have— I know in the US, it's an insane amount of games, but I think internationally it's so much easier so that practices, you don't really have load management concerns.

But obviously at the pro level, it's completely different. Adam, I don't know if, as Zico was going through that, Did you have any ideas? Because obviously it's a predicament where we've got low, moderate, high stress days. And, you know, how could we keep a low practice day at a low, but still, you know, trying to have practice with, you know, some features of constraints that approach without it becoming too high.

And like Zico said, the great point about using coaches, making sure that if coaches are used, It's not leading to negative transfer. I don't know if there are any solutions.

Yeah, that's, that's really a tricky one. And like, it's something I definitely struggle with a lot when I think about it. I do like the idea of players using their imagination, but again, this becomes very individualistic and it becomes even context-specific. Say like the guy is, he's had an exhausting, like, few-day stretches and he just doesn't have the energy to use The visual is imagery and really engaged.

A coach would have to attune to that and actually like, hey, maybe the coach actually steps in very briefly and just reignites the player and gets them back in like, oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I got, I got to lock in or I don't have it today.

And then we just scrap it. And just because again, it's not only just like negative transfer or my big concern, even like 5-on-0 or 5-on-3 versus the coaches. Yeah, it's certainly like attuning to like the wrong information and whatnot, but You're also like, you're running the risk of even like developing motor patterns that could be downright dangerous.

I mean, we see this a lot in shooting. It's like if there, if you're not under any time pressure or whatnot, you can develop patterns that are very attractive and that are very ingrained that aren't gonna hold up underneath pressure of a game.

So it's like you're actually doing more harm. Even like when I was like questioning when Zico was talking about like, How much value really even is there to just go through this stuff if it's 5-on-0? I, I mean, are we actually even, could that even be a form of negative transfer in and of itself?

Just like walking through stuff. Because again, are we just like getting into the gym just to get in the gym? But that also could, like, if we're actually spending enough time in there and they're actually getting so used to that and their body is like learning, oh, this is how I'm supposed to behave, could that cause problems down the line as well?

Would we be better off literally just going, All right, we're going to literally go hard for 10 minutes and that's it and get out of here. I don't know. I honestly don't know that question because again, load management's a tricky thing because again, it's individualistic.

It's not the same for everybody. Some are more economical in their movements than others. Therefore, the game load isn't as high and the practice load isn't as high. Whereas say a less coordinated individual, that's going to be much more taxing on them. And there's no like perfect answer or like ironclad solution to all this stuff.

I think it's just Just continue to learn and have discussions both with the players and all the other members of the staff, whatever you have available. Obviously, this is not as relevant to our rec coaches for the under-8s. That, those are essentially my thoughts after hearing Zico talk about that.

Yeah.

And I don't have the answers necessarily too, because I see, especially, you know, if you've got, if you're in a pro league and you've got a really busy schedule and you really need to get something in and have a look at something, it's I think you need an element of that, right?

But then at the same time, I understand your perspective, Adam, when you're talking about attractors and potentially, you know, very stable passive movement solutions emerging within that. And it's— I think this is an area which needs a lot more further, I'd say, research, but then just considerations.

Hopefully, as the CLA becomes more popular, we can have more conversations like this one and hopefully have some new ideas over the next few years. So I think that, guys, that's a really good note to end this podcast. I think it definitely provides a good segment onto a part 2 at some stage.

But huge thanks for doing this today and joining us.

Thank you once again. It's good to think about and to stimulate our own thought.

Absolutely. It was an enjoyable conversation. Thanks for your time, Zico. Thanks, Alex. Appreciate you.

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