George is joined by Liam Jefferson, Head Coach of the Oakland Wolves Academy, to explore the balance between structure and freedom in modern offense.
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In this episode, George is joined by Liam Jefferson, Head Coach of the Oakland Wolves Academy, to explore the balance between structure and freedom in modern offense. Liam talks about how he applies a "set play offense" with his teams, how it differs from running triggers out of known 'shapes', and discusses the importance of intentionality behind set plays. He also talks about flow offense principles and practice design. Liam shares how coaches can build systems that empower players to think, adapt, and create advantages without becoming overly reliant on set plays.
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Welcome to the Transforming Basketball Podcast. On today's episode, we have Liam Jefferson. Liam is head coach at Oakland Wolves Academy in the UK, and he's been on the show, I think, 4 times now, Liam?
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Yeah, I think so.
Yeah, welcome back, man. How are you?
I'm good, man. It's the end of our season, so we, we just wrapped up about 3, 4 weeks ago. So I had a couple of weeks off to reset, and we're shifting into that offseason period where we're working on skill development. So yeah, man, I'm in a good place and enjoying some London sun, although that heat in the UK hits a little different, but we're in a good place.
It won't last, Liam. Take advantage. So today we're going to be talking about applying set plays into your offense. So we're going to get into a lot of different things like, you know, should you add set plays? What are the benefits of, like, the benefits of having set plays versus just having triggers and vice versa?
And we'll get into a lot of that. So the first question I have for you is what's the main difference between your flow offense actions and then the more complex sets that you run strictly on dead balls?
The easy answer is spacing is the biggest difference between the two. At least for me and what we do at Oakland, it actually starts with what are we trying to achieve on offense. So the very start of our offense is how quickly can we find a gold medal score?
So how quickly can we get a score at the rim, or can we get a silver medal kick out catch and shoot 3? And so our offense primarily is let's play as fast as we possibly can do. How can we get down the floor quickly?
How can we find those high percentage shots? From there, what we've taught is 2, 3 different spacing templates that we can arrive in so that at least when we arrive, the players have some form of understanding of where everybody else is and what actions, concepts, triggers they can play through.
So we call that our tempo phase of our offense when we're trying to go in transition. And then when we recognize that it's neutral and we have no advantage from transition, that spacing allows us to flow into our flow offense, which isn't your typical flow offense.
That's just then the terminology we use for getting from one trigger to the next. So how quickly can we create dominoes within those triggers? And the players have probably 5, maybe 6 triggers that we can play out of, actions that we can play out of within those spacing templates.
Then our dead balls are much more about playing out of any sort of spacing alignment. So we would have 2 or 3 set offenses that we would play out of any alignment after a dead ball, because I wanted the players to get down the floor as quick as possible.
I wanted to create advantage as quick as possible. And if we then stop, we back it out, we get into, say, a horns alignment. Well, now you're losing that moment and that speed and that tempo that we wanted to create. So we would only ever play out of sets on dead balls.
Yeah.
dead balls, or maybe out of a timeout, but we'd be limited to 2 or 3 max. And oftentimes they were about getting our players into very specific scoring opportunities or advantage creating opportunities.
And I guess other, you know, problems with kind of backing it out, running the set, it gives the defense a chance to match up properly and fix the matchups if they need to as well.
For sure. And like I said, the biggest key for our offense was our pace. We wanted to play as fast as we possibly could do and get down the floor within 4 or 5 seconds to try and find those easy scoring opportunities. So if we're then trying to get into set offense, it's going to slow us down.
And actually our biggest strength this year was that we could play at speed, both offense, defense, and the other teams had to keep up with our pace in games.
Yeah. And so talk a little bit about those sets. I know we spoke previously, you said you had 3 or 4 Of those like early offense tempo sets, if we call them like, what is that? What would they look like? If you can share maybe one example and just, you said going from trigger to trigger, what does that mean?
Yeah. So we would play through, like I said, 4 or 5 different triggers, different actions. We would have a side pick and roll, a middle pick and roll. We had a DHO, so dribble handoff in there. And then a couple of others as well.
And oftentimes we would then layer some of those triggers. Into what was then neutral offense sets. We then have another couple that were completely dead ball that are out of nothing. But I would say the vast majority of time, I would say probably 50, 60% of the game we're in transition and then quickly into flow.
20% of the time we're probably playing through spacing sets that are those triggers stacked on top of each other. So where players know that one might flow into one or another on the next one. And then maybe 15 to 20% of the time we're in our dead ball sets.
And that very much is like after the moment where there's been a referee's touch or an out of bounds or out of a timeout. So you have the time to be able to reset your spacing in those.
No, I was going to say, like, you see a lot of like slow offenses nowadays. You see a lot of, you know, like the pick and roll continuity offense that you kind of see go side to side and try to get that side pick and roll.
Is that what it is for you? And for the players, so they know, you know, all right, we're going to be in our spacing, trying to get to our trigger on the side pick and roll here. And if we can't create it, it's back to the other side and we're flowing straight into there.
Is that, you know, is that how it is for you?
To a certain extent, yes. So if you were to imagine we're playing in transition and our rule was if our big was behind the ball, he had to stay behind the ball and fill the trail spot. If our big was ahead of the ball, he had to rim run.
and be on the rim. So we would typically either arrive 5 out or 4 out, 1 in. Even in those moments where we would have an empty corner, we actually cut through from the weak side if we ended up in a free side to fill strong side corner.
And I liked making that cut because it changed the defense and it shifted the defense. And you see a lot of teams play empty pick and roll at the moment. But one of our triggers that we wanted to get into quickly was just an early drag where the big is behind the ball.
You can get into an early drag screen and actually cutting through the play as that is happening distorts the roll tag, pulls them out of position slightly, and creates advantage. So we didn't actually play with a lot of empty corner. So we would either be 4 out, 1 in, or 5 out.
And in those moments, when we're within our flow, our big, like I said, could go and set an early drag. We can play off that. Can we create advantage? Can we hit the shake behind in that pick and roll? Can we find the big?
Can the point guard go and score? Or we could play through the big and they could receive the ball, dribble out the weak side, and that would trigger a 45 cut. And then other triggers and concepts would present themselves. But at times what we wanted was to specifically get into certain triggers that we knew were stacked on top of each other.
So one of our sets per se was the big would get into a side pick and roll. As the guard comes off that, he reverses to the opposite side. You would then have some form of 2-man action. It can either be a DHO or what we called a low pick and roll, corner pick and roll.
And the ball gets reversed back into a rub, a middle pick and roll. And you see that commonly across all of professional basketball at the moment, right? Like Paris Basketball have ran that for a number of years. Valencia do the same this year.
And so we had that as one of our set plays. But all of those actions and triggers are within our flow offense anyway. But we would have a call for that that meant that the players knew in that moment that we could quickly get into something because we were trying to score in one of those situations.
And I think the difference with that is because we have worked on each of those as one of our triggers, there's multiple scoring opportunities within that one set play. So when the big sets the early drag, that's a scoring opportunity. When we get the reversal to the 2-man game, that's a scoring opportunity.
When the ball comes back to the middle pick and roll, that's another scoring opportunity. And depending on what coverages we would see, we'd worked on coverage solutions for all 3 of those. So it wasn't like your set where you're just going through the motions and the ball is moving and players are moving, but everybody knows that it's then coming to one end action.
We rep different coverage solutions for each of those concepts within that one set. For us to be able to create dominoes or advantage in every situation.
No, and I think that's the key for coaches listening. You know, it's less about, oh, are you running sets? You know, are you trying to get into the flow offense? You're just running triggers, but it's less about what you're actually doing on offense and more about the intentionality behind it in terms of, to your point, are we actively hunting dominoes with the first action?
Are we actively hunting dominoes with the second action? Like, do we realize that the first action might soften up the defense? So we need to be hunting those advantages early on. So once we get that pass, they have a better chance of creating it.
And then so on and so forth. I think that's the key for coaches to understand less about the sets, more about, you know, are we actively trying to create these advantages? Yeah.
And I think the best way, and we've used this terminology, I remember myself, Alex, Will, and yourself, when we were at London Lions, we would talk about trying to shatter the ice. And actually, if you view the defense in that moment as a block of ice, that first trigger action might be the first chisel at the ice, but you're not going to shatter it to create the opening.
It might then be on the second or third one that you do actually keep chiseling away and shatter it. And we use terminology like you're trying to get into dominoes and create advantage. But I think it's useful to understand that as defense is set up to take away some of that advantage, it may take one or two to shatter the ice and create that advantage that you're looking for.
And we would also have specific rules within some of that, right? So as we got into that early drag pick and roll, if it was our 4 man that was in the— and we would typically play with 2 guards, 2 big wings, and a big.
So our 3 and our 4 man are pretty much the same. But if they were in that high slot, they could either play through the low pick and roll and be a screener. So a quick reversal to the corner and then go set one.
Or they could play for a DHO. Whereas if our 4-man was in the corner and they're not actually someone that we want in the pick and roll, and it was the 2-man that was high in the slot, well then they know that they can only get to a DHO in that moment, but they still have the coverage solutions to be able to play through it depending on what the defense does in that moment.
And that's a very common set action. I know a lot of teams are running, but we actually found then that the players started to get really creative within it with each of the actions. So first side, second side. First side, second side. 3rd side action, we were then able to add some wrinkles and some coverage solutions and get to different things that I think otherwise we wouldn't have done if they were just sets.
I saw, I was watching the Friar game recently and it's, you know, they run a lot of the delay action. So they get it, you know, it's a pin-down screen to the guard coming up. But if it's the target player setting that pin-down screen, then because of those rules, they're going to, instead of setting the screen and then Slurring out to the corner, they're going to come up and get the ball and that kind of zoom action.
So it's just having those rules for your players. So you, you know, you don't want just anyone handling the ball in the pick and roll, for example. You do want to be more intentional about this as well, setting those rules.
Yeah. And you know, the really cool thing in that, George, is, so staying with that same example that I've just shared, we would have a wrinkle on an out of timeout where we would put the shooter in the slot so that They got into a DHO on that second side, but as soon as they'd handed the ball off, they circled back around and got into a Spain pick and roll in that middle pick and roll.
That was an ATO that we started to draw. But what we found was within our flow offense, the players were starting to then perceive that as an action. So anytime where we arrived with the shooter in that slot, they had full license to turn it into a Spain pick and roll if they wanted to, but it wasn't a play call.
So I think at times it probably looked like it was a play call, but actually it was our players just perceiving that, well, no, I'm in the right position to be able to turn this into it. I've seen what the defensive coverage is.
I think we can punish it with this as an added wrinkle within it. And that, as our season went along, became really, really cool because now the players are starting to perceive certain advantages that early on in the season, it was probably quite repetitive in those moments.
And we really got away from that, allowed them to be super creative.
Exactly that. And like, to your point, because they know all the triggers already, they know all the covered solutions to it. So once you start stacking them together, you know, it's a lot easier for them to find the solutions for it. And you also said that you don't— I remember watching your game last season and you arrive, it'd be a DHO reversal and then flow into the action, whether it's a rub or a side pick and roll.
You said you don't do that anymore. There's no need. What changed?
A couple of things actually. So I, Try to avoid DHOs as much as possible because I think they're an action that is really easy to cover and guard. You can switch most DHOs and you're gonna disrupt the action to some sort of extent.
And we found that especially on first side action, teams would just switch early and take away really aggressively, take away the reversal so that we couldn't get to either that delay action on the second side, or we couldn't get to the big to be able to play through them.
And I also, I watched a clinic from a good friend of mine, Lloyd Gardner, did the Hoops Fix clinic a year ago. And he spoke about in his clinic how he turned DHOs into dribble pitches instead of handoffs. So the first thing that he taught all of his players was actually you should be attacking the defender very aggressively.
So if you can attack the defender aggressively, you can create advantage and maybe you can get a downhill drive. But by attacking that defender aggressively, you then open up more of a pitch.
Right.
Rather than a handoff. So it's less about me putting the ball on a silver platter to my teammate. It's actually, I'm almost like shoveling it to them in the corner, which gives them advantage to be able to turn the corner and stampede on that shovel a little bit more.
And so we just found that on that second side action, we could get to more of a dribble pitch instead of a dribble handoff. And on the first side action, it always ended up in a dribble handoff and it was really easy to disrupt.
And blow up. And I think the other key for us is a lot of what we're doing on the offensive end is about shifting the roll tag and shifting the help defender. And how much can we move them within the actions and concepts that we create?
And actually, I just think that first side DHO is wasted energy. You don't really create much from that. And also for those teams where, again, you think about a Paris or a Valencia, oftentimes it's their primary ball handler that has the ball. In that situation.
And if they go DHO, you're then hiding them away from the action and you want them to be getting the ball back in the middle of the floor to play downhill on that step-up pick and roll. And so that was just a big reason why we decided to change it.
It went away from being a dribble handoff and more to a really aggressive dribble pitch. And we found that it created more advantage for us, especially on that second side.
It's hard to affect the play so much if you're actually driving at the defense and then getting rid of it with the pitch. Going back.
And on that, especially just staying within this one set, but it is one of our like heavy, and again, set our flow principles. Teams know that if you're always getting into a low pick and roll, teams know that they can deny that passing lane and take that away.
If you're then looking to be really aggressive on that catch and try and stampede it and get downhill from the slot early, well, they can't deny that pass every time. So now it gives you the option to play out of the dribble pitch.
Or the low corner pick and roll, and you have the 2. And that's why we like giving players the option and the autonomy to make that decision in that moment rather than it being repetitive, because they have to perceive what the defense is doing.
If they're denying the pass to the corner, well, then you've got to attack that gap, and then that might open up the pitch if they stunt away from the corner. If they're not denying it, you can probably get to the low pick and roll, that corner pick and roll.
And so again, we're allowing the players the freedom to make choices within our flow. Rather than it being predetermined and prescribed.
And that's a great example of shattering the ice as well, where you're not just like moving the ball for the sake of it. You're actually trying to just soften up that defense a little bit, making it easier for the guy coming up off the corner to make a play.
Triggers. You spoke a little bit about manipulating the tag defender, the big defender, by, you know, not running empty side pick and roll. So, you know, that's one way to kind of disrupt the defense. What happens? I know for me personally, Leo, You know, coach, I feel like the higher the level you get, the smarter coaching gets, the better the players are, the more ground they can cover.
What I found happened, especially when we were at Lions, even looking back at some clips, our offense was heavy, just triggers kind of thing. Side rub, clear angle. And the opposing coach would just put a MIG right in the middle and then basically zone up on the backside, have that, you know, take 2 defender there.
So what I saw, or what was happening, is it was hard for us to make had created advantages with the roller going down because the tag defender was already there. So my question to you is, you know, what happens if you are just running triggers, trying to create advantages on maybe the same side, but your focus isn't necessarily on a flow offense or a set?
It's just more like get to a trigger, you know, and get to the same trigger again. Like what happens if you do that?
I think that the key with especially conceptual offense and using triggers You have to upskill and educate the players to be able to read the affordances in front of them quickly to make decisions. And I think the common challenge that you often see, and sometimes in the younger age groups, because conceptual offense, it is difficult to teach all of these coverage solutions, is you'll see teams that will try and play through a trigger.
It will be neutralized, and then there'll be this pause before they then get to the next one. And so it is really easy for defense to disrupt in those moments. And actually it's teaching and helping the players to understand that if there is no advantage, move the ball, get to a different trigger.
So you talk about some of the ones that we played out of side pick and roll, we would just call side would be one of them. That could have been an early drag or it could have been a sprint up pick and roll.
But we would find, especially with the, like the U16 age group, is if they didn't create advantage on that side pick and roll, well, the guard would just dribble back over again and call for another side. And I think that's the key is to help coaches understand that if you can shift from one to the next, to the next, defense has to adjust each time and you're more likely to get them shifting and moving to be able to attack.
And that's why we made a choice this year to be really intentional with just having 5 triggers and 5 actions that we use on the offensive end so that players were very clear. And in some situations, there was only 2 that were available to them.
in certain situations. And it's not about trying to teach them every trigger and every concept and every action and then every coverage solution. It's about identifying which ones are the ones that are going to work for the personnel that you see, which ones are the ones that are going to work for the most specific defensive coverages that you see.
Well, youth basketball in the UK, we're going to see a lot of drop in the pick and roll, and we're going to see a lot of switching in the pick and roll. I'm a coach. I very firmly believe that we should teach players how to play in the pick and roll a lot.
So that's why there is a lot of pick and roll within our offense, and we will teach the coverage solutions based on what we see. It all comes back to that piece, and we all talk about it all the time, about being extremely intentional with why you're choosing the triggers and the actions that you want within your conceptual offense, rather than trying to have 9, 10, 11 of them, because then players will struggle to get from one to the next quite quickly.
Yeah. And I said this before, I think I said it on a podcast as well. It's like, and I believe I first heard Alex mention this and it always Stuck with me. It's about like catching butterflies. And it's like when you're trying to catch a butterfly, you don't try and catch them all at once, right?
You focus on one and then you catch it and then you go to the next one. And I think it's a great example of what you should do on offense when teaching triggers, teaching coverage solutions. Like focus on one, you know, get really good at it and then you can move on to the next.
Because if your players can't do it, then, you know, there's no point trying to add If they can't create an advantage off a one-on-one dribble, then it's going to be hard for them to play in the pick and roll because they might not be able to reject.
Right. So it's all about, you know, meeting the players where they're at with the concepts that you have in your offense.
Yeah. I think that the key is knowing, knowing your rules and your principles for when you're in dominoes and when you've created advantage and then choosing one or 2 triggers to then build on that. And then when you feel like players are comfortably in a position with those one or 2, maybe add one more.
And go that way. At least that's where I found success rather than trying to throw 10 different— I think the first year that I was at Oakland, this is my second season. In year one, we just threw everything at everybody. And then I wondered why the players were struggling in those moments.
This year, we really streamlined what they were able to play through. And don't get me wrong, that's not then taking away their autonomy and their creativity because they have full license to do that within our offense, either in transition or in that flow stage.
But we're being very intentional about, okay, after this one, we can get to maybe option 2 or 3. And then when the ball comes back, well, maybe you're back to any of the 5 options that we have to be able to play out of.
And I think that there's still that level of unpredictability to our offense where teams didn't know exactly what was coming, but the players were able to process and work at a much higher speed.
They pick apart any defense. Can we talk a little bit about What happens when coaches make their players run 5-on-0 to get the, you know, quote unquote, get the patterns down? And I want to ask you, what can coaches do instead? And also, can you share some small-sided games or constraint ideas that you used when you, you know, when you installed these kinds of flow offenses into a 5-on-5 or in any other game?
Yeah. I mean, again, going back to that example, I'm not, I don't want coaches to think that that's the only thing that we played through. With that early drag into the second side, into a middle pick and roll. But I think it's one that's universal and that everybody knows and can picture.
So within that, as one of our flow sets, we would strip it down to each of the actions within it and teach those 2-on-2, 3-on-3, right? So if it's that second side action where players had the option to be able to get into either a DHO or that dribble flip or a corner pick and roll, then we would set them up on one side of the floor.
The coach would make the pass as if they'd just come off the pick and roll. And we would say, all right, maybe your, your opposite lane line is out of bounds. You've got to play 2-on-2 and you've got to find a way to create advantage through that action on that side of the floor.
So we would break down a lot of our flow offenses into the individual triggers, into the individual concepts and how we would teach them. So everything that was, was in our flow was something, like I said, that could be layered on top of each other so that the small-sided games of when we're teaching those triggers.
can then be used again when we're in our set offenses as such. I think there is still sometimes a place for— so we spoke a lot at the start about the dead ball offenses that we ran. So we had a couple of horn sets, and then we had one other set where they were out of a different alignment to our spacing template in transition.
We would sometimes run those 5v0, but we would do it in our warmup rather than as a bulk of practice. So we would often have some form of activation game before we got into our stretch or our functional warmup that would be led by an S&C.
Sometimes that would be American football, sometimes it would be ultimate frisbee. We would do loads of different things in that moment, but sometimes we would go 5v0, but we would add a variable shot clock so that those 3 offenses that are dead ball offenses for us, the players had to execute them, but there was a time constraint.
They had to find a high quality shot. Within a 7-second or a 14-second, and that would constantly change. Sometimes we made it a race to score first to see who could execute it when it was just carnage and mayhem and you were having to go at 100 miles an hour.
So again, there's some sort of pressure constraint that we've added to it. And then other times we would add maybe 2 or 3 defenders. So they weren't actually going 5v0 specifically with blowing up a certain action or disrupting a certain action. So it wasn't just repetitive over and over and over again.
There are ways to be able to find opportunities to do something similar, but utilizing some constraints. And I think the key is we limited how often and how much time we spent in those moments. So it was very much about 5 to 10 minutes max, once every few weeks.
Like, this wasn't something that we were doing every practice repetitively over and over again, where it was just 5v0, 5v0. So that's the way that we kind of got around that and players really enjoyed it. Their feedback was there's always, always an intention to what we were doing and it was always competitive.
So even in the 5v0, there's a time constraint. It's competitive because you're trying to score before the other team does within that time constraint. So it just, it made it a really unique way to keep bringing it to life without it being the traditional 5v0 over and over and over.
Yeah, there's a lot of things you said there. I really liked the concept of, you You know, if you're doing 5-on-0, maybe add 1, 2, 3 defenders there. I like it for the fact that you can individualize the constraints. So if you have players that know what they're doing already, it's a lot easier for them to have the defense on them.
And then the other players can learn by seeing, you know, how they're guarded going through it. Return to play as well. I think it's super powerful when players are getting back up to speed, then they can get a defender on them as they're getting prepared.
And another thing is the players enjoyed it. And I think that's super important to like find activities that players have fun with. And it's not only what you want to do as a coach. I think being able to meet players in the middle is super important because if you're always just doing what you, maybe you lose them a little bit or you lose them for that session.
And I think that's super key. So I really like what you said there. Moving on here. Talk about, let's shift over to game feedback. Let's say you're in the middle of a game. The defense is blowing up, you know, we can keep the same example.
Maybe they're blowing up that second side action and making it hard for you to reverse the ball, you know, to the third side. And the players are struggling with it. You know, how do you adjust in that moment with just without shifting the plate?
It comes down to the work that you've done in practice with your coverage solutions. And that's the key. I think we would often in our timeouts, we would ask the players to provide the solutions to the problems that we're facing them. And that would give us intel then for the rest of practice.
And I think I mentioned in the stuff that went out on social media, like by the end of the season, we'd seen most ways, if not always, that teams were trying to disrupt the actions that we had so that whenever they presented themselves, the players could quickly find a solution.
But I think it's also allowing them some creativity in that moment, right? So if a team is taking away the reversal to the second side, Maybe you can just go and set a pin down to create an opening. Can we now get the opportunity to reverse the ball?
So are you looking to do that as that initial drag is set? We know that over a few possessions that that's one way that they're disrupting it. Or do we have the big pop and actually we look to go back the other way and we play on, on another action?
And I think it's just about guiding the players to those solutions to those problems rather than saying, it's really not working. Let's move it. We'll shift to something else. Let's just run this. differently. And because that was such a heavy staple of our flow offense, by the end of the season, like I said, we'd seen most ways that teams wanted to disrupt and take us out of it anyway.
And I guess, how important was that at practice to make sure that you threw different defenses at the players so that they can be prepared for it in games?
Yeah, and I think that comes back to that piece about knowing your own leagues, for those that are coaching in competitive leagues, and knowing what coverages you're going to see the most. So I'm a big believer, especially with our academy team, less so with our men's team.
I have a duty to teach the players almost every coverage solution I possibly can do because we're setting them up for life after Oaklands. So our practice environment, we have to add a lot of diversity in there. With our men's team, if we know that we're only ever seeing switching and drop most weekends when we play a game, well, we don't need to work against an ice or we don't need to work against a blitz.
Actually, we need to get the players to a position where they feel completely comfortable with those coverage solutions in those moments. And I think that again is that intentionality piece in practice. You're not just going through the motion with stuff that you think needs to be taught.
It's okay, what's the reason behind this? Why do we think this is important? And how does this translate to what we're trying to achieve?
Is there anything else, Liam, just in terms of, you know, what we covered today in set plays that you want to share?
Yeah, I think the only other bit for me, and this was a conversation that I had with another good coaching buddy of mine, a guy called Drew Spinks, who coached at really high levels in the UK, had a great playing career. And we were talking a lot about how within conceptual offense and even within the flow offense that we had this year, oftentimes there's still moments where the ball doesn't end up back in your star players, your target players' hands.
late game. And so actually there needs to be a comfort level amongst coaches that you can still be a conceptual offense. You can still be about, and we're as much equal opportunity as I think you can probably get to, but there's still a hierarchy in those moments.
And there's still also sometimes a need to get the ball back to your target player to go score. So if you're in a cup final and you're down 1 and there's 8 seconds on the clock, you need to find something that's going to get the ball back in your star player's hands to be able to go and get a score.
And it's okay in those moments.
Yeah.
To be able to go to something that you think is the right thing. It's if you go to that over and over and over again in games and for the full 40 minutes or 48 minutes of a ball game, that's when there becomes more of a problem.
And I think for me, that's where then our dead ball offense that we spoke about came into it because we were very intentional with those dead ball offenses about them being specific as to who we wanted the ball to be in the hands of.
in certain moments. And it also wasn't a case of, you see so many Instagram accounts and Twitter accounts now that are posting all these great sets that coaches are running, but these sets are great because they work for the personnel that they have and the team that they have and what they're trying to achieve.
So I think oftentimes we as coaches can see them and go, that's such a great set. I'm going to teach that to my under-14 boys team. And it just doesn't translate and it doesn't work. And it's actually being intentional with knowing why you're doing and what you want to achieve from that set.
Then it's okay, at least in my own experience and in my belief. And there are others that may, may counter that and disagree with it. But I think that's how I view set offense and that's why we have the few that we do within our offensive package.
No, I think that's great. I learned a lot. I know you said about us disagreeing, but I think everything you said pretty much I'm on your side with. And I think it makes sense. I'll have to think about it a bit more, but I completely agree.
It's a bit, one example while you were speaking. Just to kind of wrap up is, you know, if it's the last 8 seconds, then it's fine to change up and give your star player the ball to finish the game with a shot. And it's the same thing with like shot selection, right?
So if it's one shot left in the game and a mid-range shot, you know, whatever your team, maybe your team shoots it at 40%, but they shoot a 3-point shot at 35%. Well, you're still better off getting the last shot as a mid-range shot.
So just about understanding, like, you know, just because you have these principles, Knowing when that you can adjust them to, to, to make it fit for, you know, the game at hand.
I also think that there's a whole conversation around shot selection on an individual basis rather than just on a team basis, because a gold medal for, I don't know, someone who's 7 foot tall versus someone who's 5'11 and is crowded versus a kick-out silver medal for your best shooter on the team.
Well, That's a higher percentage shot in that moment. And it's actually understanding within the conceptual offense and that flow offense that shot selection is also key. It's not a complete carte blanche. Everybody gets the same sort of license within it to be able to take those shots.
There's also that understanding and hierarchy within it too. And that's one of the reasons I think we had as much success as we did this year with Oakland, because our offense was unpredictable. It was played at a real speed that defenses struggled to keep up with it.
But players understood that there were certain moments where they had license to be able to go score. And there were certain moments where they had to move the ball and get it back into someone else's hands for them to go and create again.
And maybe it comes back to you. And I think that nuance within shot selection that is then sometimes missed when we're just talking about gold, silver, and bronze medals for the team.
And the fact that if, like, if it's a robbed shot, if it's an open shot, right? Like, you know, I think you see a lot of really contested shots. That maybe for your player, that's their high quality look. But if it's that contested, then, you know, probably not, you know, at least that's again, the numbers say.
But Liam, thank you so much for the conversation. It's been great talking to you. I know you already gave us a transformative tip before. I don't know if you want to leave the listeners with another one.
The big one for me, especially this year, just reflecting on it, is still find time within your season to get into other people's environments. I didn't find enough time this year as a coach to be able to get into other people's environments and Maybe not the coaches that you're coaching against, but even if it's an under-12 session or a senior women's session when you're coaching men's basketball.
And I think you'll often find little nuances that you can pick up from there. And so I would encourage coaches as much as possible to try and get out of their own environment in season, because you may find something that also impacts your own coaching and your own environment.
And online, like, you know, the world's so small now, you visit a lot of different environments on YouTube. But yes, Liam, thank you so much. Yes, always a pleasure.
Appreciate it, man. Thanks for having me on.
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