EP 63Player development
Intentionality in Professional Basketball with George Galanopoulos
Alex Sarama is joined by George Galanopoulos, the Associate Head Coach at Rip City Remix.
49 min
0:0049:27
Alex Sarama is joined by George Galanopoulos, the Associate Head Coach at Rip City Remix.
Keep listening while you explore. Your episode keeps playing as you browse other pages on this site.
In this episode, Alex Sarama is joined by George Galanopoulos, the Associate Head Coach at Rip City Remix. They discuss the application of contemporary skill acquisition ideas within the G League. George highlights the importance of education and understanding in player development. Alex and George also delve into the practical aspects of skill acquisition, including pre-practice and pre-game warm-ups, as well as the significance of clear communication and terminology in coaching principles of play.
Learn about player development with our FREE activities book. Inside, you'll find 50 activity diagrams for your workouts and team practices: https://transformingbball.com/small-sided-games-book
This transcript follows the original English audio.
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. Delighted to be joined by a coach who I can really say I really genuinely love developing a good friendship with this year during our tenure coaching at the Rip City Remix. So Delighted to be joined today by Associate Head Coach of the team, George Galanopoulos.
Explore Transforming Basketball membership and continue your coach development.
George, thanks so much for joining the podcast.
Really appreciate you having me here, Alex. Obviously enjoyed our time together, you know, sitting 2 desks away and traveling around the country a little bit to these random American cities you haven't been to. So the fact that we get to talk about some of the things that we talked about all year on this platform is exciting, and I really appreciate it.
Absolutely. And I learned so much from you this season, George, and I think Just all the stimulating conversations we had in all those different places, talking about, you know, everything from player development to pregame warmups, the principles of play. And, you know, I think you're someone doing this at such an elite level.
And also, you know, from the transforming perspective, you're doing all of the CLA, Scalac stuff. And I think that was the first thing, the kind of in our early conversations, how you were actually doing a lot of this unintentionally.
Yeah.
And then you were going through actually reading the papers this year. And I think for me, that was just incredible to see how the stuff you were already doing and then you were just experimenting, doing it on the court. It was awesome. So what was your general experience, George, just with Skillhack ideas and how that all fits in with the NBA G League world?
Yeah, I think more than anything, it's important to educate yourself on whatever topic it is that you're trying to learn or trying to implement. So for me, having the conversations with you and reading the research papers, listening to the podcast, just educating myself and learning about what skill acquisition means, what's the ecological approach, what is the CLA, how do all these concepts apply to skill acquisition and player development?
It was, it was relatively new to me. But again, what I was encouraged by was it wasn't completely foreign. You know, some of the words I think scare people at times. Yeah. Come outta these research papers. But at the end of the day, what you did a great job for me was putting in perspective and putting a lot of things in layman's terms and giving a lot of life examples on the court of how to apply these concepts.
And like we talked about, for me, I realized that I wasn't completely behind the 8-ball on a lot of these concepts. It was very easy to look back and say, oh, okay, like this idea of constraining a practice or constraining a drill to, you know, understand and get players to kind of see affordances like you talked about.
That's a word that like I didn't know about at first. And, you know, you understand that it's the opportunity, you know, opportunities for action that players see. And it really just painted this picture. Of like, how can we get players to react differently, to read different situations when as a coach we've just been told and taught to tell players and teach them and that's it.
So it was cool to see when we would have these conversations like, oh, I've done that before. I've done that drill before. Okay. This is where I can make this drill more applicable to the CLA and more applicable to getting these players to acquire the skills that They need in order to be successful.
What's most important is, as a coach, before you apply any concept, no matter what it is or any philosophy, is to learn it, to learn the what, to learn the how, and ultimately the why you're doing it so that you can best teach the players how to apply those concepts to the court and to their game specifically.
And I found it very easy to apply these concepts in the G League, especially because you have more practice time. than you do in the NBA. But what I also learned was when you only have a limited amount of time with a player, it could be 10 minutes in a pregame, it could be 10 minutes in a pre-practice session.
Like, how do you maximize the time on the court to make sure those players are developing in such a way where you are being efficient and not wasting those 10 minutes at the end of the day? Like, I think every opportunity you have to work with a player on the court is an opportunity for them to get better.
And ultimately, over time, those 10 minutes will compound into an hour and a half, 2 hours into 2 full days of practice. And I think the time that you spend on the court is extremely important. And this is just another way where I've— it's kind of broadened my perspective and it's allowed me to see things through a much clearer lens of player development, skill acquisition specifically.
I love that, George, and fantastic overview you've shared about the potential that Skill-Ac has at the highest levels of the game. I'd love to get to now what this looks like practically. So maybe starting with player development and what this actually looks like on the court a day day-to-day, you know, how could some of these CLA ideas actually be applied?
Yeah, so I think when people talk about player development, there's almost to me a misconception that it is just about skill work on court, right? When in reality, player development is all-encompassing. And I think everybody in every department has an equal role and equal contribution into how a player develops to be a professional at the highest level.
But specifically, The on-court player development skill acquisition aspect is extremely important. And the way that we create representative designs for players on a day-to-day basis in order to maximize their potential is obviously extremely important. And one, I think the first way that you can implement a lot of these ideas and put into practice is on the court pre-practice.
We talk about a lot of teams call it vitamins. When I was coaching in New Zealand, they called it peas and carrots. So however you want to phrase it, the on-court work, the specialized, individualized on-court work that players are doing before or after practice is really where you can get a lot done with guys.
And I think we're very lucky at this level in the G League, and especially at the NBA, the amount of resources that we have specifically with the number of staff and coaches in order to put a lot of these ideas and practices into play.
Having bodies at the very least is something that is extremely helpful and almost crucial. So we'll kind of go that route with, you know, the number one pillar. It's important to have number of staff and number of coaches, and then you can design the practice and constrain the workout or whatever it is that you're doing to the amount of people that you have, obviously.
So number of coaches is important so that you can simulate game situations as much as possible. Now, there's different ways that you can do it as well based on the amount of coaches or players that you have. There can be individual pre-practice work where you're just working with one specific player.
Also, if you don't have as many coaches and you want to consolidate, you can do small groups, be 2 players, 3 players. And now instead of having 1 player with 1 coach on 1 basket, you've got 3 coaches and 3 players on 1 basket, and you're still getting meaningful reps.
I think that's extremely important. So it's up to us as coaches, obviously, to come up with what that design and what that practice looks like at each basket or multiple baskets, depending on how many people you have. Obviously, again, But at the end of the day, no matter what it is, it's our job as coaches to put players in applicable game situations and having them recognize those affordances.
Like we talk about the opportunities for actions and come up with solutions to themselves. And in layman's terms, it could be simply making a read, right? That's how, that's how most coaches I think would talk about it. But it was important for me to learn a lot of this terminology and to learn what an affordance is, what it means to have an opportunity for action.
And I think one thing I think about when reading more about this is, for example, a player reading help or a player reading a defender's foot angle, right? And then you offer them the solutions to that. And I think the more that you can simulate that on the court, specifically in whether it's small-sided games or just 2-on-2 situations, or, you know, 2 guys versus coaches, whatever the case may be, those meaningful and intentional repetitions over and over again for these guys to make their reads and make decisions in real time.
Is extremely important and can really expedite the development process no matter how long you're working with them before practice or how much time you have. And at the end of the day, it's our responsibility as coaches to learn and understand which constraints to manipulate and when in order to maximize their learning, maximize their development.
It's extremely important. And I think a lot of that pre-practice when it comes to player development is having it be very concept and decision-making based. Within the framework of what you do offensively and defensively versus like skill work based, you know, just ball handling or just getting shots up and spot shooting.
Like what can you do from a concept and philosophical perspective, you know, to maximize those 10 minutes that you're on the court with those guys? Obviously, you know, you talk about shooting, it's a light shooting day. Talked a lot this year about Brad's and Swish's.
Yeah.
Right. That was something that I think the players at first kind of rolled their eyes at or, you know, kind of wondered what the hell you were talking about. The idea of, you know, aiming for the back rim and trying to get a back rim and down, which is an optimal make as well as a swish.
If a guy's just going to do some light shooting, why not just have him be, you know, for lack of a better term, picky about his makes instead of just, hey, make 10 and get out. You know, you never know what the residual and compounding effect is of constantly working Towards having an external or holistic focus on things like that, and specifically shooting.
And one thing that's a lot of development is especially pre-practice work, because everybody thinks they just want to do offense, which players do mostly want to work on offense. How do you incorporate defense? You know, how do you incorporate your coverages? How do you incorporate your rotations?
You can manipulate situations so that players are getting repetitions with our defensive coverages or with our defensive rotations and getting our talk. As well as offensively, you could have a player work on their drive kick X-out rotations and then finish it with a quick, like, 2-on-2 game.
You can do things, I think, to, you know, manipulate the constraints as well as include defense with offense to make it fun for a player, or at least more engaging at the very least, instead of just having them do defensive slides, obviously for 10 minutes.
Nobody really wants to do that. So it's interesting. I think that like, Those pre-practice sessions, those post-practice sessions where you're working individually with guys or in small groups is integral to being able to acquire any skill that you want them to acquire and ultimately become the player that they want to be, for lack of a better term.
And then obviously player development doesn't stop just in individual and group work, right? Practice, team practice is not separate from that. We talk a lot about how much it should align with each other and how much intentionality there needs to be with how you construct a practice plan and what you do pre-practice and post-practice needs to align as well.
And at the end of the day, it just comes down to incorporating whatever was worked on. You know, for example, coverage attacks, you know, if you're working offensively on attacking switching or attacking the drop or attacking up to touch coverage with the big, it's as simple in practice as having coaches play defense that the other team is going to play that you're preparing for.
Or if you're just trying to figure out coverage solutions, just having the coaches mix it up. And what that comes down to ultimately is just being more prepared with intention as a coach of making sure the coaching staff knows exactly what that means to switch everything, what the talk is, what it means to be up in an up-to-touch drop.
So there's a lot that goes into it, you know, a lot of preparation obviously, but it comes down to the preparation, identifying what you need to do in order to constrain these practices to help these players. And then executing it. But at the end of the day, it's putting players in the positions to apply skills that they've worked at individually and then doing it in a group setting and making sure that if you've got point guards, for example, working on drop attacks with the basketball and you have wings pre-practice working on attacking closeouts, making sure
that during practice it's those point guards that were working on handling the basketball versus the drop in team practice. And not the other way around. And if you want to do that, if you want everybody to be positionless and be able to get repetitions at it, then you need to do it, obviously.
But I think that that's very important is to make sure that whatever you're showing these guys on film, whether individual or as a team, whatever you're working on pre-practice or post-practice and whatever you're doing in practice, it all aligns. And there's no break in the action.
And that, and the players, I think just even without realizing it subconsciously, they're able to tie it together. And then at the end of the day, that's when you see growth.
George, enormous value in that segment. I think that's like everything contemporary player development in one answer. So that was incredible. I think a common theme is intentionality. And one good example we've spoken about a lot is connecting everything you've just spoken about to the player development plan, the PDPs.
And, you know, we obviously had— we enjoyed that this year, trying to be incredibly specific Identifying these limiting factors in every player. But maybe you could just connect everything you've just spoken about now to the importance of having that player development plan to unify, you know, connect all these dots.
Yeah, I think the player development plan, or the PDP as you like to call it, at the end of the day, I just look at it as a specific guide and a navigation system to these players' improvement. And it gives you the who, It gives you the what, you know, what they need to improve at, what they already do well, and how to maximize those strengths.
The how, how exactly are we going to do this? What are these specific action items? What are the activities that we're going to do on a day-to-day basis in order to address these areas of improvement or continue to maximize their strengths? And then the why behind it, like, why are we doing this?
I think it hits on all 4 of those questions very clearly. And I think the specific activities in the action plan is important. That's something that you opened my eyes to this year is anybody can put down on paper exactly what a player needs to improve on and identifying strengths and weaknesses and then just leave it up to the coach to be able to come up with different exercises and activities and drills in order to maximize that player and help them with their development.
Ultimately, but to have that written down and to have those activities and to have those drills there and as a part of your system and your process to help these players specifically get better, then that's when nobody's straying off the beaten path. That's when you're going to see incremental growth and you're going to see the player development process be expedited over time is when it's very intentional, not only like what you're working on, but what you're doing specifically.
And the environment you're putting the player in, in order to do that every single day. So it could be, you know, one-on-one finishing, it could be closeout reads, it could be one-on-two reading the help, whatever the case may be. And then it's your job as a coach, obviously, to manipulate the constraints, figure out what constraints you want to implement, you know, to maximize that time with the player.
So the PDP, again, is most importantly a guide. It's a north star for the player as well. It's a north star for the coach as well to help the player. And, you know, it's very important, I think, to have those. be accessible to everybody in the organization that is a part of the player development plan to be able to go in, click and see, okay, this is what they're working on.
So if the head coach wants to see what's in that player development plan, he walks out on the court, he knows exactly what should be worked on with that player that day. I think those things should be— they should be updated, if not monthly, weekly or biweekly or daily, whatever the case may be.
I think as time goes on, Those PDPs could change. You know, a player could improve greatly at one area of improvement. Now all of a sudden there's something else that brings itself to the surface that they need to work at because you've started to play games and they're starting to see different coverages.
They're starting to see game plans, specific defense or offense on the opposite end. So these answers over time, like, I think it's important as a coach to become adaptable to what you see on a day-to-day basis and just continue to have these conversations with Not only the staff, but the player as well.
I think them having ownership in their player development plan is important as well. It's not all the answers that they'll have for you, obviously, as a player. Like, they want to be coached, they want to be guided, but they might have ideas of what they've struggled with in the past and what they want to work at.
And I think when a player has ownership in that PDP as well, and you've sat down and you've put the time in to, to talk to them about it, incorporate them, help them, I think they're more inclined to try to help themselves and give what they can to the team.
Most definitely. I think something you spoke about earlier on, George, was how even in pre-practice of 10 minutes, you can have an enormous impact if you're efficient, you've got a plan, and, you know, you're manipulating constraints. And I think maybe one of the best examples of how these ideas have, you know, potential to be applied is the pregame warm-up.
And a lot of times we see I'd say warmups have a dominant approach where players are just getting reps after reps and everything's the same. And one of the most enjoyable parts of the season was working with you, helping you with pregame, and we did something very different.
So could you just talk for the benefit of the listeners as to how you used the CLA for pregame warmups?
It was different from anything that I'd done pregame, and I think it was because I think I was somewhat like institutionalized to the idea that You know, I was with the Mavericks as an intern in 2015 and you'd see JJ Barea walk out there who was an NBA champion, a veteran that would go out in his 10 minutes.
He would just probably 50% speed, get some shots up and that's it. So you think at the time like, ah, this is what pregame's supposed to be. It's just a light little warmup, make him feel good. There are players that are able to do that and that's completely fine.
I'm not knocking JJ Barea because he's obviously an extremely successful player and also a great person, great coach now. But regardless, I think especially with young players that are really looking to develop and that need that specific development that hadn't even scratched the surface of their potential, it's important in those 10 minutes, 15 minutes, whatever the case may be, with an appropriate load on their body, obviously.
I think it's very important to be efficient. And with that comes being intentional and making sure everything you're doing is applicable to the game. And, you know, obviously when it comes to the CLA and what we were doing, there's just a lot of variability, as much variability as possible.
It could be the pass coming from different directions, right? Or different coaches and them not knowing exactly where the pass is coming from. So the variability along with just simply decision-making, them having to make a decision in real time, or if they're shooting and we're working on brads and switches, just having something be an external focus in order to guide their movement.
Obviously, I think at the end of the day, so, you know, something as simple as a lot of that bump 2-foot finishing that we were doing.
Right.
To start this segment, you know, they needed 5 makes. Like, that was a fun little way to just like contact to contact finishing with the player. Right. So you're putting in like that sweat equity with them, but at the same time, like, it's not only making it fun, it is applicable.
In the first quarter drive to the basket during the game, there's a bump finish that they need to execute. So I think the most rewarding thing about what we did pregame with a lot of that was it was very quickly seen and felt by us and the player.
That what we were doing was happening in the game, and I think the best part—one of the most rewarding parts—but at the same time, I think beneficial for the player was that when I would watch film with them before the game or before we'd work out, I would label clips from the past game pregame.
And what I meant by that by that label was I wanted to show them, hey, we do this in pregame, you know, and this is you doing it during the game. Great job, or. Hey, this is happening. We need to work on this more, or you need to take this more seriously.
This is the exact same bump finish that you missed 5 times in a row when we were warming up. You saw it happen during the game. You didn't make it. Let's lock in on these a little bit more, whatever the term, you know, lock in means to people.
So I thought that was the best part of it for me, and not just rewarding, but it was, it confirmed what, you know, you and I have been talking about throughout the year, trying to help these players during their pregame segment in the 10 minutes that we have.
It confirmed that, hey, these things are applicable. These things are happening during the game. And I think that's the most important part. You want to make it as game-like as possible in the short amount of time that you have with that player.
100%. It was really cool to see how much the guys enjoyed it too, you know, coming for that little pregame window, just the engagement was sky high. So you've covered some really, really good stuff on the player development piece. I'd like to shift now, George, to principles of play.
And I learned a lot from you, especially on the defensive side of the game. And for me, I think the thing that immediately stood out was the coherency in your terminology and your language and those intentions defensively. Obviously, you're, you know, running the— leading the defensive side of the team.
It really stood out. So how important is it, do you think, to have those intentions, terminologies, glossaries in place? for coaches when they're trying to coach through these principles of play?
Yeah, it's extremely important. It's integral to the success of a defense. And I definitely don't want to take the credit for the defense. You know, being a part of a G League team, you're teaching the big clubs defense. So credit to the Blazers staff, obviously, for implementing a system I think that was very easy for the most part to teach.
And the talk was very clear and concise. But at the end of the day, like, clear communication is the building block to any functioning relationship, I think, and the trust that it ultimately fosters, whether it be 2 players on the court, a coach and a player, a marriage between 2 people, or 5 players on the court.
Communication is everything. And I think as a coach and a coaching staff, creating a clear and intentional system of talk and communication with specific and concise language, like I said, is integral and extremely important to Having an efficient defense and being able to rely on that defense on a night where coaches like to say, well, we might miss shots, but like our defense should always be there.
It comes with your communication and the players' understanding of the what, how, and why you're saying what you're saying and how it all ties together. And I think at the end of the day, when you break it down defensively, it's important instead of just throwing all these terms at players is you're basically telling a story.
I think from the beginning of training camp of how we want to play and what we are going to do defensively, both from an aesthetic standpoint, from a conceptual standpoint to an attitude standpoint, right? Like, what is our approach defensively? But within that, there's specific language.
So a lot of teams say it starts with transition defense, right? The game starts when the shot goes up, right? So on the way back, there's your shell talk, right? Simple, general talk. Back. I've got ball. I'm in the gap. Shrink. There's all these just like simple general terms that can apply to any situation during the game, but specifically in your shell.
Then the next layer to that is coverage talk, right? What coverage are we in? Are we in an ice if a team calls it an ice and we're keeping it on the sideline? Are we in 5 down? Are we in 5 this? 5— whatever it is that you call your defense at that time is gonna be up to There's a number of different coverages that you need to not only understand, but you need to be able to communicate so that everybody understands it, right?
Are we switching 1 through 5 on the ball? Are we switching everything? Are we in zone? Like, there are so many different situations, and you saw it this year, and I saw it even more overseeing the defense than I did as a head coach.
Like, just how many situations there are and how important it is. To label these, have terms for them, and be very clear about what these things mean, and having the players obviously execute them in practices as well as in the game. And then after coverage talk, I think it's specific actions.
You have your different actions that you guard, and you've got communication for it. The first thing that comes to mind is stack action, right? How long did we sit there and think about how we wanted to guard stack and the players and how they were going to communicate it?
Like, That's a very advanced play and now being disguised in offenses, possession to possession, to make sure that they're taking advantage of the defense. There's double drags that you need to talk through that just might be different than the way that you cover guard-to-guard screens, as well as bigs guarding the screen.
So now you add 2 of those guys. Okay. How are you guarding double drags? How are you guarding pistol action, split game? Like making sure that you have communication for these is so important because it's the difference between a team that looks like they're connected and playing hard and a team that looks like they're not playing hard.
You could be playing as hard as you possibly can. One person messes up one word that they yell out in a split game and you're giving up a layup. And then everybody's like, ah, what's going on? The team's not playing hard. It's like, well, I don't know if it's that they're not playing hard.
It's our job as coaches to recognize like, Did we communicate what we were supposed to communicate at that specific moment in time? So for me as a coach, before you, you ever question effort or how badly the players want it, what is, what's our language supposed to be?
What is our talk supposed to be at that time based on what these players are seeing? And the reality is offense is more advanced than it's ever been. It's played at a faster pace. The actions are extremely hard to guard, and the players are arguably More skilled and talented than they've ever been.
So with all of that, it's really important that you go over what your system of talk is going to be. And that starts in, in the summer as coaches coming up with a complete glossary of terms and making sure that they all tie together.
You're telling a story at the end of the day of how we're going to play defense and why we're going to play defense this way. And what I've noticed that being in the professional game, G League, NBA, overseas, doesn't matter. Players are going to ask you questions.
If they care at all, and most of these guys care, they're going to ask you questions and they're going to want to know how to guard something. They might even do it just to test you to see if you've done your homework and they actually do know the question.
But I think as a coach, it's about finding the perfect balance between and the sweet spot of having answers for these guys, doing your homework and having the answers to give them while also being somewhat adaptable and flexible as the year goes on and working with them on finding the answers.
Hey, from your perspective, like I didn't play at a high level. I didn't play college, NBA, pro. Like, what do you think about guarding it this way? Where are you struggling and having trouble? And one story that I think about a lot in regards to that, because I remember you and I talked about this, was our terminology of switching, you know, calling the direction.
And I think there was one time during a game that we were supposed to be switching 1 through 5 or 1 through 4, and one of our players didn't switch.
Right.
Or he was supposed to be up to touch. There was some sort of miscommunication and we asked him like, you're supposed to go over the screen and stay over. You're not supposed to switch. He said, well, I didn't, he goes, I didn't know who was calling the direction.
I didn't know who it was. I didn't know if it was a 3 or a 4, if it was our center. And it made me think in that moment, like, oh, I can see the confusion there. We shouldn't have him differentiate between the player's voice.
Like the call was the same for both of them, but we had expected him To know what to do. And then we needed to change our talk again and just add a word here or simplify it here without giving away the Blazers' coverages, obviously.
But I'll never forget that. Like, it was just so— you sit there as a coach, you think, man, what the hell are we doing? But instead you just kind of ask him like, what happened there? He said, man, I didn't know who was telling me the direction.
That's actually a really good point, right? So just making sure that that specific and coherent language ties together. And you can't assume, you can't assume that players are gonna know what to do just because you're looking at it on the court. When you're guarding the basketball, you don't see anything behind you.
You need clear, coherent talk. So it's the more that I've done this and every single year it uncovers something that I didn't realize was as important as maybe I thought it was before, or it is more important than I thought it was before.
But the, the, the talk, the communication, making sure you're giving these players answers.
Yeah.
To as many of these questions as possible is extremely important, especially on the defensive end of the ball.
So George, when it comes to implementing these principles, you know, we've just discussed, I think the dominant approach would just kind of be, I'd say, quite a rudimentary shell drill. And I use this term MAYA a lot, most advanced yet acceptable. I really believe in the NBA, I don't think it makes sense to move away from the shell drill.
The reason why is because all the players know it, the staff know it, it's what the players are comfortable with. And you can easily change it with some very simple changes and actually derive good value out of it just because it starts becoming more unpredictable.
So could you talk maybe a little bit about some things that coaches could do just to mix up the shell drill and some subtle changes which can lead to very big differences?
Yeah, absolutely. I think it goes back to what we talked about player development. I think first and foremost, having the luxury and the resources to have more, more bodies, more coaches, right? So the primary way that you can make a shell drill unpredictable is not having to explain what the offense is doing or going to do before they go, you know, quote unquote live, or at least, you know, 75% speed, whatever you want to call it.
So if you have coaches that are the offensive team in a shell drill and it's not players and players, you don't have to walk them through it. The idea is that you've already prepared beforehand. I mean, just to prepare coaches, it's one of those things where if you've got an 11 o'clock practice, for example, and you've got 10:20 pre-practice with 2 different groups, and you've got players coming in at 9:45, so you want coaches available to just kind of be on the court to help them out at some point before you meet as a coaching
staff or after you meet that you're meeting for at least 10 minutes on the court to go over what exactly you're going to go over offensively to create some sort of variability. and indecision with these players specifically just to challenge them a little bit more, make it more game-like, right?
So having the staff and the numbers to do that, I think, is first and foremost important, and then preparing them for what these players should be seeing during the shell drill. I think the second part to that, and you actually opened my eyes to this, especially in shootarounds when we did the jerseys.
Yeah.
I think it was for the Raptors when we put pictures of guys' faces on so that they would see if this is going to be very KYP-based. Then let's put these jerseys on so these guys know exactly who they're guarding. And if they're not starting off the game on that player, like they get switched onto him, you got to know who you're guarding at what time.
So we talk about KYP, know your personnel. We go through a whole training camp sometimes never talking about that and only talking about how we're going to guard things as our base defense. And then you get to the very first game and it's like, well, this guy's this sort of closeout.
This guy, you're supposed to chase off pin downs. You're supposed to gap in. This guy's a driver. There's all these different ways we hadn't practiced it. Right. So to put these jerseys on, it could be a red jersey for a shooter, a yellow jersey for a regular closeout, and a white jersey for what we call a short closeout, you know, versus a driver.
Putting jerseys on these guys creates enough variability where now they have to recognize in real time what that player is. They gotta look, they gotta call it out. They gotta know ahead of time, okay, this guy's a shooter. This is how I'm closing out.
So you've given them those answers ahead of time and now you're executing it in real time. So I thought that that was big for us, especially when we did that closeout drill where we had them moving around in a circle, right? And they had to just randomly, like they needed to talk and point.
And then the moment that the ball moved, they had to close out appropriately, you know? And if they don't do it right, then they're going to do it again. And it created enough variability, I think, and indecision for a moment that it got them talking, got them moving instead of just basic, like you were going to close out here exactly like this.
That's just not how the game is. And we know that. So I think the big thing there is, you know, creating that variability and some of those constraints within the environment so that even though they're not going 100% and going live, you're still maximizing that time.
You don't need to just accept the fact as a coach that like, eh, it's just a warmup. Like it's, it is what it is. Well, if they're going 50%, but their mind needs to be at 100%, I think that's a win. And then if that's your DNA and a part of your fabric as a team, Then that'll compound over time.
There's no doubt about that in my mind. And I think the last part that you can do to create some unpredictability is start them in transition, you know, instead of just a normal shell in transition. Again, it doesn't need to be 100%, but you can put them in different positions starting off on offense where shot goes up and now they're going to go as hard as the coaching staff goes, right?
So that's why it's important to have coaches is that like the coaches through preparation and through meeting with The head coach and everybody together, they're going to know what pace they're supposed to go at to get these guys ready to play and how to stimulate them exactly.
So if you're going in transition, might not be 100%, but the defense is going to react to how fast the offense is going. So if you can put them in just some sort of random position where they got to transition now into their shell, that now applies something that they're going to see in a game.
There's 220 possessions in a game. You're never playing shell and coming in from the baseline. Right. That's just not how it goes. So that's something I thought about recently too. I don't know if you have any interesting thoughts about that is like where to place players when we are doing a shell.
I think the traditional sense is like stand on the baseline and then come forward. Should we put them on the sideline? Should we put them somewhere else behind the coach at half court? I don't know. It's something I've been thinking about recently. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that, but sorry to put you on the spot.
Something I've thought about is like the going away from the traditional sense of like, is that beneficial to have them on the baseline and then walking I don't know.
I think that would be really interesting to experiment and just give them different vantage points where they're seeing it from both like different perspectives. I think I love your idea on the transition trips, and we've talked about that before, so obviously it wasn't a surprise, but I think that's such a good one.
And just having them doing something before where maybe it's— you got— it could be a transition, it could be they run like a side out of bounds, and then boom, Transition, come back into it. I think there's just so many different tweaks, wrinkles you could add to it.
And like we said as well, George, I think just having it where you're not chunking, doing— say you, you know, you're preparing for a game and you've got, I don't know, maybe 3 or 4 different triggers, actions you're preparing for. Instead of doing A, B, C, D, like we started doing, just mixing it the whole time.
And just doing that alone, I think, is so much better for learning.
Yeah, no, I agree. And again, it really comes down to the way that you can maximize a player's time on the court is by preparing with your staff. I think the preparation with whoever is a part of that shell, you know, by the end of the season, or hopefully by the beginning or middle of the season, you have your staff that is a part of the shell.
And I think you have a greater luxury and more resources at the NBA level with just more capable bodies. But at the end of the day, that sort of preparation to make sure that You are chunking, right? You're making sure that you're doing
maybe 3 or 4 different, or you're addressing 3 or 4 different concepts and ideas, you know, offensively that you want to guard defensively. You're doing that within one possession and you're able to talk about those things. You're able to see it, feel it.
And then hopefully if you're going to, and I think we've talked about it before, like instead of just doing a pick and roll drill to start. Okay. And then the very next play that you're doing in a shootaround to prep for the other team.
Is a set that flows into the pick and roll. Well, you just do it all together, do it all together and save time. And then if you need to correct, you always stop, you correct and help them out as much as possible and make sure that they're engaging in the conversation as well.
But yeah, I think towards the end of the year when we were just, we were playing at quote unquote random, but still with intention, making sure that these guys were guarding the actions that they were going to see, I think is definitely extremely important.
It's something where you can maximize your time on the court.
Fantastic. So George, I want to highlight the head coaching experience you've had both in the G League and internationally with the Uganda national team. And I think a common theme of all these conversations is intentionality. And something you've always been very intentional with is organization efficiency because that transfers back to the court.
So could you talk about the importance of that as a head coach? being able to have, you know, these, this clarity that stems from processes, organizations, even checklists is the term we've used in our conversations.
I just always felt this way as a head coach that the culture, right, specifically whether it's the culture of the staff, the culture of the building, the culture of how you play, it starts and ends with the head coach. I truly believe that.
I believe that reflection of their coach. And that's how I felt specifically at all times. So if I felt that we weren't organized at the end of a game, for example, like for me, I was like, well, am I as organized as I could be?
Or can I be teaching this better? I think that's very important that there's, there's a few different pillars, I think, to organizing yourself as a head coach. Number one is your general organization. That's the culture. That's the organization. Understanding and owning that it starts with the head coach, right?
And specifically to start the season. Your staff, hiring your staff, putting your staff together, and delegation of roles and responsibilities. And I think that comes from that coach, comes from the GM, it comes from, you know, the head of the snake, for lack of a better term.
And who you put in those roles, how you delegate and allow them to delegate as well within their roles, and the leaders that you have within the staff is extremely important. Those are the general organizational items that need to take place, obviously, before the season.
And then as a coach, it's day-to-day stuff. Like, what is your organization day-to-day? And there's different days. There's shootarounds, there's no practice days, there's off days, there's You know, a high load practice. There's all these different days. And in order to, I think, maximize those days and make sure that you're not just on a whim going day to day with what should we do, it's those checklists that you're talking about.
I learned the importance of checklists when I became a video coordinator for the Mavericks, where I realized I had so much being thrown at me. I needed to have checklists every single day to make sure that I was getting my work done. And it helped me tremendously, just simply writing down what you need to do.
In order of priority, as best you can identify that, do it and get it done and check it off. And it's the same thing today in the offseason when you're trying to look for things to do to be productive. Like, who am I going to call today?
I'm going to call this person. Literally write it down and just check it off. So your day-to-day, I think, should be based on that. But that's helped me. Everybody's a little bit different. And then in your day-to-day organizing your meetings, you know, how are you organizing your staff meetings?
Talked about the importance of meeting with your staff to go over shell drills. Right. Just to make sure if they're going to run the offense, they need to be prepared for this so that we can create more variability with the players and maximize that time on the court.
What are your action items in the meeting? Organizing that as a head coach, used to call it a shot clock. I would put a shot clock on myself in the meeting. So to make sure we didn't go an hour and a half if we didn't need to, some meetings need to.
But for the most part, this is what we're getting done. Prepare for it. 30 minutes, no matter what, we're out, we're out, we're done. So I think with that comes with, as a coach, organizing yourself to prepare the group to be prepared. So one thing I used to do as a head coach was I made sure to text the group the night before our meeting with what they need to be prepared for.
If we were talking about player development, hey, have a couple clips ready to talk about what your position that you're overseeing or what your guys you're overseeing need to be better at. And we're going to talk about that. We're trying to figure out rotations for tomorrow's game.
These are the players that we're going to have. Make sure you guys come with an idea of what you want the rotations or the starting lineup to be, for example, so that when we got to the meeting, they've already thought it through. They knew that I was going to ask and they knew we were going to talk about it.
So that would make it more efficient as well. And then organizing yourself as far as what you want to do on the court, obviously the player development, pre-practice, making that a point of emphasis of this is what we're going to do on a day-to-day basis.
And it doesn't need to be day to day that you're coming up with these solutions. Hopefully you can maybe have a weekly plan. Hey guys, this is what we're going to do for the week. And then it's just a well-oiled machine by the middle end of the season and making sure that all that correlates, like we talked about, to the practice plan.
So again, it's kind of up to you as the head coach and whoever you're delegating those responsibilities to, to make sure that it all aligns. That's important. It's important to oversee. And then I think similar to like your organization as a coach, I think about the offensive end.
I wasn't great when I first got in. I was actually terrible at organizing Our coverage attacks. You like to call them coverage solutions, right? I thought attack. I hear Mark Dagnall use that word a lot, like attack.
Yeah.
Yeah. Coach Phillips has used it before too. Like, so what's our attack plan? Like it, I think it frames it in such a way where like, we're not only coming up with a solution, we're attacking. This is for us to be aggressive. So if a team is switching, okay, we got a switch attack.
We shouldn't be hesitant because the team is switching. We should see that as an opportunity to do X, Y, and Z. So coming up with simple plans for your coverage attacks, switch attack, drop attack, up-to-touch attack, blitz attack, whatever the case may be, organizing yourself as a coach to teach that, or your coaching staff who's running the offense, and then making sure that that's implemented on a day-to-day basis, I think is extremely important.
Then lastly, as a head coach, in-game, how are you organizing yourself in-game? You know, it took me 3 years to come up with a coaching in-game card. That I wanted to make sure I realized at one point after that, my first season, I barely looked at this thing.
What is on this? Yeah. And why is it on here? And why didn't I look at it as much as I should have? And then the next year it was like, all right, I'm looking at this more, but I never look at this section.
Take it off. Yeah. Right. So I think it's constantly like evaluating and adapting to like what is going to help you organize your thoughts and yourself during the games.
Yeah.
You know, you need your go-to actions, you need your special situations, all those things you need to organize yourself. Timeouts. You and I talked a lot about timeouts, right? How to make timeouts more efficient, how to make halftime speeches more efficient. Talk about the rule of 3, right?
And applying that.
Exactly.
Situations. I think the most fascinating thing to me, because I know that I've been emotional at times in a timeout with all teams that I've coached, is recording your timeouts. That's something I would do as a head coach. If that ever happens again, I'm ever in that position is I would love to record myself to hear.
I'm sure that I would listen to myself a couple games and be like, what the hell did you just say? You know what I mean? Like, no, no wonder this team went on a 10-0 run that you're playing right after that timeout. You didn't say anything.
You didn't organize these guys. So I think it's very important. I love to listen as much as possible to when I teach on the court, listening to the play side afterwards and be like, you spoke for 7 minutes. Can you do that in 3?
I think it's important to sit there and self-reflect and figure out how you'd be a better coach as much as possible, how to organize yourself better to make sure the players are retaining the information. Yeah. So I think, I know that was a lot there, but specifically the, there's the general organization you have as a coach.
There's the day-to-day that you need to organize yourself and your staff with. And then there's in-game. What's your in-game organization? How are you organizing yourself and the players and your staff?
It's extremely practical, I think, for coaches of all levels. It applies to everything. So I guess my last question is, as we wrap up, it's more specific to the context of the G League and the NBA. And I'd love to know how you think the league is changing and what you think the future might hold for these levels of basketball and, you know, the direction that you see the game is going towards.
It's amazing. My first year in the G League was 2011. I just graduated college and I think there were 18 teams and I was a part of a team, the Bakersfield Jam, which it doesn't exist anymore. I think it's the Grand Rapids Gold, you know, it turned into just through some ownership changes and moving across the country and whatnot.
But there are 18 teams and my team is affiliated with 5 NBA teams. You now have, after the Phoenix Suns are operating their own G League team next year, you have 1-to-1 ratio, which I think is incredible. You know, it's a legitimate minor league system.
And over that time, what I've noticed too, other than the growth of the league, is we talked about it kind of earlier in the podcast about resources. There's so many more resources now than there've ever been. Players are getting paid more, staff are getting paid more than they ever have, which is great.
Obviously that allows for not only more opportunity to put certain things into practice, but also to get more talent, to get some of those talented players that were only going overseas because of the lack of pay here. Now they're staying. There's more incentive for them to stay.
Same thing with staff. Facilities, advances in medical and health equipment and access to information, video, the whole bit. Resources at an all-time high and they're only going to get better. I think it comes down to how you're going to use those resources. Just because the resources are there does not mean that they're being used with intention.
I think the relationship and the synergy between the teams has gotten a lot better. You see the Blazers, for example, we practice in the Blazers facility. Like organically, you are going to have more synergy than a team that is hundreds and thousands of miles apart, for example.
But again, it comes down to, you know, what system and process you're putting in place to make sure you maximize that relationship. Player development, you know, the conversations that we're having right now, I think the CLA, you know, constraints-led approach to player development, specifically how to incorporate it in your day-to-day, is something that is being talked about a lot more and people are figuring out how exactly to implement it.
And the research backed ideas behind it. I think that's extremely important. And, you know, player development at the end of the day comes down to creating an environment that supplements the development and individual needs of every single player within the construct of the group and using the resources we talked about to come up with an intentional functional plan that aligns with the goals of the organization.
Like, all those things are very important to talk about that you can't take for granted. And I think, you know, the last part of it Which I don't know how many teams have really tapped into this or thought about it. Talk about player development, PDPs, player development plans.
I think it's equally important to have staff development plans. I think it's important to intentionally develop staff for the next level, just like you do players. I think as of right now, in general, my guess is that when the G League identifies, oh, this guy coached in the G League, Mark Dagnall coached in the G League.
Nick Nurse, Chris Finch, they coached in the G League. It's almost not by default that they got to the NBA. I'd be hard pressed to find teams that have a very intentional plan of how they're going to identify staff talent and specifically develop it.
For example, you know, I think without intention was a player development intern for the Mavericks. I then was an assistant coach for the G League team. I then was brought back as a video coordinator for the NBA team. And then I was hired as a head coach for the G League team.
That on paper looks like a nice blueprint, an intentional plan of how to utilize the G League and the NBA team to develop a staff member. I think it more happened by default organically over time that I was kept in the organization, but to use that as kind of a blueprint and a guide for, hey, we just hired this intern, we really like him.
What's the plan for him? I think literally putting together Staff development plans or coaching development plans is just as important. Just takes, I think, attention to it and valuing it more than anything. But you see so many people that are with G League experience going to the NBA and being very successful.
I think it's important to identify talent and making sure that you got staff development plans as well and create leaders within your organization. You can do that. You can develop that just like you do players.
George, that was a terrific podcast. There's so many nuggets in there. Big thanks for taking the time. We'll link your social media profiles to the show notes. So coaches, and I think coaches, just if they do some searching, they'll see some more of the great stuff you've shared online.
Yeah, really appreciate you taking the time. I really enjoyed recording this.
Yeah, thanks so much, Alex. I've enjoyed our time together this season and looking forward to all your success, obviously.
Thanks so much, George.
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Transforming Basketball Podcast. If you'd like to learn more about the work that we do, head to transformingbball.com to access our free resources and spread these ideas throughout the basketball world. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform.
You can also connect with us on Instagram, X, or YouTube with any questions that you have from the episode. See you next time on the Transforming Basketball Podcast.