Exploring basketball's best ideas, strategies, and coaches around the world

Happy Sunday and welcome to all the new subscribers from around the world! Today is the 199th straight Sunday of the newsletter!

ICYMI: Last week, we looked back at the past 3 months of breakdowns & newsletters to highlight our most watched SGTV videos, including our most viewed "Film Room" sessions. View the Newsletter HERE.

This Week at a Glance:

📺 SGTV: TJ Saint - Cluster Spacing & Dribble Point Offense {🔒}

🎤 Slappin' Glass Podcast: Dip Metress {Augusta University}

🥇Best of the Week: Double Ballscreens & Elbow Splits​

📣 SG Plus Coaches Corner: Coaches Roundtable Replay 🔒 {What Are You Studying?, Off Ball Cutting, Transition Outlets, Pace and More!}

We'll be back again at the NBA Summer League hosting another great Coaches Social on Tuesday, July 16th! As an SG Plus member you get an invite! Join coaches from over 65 countries using SG Plus here...

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Let's dive in...

Cluster Spacing

In early June, Birmingham Squadron Head Coach, TJ Saint, joined us on the podcast 🎙 to discuss the "fingerprints" of his offense, "sticky" words, simplifying reads in the PNR, and much more in what has become one of the more popular episodes of the year so far. Coach Saint returned this week to join us in the SGTV "Film Room," providing film, context, and deeper insights to much of what we covered in the podcast, as well as a few new ideas as a kicker.

Over the next two weeks we will dive into several unique spacing concepts Coach Saint deploys in their "Dribble Point" and Ballscreen Offense, along with the use of the "Go" catch, thoughts on playing small, and the reads Coach Saint uses with his ballhandlers in the PNR.

Today, in Part 1 of our "Film Room" session, we explore Coach Saint's "Cluster" spacing around angled ballscreens and their Dribble Point offense. Additionally, we look at the various actions Coach Saint layers onto their Dribble Point spacing alignment.

Cluster Spacing

To begin, we look at how Coach Saint attempts to confuse defensive coverages within their angled ballscreen action by lifting the corner player well above the free-throw line, clustering two players behind the ballscreen. Playing out of this spacing alignment raises the low man off the rim, creating an unimpeded rim roll for the big, or, a two-way closeout for the defender dropping down to tag the roll before recovering to a skip...

Zooming In: With two players spaced in the top left quadrant of the court, Coach Saint sneakily uses what looks like poor spacing (two players so close together) to create great space. As shown above, when the roller comes out of the screen, there is no defender in the paint or even below the free-throw line. The low man, in an effort to tag the roll, drops so far down that he is caught in a two-way closeout on the kick-out the shooter floating into an open window.

With teams typically preparing their coverages based on standard shell spacing, the "Cluster" spacing presents them with an unfamiliar alignment and a unique challenge they are often unprepared to solve.

Zooming In: By lifting so high off the corner, the low man, not realizing he is the tag/low defender, bases his responsibility on his position on the court rather than the spacing of the offense.

Building upon the "Cluster" spacing, Coach Saint incorporates this alignment into their Dribble Point offense, using it to eliminate rim help on their initial away screen entry.

Zooming In: Reinforcing the concept of "bad space to create great space," Coach Saint positions the corner player and the 45 player in the same quadrant, leaving the paint completely devoid of any help. This opens up opportunities for back cuts and curl cuts off the away screen.

Zooming In 2.0: This interesting use of space was also discussed with newly hired St. Louis HC, Josh Schertz {🔒}, when he joined us in the Film Room to dive into "Gaggles" and how bunching three players together can be beneficial.

Winning Possessions

In our examination of Coach Saint's "Cluster" spacing, we had an interesting discussion about organic versus scripted spacing and how coaches can win possessions without calling a timeout. Coach Saint acknowledged that during the free flow of the game, his players often end up filling corners and adapting to the organic spacing that develops within each possession. However, when situations allowed Coach Saint to have more control—such as an inbounds, after free throws, or dead-ball situations—he would use these opportunities to script their "Cluster" spacing to potentially steal an easy basket. As shown in today's "Film Room," most of their angled ballscreens with "Cluster" spacing originated from sideline inbound situations. For much the same reason that the spacing is difficult for the defense to defend, its unusual nature can also make it challenging for the offense to achieve organically without a trigger, call, or specific situation to set it up.

Dribble Point

To close out Part 1 of our session, we turn to Coach Saint's Dribble Point offensive execution, reads, and actions. As previously mentioned, the Cluster spacing creates space at the rim, so a heavy emphasis was placed on the big man screening the trailer and the trailer reading the defense to take advantage of the open rim. This benefits of this initial Away Screen and rim cut was explored at great length in our "Film Room" session with Alabama Assistant Coach, Ryan Pannone. {🔒}

Zooming In: See above how lifting that backside player out of the corner leaves the rim wide open after that initial away screen and puts the low defender in the same predicament as discussed with the Short Angle PNR above.

Throughout the breakdown Coach Saint shares with us valuable insight on several topics, including:

• Releasing pressure with a dribble hand-off
• "Hang or Hostage" against a dropped coverage
• "Short, Shake, or See" against an "Up" coverage

As always with these Film Room sessions, it is best to hear Coach Saint explain the finer details of these actions in his own words, so we hope you enjoy him doing so in this week's Part 1 FilmRoom Session with TJ Saint here...

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Slappin' Glass Podcast

We were joined on the podcast this week by the Head Coach of NCAA DII Augusta University, Dip Metress! Coach Metress has not had a losing season in over 20 years, along with going to two National Championship games, and in this conversation discusses his thoughts on their style of motion offense, the reads and screens he teaches daily, fundamental post work, and dives into halftime stats and recruiting to fit during the always fun "Start, Sub, or Sit?!

Listen to the entire conversation here...

Together with Hudl

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Tactical

📺 Double Ballscreen Concepts​

"Coach Cody Toppert's Double Ballscreen concepts with a shooting big, demonstrating options to use the veer screen or flare screen based upon the alignment of the bigs."

✚ Pair With: Slipping the 2nd screener out of the double ballscreen to create defensive confusion.

🔒 SG Plus Content: Coach Cody Toppert's clinic on the "Play after the Play."

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📺 Furman University - Split Curl • Pin Down​

"An action of curling a shooter of an elbow split before receiving a pin down to come back out."

✚ Pair With: Nova Southeastern using the elbow splits on a pinch post catch.

🔒SG Plus Content: Our "Film Room" session with St. Louis HC Josh Schertz on teaching the Split Cuts.

Interesting Reads

📚 You're Not Overwhelmed, You're Just Focused on the Wrong Goals​

"Being focused on the wrong goal is part one. But people go and piss all over themselves by trying to win at multiple goals simultaneously. I’ve never seen this strategy work. Never. The top 1% don’t try to be extraordinary at every goal because there aren’t more than 24 hours in a day to do so. They focus on one goal. It leads you to live a weird life."

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📚 Marcelo Bielsa: The manager Behind the Myths - What is it Really Like to Work with Him?​

"As a man, he demands very high performances of himself and his team, so you have to be alert every second. Every moment matters in every training session - every first touch, every strike, anything that happens is scrutinised and that makes you really aware in every training session. His coaching style, always in contact with the ball, eventually makes you feel really confident and makes you improve how you play the ball. His way of looking at each detail and being able to analyse the tiniest movement in a match and reflect on it afterwards makes you improve a lot."

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📚 The Mental Game Of A Champion​

"2. Resilience - One comment that surprised many people is when Gukesh shared that it was after his loss to Firouzja that he felt he reached his best form. Good players come back just as strong from a defeat, but the true greats (Carlsen, Kasparov, Fischer, and now Gukesh) come back even stronger after a loss."
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Join the conversation, gain insights from others, check up on previous newsletters and help your fellow peers! As we use this community of coaches to make ourselves and our teams better, the Coaches Corner is the perfect place to do connect and share.

📺 Coaches Roundtable Replay {🔒}

Our latest Coaches Roundtable discussion for SG Plus members is now up on SGTV! We have a terrific conversation on areas of the game coaches were studying, teaching off-ball cutting, transition outlets, pace, and much more.

Thank you to all the coaches who attended, look forward to seeing you all again at the end of the month.

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Quote of the Week

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Thank you for reading and have a great week coaching,

Dan and Pat

info@slappinglass.com

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