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Welcome to our free Slappin' Glass Newsletter, exploring basketball's best ideas, strategies, and coaches from around the world.

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This week's newsletter covers:

• Brad Stevens: Inside the Episode
• Best of the Week
• "Next Defense": A Primer
• And more...

Let's dive in...

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Inside the Episode

We were excited to be joined on the podcast this week by former Head Coach and current President of Basketball Operations for the Boston Celtics, Brad Stevens. We had a blast picking Coach Stevens' brain on a variety of coaching, leadership, and tactical concepts. Here's a look inside the episode...

Ted Lasso, Mental Health, and Growth Mindset

​During a fun segment of "Start, Sub, or Sit?!", we gave coach Stevens three Ted Lasso (the hit sports/comedy show on Apple TV) quotes to chose from, and the conversation eventually flowed into the important topic of mental health for both athletes and coaches.

Coach Stevens provided some great thoughts on the importance of both coaches and athletes to find ways to handle stress, pressure, and the inevitable ups and downs of life.

For coaches and athletes interested in learning more on this subject, we recently partnered with Bret Burchard, a former G-League Head Coach and the founder of the mindset training company, ChampionShift. Coach Burchard's "1-Hour Mindset Mastery" Class is available for free today on SGTV covering:

• The 4 factors affecting your success and progress
• The most powerful tool in your arsenal that most people neglect or underutilize
• 3 actions to get the most out of your mental skills.

1- Hour Mindset Masterclass

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Guarding the "Spanish PNR"

One of the most popular and difficult to defend actions being run across multiple levels all over the world is the "Spanish PNR". The alignment, where a shooter and big are placed in a "stack" formation, and the shooter often sets a backscreen on the defending big during the ball screen (or slips out early), can cause all sorts of problems for a defense if coverages are not communicated properly.

During our "Start, Sub, or Sit?!" segment we discussed with Coach Stevens his preferred way to guard the "Spanish PNR", one of his favorites being "trapping" the ball handler and rotating defenders to cover the role. Our follow-up question was "what do you do if the 'Spain' screener (the shooter) slips out early?" Coach Stevens explained how he'd have the defender guarding the shooter stay with the slip out, have the opposite corner helpside defender come across the take away the short or long roll, and be looking to steal a skip pass.

Here's Coach Stevens in his own words...

Beyond these two concepts the episode also packed with great coaching wisdom from Coach Stevens including:

• Leading People both on and off the court in his new role as President of Basketball Operations
• The art of planning and executing great practices
• Why Coach Stevens dislikes most meetings and what he includes in ones he does have
• Making adjustments and the building blocks that must be in place "before the adjustments"
• Flex, Motion, and the Dribble Drive Motion Offense
• The best investment he's made in his career

You can listen to the entire episode with Coach Stevens below, and while you're there, if you're enjoying the show we'd appreciate a quick rating and review. Thanks for the support!

Listen to Brad Stevens!

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Tactical

📺 Bayern Munich - Spain Double Slips​

"Coach Andrea Trinchieri attacks the blitzing ball screen coverage in the Spain PnR by slipping both the ball screen and stack screen."

➕ Pair With: Our breakdown of the Late-Clock uses of the "Ghost Flare" Action​

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📺 Ratiopharm Ulm - Rescreen Flare​

"Coach Lakovic runs a shooter off a flare screen, both times sending cuts behind the screen in order to create space."

➕ Pair With: Our deep-dive into Coach Lakovic' terrific playbook with Ulm​

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📺 John Leonzo - 5 Ways to Increase Points Per Possession​

"Priority #2: Focus On Shot Generation Over Shot Selection Does your offensive system make it hard for players to take tough shots? It should. Design your system so that the most natural shots are either at the rim or assisted 3pt attempts. Make it easy to do the right thing."

➕ Pair With: Our "Start, Sub, or Sit?!" conversation with NY Knicks Head Coach, Tom Thibodeau, including the analytics he relies on the most.

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Interesting Reads

📚 A Week with Cincinnati Bearcats Football- Luke Fickell's Staying Power​

"...everything in head coach Luke Fickell’s Cincinnati football universe runs defiantly early. A 7:30 a.m. meeting begins at 7:23 without anyone walking in after. When defensive line coach Greg Scruggs came to interview at Cincinnati, he arrived 10 minutes early to take a bus to a scrimmage. It already left."

➕ Pair With: Our conversation with East LA College's Head Coach, John Mosley, (from the hit Netflix documentary Last Chance U) on the power of tough-love.​

*Thanks to Wagner assistant MBB Coach, Bobby Jordan for passing the article onto us.

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📚 The Leader as Coach ​

"Coaching well can be hard for even the most competent and well-meaning of managers. One of us teaches a class to executives that makes this clear year after year. The executives are given a case study and asked to play the role of a manager who must decide whether to fire or coach a direct report who is not performing up to par. The employee has made obvious errors of judgment, but the manager has contributed significantly to the problem by having alternately ignored and micromanaged him."

➕ Pair With: Our conversation with former Croatian NT Head Coach, Ivan Rudez, on handling the "Three Frontiers of Coaching."​

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📚 10 Commandments of Salary Negotiations ​

"It can be awkward to ask for more money, but trust me, everyone expects you to do it. On top of that, it doesn’t help that so much of the advice out there is conflicting. Let’s set the record straight..."

➕ Pair With: Our conversation with former NBA Head Coach, David Fizdale, on the art of interviewing for a coaching job. ​

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For this week's "Deep-Dive" breakdown we were happy to collaborate with former professional basketball player and current coach with the Glasgow City Basketball Club in Scotland, Alexander Geddes.

Coach Geddes is launching a new book titled, "New Ground - Modern Team Tactical Strategies in Basketball" and graciously provided a snippet from his chapter on "Wall/Next Defense" for this week's newsletter.

Below is Coach Geddes' guest post, followed by our full video breakdown of "Next Defense", out today on SGTV.

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Defining Roles And Addressing Vulnerabilities Within Wall Coverage

By Alex Geddes

Wall Coverage is an inventive new way of defending wing ball screens that over the past few seasons here in Europe, has become more and more common. The concept is actually very simple and before it was branded Wall Coverage or Next Coverage (as it is sometimes known) I would have identified it as a Nail Switch, as we are simply bringing the so called Nail defender over from the weak side onto the ball handler, and switching the ball handler out. In essence, you are attempting to “build a wall to stop the ball”. This presents a multitude of potential benefits to the modern defence which I will touch on in this article. Let’s get into it.

Defining Roles And Responsibilities

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First of all it is important to define roles and the responsibilities of said roles within any Wall PNR coverage. There are certain so-called "jobs" that must be carried out in order for any wall coverage to be successful and the way we ensure that these "jobs" are fulfilled is by defining clear roles to our players.

Yellow Circle- This is the Nail Defender and as such is probably the most important player within any wall coverage. This is the player who initially has responsibility for the offensive player in the weak side slot, however, in wall coverage this is the player who has the responsibility of physically erecting the wall. The wall that he erects must be higher than the free throw line and ultimately, must force the ball handler backwards and away from the danger area in the middle of the floor.

Purple Circle- This is the player who has responsibility for defending the ball screener in the wing ball screen that we are defending. I refer to him as the Sticker as in wall coverage he is not responsible for providing any help, he merely "sticks" to the big man following the screen.

Pink Circle- This is the player charged with the initial responsibility of defending the ball handler in the initial wing ball screen and is ultimately the player who we will switch out to the weak side following the construction of the wall. He must lock himself on the outside hip of the on ball player and trail him around the screen. This puts him in a position where he can prevent any immediate pull up from three point range (just like routinely chasing over a ball screen) as well as putting himself in a position where he can easily close out to the weak side slot player. Incorrect X1 body positioning is a major reason why Wall Coveragers fall down.

Green Square- Finally, we have the two off ball players who’s whole responsibility is to compress the floor and attack the spacing of the offense. As X5 is sticking to the ball screener and X2 is erecting the wall, it is unlikely they will have to provide any help on any direct action to the basket. X3 may have to help out on 2 but apart from that, the players in the green square can, generally speaking, stick to their man.

Wall Coverage Weak Side Slot Back Cut

Over the course of this article I will explore primarily, one of the vulnerabilities of Wall Coverage. When deploying a specific defensive coverage, as the defensive coach we must fully understand what the vulnerabilities of that coverage is and as such, what approaches we will have to take in order to negate these vulnerabilities. Following a basic understanding of overall structure, vulnerabilities and how to approach those vulnerabilities should be the next port of call. The first major vulnerability in Wall Coverage is cuts by the weak side slot player during or prior to the erection of the wall.

As you can see from the diagram, 2 has elected to cut during the erection of the wall by X2. Due to this, X3 (marked in the yellow circle) has been left in a position where he has to make a decision whether he goes with the cut of the 2 man or he goes with the lift from the 3 man. Cuts against defensive rotations are the number one reason why defenses collapse. First of all cuts are dangerous as they provide an immediate and direct threat to the basket; that much is obvious. When players cut against a rotating defense it complicates rotations and as such creates confusion in the defense. This was a commonly utilised approach by Real Madrid’s Jaycee Carroll when Wall Coverage was utilised against them within the Spanish ACB. So, how should we approach a cut from a weak side slot player during Wall Coverage. In many respects an early cut from the weak side slot can be lethal to wall coverage. The green circles indicate that if the cutter gets to the green circle on his line of travel at the same time as 1 reaches his green circle, then 2, if undefended, will be wide open for a layup.

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The best approach in this situation is merely to switch this back cut. In order to do this X3 picks up the back cutting 2 man and initiates contact before he puts a single foot in the paint. Any later, and 2 is still very much a scoring option. Any earlier and he leaves his own man (player 3) open to cut to the basket himself for a potential layup. X1 maintains his position on the outside hip of 1 and as 3 lifts out of the corner, X1 merely picks him in the same position that was previously occupied by the 2 man. Evidently the major issue here is if 3 does not relocate all the way to the wing and instead, stays in the corner or only lifts to the medium corner. This increases the distance of X1’s relocation, however if X2 has done his job properly and has erected the wall high enough with high hands and a wide base, then this pass should be very difficult to make. As a coach, when I think about having to play against a specific defensive coverage, I always look for a so-called quick hitter that I can use as an offensive approach. In this scenario, the quick hitter I would utilise is a weak side slot back cut and as such, from a defensive perspective, I would look to develop my team's ability to seamlessly deal with this very scenario.

Why Does Wall Coverage Collapse?

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The number 1 reason from my perspective as to why Wall Coverage falls down is because the wall has been erected too low. The diagram indicates two positions in which the wall can be erected. X2 green is the optimum position for the wall to be erected; this puts him in a position to be able to influence the ball and force him backwards and away from the middle. X2 red is a position that is too close to the basket. When in the lane, the guard is merely close enough that he can lift into a midrange pull up and can easily react to this “backpedalling” defender. When you see Wall Coverage collapse, it nearly exclusively occurs because of one of two reasons. This is the first.

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The second reason why Wall Coverage falls down is because we give up a wide open catch and shoot three pointer in the weak side slot. This can be due to a number of reasons. X2 may not take this angle away because he has set up the wall incorrectly. It may be because X1 is late; either because his body positioning is incorrect or he may just be slow. X3 must be active and ready to react to this very scenario. If X3 recognises that X1 is late, then X3 should stunt on the airtime of the pass to prevent any easy catch and shoot three pointer from 2. The best way to prevent these catch and shoot 3’s is to drill X1’s ability to close out specifically in this very situation as well as equip X3 with the knowledge that he must be in a position to stunt if he recognises that X1 is late.

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Wall Coverage is a fascinating, modern defensive coverage that certainly presents a multitude of positive benefits. I’ve only been able to go into a small portion of the potential of the coverage within this newsletter but I hope that it has been of some use to you and your program. If you are interested in reading more about Wall Coverage then I have a book, New Ground- Modern Team Tactical Strategies In Basketball, which will become available in early October. The book goes into the finer details of Wall Coverage, including team tactical elements, training methodology, implementation pathways and drills to develop the concept; as well as exploring in detail 3 additional modern defensive coverages (Scram Switching, Blitz and Triple Switching, 3-2 Zone) and a further 4 additional modern offensive coverages (Short Rolls, Spain Pick And Roll, Actions Based Play, High Post Actions).

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For further film study on "Next/Wall Defense", click on our full breakdown on SGTV below. For a small, free preview of the full video, click here.

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A big thank you to Kevin Tarca for inviting us on his terrific "Sports Business Secrets" podcast this week! We dive into the backstory of how/why we started Slappin' Glass, our process in preparing and editing podcasts, watching film, and a whole lot more. We highly recommend checking out all the other great episodes and guests he's had on the show!

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Thank you for reading and have a great week coaching,

Dan and Pat

info@slappinglass.com

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