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

Happy Sunday and welcome all the new SG Plus members from around the world! It's great to have you as part of the community.

ICYMI: Last Sunday we analyzed the effectiveness of the Skip Dribble in PNR set ups and attacks. View the full breakdown HERE.

Today at a Glance:

📺 SGTV: Tenerife - Sets for a Shooter 🔒

🎤 Slappin' Glass Podcast: Insights on Leadership​

🥇Best of the Week: Attacking Switches & Iverson Rubs

📋 April SG Plus Roundtable: Drills, Drills and more Drills

Let's dive in...

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Deceptive Designs - Tenerife Sets for a Shooter

Week after week, one of our favorite teams to watch is the Spanish club, Tenerife. Their entire offense is beautiful. Some have said it inspired the famous Ed Sheeran song, Tenerife Sea. Perhaps we'll never know for sure.

What we do know, is that Tenerife Coach, Txus Vidorreta, is one of the best at generating open looks for their terrific guard, Sasu Salin, using a staple set of actions. This is no easy feat considering Tenerife competes in both the ACB and Basketball Champions League. With some of the best defensive minds game planning every week to take away Salin's opportunities, we thought it best to take a closer look at Tenerife's secret sauce in getting him open.

With varying degrees, the defensive scout with most shooters often consists of giving limited help, crowding their space, and chasing over screens. Armed with this knowledge, Tenerife must do a little more than set simple Down or Stagger screens to properly free Salin for a shot. Thus, Tenerife introduces a number of smart and deceptive screening actions prior to running Salin off a primary screen.

Screen the Screener Actions

One of these actions is the tried and true small-big "Screen the Screener" action. Whether it's a RIP or cross screen, this STS action presents the defense with a difficult bump/help situation before Salin flies of a perimeter Down Screen. As we discussed in our breakdown of the Argentina Transition, Tenerife smartly deploys these screens in transition, where the defense is in flux and can be caught off guard, unable to execute their base small-big screening coverage...

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On and Off Ball Slips to the Rim

One our favorite things that Tenerife does to create momentary space and confusion defensively, is their use of "guard to guard" screening actions prior to that last screen. Here's an example of that out of some "Bilbao-type" post automatic action...

The randomness of these screens makes it difficult for the defense to stay completely attached to Salin.

If the defense does switch these guard-to-guard pre-screen actions, the defender is often left out of position and at a disadvantage as they begin to chase Salin off the final screen. No better is this exemplified than in a few of Tenerife's actions involving Salin screening on the ball before diving back to the rim for a Turn Out screen. Here's a look of that out of their Horns Small set...

Zooming In: In this Horns Set, rather than setting the on ball screen and ghosting out to the 45/wing, this play design sends Salin back to the rim on the slip. This slip/roll to the rim often puts Salin's defender in a position where he is unattached, giving Salin plenty of space and freedom to use the screens appropriately.

Here is another example of Tenerife getting to the same action with Salin out of the Stagger Away entry...

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We only scratched the surface above on Tenerife's multiple set designs for their shooters. To view more actions, including:

• Transition Corner Exits
• Horns Actions & Alignment Variations
• Using Decoy Screening
• Stack Veer Screens

Visit SGTV for the full breakdown!

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Slappin' Glass Podcast

We did something a little different on the podcast this week, as we went back through some of the most popular episodes over the first part of 2023 and pulled out our favorite conversations around Leadership and Coaching. We love diving into the technical and tactical part of the game at likely an unhealthy level, but this week's episode focuses on the more important fundamentals of leading and coaching teams outside of the X's and O's. In this week's podcast you'll hear from:

• ​Jeff Van Gundy on Motivating and Coaching through rough times
• ​Cheryl Reeve on Teaching Toughness
• ​Mike D'Antoni on managing locker rooms where your best players aren't your best leaders
• ​Peter Lonergan on "The Power of 3" and developing your ability to teach
• ​Pablo Laso on handling egos during losses or losing streaks
• And more!!

Tons of great coaching wisdom in this week's episode, so we hope you enjoy it here...

Listen Now!

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Tactical

📺 Varese - 4 Out • DHO • Ghost​

"Great timing & execution of the Ghost Screen to attack the switch coming out of the DHO with the 4-man."

✚ Pair With: Our podcast with Pro Coach, Zico Coronel, on defending the ghost screen.

🔒 SG Plus Content: Our breakdowns on Attacking the Switch and Defending the Ghost Screen.

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📺 Bahcesehir - Iverson Rub • 4 Twist​

"Executing for a shooting 4-man out of the Iverson Rub entry. Bahcesehir rolls the 4-man off a ball screen into a pin down screen."

✚ Pair With: More Iverson variations from Memphis and German club Chemnitz.

🔒 SG Plus Content: Our breakdown on Lietkabelis' Iverson Loop Elbow series.

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Interesting Reads

📚 What Makes You Happy​

"A weird thing in life is that everyone strives for a good life because they think it will make them happy. But what actually brings happiness is the contrast between what you have now and whatever you were just doing."

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📚 Great Leaders Are Thoughtful and Deliberate, Not Impulsive and Reactive​

"The problem is that most organizations spend far more time focused on generating external value than they do attending to people’s internal sense of value. Doing so requires navigational skills that most leaders have never been taught, much less mastered. The irony is that ignoring people’s internal experience leads them to spend more energy defending their value, leaving them less energy to create value."

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📚 3 Rules to Express Your Thoughts So That Everyone Will Understand You​

"As Alda said in his interview: 'If I have a difficult thing to understand, if there’s something I think is not going to be that easy to get, I try to say it in three different ways. I think if you come in from different angles you have a better chance of getting a three-dimensional view of this difficult idea.'”

*Coach Peter Lonergan discusses the "Power of 3" in our podcast with him as well.

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Members of SG Plus also get access to the Coaches Corner, a private community of SG Plus members where they can connect, share, and learn from others. Our monthly Rountables and clinics are included. Information on this month's Roundtable is below..

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🚨 April 27th Roundtable - Drills, Drills and more Drills!

Building off of our recent podcast conversation with the guys at The Pro Lane, we will be collaborating with them next week on a project to provide a framework and ideas to help Coaches think about maximizing reps and decision making within their warm ups. To this extent we thought it would compliment nicely to follow up with a roundtable all about the art of a great drill. On top of discussing this concept with The Pro Lane, coaches can share some of their own favorite drills as well. Please feel free to come with film and share!!

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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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