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

Happy Sunday! Welcome to all the newest subscribers from around the world!

ICYMI: Last week, we explored Baldur Ragnarsson’s contact drills and Drew Dunlop’s variable movement Ready Ups in the Practice Lab, looking at how to prepare players to stay balanced, adapt through contact, and find solutions from unfamiliar positions. Read the newsletter HERE.

This Week at a Glance:

🔒 SG Plus Content: Forcing the Late Switch - Attacking Drop Coverage​

🎧 Slappin' Glass Podcast: Kim Caldwell

🥇 Best of the Week: Elevator Screens & Bunched Spacing​

Forcing the Late Switch

Against drop coverage, we often coach the guard to turn the corner and the big to roll hard, putting pressure on the rim and creating a 2v1 against the big in coverage. But there’s another way to create similar pressure: let the guard win the race while the big trails the play.

This week, we’re looking at how that difference in timing can force a late switch and give the big a smaller defender to seal near the rim.

We’re off to the races!

Race and Pivot

In drop coverage, the big protects against the ballhandler’s downhill drive while the guard’s defender works to recover and get back in front. If that recovery doesn’t happen by a designated point, often around the free throw line, many teams will trigger an emergency switch.

That gives the offense a defensive rule to attack.

The guard’s task is to accelerate out of the screen and beat their defender to the recovery spot, forcing the drop big to commit and triggering the late switch.

Zooming In-Guard’s Role: When the goal is to force this exchange, the guard’s job becomes clear. No hang dribbles, no hostage dribbles, no probing. It’s a race.

Then comes a controlled stop and pivot, giving the big time to arrive and seal the smaller defender. The purpose of the pace is to force a commitment, then get the ball under control to attack the mismatch.

But forcing the switch is only the first step. Can the big establish the seal before the defense scrambles out? Can the offense keep the low man away? And what happens if the defense avoids the switch or takes away the first pass?

Inside SG+, we break down the screener’s delayed roll, spacing to protect the seal, and the Nash dribble to keep the advantage alive. Join SG+ to watch the full video on SGTV and read the complete breakdown in this week’s premium newsletter.

The Season Is Almost Here

What Are You Working On?

A defensive principle that isn’t carrying into live play? A practice constraint players have started gaming? A player development problem you’re still trying to solve?

Inside The Practice Lab, Drew Dunlop shares what he’s testing, learning, and adjusting in the gym. SG+ members can watch the work, ask questions in the community, share their own experiments, and help shape future Practice Lab pieces.

The goal is to develop better ideas you can adapt to your players, your philosophy, and the way you want to play.

Join SG+ for access to The Practice Lab and our coaching community. Bring one problem you’re working through and what you’ve tried so far. Let’s work on it together.

Together with Hudl

The Best Staffs Are Built on This

Night one starts with the work before tip-off. Breaking down film. Building the scout. Deciding what your players need to see.

Hudl brings Sportscode, FastModel, and InStat together to help your staff connect video, strategy, and scouting. Assistants, analysts, and head coaches working from the same information, with a clear plan to bring to the floor.

Prepare for your opener with Hudl.

Learn more at hudl.com/slappinglass​

Subscribers to Slappin' Glass can also directly email Winston Jones of Hudl at winston.jones@hudl.com.

Slappin' Glass Podcast

🎙Kim Caldwell on Building a Connected System, Burning the Boats, and Practice Tipping Points | Tennessee

This week we’re joined by Tennessee Women’s Basketball Head Coach Kim Caldwell. We discuss the connected system behind her up-tempo style, including creating 20 more shots, crashing four, flowing into full-court pressure, and subbing in waves. We also explore the balance between conviction and adaptation before finishing with Start, Sub, or Sit on communication, decision-making, and execution when players reach their physical limit in practice.

Seven Lessons from Kim Caldwell

1. Possession Volume Can Be Its Own Form of Efficiency

Caldwell is willing to trade some shot quality and defensive security for more total opportunities, betting that a sustained advantage in attempts will outweigh imperfections within individual possessions.

2. A Style Is Only Real When Every Phase Supports It

Playing fast cannot sit exclusively inside transition offense; shot selection, offensive rebounding, substitutions, pressure, conditioning, and practice design must all drive the game toward the same environment.

3. Freedom Has to Be Funded by Structure

Players earn the freedom to shoot early and make aggressive decisions by fulfilling the responsibilities that protect those choices—running the floor, establishing rebounders, applying pressure, and playing through fatigue.

4. Offensive Rebounding Can Be the First Action of Transition Defense

Crashing four is not simply an attempt to recover the ball; it places defenders next to matchups and allows Caldwell’s pressure to begin the moment the opponent secures the rebound.

5. Substitution Policy Shapes the Psychology of Effort

When players know they are being removed to recover rather than punished for mistakes, they can spend more energy, take more aggressive chances, and avoid playing cautiously to preserve their minutes.

6. Conviction Means Protecting the Architecture, Not Refusing to Adapt

Caldwell can change the press, stunts, lineups, or late-game decisions without compromising the larger connections that make the system work.

7. Practice Must Expose What Survives Under Fatigue

The purpose of Caldwell’s full-court practices, short drills, limited stoppages, and conditioning is not simply fitness—it is discovering whether communication, decisions, and habits remain intact once execution begins to deteriorate.

Listen to the full conversation here...

Together with NABC

Stay Connected to the Coaching Profession

The season moves fast. NABC membership keeps you connected to the coaches, ideas, events and issues shaping the profession.

More than 5,000 coaches across every level are part of the NABC, with member access to the NABC Convention, regional clinics, mentoring, exclusive awards, discounts and professional development opportunities throughout the year.

Just as importantly, membership helps strengthen the collective voice of coaches on the issues affecting the game and the profession.

If coaching is your profession, the NABC should be part of it.

Renew your membership — or join for the first time — at NABC.com/membership.

Tactical

📺 BLOB - Bunched Elevator Screen​

"Using a bunched alignment on either the strong or weakside of the inbounder to disguise which shooter will exit through the elevator screen."

🔒 Pair With: A few of our favorite elevator actions out of Drag ballscreens, Pistol, and Horns entries.

🔒 Pair With: Using three players bunched together at the elbow to create unpredictability and defensive confusion on SLOBs or BLOBs.

🔒 SG Plus Content: Our Deep Corner Inbound breakdown exploring several options to create safe passing windows and quick scoring looks from a difficult inbound spot.

Interesting Reads

📚 Mistakes We Made While Building what Became an Award Winning Culture​

2. We learned "If you want to be loved, you have to give up trying to being liked" and it changed our leadership style. We stopped trying to be liked by many and started focusing on being loved by our community - for all of our faults and positives alike. It sounds nice, but it ain't for the faint of heart.

📚 Build Your Culture Like a Product ​

To pull off successful communication, sometimes you need to share the same information so many times that you get annoyed by the sound of your own voice.

📚 How You Chase the Unthinkable​

1. A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats.

It starts with raising the standard. In most breakthroughs, there is no lone genius. It’s a group of people pushing one another to reach heights. We need competition, but it’s got to be the right kind of competition.

Quote of the Week

Thank you for reading and have a great week coaching,

Dan, Pat, Eric, and Drew

info@slappinglass.com