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

Happy Sunday and welcome to all the new subscribers from around the world! We're excited to have you as part of the community 🙏

ICYMI: Last week, we looked at how Nikola Mirotic is creating early, easy scores with his transition high seals. View the newsletter HERE.

This Week at a Glance:

🔒SG Plus Content: Nik Popovic - Preparing Athletes to Move​

🎤 Slappin' Glass Podcast: Brian Katz​

📖 The Road More Traveled by Brian Katz

🥇Best of the Week: Slip Out Gets & Flex Offense​

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Let's dive in...

Preparing to Move

We all love studying the best ways to help our teams compete at the highest level on the court, sometimes glazing over the process of preparing them physically to get on court before we put in Uconn's "Wide Veer Shuffle Flare Slip" {🔒}.

We are thrilled to announce the release of a special edition to our "Film Room" series this week featuring the Adelaide 36ers' Head of High Performance, Nik Popovic. Last November Coach Popovic joined us on the podcast to discuss a variety of topics, including preparing athletes for peak performance, understanding weekly "load cycles", injury prevention, and more. During our conversation, Coach Popovic hinted at his pre-practice warm-up routine with his players, designed to prime and prepare their bodies for the day's practice demands. Following the interest sparked by our conversation, Coach Popovic generously volunteered his time to help us put together this "Film Room" breakdown on how to prepare your athletes for movement.

About the Project

Recognizing that not every program or club has a full-time S&C Coach or access to the latest equipment, we collaborated with Coach Popovic to create a video outlining several warm-up exercises that coaches can use within a 8-10 minute pre-practice warm-up regardless of their situation. These exercises aim to integrate physical preparedness with basketball-specific movement patterns. Coach Popovic guides viewers through each exercise, emphasizing what is being required in terms of movement and functionality to directly prepare the athlete for the demands of practice.

What the Video Entails?

Today's video breakdown provides a detailed discussion of several topics related to athlete performance and movement specificity, including:

• Hip Rotation, the Powerhouse of the Body.
• The importance of foot placement in creating hip rotation and efficiency in change of directions.

• Adding multi-direction movements within generic drills.
• Efficiency & velocity of movement, ability to transfer efficiently from one movement pattern to the next.
• Ability to rotate the hip and utilize the hip to get the body accelerating, decelerating, and changing direction.
• Developmental work to build basketball movement patterns (defensive slides).

• Duration and number of repetitions.

Today's "Film Room" video with Coach Popovic delves further into the specifics of player movement required during practice and offers optimal strategies for transitioning players from the warm-up phase into the first drill of the day.

To learn much more on ideas to help prepare athletes to compete at a high intensity level, please enjoy this week's latest video on SGTV...

Official Sponsor of "Start, Sub, or Sit?"

Just Play is the premier platform for engaging your team and managing workflow within your organization. Just Play consolidates the platforms you use and integrates with industry-leading video tools to help you win in four major areas: Teaching, Opponent Scouting, Prospect Recruiting, and Analytics. If you are interested in learning more, go to justplaysolutions.com/slappinglass.​

Slappin' Glass Podcast

It was a terrific time on the podcast as we sat down this week with California JUCO Hall of Fame Head Coach, and former Mid-Major Coach of the Year, Brian Katz! Coach Katz recently released a book on lessons learned in his 45 year journey, and we dove into a number of topics including winning players, true leadership, competitive open gyms, along with shot selection conversations and "good to great" program development during the always fun "Start, Sub, or Sit?!"

Listen to the entire conversation here...

Together with Hudl

We're proud to partner with one of the best tech companies in the world of sports, Hudl! Every play, every stat, every breakdown. On their own, they’re essential. But all together, they’re undeniable. Hudl recently introduced their newest product, Hudl Instat – a new advanced data platform that integrates with Sportscode and every Hudl product you rely on to create an all-in-one data powerhouse. Hudl Instat’s advanced tagging and next-level stat reports help you develop your team – and its global film library helps you find the missing piece to get the most out of every second of film. Visit ​hudl.com/slappinglass​ to learn more.

Tactical

📺 Pinar Karisyaka - Slip Out Gets​

"A well-timed slip out into a "Get" handoff, utilizing the threat of a Ghost Screen or RIP Screen to free the shooter's sprint into the ball."

✚ Pair With: Bilbao running a slightly different variation off the Ghost Screen.

🔒 SG Plus Content: The Sacramento King's Get & Zoom spacing.

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📺 Mega Basket - Flex Reject • Shuffle​

"Rejecting the flex screen to loop back over the top into a shuffle screen, down screen."

✚ Pair With: Our podcast conversation with Mega HC Marko Barac on hedging in the PNR & Spain PNR Reads.

🔒 SG Plus Content: Alba Berlin's Shuffle Cut Offense and Flex SLOB.

Interesting Reads

📚 The Best Books to Read as a Team​

We put out a question on Twitter(X) this week about the best books to read with your team. Tons of great suggestions in the comments!

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📚 Lucky vs. Repeatable​

"It’s so important to know the difference between the two when attempting to learn from someone. You want to try to emulate skills that are repeatable. Attempting to copy the parts of someone’s success that aren’t repeatable is equivalent to a 56-year-old dressing like a teenager and expecting to be cool."
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📚 You Merely Adopted the Grind. Tom Thibodeau Was Born in It.​

Success was never guaranteed for Thibs. But now the hard-nosed Knicks coach has his team in their best position in decades—and he got them there by staying true to himself.

Quote of the Week

Thank you for reading and have a great week coaching,

Dan and Pat

info@slappinglass.com

We're proud to partner with the leading Sports Travel company in the basketball world, Beyond Sports! Follow the link above to learn more about why more than 600 universities have trusted Beyond Sports for their team's foreign trips. Let them know Slappin' Glass sent you!

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