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

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

ICYMI: Last week, we recapped Coach Johnn Tauer's Socal Coaches Summit presentation on how coaches can recruit, measure, and build environments that sustain intrinsic motivation within their teams. Read the newsletter HERE.

This Week at a Glance:

🔒 SG Plus Content: Jump on the Pickup - Generating Steals in the PNR​

🎧 Slappin' Glass Podcast: Justin Bokmeyer {Brooklyn Nets} *Midseason Schedule

📣 Hudl Instat & Dr. Dish

🥇 Best of the Week: Baseline Staggers & Twirl Screening​

📚 Interesting Reads: The Pitfalls of Consistency

Let's dive in...

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Jump on the Pickup

As coaches around the country dive into a new season, a recurring conversation we’re hearing is: How can we create more turnovers on the defensive end?

Aggressiveness is trending upward as teams look to be more disruptive, more physical, and tougher to play against. But many “aggressive” defensive adjustments require extreme changes that pull coaches far from their base principles. While those can work situationally, most coaches are searching for small, sustainable tweaks that still crank up their steal creation without overhauling their identity.

A few summers ago, we explored this topic with the help of Coach Gonzalo Rodríguez {🔒}, highlighting several situations and techniques defenses can employ to dial up aggression and generate steals without compromising their base coverages.

This week, we’re looking at a beautifully simple yet highly effective technique used last season by Coach Richard Pitino and New Mexico (Coach Pitino is now at Xavier). It’s a way to bother pick-and-roll ballhandlers, remove their primary read, and create a loud, physical cue that can spook the passer, stall the action, or even trigger a deflection or turnover.

Zooming In: "Traditionally" taught, the on-ball defender chasing over the screen fights like crazy to get immediately back in front of the ball. But New Mexico flips the priority. Instead of racing to re-square the ball, as soon as the ballhandler picks up the ball, the defender automatically jumps with arms fully extended — an exaggerated, disruptive contest aimed directly at the anticipated passing lane.

With the big stunting or containing the drive and forcing the early pickup, the ballhandler becomes primarily a passer, and that’s when the jump becomes a weapon. It buys time for weak-side rotations, chokes off straight-line passes, and can stall the possession entirely. The farther from the rim the pickup happens, the more effective this technique becomes.

In short: it is a simple, loud, repeatable cue that fits seamlessly into base coverage and meaningfully increases your chances of stealing an extra possession.

Buying Time

This technique can generate a high volume of deflections and, in turn, forced turnovers. According to Synergy, New Mexico forced turnovers on 24% of opponent pick-and-rolls where the handler made a pass. But even when it doesn’t produce a steal, the technique still carries significant value by slowing down your opponent’s ball movement in the half court.

The guard’s jump on the pickup becomes a major visual obstacle for the ballhandler, and that disruption helps the defense in several ways. It can completely take away the primary passing lane, forcing a secondary decision, or it can force the ballhandler to shift their angle to deliver the pass. That usually means the ball is thrown to a slightly different spot and with less pace, a small details that buys the defense precious time to rotate and arrive on schedule.

Zooming In: Slower, longer passes are what fuels great defenses and this technique does just that. As shown above, by jumping on the pickup the ballhandler is unable to hit the open player lifting behind the roll, buying time for the defender, stuck in the tag, to recover back out.

Taking Away The Most Direct Pass

The last thing any team wants out of pick-and-roll coverage is to give up a score directly off the first pass, and jumping on the pickup is a great way to prioritize removing the most dangerous options based on the coverage being applied. When the big is asked to be up to touch at the point of the screen, the slip out becomes a potent weapon for the offense. By anticipating this, the on-ball defender can help protect the big and support the rim rotations by aggressively jumping on the ballhandler’s early pickups over the top.

Zooming In: In tough single-side tag situations, this technique becomes especially valuable: it buys the tag defender an extra split second to react to a lobbed pass and helps eliminate the chance of a quick slip out.

Jumping on the pickup can be a way to add a bit more disruption to a conservative coverage, but it can also play a key role within an aggressive coverage:

Zooming In: In aggressive coverages where two defenders commit to the ball, the biggest threat, and the ballhandler’s most likely first read is the short roll. With that in mind, the on-ball defender’s responsibility shifts to taking away this pass or, at minimum, forcing a tougher angle that slows the delivery and buys time for the help to rotate.

A well-timed jump may not overhaul a defense, but it meaningfully raises its ceiling. As the season unfolds, these small, repeatable details can become the difference between giving up a rhythm pass and earning an extra stop. To learn more on this defensive technique, including second jump deflections, SG+ Members can view the entire breakdown now on SGTV!

Together with Dr. Dish

Imagine having your team’s entire development, training, and analytics in one place. That’s the Dr. Dish Training Management System — T-M-S — the ultimate coaching platform that transforms your shooting machine into a complete player-development engine. Track every rep, drill, and player. Assign custom workouts. View heat maps, leaderboards, and progress across your entire roster — all in one dashboard. Build accountability. Unlock smarter reps. And take full control of your team’s growth. Feed Your Fire at drdishbasketball.com.​

🎧 Justin Bokmeyer on Structures for High Performance Environments, the Value of Pre-Mortems, and Systems Thinking {Brooklyn Nets}

Last week on Slappin’ Glass, we sat down with Justin Bokmeyer, Director of Basketball Operations for the Brooklyn Nets, to explore how great teams build sustainable, high-performance environments.

With a background spanning West Point, MLS Next, and the NBA Academy, Justin shares powerful lessons on leadership, systems thinking, and developing people-first organizations that thrive under pressure.

🧠 What You’ll Learn

• People Over Hardware: Why elite performance starts with hiring, aligning, and empowering the right people.
• Systems Thinking: How to connect decisions across departments to reduce silos and improve trust.
• Onboarding and Role Clarity: The overlooked key to alignment and long-term success.
• Decision-Making Frameworks: How Justin uses pre-mortems, decision journaling, and pushing decisions to the lowest level to build accountability and clarity.
• Military Leadership Lessons: Applying principles like shared mission, healthy ego, and accountability from West Point to professional sports.

🔁 Key Quote

Tune in to learn how the Brooklyn Nets’ Justin Bokmeyer blends leadership, decision science, and culture-building to create environments where teams can grow, compete, and sustain excellence.

Together with Hudl

Hudl Powers Every Possession

If you’re already using tools like FastDraw, FastScout, or FastRecruit—you know how essential they are to your workflows. And now that they’re fully part of the Hudl ecosystem, they’re more powerful than ever. From film and play diagrams to scouting reports and custom recruiting boards, everything flows together. One system. Built for high-performance programs.

​Learn more about Hudl and their variety of products or subscribers to Slappin' Glass can also directly email Winston Jones of Hudl at winston.jones@hudl.com.

Tactical

📺 Horns Entry - Pin Down • Pitch • Baseline Stagger​

"Rolling a shooter into a baseline stagger screen off the horns screen entry."

✚ Pair With: Clever baseline staggers and screening actions drawn from both the Turnout entry and 5-Out spacing.

🔒 SG Plus Content: One of our favorite technical breakdown videos on off ball screening adjustments to hit screens.

📺 Twirl Screening - Zipper Entry & Post Trigger​

"A few ATO variations incorporating the twirl screen to bring a shooter back to the ball."

✚ Pair With: UConn doing “UConn things” with this beautifully intricate twirl screening action.

🔒 SG Plus Content: Our breakdown on UConn's Swing Thru and Diamond series.

Interesting Reads

📚 Do What You Can't

Information abundance is a modern miracle but it's also an impediment to agency. And it happens to be much more fun and freeing to be out in the world just doing stuff, stumping around and humming merrily, expanding my zone of competence, than sitting inside on a screen watching someone else do stuff. Knowledge is rarely the bottleneck. To start almost anything, you need to know nearly nothing.

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📚 The Pitfalls of Consistency​

This highlights an important thing: Consistency is beautiful when it’s used to build deeper connections, but becomes burdensome when you use it solely for personal gain.

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📚 Da Vinci's Rigor​

What’s particularly revealing is that da Vinci pursued this level of excellence largely for himself. Many of his most thorough studies remained hidden in private notebooks. His commitment to understanding wasn’t performance art for others; it was his internal standard.

Quote of the Week

Thank you for reading and have a great week coaching,

Dan, Pat, and Eric

info@slappinglass.com

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