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 broke down how to force a late switch against Drop Coverage by having the screener race out of the screen, beat the on ball defender to the recovery point, and pivot into a seal. Read the newsletter HERE.

This Week at a Glance:

🔒 SG Plus Content: Coaches Roundtable - The Ready Up​

🧪 The Practice Lab: What Are You Working On?

🎧 Slappin' Glass Podcast: Brooks Savage​

🥇 Best of the Week: Playing off the Drag​

The Ready Up

The First 10 Minutes Can Shape the Rest of Practice

This past week, we hosted the final installment of our SG+ Summer Coaches Roundtable series. Our own Drew Dunlop led the session, sharing his ideas around “The Ready Up” before opening the floor for discussion.

One question stayed with us:

What if the first 10 to 15 minutes of practice prepared players for the decisions they’ll face later, not just the movements?

The Ready Up is a way to connect the opening of practice to the work that follows. If the main part of practice will ask players to drive and kick, switch, cut, or finish through contact, the Ready Up can introduce those problems early.

But preparing players to decide doesn’t always mean asking them to play faster.

Consider a closeout. If a defender arrives hard and takes away the shot, the player may need to attack the advantage immediately. If the closeout is shorter, the better play might be to hold, use a jab, and let the defense show its next move.

The read matters more than a rule that says every catch must be a “0.5” decision. The aim is to recognize the situation earlier, organize the movement sooner, and choose the right action.

That changes how we think about a warm up. The question isn’t only whether a drill looks like basketball. It’s whether players have information to read and a reason to move. A changed closeout or an imperfect starting position can turn a familiar movement into a decision.

A useful place to start: look at the main portion of practice and work backward. What will players need to see, decide, and do? Bring an early version of that problem into the first part of practice.

In the full Roundtable, Coach Dunlop shares more Ready Up examples and discusses how to adjust the problems for your players. SG Plus members can watch the replay on SGTV, with the presentation slides and downloadable discussion notes alongside it.

Better Questions. Better Practice.

Thoughts from Drew Dunlop in building The Practice Lab

Last week, I wrote about making The Practice Lab more interactive. Bring your questions. Share what you’re trying. Give us something we can work through together.

This week’s coaches roundtable showed the value of that.

The questions opened up a great conversation around developing footwork, finishing tactics, and playing out of bad positioning. Each topic became more interesting as coaches added their perspectives and explored the details.

Brick

It’s easy to discuss the solution without fully understanding the situation.

“Work on footwork” sounds straightforward until we start asking: Footwork for what situation? Where is the defender? Where is the help? With how much space and time?

The same goes for finishing. A tactic might help in one situation and leave a player with fewer options in another. And sometimes, the player is already in a poor position when the problem begins.

Those details matter when we design the work.

Takeaway

The questions are part of the value.

One coach presents a problem. Another adds a different context. A follow-up question makes us reconsider how we would approach it.

That exchange helps us get more specific about what players need to recognize, what options are available, and how practice can help them explore those options.

This is what we want The Practice Lab to become: a place where participants help shape the learning through the problems they bring.

Tinker

Give players experience solving the possession from a difficult starting point.

I want to keep exploring how we design for players who are crowded, off balance, cut off, or caught in a compromising position.

Can they recover options? Create enough space to finish? Keep the possession alive?

We can deliberately include those situations and see what players discover.

The value of this community and our conversations are clear, they turn this into an interactive journey. Bring a clip, a question, or a situation you’re struggling to recreate in practice. Because the more we can see what you’re working through, the better we can make this space useful to your coaching.

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

🎙Brooks Savage on Offensive Evolution, From Tagging to Crashing, and Late-Game Comebacks | East Tennessee State

East Tennessee State head coach Brooks Savage joins us to talk through the evolution of his offense, why he moved away from trying to be different, and how his program’s identity starts with standards. We also get into keeping practice simple and competitive, offensive rebounding, playing without a traditional center, and how to create a comeback when the game starts to get away from you.

Seven Lessons from Brooks Savage

• Adapt the system to the roster. Savage’s offense evolved as he learned what each team could execute and where its best advantages came from.
• You don’t need to be different everywhere. A strong defensive identity can be the program’s point of separation while the offense stays simple and familiar.
• Standards make identity actionable. Recruiting, playing time, and daily expectations show players what the program actually values.
• Repetition gives culture a shared language. Consistent terminology and clear definitions help players recognize what the team expects in practice and under pressure.
• Practice the priorities that decide games. Savage builds practices around recurring needs—such as rebounding, transition defense, and playing on balance—rather than long blocks of dummy offense.
• Rebounding strategy has a cost. Tagging up can protect transition defense, but it demands time and coordination; crashing requires clear decisions about who goes and when.
• When trailing, change the conditions of the game. Savage’s first move is to press, play smaller, and increase the pace, while using timeouts when the moment calls for them.

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

📺 Drag & Get PNR - Twirl • Elbow Splits​

"Advancing the ball to the slot out of a drag screen, then twirling back into split action with the drag screener."

🔒 Pair With: Using the entry to attack through a corner stampede.

🔒 Pair With: Rejecting the slot pin down after the drag screen to flow the shooter directly into a "Peja action."

🔓 SG Plus Content: Our breakdown on Coach Kattash transition concepts and actions based off the different spacing locations of their two bigs, including Bilbao's trailer Gets.

Interesting Reads

📚 The VCU Blueprint: How the Martelli Hire Is an Antidote to College Basketball’s Chaos​

Phil Martelli Jr. is the perfect synthesis of old-school values and new-school methodology. His upbringing as the son of a St. Joseph’s coaching legend provided him with an innate, cradle-to-present understanding of the A-10’s competitive soul. He didn’t just study the conference; he was raised on its sidelines, absorbing its rhythms and rivalries

📚 Nobody Gives New Team Leads a Handbook. So I Started Writing One​

2) Trust is built through small repeated signals, not hero moments.

Micro-situation: You save an incident once and everyone claps. But real trust comes from being consistently reliable: your reactions, your rhythm, and your boundaries, week after week.

📚 Four Steps to Building the Psychological Safety That High-Performing Teams Need​

“It used to be: How do we get the work done? But nowadays, there’s just as much interest in: How are people doing? And what the research finds is that psychological safety is one good predictor of more positive work experiences,” she says.

Quote of the Week

Thank you for reading and have a great week coaching,

Dan, Pat, Eric, and Drew

info@slappinglass.com