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 released Coach Drew Dunlop's Socal Coaches Summit clinic on "Ecological Design in Player Development." Read the full session recap HERE.

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This Week at a Glance:

🔒 SG Plus Content: September Roundtable - What gets you Beat?​

🎧 Slappin' Glass Podcast: Dr. Sarah Sarkis​

📣 Hudl Instat & Dr. Dish

🥇 Best of the Week: Zipper & UCLA Entries​

📚 Interesting Reads

Let's dive in...

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What Gets You Beat?

Throughout the summer, we at Slappin’ Glass have been hosting a series of our annual Coaches Roundtables that have sparked tremendous discussion and insight. No matter the topic, it’s always inspiring to hear coaches share their questions, ideas, and experiences in ways that challenge and elevate everyone in attendance.

• July Roundtable - What are you Studying?
• August Roundtable - Establishing your Culture​

For the September installment, the discussion shifted toward a question that sits on the minds of many coaches as the season approaches:

What gets you beat?

So much of what coaches focus on in the offseason centers around new schematic ideas, fresh teaching methods, and the excitement of what’s possible in the year ahead. But for this session, we intentionally took things in a slightly different direction.

Not to be pessimistic or dampen any preseason optimism, but to take a holistic and honest look at our teams and programs, to identify not only what might propel us toward a championship, but also what could quietly hold us back.

By exploring the things that “get us beat,” we challenge ourselves to recognize potential weaknesses before they surface, and to develop strategies to solve or mitigate those issues before they snowball into bigger problems during the season.

It turned into a tremendous, candid discussion and a reminder of why these SG+ Roundtables are valuable spaces where coaches can think critically, share openly, and leave with actionable ideas to improve their teams.

Below are some of the central takeaways and themes that emerged from the September Roundtable discussion on “What Gets You Beat?”

Failure Defense

Any coach with a beating heart heads into training camp envisioning a defense running on perfect harmony with all five players on a string, communicating as one, gliding from rotation to rotation, seamlessly winning every closeout and smothering every scoring action.

But what happens when there’s middle penetration? Or, when a short roll distorts your coverage and the structure begins to bend?

What gets you beat? Is it focusing too much on your primary coverages or not enough on what happens when they fail?

Even when all five defenders are executing within the system, there will be (many) possessions where someone gets beat off the dribble, an offensive player gains leverage, or a closeout arrives half a step late. Suddenly, you’re in "failure defense" — situations or rotations outside of your base coverage.

And that’s the rub. With limited time and an endless list of priorities, how much attention should be given to these moments? How much credence do we give to training our teams to solve these situations versus doubling down and correcting where the breakdown in our base coverage occurred in the first place?

Most teams spend hours perfecting their shell, pick-and-roll, and help-side principles, but far less time rehearsing how to recover once the shape collapses. It’s not glamorous work, but it’s often the difference between forcing a late-clock miss or surrendering a wide-open three.

When it comes to failure defense, two key themes emerged from our September Roundtable discussion…

What are the emergency defensive concepts?

For many coaches, these moments present an opportunity to lean on an emergency defensive concept such as the peel switch {🔒}, something we’ve covered extensively on SGTV, where Coach Paul Kelleher shared excellent insight and drills {🔒} from his experience teaching it.

On dribble penetration where the on-ball defender is clearly beaten, the next defender one pass away will switch onto the drive while the initial defender peels off to cover the offensive player that teammate has just left. When executed properly, this rotation can stop the penetration before it reaches the paint, all without committing two defenders to the ball.

The challenge with peel switching lies in recognition and timing. Knowing when the on-ball defender truly needs the peel versus when they’re still competing to level off the drive. It also depends heavily on your base defensive philosophy: whether you emphasize being square on the ball or forcing a side, each approach shapes from where a possible peel could or should come from.

The peel switch is just one example of failure defense and why having a clear set of rules, communication cues, and drills for these moments doesn’t just plug leaks; it gives your defense confidence that it can bend without breaking.

When do you team these emergency concepts?

One potential drawback of teaching failure defense concepts too early is that players may begin to lean on them as a crutch. Trusting that if they get beat off the dribble or lose a closeout, there will be coverage behind them to clean up the mistake.

While these emergency concepts are critical to a complete defensive system, they should never replace the foundation of basic containment and accountability. The subtlety for coaches lies in knowing when to introduce them, balancing preparation with principle.

Maybe these concepts aren’t necessarily installed in the first week of practice (though some coaches certainly do), but they should absolutely be part of your early-season planning. Because at some point, those moments of defensive breakdown will happen and when they do, you don’t want to be figuring it out after it’s already gotten you beat.

Balancing A Transition Focus With Half Court Execution

You've heard it a million times from a million coaches, from the development level all the way up to the NBA.

"We're going to play fast this year."

And for good reason. Transition basketball is fun, efficient, and energizing. Transition attempts remain among the most productive shots in the game at nearly every level. Players love the freedom and tempo. Fans love the pace and points. And coaches love the pressure it puts on defenses.

But here’s the question: Does playing fast help you win the biggest game on your schedule?

What gets you beat? Building a transition-heavy identity that doesn’t translate when games slow down.

Think about every rivalry matchup or playoff game you’ve ever coached. How many of them came down to one or two possessions in the final minutes? Probably most. Because when the stakes rise, the tempo usually drops.

Even if both teams are flying up and down the floor for 38 minutes, the last two almost always become half-court battles. Possessions tighten, decisions matter more, and the ability to execute out of dead balls or controlled sets often determines who advances and who goes home.

As much as we all want to increase pace and find easier points in transition, it’s important not to let that emphasis hide weaknesses in half-court execution. Early in the season, pace and effort can cover up a lot. Running harder, rebounding better, and converting easy chances on the break will win you games. But when the margins shrink later in the year, those easy transition points dry up, and your team’s ability to score and defend in the half court becomes the deciding factor.

The preseason is a great time to study your league and look at the teams that succeed deep into the playoffs. Do the regular-season leaders, often those that thrive in transition, match the teams that win championships? In many leagues, the answer is no. The data (and the eye test) often show that the teams best in half-court execution end up winning when it matters most.

So, even if your identity is built around playing fast, carve out time in practice for special situations, late-game possessions, and half-court scenarios. They may not define your team in November, but they often decide who’s cutting down the nets in March.

For the full Roundtable discussion, with several other conversations on topics such as:

• “Clyde” Cutting
• Limiting Turnovers
• Identifying High-IQ Players

​SG+ Members can now view the replay on SGTV!

Together with Dr. Dish

Dr. Dish Basketball is accelerating player performance with the most innovative game-like shooting machines in the world, allowing coaches and players to get better faster than ever before. By providing the most usable and advanced shooting machines, on-demand workouts, multi-player stat tracking and instant analytics, Dr. Dish Basketball has become the preferred source for basketball training with progressive coaches and players.

🎧 Dr. Sarah Sarkis — Coaching Through Stress, Flow, and Friction

This week, we dive deep into the psychology of high performance with executive coach and psychologist Dr. Sarah Sarkis, whose work spans elite performers in both sport and business.

In a game where the scoreboard never stops ticking, Dr. Sarkis breaks down how great coaches metabolize stress, regulate team friction, and build cultures that turn pressure into flow. From “stress audits” to boundary-setting and recovery habits, this conversation unpacks how coaches can create high-trust environments where teams—and leaders—thrive under tension.

Key takeaways include:

• Metabolizing Stress: Stress isn’t the enemy—it’s fuel. Sarkis reframes stress as something to process rather than eliminate, teaching coaches how to guide players (and themselves) through overwhelm back toward clarity.
• Boundaries and Recovery: The best leaders know when to be on and when to be off. Sarkis highlights how top performers—like LeBron—invest time, not just money, in recovery, reminding us that “all debt comes due.”
• Friction and Flow: Competitive environments are built on friction. Great coaches learn to channel that heat into focus, not chaos—guiding their teams between the edges of boredom and overwhelm.
• Trust and Communication: Micro-cues build (or break) trust. Sarkis explains how consistency and honest communication are the foundation for flow, accountability, and culture.
• Motivation and Meaning: The great motivators don’t rely on speeches—they understand the reward systems that drive human behavior. Motivation, she reminds us, isn’t something you wait for; it’s something you engineer.

This episode is a masterclass in the inner game of coaching—where neuroscience meets leadership, and where the work isn’t just about your players... it’s about your own capacity to lead under stress.

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

📺 Zipper Entry - Elbow • Zoom • RIP Screen​

"Unicaja Malaga one of the best in the game at cutting their shooters to set up RIP screens."

✚ Pair With: A zipper entry into a guard weave, followed by a roll-replace action to create confusion and remove the tag.

🔒 SG Plus Content: Our breakdown on Unicaja Malaga's Arrive Offense and set design for their shooters.

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📺 UCLA Entry - Shuffle • Turnout​

"Cutting the shooter to the rim off the Shuffle screen to bring them back out off the turnout."

✚ Pair With: Stacking a baseline stagger and a screen-the-screener action off the point guard’s UCLA cut to the rim.

🔒 SG Plus Content: The use of the inside hand push dribble to help shooters create separation off hand-offs and off-ball screens.

Interesting Reads

📚 The Five True Originals of the 21st-Century NBA​

Steph Curry is something else entirely. First he broke everyone’s brains—baffled defenders, skeptical coaches, concern-trolling pundits—and then he changed the sport forever. It’s an open-and-shut case, the most self-evident Original of the last 25 years. When you zoom out to see the long arc of basketball history, there will be a stark line separating life before and after Steph’s emergence. It’s not just the 3-point volume, but everything that came with it. The space. The flow. No single player has had a greater impact on what is understood to be a quality shot. Steph rewired the brains of basketball lifers and upended the game on a grassroots level.

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📚 21 Facts About Throwing Good Parties​

19) Throughout the party, prioritize introducing people to each other and hosting the people who are new or shy, even at the cost of getting less time hanging out with your best friends yourself. Parties are a public service, and the guests will (hopefully) pay you back for this by inviting you to parties of their own.

20) Let me repeat that: Parties are a public service, you’re doing people a favor by throwing them. Someone might meet their new best friend or future lover at your gathering. In the short term, lovely people may feel less lonely, and that's thanks to you. In the long term, whole new children may ultimately exist in the world because you bothered to throw a party. Throwing parties is stressful for most people, but a great kindness to the community, so genuinely pat yourself on the back for doing this.

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📚 Finding Fulfillment ​

Great people want the opportunity to do great work. They want to be around other people who are doing the same. Experts enjoy deploying their expertise; novices with vim and aptitude enjoy learning and growing.

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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