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

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ICYMI: Last week, we revisited Tenerife's continued success with the Argentina Break. Read the newsletter HERE.

This Week at a Glance:

🔒 SG Plus Content: Weakside Switch the Pop - Drop PNR Coverage​

🎧 Slappin' Glass Podcast: Jumping on the Pickup, "Total Basketball", and Finding Flow | A Coaches’ Mailbag on Modern Advantages​

📣 Hudl Analyst Academy!

🥇 Best of the Week: SLOB's & BLOB's​

📚 Interesting Reads: 37 Pieces of Career Advice

Lets dive in...

Defending the Pop

We all wish there was a perfect defensive coverage solution, one that could neutralize every possible offensive attack and leave the offense flummoxed with no reads or scoring advantages on the table.

Unfortunately, no such defense exists. And truthfully, if it did, the game we love and the art of coaching would not be nearly as interesting. Coverage decisions are always a game of give and take, trade-offs, calculated risks, and taking something away while knowingly conceding something else. In this breakdown, we look at how elite defenses are solving the pick and pop without abandoning drop coverage, and what that reveals about modern defensive problem solving.

What You’ll Learn

• How to remove the pop without giving up the rim
• How weakside switching and guard rotations solve drop’s biggest stress points
• How modern spacing and burn cuts attack drop, and the reads defenses must win

Drop pick and roll coverage is a classic example. Protecting the lane with the big has proven its value over the past decade plus, but it is not without vulnerabilities. The pick and pop has long been a reliable counter, often producing a clean look as the dropping big retreats while the ballhandler applies pressure.

As bigs become more skilled and more dangerous from three, this type of passive coverage on the pop can quickly become inadequate. In a game defined by matchups and stylistic trade-offs, what options are available when facing a true popping threat with a slower footed big? Especially if switching or a change of coverage falls outside your defensive identity or the capabilities of your big.

To defend the pop at a higher level while still staying in drop, one solution is a full weakside switch, allowing the defense to take away those damaging, semi wide open threes and challenging the willingness of the offense to read and pass against the rotations.

Protecting The Big

If you have a dynamic big who can retreat in drop coverage and still recover to take away a pick and pop three, you are in a fortunate position. With that level of mobility, you may also have the flexibility to play an entirely different coverage altogether.

For most teams, however, drop pick and roll coverage is used to protect a slower footed big. Drop shields the big from their primary deficiency, perimeter speed, while preserving their size and rim protection. The trade-off is clear. While the big is protected at the rim, the pop becomes the most difficult action for them to defend in space.

The weakside switch exists to solve this specific problem. By switching on the flight of the pop pass, the highest defender on the weakside takes the popping big, while defenders behind rotate up accordingly. This creates a clean, connected rotation that removes the big from having to recover out to the pop. Instead, the big can locate the third pass, a task that is far more manageable given the time and spacing involved.

This matters because two of the most difficult closeouts for any defender are long closeouts and two way closeouts. In a conventional drop, the defense is often asking its least mobile player to execute both. The big must protect the paint, then sprint to the perimeter while guarding a live shooter with multiple options. By contrast, the weakside switch turns that demand into shorter, more controllable rotations, allowing the defense to stay intact while protecting the big from their most vulnerable assignment.

Keeping Size At The Rim

Teams seeking to force longer closeouts and eliminate gap help typically rely on two spacing solutions: a “Last,” {🔒} or dunker filled, alignment, and "burn cutting."{🔒} With "Last" PNR spacing, the lone weakside corner defender is stressed, as they must cover significant ground from the corner to contest the pop.

If this action is scouted or quickly diagnosed, a slightly higher drop can help deter corner skips while allowing the corner defender to adjust off the corner in preparation for rotating onto the popper.

Zooming In: The primary advantage of this coverage against a filled dunker spot is that it allows the dropping big to retreat back toward the rim. The dunker defender becomes responsible for sprinting to the corner on the extra pass off the pop, rather than asking the big to make that recovery. By doing so, the defense maintains size in the paint and stays prepared to defend any drive that follows the first pass.

Alternatively, when the pop occurs to the two side, the most natural offensive response is a 45 cut, commonly referred to as a Burn cut. Since many defenses will stunt at the pop rather than fully switch, the offense can “burn” the next closest defender behind the pop, creating a layup on the cut or eliminating the stunt altogether.

This action remains effective against the weakside switch, and because it is one of the most common cuts following a pop, it is one the defense must be prepared to recognize and absorb.

Zooming In: As the 45 cut occurs, the responsibility falls on the low defender to step up and control the cutter, taking away the early passing window from the ballhandler before the dropping big can absorb the action. When executed correctly, this offensive movement actually helps the defense by creating a clean, natural rotation. The dropping big can carry their momentum from the drop back to the rim, where the cutter arrives directly into their rotation.

Send Guard Rotation

At times, when the offense shows a consistent ability to move the ball against the rotation by repeatedly forcing the big into closeouts or popping to a single side of the floor, it can make more sense to solve the pop with an alternative guard switch that resembles a peel or even a triple switch within the pick and roll.

Rather than asking the big to sprint into the rotation, the ballhandler’s defender carries their momentum out of the initial coverage and enters the weakside rotation on the pass out to the popping big. This structure keeps guards in the rotation, while maintaining defensive balance and preserving size at the rim. With size anchored in the paint, the defense is better positioned to contest rim penetration on closeouts and finish possessions with improved rebounding position.

By using the weakside switch against the pop, the defense is still able to accomplish the core goals of conventional drop coverage while neutralizing one of its most persistent vulnerabilities. More broadly, it reinforces a central truth of defensive design: no coverage is complete on its own. The advantage comes from identifying where a coverage is stressed and layering in solutions that protect its intent rather than abandoning it altogether.

To learn more on this weakside switch against the pop, SG+ Members can enjoy this week's newest breakdown on SGTV...

2025 Recap & Mailbag

This week on the podcast and YouTube, we released a three part Mailbag series recapping the biggest trends we saw across the game in 2025.

• Part 1: Defensive Trends​
• Part 2: Offensive Trends​
• Part 3: Beyond X’s and O’s​

Have a question you’re studying or wrestling with? Send it in and we’ll feature selected submissions in upcoming Mailbag episodes.

📩 Submit your Mailbag questions HERE.

Together with Hudl

Built for coaches who want clarity, not complexity.

If you’re already using tools like Instat or Sportscode, you know how powerful they can be. Hudl Academy is designed to help coaches get more out of the technology they already have, and confidently add what they don’t.

The Hudl Analyst Academy walks coaches through Instat, Sportscode, and the broader Hudl ecosystem, with clear, practical instruction on film workflow, tagging, breakdowns, and analysis that actually translate to winning.

​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.

🎙 Jumping on the Pickup, "Total Basketball", and Finding Flow | A Coaches’ Mailbag on Modern Advantages

What were the ideas from 2025 that coaches couldn’t stop thinking about—the ones that kept showing up in practice plans, film sessions, and staff rooms?

In this Slappin’ Glass Mailbag Episode, we revisit the most compelling concepts covered by Slappin' Glass in 2025 as well as questions sent in by coaches around the world, unpacking how modern teams are creating advantages on both sides of the ball—and why the best programs are increasingly focused on flow, disruption, and continuity rather than isolated actions.

The conversation begins with a deep dive into “jumping on the pickup” in pick-and-roll defense—a subtle but powerful technique for shrinking passing windows, generating deflections, and creating turnovers without abandoning base coverage. From there, the discussion expands into broader defensive trends around smart aggression, including selective hitting, late-clock doubles, ATO disruption, and how elite teams steal possessions without gambling.

Offensively, the group explores the growing influence of Total Basketball—a philosophy rooted in eliminating pauses between offense and defense, tagging up on the glass, arriving “already playing” in the half court, and flowing seamlessly from one advantage to the next. Coaches will hear how leading programs are emphasizing shape over spacing, simplifying actions to increase pace, and using familiar structures to unlock better decision-making under pressure.

Beyond tactics, this episode also weaves in insights from some of our most impactful off-court and analytics conversations of the year, including:

• Guiding teams into flow states
• Measuring and developing decision-making
• Understanding kill shots, runs, and game-swing moments
• Using analytics that actually help during games—not just on Twitter

This mailbag isn’t about trends for trend’s sake. It’s about how elite coaches are thinking, teaching, and designing environments that allow players to play faster, freer, and more connected—and what those ideas suggest about where the game is heading next.

🎥 This episode is also available on YouTube, with embedded video clips that bring the concepts to life.

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Tactical

📺 BLOB - Box • Backscreen Lob​

"Screening the big to the rim within a BLOB Box alignment."

✚ Pair With: A great variation of the difficulty in defending "Screen the Screener" actions occurring under the rim.

🎧 Pair With: Our podcast conversation with Michigan HC Dusty May.

🔒 SG Plus Content: Our recent breakdown on effective screening and spacing in Deep Corner Inbounds.

📺 SLOB Zipper - Slip Out Hook Screen • "Last" Spacing​

"An effective screening and spacing concept designed to open up the short roll."

✚ Pair With: Another effective screening tactic in the SLOB, using Gaggle screens at the elbow to create unpredictability and defensive confusion.

🔒 SG Plus Content: Our breakdown on punishing aggressive coverages with the Slip Out Hook Screen.

Interesting Reads

📚 A Few Things I’m Pretty Sure About​

I have a theory about nostalgia: It happens because the best survival strategy in an uncertain world is to overworry. When you look back, you forget about all the things you worried about that never came true. So life appears better in the past because in hindsight there wasn’t as much to worry about as you were actually worrying about at the time.

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📚 37 Pieces of Career Advice I Wish I’d Known Earlier​

12. All success is a lagging indicator… all the good stuff (and bad stuff) is downstream from choices made long before.

13. Lyndon Johnson said that the way to get things done was to get close to those who are at the center of things.

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📚 Before Drake Maye Took the NFL by Storm, He Would ‘Destroy Everybody’ In Basketball​

Initially, Maye didn’t want to ruffle feathers by hogging the ball. He was just a sophomore, his first game with a new team. He told Duwe Farris, a 6-foot-6 senior who went on to play at the University of North Carolina, that he’d try to get him some shots.

“I was like, ‘Oh, that’s pretty cool,’” Farris said. “And then by the second half, I was like, ‘Drake, bro, forget it. You keep the ball.’ He was that good.”

Quote of the Week

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Thank you for reading and have a great week coaching,

Dan, Pat, and Eric

info@slappinglass.com

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