Mike Jagacki is a Men’s Basketball Assistant Coach at SUNY New Paltz where he helped lead the Hawks to the NCAA D3 Tournament in 2024 and to the SUNYAC Tournament in each of his 4 seasons. Prior to arriving at New Paltz, Jagacki spent 3 years as a Video Coordinator and Assistant Coach for the Women’s Basketball Program at Hofstra University helping the Pride to a Semi-Final appearance in the CAA Tournament and the first Top 5 conference finish in 5 years.

Before Hofstra, Mike spent time as Boys’ Basketball Associate Head Coach at Combine Academy, a Post-Grad program in North Carolina. He started his career as a Boys’ Basketball Assistant Coach at his alma mater, Middlesex High School in New Jersey. During this time Mike also opened his own AAU Program, TrueHoops.

Jagacki is also the creator of Lockdown Defense which has amassed over 8 million views and 44,000+ subscribers on YouTube and is the author of Lockdown Defense: Developing Elite Defenders which has reached Amazon’s Top 12 Best Basketball Books and has sold over 1000 copies worldwide.

On this episode Mike & Mike discuss the importance of disruptive defensive strategies, particularly in the context of preparing for postseason play. Jagacki emphasizes the necessity for coaches to instill a strong foundational understanding of core defensive principles within their teams. As the playoffs approach, he advocates for a balanced approach that combines maintaining present focus, reinforcing established fundamentals, and developing tactical adjustments to counter opponents effectively. The conversation highlights the significance of designing turnovers and creating pressure, which can significantly alter the course of a game, particularly in post-season situations. Ultimately, this episode serves as a comprehensive guide for coaches seeking to enhance their team's defensive capabilities and improve overall performance during post-season matchups.

If you’re looking to improve your coaching please consider joining the Hoop Heads Mentorship Program. We believe that having a mentor is the best way to maximize your potential and become a transformational coach. By matching you up with one of our experienced mentors you’ll develop a one on one relationship that will help your coaching, your team, your program, and your mindset. The Hoop Heads Mentorship Program delivers mentoring services to basketball coaches at all levels through our team of experienced Head Coaches. Find out more at hoopheadspod.com or shoot me an email directly mike@hoopheadspod.com

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Get ready to take some notes as you listen to this episode with Mike Jagacki, Men’s Basketball Assistant Coach at SUNY New Paltz.

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Can you design some turnovers?

Very timely pressure in the right moment because if you can force a steal, not only have you stolen a possession, you've taken points off the board because now they can't score right.

You've eliminated a two, three foul shots, whatever they would have scored.

And if it's a live ball turnover, well, heck, you've just given your team a chance at one of the highest efficient shots you're going to get all game.

Prior to arriving at New Paltz, Chigaki spent three years as a video coordinator and assistant coach for the women's basketball program at Hofstra University, helping the pride to a semifinal appearance in the CAA Tournament and the first top five conference finish in five years.

Before Hofstra, Mike spent time as the boys basketball associate head coach at Combine Academy, a post grad program in North Carolina.

He started his career as a boys basketball assistant coach at his alma mater, Middlesex High School in New Jersey.

During this time, Mike also opened his own AAU program, True Hoops.

Jigaki is also the creator of Lockdown Defense, which has amassed over 8 million views and 44,000 plus subscribers on YouTube.

And he's the author of Lockdown Defense Developing Elite Defenders, which has reached Amazon's top 12 best basketball books and sold over a thousand copies worldwide.

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Get ready to take some notes as you listen to this episode with Mike Jagaki, Men's basketball assistant coach at SUNY New Paltz.

Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast.

It's Mike Clenzing here without my co host Jason Sunkel tonight.

Welcome.

But I am pleased to welcome back to the Hoop Heads Podcast for his second appearance, Mike Jagaki, men's basketball assistant coach at SUNY New Paltz and from Lockdown Defense, which is where we're going to spend a lot of our time tonight talking about how you as a coach can improve your team's defensive performance.

So Mike, welcome back man.

Thanks for having me Mike.

Always a pleasure to share the game and be a part of these kind of podcasts and coaching conversations.

Excited to talk to you tonight.

And as I told you on our pre pod call, I've been sharing a lot of your videos as part of the Hoop headspot newsletter because there's just been, I think, so many things that both coaches and players can benefit from.

So you tell me where you want to start.

Where are we going to dive into?

What do you want to dive into right away?

Well, I guess the most topical thing for me is kind of where my mind's at.

Our season's kind of coming to its end, right?

And hopefully we have a long season ahead of us.

But everyone's kind of inching closer and closer to the most important games of their year, playoff time, tournament time, whatever you you want to call it.

And so I'm trying to debt balance this delicate three prong mental framework, I guess as these playoffs approach, number one, making sure we're staying present, right?

We don't want our team to think too far ahead.

We want to make sure our team is staying in the moment, staying present, focus on the opponent in front of them, the next practice, the next game, the next possession, because we want to be playing our best basketball headed into the most important games of our.

Our season.

Right.

And I'm a big believer in momentum carry.

So we want our team to stay in the present, but as coaches, we also have the semi privilege of taking a much wider view of things.

Right.

And that's kind of where the next two areas come into play.

The first is, is making sure, especially headed into playoffs, where I won't say resetting, but reestablishing what's gotten us this far.

Right.

And hopefully you're on a little bit of a good season here.

But reestablishing our core, our core tenants, our core principles headed into the postseason is really important.

Making sure your base is solid, because your base is really what's going to set the floor for what you're able to achieve in the postseason.

So hopefully you've done it a couple times throughout the year, but understandably, and myself included, like, our focus drifts, you know, it becomes scout specific.

It becomes, okay, this is a weak area that we need to focus some more time on.

So your core principles ebb and flow throughout the year, but making sure they're strongest headed into the postseason.

And then the last thing we're trying to balance, especially as a coaching staff, is, is making sure we have answers.

I think the postseason, and this is where I disagree with some coaches, it doesn't reward who you've been.

It rewards if you can solve a problem in front of you.

It's no longer about a developmental framework and how we're going to play.

It's about winning the game in front of you because it's.

It's make or break at times.

So if something's not working, do we have an answer?

Do we have a curveball we can throw at our opponent to buy us some time to buy us some possessions, to maybe stall out their offense, add some different reads that they're.

They're not used to flowing into.

And especially if we can design some disruption, some pressure for some turnovers, those are going to be some of the hugest plays we can make, especially in games that are decided by the thinnest margins.

And the postseason is really so often a possession war.

So we want to make sure we're winning that war.

And that's the balance I'm trying to tow right now.

Right?

A focus on the present, making sure we finish strong, the past making sure we understand why we've gotten to where we are, and the future, making sure we have answers for what lies ahead.

As you think about those in practical terms, right.

So I get the idea behind each one of those.

When you start thinking about what that looks like on the ground every day with your team in practice, I get the for sure.

I think the easiest one to understand is probably being present, right.

You want your guys focused on, hey, I got to be at my best today in this practice.

We've got to be at our best in this particular game with whatever it is that we're trying to execute.

So let's talk about the balance between the other two, between understanding who you are, who you've been, what you've been successful at throughout the entire season, and yet also being prepared with something that you can throw at a particular opponent in a specific moment in a matchup, whether it's offensively, defensively.

So talk about how you're balancing that as a staff and how you think about that.

Yeah, well, it depends how much time you have in preparation for your playoff run.

But I want to say like about two or a week ahead of playoffs, you really want to be making sure your core is really fundamentally sound.

So that means going back to basics for us, right.

We want to reestablish some of the drills we did in preseason.

Right.

Just to re hone the point of the core principles.

And not everything is a core principle.

Like for us, for our defense, we have three core principles.

So making sure those are really at the height and forefront of all the players minds.

I think I'll give you a quick example.

Two years ago when, you know, my second year here at New Paltz, we're having a good year.

Second seed, first seed was, I don't think lost the game all year in conference.

So you know, we had quite the journey ahead of us.

But we went on to win our first national, first nana, first conference championship that year in program history.

And the most memorable moment for me was about a week and a half headed into the last week of the regular season.

A film session we put together for our guys, just really putting together what our core principles look like.

At the start of the year, when they were the only thing we were intensely focused on to where they had been the last three games for us.

And you could like hear a pin drop in that film section.

The guys seen the huge difference there was in our on ball activity, our urgency to get the help side, our physicality and our switches.

You know, the last three games weren't against the toughest opponents, so we would expect some slippage.

And throughout the year, you know, as we reestablish and then scout specific and stuff like that.

So Making sure they see the importance of your core principles and then drilling it, you know, back to your basic drills and then the last, you know, preparing for the future, that's something you have to do as a coach, right?

You have to understand intrinsically what your team is all about.

Like that's where self scouting, you know your team hopefully better than any opponent will know your team.

So I'm constantly thinking like, if I was playing against us, how would I be planning to attack our defense?

That needs to be at the forefront of my mind.

I need to know exactly where the biggest weak points are so that if they do start to be attacked, I need to start preparing for what we're going to do in those situations.

And it's, it's, I think it's cliche to just say we're just going to be who we are.

And listen, if you're the best team in your conference, in your tournament, that's probably enough.

But I've never been honored to be in that situation where we could just be us and roll through the tournament.

So, you know, we're not going to rely on hope, we're not going to rely on a bad night from our opponent or a super high variance shooting night from ourselves.

If something's not working, I should have already prepared for it.

And our team needs to know that we have some, some backup plan, some curveballs we can throw, whether that's a secondary defense or whether it's just some adjustments to our man, we can get into some specific curveballs, but making sure we have adjustments we can go to against some of the weakest things that, that I'm worried about.

When you think about adjustments or switching defenses or just throwing a new look at somebody, are you oftentimes thinking about just the way that you play your man defense in terms of how you're switching or ball screen coverages?

Or are you thinking more radical and not that switching from man to zone is necessarily radical, but are you thinking about more of a complete switch of your defense or are you thinking about adjustments within the man defense off those fundamental base drills and things that you've done throughout the season?

Well, I think usually when I say curveball, I'm thinking about adjustments in our base, but I am a believer in having a secondary defense.

I know not every coach is take kind of the Dean Smith model there where sometimes your curveball isn't, it's not going to replace your fastball, but it's going to make your fastball better when you go back to it.

And that's the goal of a curveball.

And sometimes like we run a three, two zone, right?

Now, if you're out there listening to this saying, oh, I've been interested in three, two zone, listen, don't pull up our film and study how we play 3, 2 zone because it's not going to be perfect, right?

Like we only spent probably 2% of our allotted defensive practice time on our secondary zone defense, right?

We're going to spend 98% of the time on our man and the adjustments in our man.

So really all that zone is, is intended for is moments where something's not quite working in our man, opponent has found something, a matchup, a coverage, whatever it might be, we're going to go to our zone maybe just to try and buy ourselves a couple possessions.

And the most ideal situation is it kind of completely changes the reads of the offense, right?

And that's usually what happens when you go man to zone.

There's a little bit of a stall out in offense and that's just enough time usually for the other coach maybe to call a timeout.

Even if they were finding some success, they hit a three, but maybe we got two stops.

So we played three possession of this zone.

The other coaches called timeout just to talk about it and that's all we wanted.

Like we're in that timeout talking about how we're going to adjust our man so that we can go back to it and they're wasting that time out talking about how to attack our zone defense that will never going to play the rest of the game.

So something to buy you time.

Now, it doesn't have to be as drastic as a secondary defense.

And if you don't have one in already for the playoff time, I don't know if that's the time to put it in.

But adjusting your main can be as simple as changing certain matchup, you know, specific coverages.

So whether you're face guarded, key player, whether you're smothering a supplier, whether you're not leaving the pain, you know, you can change different coverages on the ball.

You can go to situational denials, whether that's a specific play play, whether that's a first pass denial or you can do.

One of my favorite things, especially in postseason, is introduce a trapping package, right?

Because if you can force a turnover, especially in some of the tightest games of your year, those we can talk maybe about how important turnovers are in steals in the postseason, but those are going to be huge.

So can you add some disruption and pressure and Take the other team out of what they're trying to do.

All right, so let's dive a little bit deeper into that pressure and trapping.

When you're talking about adding that to your man to man package.

And I don't want to get you to give away all your secrets here, but as you're thinking about how you go about installing that, what's a situation that the offense a common action that you might be defending against where you feel like you can get a trap out of that particular action that you might see frequently as a defense.

Yeah.

So it's not always going to be.

Sometimes it can be right.

A specific play they're going to run and that's what we're going to key into trapping.

I used to do that at the high school level when I first started coaching.

We have, we had a very complicated trapping system back then which I covered in one of my recent clinics.

And you know, we could talk about that, but it's, it's pretty complicated.

But it gave me a lot of control as a coach to send certain traps at certain moments.

But more generally, you know, I'm thinking about the five W's to trapping my.

And it comes to my journalism background, I guess.

But the first W is who, like who are you willing to trap?

Is it a key player?

Is it someone who doesn't handle pressure well that you think you can force them to a turnover?

Is it a just a certain action like the guy coming off a ball screen or a guy in the post?

So, so who are you willing to trap?

When are you willing to go trap them?

Right.

Like if we're trapping the posts, are we trapping on the catch?

Are we trapping on the first triple, the second dribble?

Are we going special situations on a size up on a specific, you know, we can go on and on, but.

So we got who, when, where, where are we sending it from?

If we're a no middle base, a no middle team, we generally have heavy help side, right.

A guy holding that midline.

So it would make sense for us to send the trap from the low man.

If we're a pack line team, that might not make sense.

So our trap in the post might come from the nail, it might come from the passer, might come from the cutter.

So where are we sending the trap the last?

Well, the main question is why, Right.

That probably should have been the first one I led with, but why are we trapping?

Is it to get the ball out of someone's hand or is it the force of turnover?

For me, I Always look at trapping mainly to force a turnover.

That's not always the case, though, but that will specifically influence the.

The what and how.

So how are we rotating when we're trapping?

How are we teaching the technique within the track?

Are we going from the seal?

Are we going for deflections?

Are we rotating to intercept or are we rotating to protect?

Are we mixing the.

Both?

So I don't want to over complicate it, but those are kind of the thought process you need to have as a coach.

And picking a trap package that can work, especially one that you might see important come into your playoffs.

Like two years ago.

Again, like, we knew our weakness was in the post, so we had to devote a lot of time to coverages trapping the post.

And it came up huge in our semifinal game, shutting down one of the best players in our conference in terms of scoring, who lived in the post.

All right?

But our players knowing very clearly where we're sending it from, who we were trapping, when we were going, why we were doing it, those are all important.

And when you can force a turnover, especially from the best player.

You know, I just want to.

I just want to go on a little bit of a tangent here about turnovers, right?

Because I don't want to just throw in a trap.

To throw in a trap sake.

Like, we can name all the different traps you could have, but really, if you can design some turnovers, especially in the postseason, like as an offensive coach, hopefully what you're thinking about come post season is how can you get your team an easy basket, right?

Can you design quick back door off of a wrinkle, something you've done all year, maybe a new set?

Can you get your best player an open shot, right?

That is how your offensive coach is going to earn their stripes in the postseason.

A defensive coach isn't just worried about stops, but can you design some turnovers?

Can you.

Can you force the other team in some timely turnover doesn't mean you're gambling, right?

I think when coaches hear the word steal and turnover, sometimes we cringe because we're thinking about like a player gambling and hurting our defense by getting us out of position.

And it like, makes us want to pull our hair out.

That's not what I'm talking about.

Very timely pressure in the right moment.

Because if you can force a steal, not only have you stolen a possession, you've taken points off the board because now they can't score, right?

That you've eliminated a two, three foul shots, whatever they would have scored.

And if it's a live ball turnover.

Well, heck, you've just given your team a chance at one of the highest efficient shots you're going to get all game.

Right.

A run out, whether it's a transition break, whether it's a quick score.

So now we're looking at a quick two or three.

And right there, one steal was maybe a four to six point swing in the game.

And there's no offensive play you can draw up that's going to be as impactful as that.

So you can design some of those very carefully.

Maybe a key part in a play that maybe this is a good time to go for a steal here because the backdoor threat's not there.

Some situational smothers or denials because this guy can't handle the ball.

Or like I said, some traps, those deals are going to be huge.

Oh, when you figure out the answer to the W questions.

Yeah.

And you know, the what, when, where, why, how you're going to go about putting in the trap, then what does it look like working with your team to help them to understand what that's going to look like on the floor?

In other words, in practice, what kind of drills, what kind of situations are you putting the team in to be able to help them to learn and be prepared so that when they do go to that in the game that they're ready.

Yeah, I think for me, we always start the year with, with having at least one trap package already installed and that if you're listening to this now, that might be too late.

But we want to have our guys a little bit familiar.

Not that we're doing it often, but familiar with some of the techniques that come with trapping.

And also I'm a believer something's not working.

Like we want to be aggressive, not defend.

Like if we're not guarding ball screens.

Well, I don't want to just sit in a drop immediately like, because then you got the players that are thinking like, well, let's just be conservative.

I want the defaults when something's not working to be aggression.

Can we blow it up?

Can we trap it?

Can we make it a little harder than it would be just to execute our coverage?

But anyway, back to your question.

Right.

So ideally, when we're installing a trap specifically, hopefully we have some film of it working against our opponent.

That would be the ultimate ideal, showing them, hey, this guy in this specific spot doesn't handle this trap well.

And, and you know, sometimes I'll pull clips of them passing out of the trap really easily, end up hurting the trap and we point out why that trap wasn't successful.

And that's not what we're going to do.

This is what we're going to do instead.

So having some film to create that buy in visually of your players is important then when it comes to trapping, you know, depending on your time and constraints like that.

But hopefully you've already spent some time on the fundamental trapping drills.

You know, for me, you know, getting your feet together, having wide hands, not going for the steel, not going for a foul, but making sure the guys behind the steel can actually get the steal.

Not, not you in the trap.

Your job in the trap is to limit vision, right.

And make a bad pass.

So you know, we do some, some small sided games like 3 on 3 trap and 4 on 4 trap.

And you know, I think everyone's seen those kind of drills and planks.

And then when it comes to actually installing the trap package, we do it a lot in kind of a shell format, right.

We were walking through it, especially if we have a scout specific set or, or scout specific actions they run or scout specific alignments they're going to be in when we trap, walking through those rotations.

And then we go live with it a lot.

We, we rep five on five until we, we have felt good enough to use it in a game, right.

I never want to leave practice thinking, well that didn't look good.

You know, like I'm willing to stay on it.

I think this is one of the differences I have and sometimes there's some disagreement in staffs, but I never want the practice plan to trump the standards, right.

So like if something's not work, like if we need to spend more time on it, there's nothing more important.

Like why would it, why was it on the practice plan at that point if we were willing to move on from it?

So like if you're willing to move on from something, put it at the end of practice, right?

You might not get to it, but if you're some, if you're starting with something or have something early in practice, that means you're unwilling to move on from it until you get it, sharpen it.

And not everything's going to be completely sharpened in one day.

If you have multiple days to prepare for.

I get it.

Um, but you know, we'll do things where, where they need two or three stops in a row to move on and, and we're not, you know, sometimes it, it takes a while and, and there's a lot of good teaching points, especially when your offense is, is clicking against Your defense and, and they know what's coming, so it's even harder.

Um, so we will constrain it a couple times, but then we're.

We're kind of live and, and we're learning on the fly.

We're coaching on the fly, and we're not letting our standards slip just to move on.

When you're teaching it in your experience, are there more breakdowns with the two guys who are involved in the trap or with your three guys off the ball when there are problems, when it's not working or even when you first install it and guys are trying to learn it?

Which of those two comes easier to your team?

The actual trap itself or the off ball movement that's required to get in the passing lanes and take things away?

You know, I think I'm going to answer this a little selfishly because this is what I focus on the most, which is the point of attack of, of our trap.

So nothing is going to annoy me more than an incorrect trap.

You know, guys coming at the trap, going for the ball, that means their hands are down, their hands are tight, they're not wide, they're not limiting vision.

That's not what we want our trap to do.

We want our trap to be as big as possible.

Guys getting out of position, trying to trap the ball and not the person, right?

And now we're getting split through and things like that.

If we're trapping ball screens, guys not setting a hard edge and now they're dribbling past the trap, you know, so for me, like my focus especially early on is intensely focused on the point of attack of the screen.

Because so often we'll have a terrible intercept rotation or terrible safety coverage.

But what saves you the deflection in the trap, the poor pass, limit of vision?

I think a lot of times we obsess over the rotation.

Oh, this guy didn't tag.

This guy didn't X out this guy.

Let's go to the point of attack, even in our base defense, like what happened on the ball?

Like why we can't guard the ball?

Like we, we can't set a good trap.

Why is this guy seeing this pass?

Why is this pass on time, on target?

Those are the questions I want to answer first.

Once that trap is.

Is set.

Yeah.

Then for me, we have two interceptors and a safety every trap.

Because again, our goal usually is to get a steal.

So.

And that usually comes pretty naturally.

Especially, you know, we play somewhat of an aggressive style man defense.

So we're kind of used to turning up the pressure when we need to.

So having two interceptors having a safety, but really my focus and a lot of the blown whistles on the long whistles come from the point of attack of the, of the trap.

Okay, makes sense.

Let me ask you this.

Once you have it installed and you feel confident that your players can execute it in a game, what is the point within the game where you would go to it?

Is it an after timeout thing where you have a chance to talk about it?

Is it a call in the action?

Is it triggered off of something in particular that's happening in a game?

Is it just a feeling?

How do you know when to try to steal those two or three possessions that you were talking about earlier?

It might be a thing where we start with it too.

You know, if we feel really confident that this could set the tone of the game, we might start with it.

But if we're not starting with it, if it's something we're keeping in our back pocket.

For me, I'm constantly keeping track.

You know, I got my little notebook there on the bench and every time someone scores on us, I'm recording it.

I'm recording exactly how it happened, whether it's a pain or A3, what the breakdown was.

If there wasn't a breakdown, what it was.

So anytime something's hurt us twice in a row, that's enough cause for me to say, let's not let this get any worse.

I know some coaches might wait for a lot more than that, but for me, two possessions in a row is enough of a trend to trigger something.

If we don't have that situation happen, if it's just kind of the flow of the game and a timeout does happen, we're really aggressive at timeouts.

We always want to throw something in a timeout because we know what the other team's spending their timeout talking about some kind of play they're going to run against our man.

So we can throw something out of a timeout.

That's what we're going to do.

Very rarely are we going to come out of a timeout in our base.

And you know, like, I think our opponents know that at this point, but I would say 7 out of 10 times we're throwing something, we're throwing a curveball and, and even the times we don't like sometimes you're, you need to have some guts as a coach to go to a trap, especially in a tight game.

Everyone would love to throw a trap when you got a six point cushion.

But like you're down four, you're down six.

You know, you're in a close game.

Let's just stick to what we're doing.

You know, sometimes you need to have some guts to throw something.

And yeah, the fear of it not working might be there and it might happen, right?

We might trap, we might give out a wide open three and it might go in, it might not.

We might give up a wide open layup.

Hopefully not, right?

We don't want to give up anything easy, but it might happen.

And so you say, well, that didn't work.

That's not true.

Again, like going back to the first metaphor I gave about the curveball, it's not going to replace your fastball.

It's going to make your fastball better.

Right.

Pitchers know that.

So maybe you just added some hesitation in the guy that's killing you right now.

He's coming off a ball screen and he's like, oh, shoot, are they going to trap me?

And that's a lot different than coming off the ball screen like he has been all game killing us.

So adding some hesitation, one trap could be worth its weight in all the preparation you did, even if it doesn't work just for how it can change the mindset of your opponents.

I'm assuming, speaking of mindset, that as you're going through your season, it's not just as you talked about with the trap package, but it's your base defense and aggressiveness and all that.

But when you're thinking about the mindset that your team needs to have, the confidence that they need to have that, hey, we can throw this at our opponent, come out of this timeout or in this key possession.

How do you talk about that piece of it?

I'm assuming it's ongoing, but then maybe there's some specific things you talk about with your team when you're getting ready to utilize this for a particular opponent.

Yeah, I'm going to go to a non basketball reference again, but not this time, not baseball, this time football.

And I know the jury might be out on valid check recently, but, you know, reading his recent book and, and studying him, you know, yes, he's great.

Documentaries called do more about the last three championships.

I highly recommend that to any coach, especially preparing for the playoffs.

But Belichick talks about how his defense was a game plan defense.

Right.

So if all season you were just, we're just going to be us.

And you never really prepared specifically for an opponent and now you come playoff times and you're like, all right, guys, we're Going to do this new thing against this opponent.

Well, your team's not used to that at all, right?

Your team is used to just being.

Your team isn't used to you teaching something new.

It's not used to making new reads like, so it's going to be probably a complete disaster.

But if all season long you've been installing some wrinkles, you've been adjusting your man, you've been throwing some curveballs in just to see how your team handles it, that's gonna, that's gonna pay dividends come playoff times when you might need something like this.

So our confidence throwing something new at our guys comes from the whole season, right?

We're throwing something new at them, you know, in every game almost, right?

Not every game, but in a lot of games we're preparing certain things for opponents.

We don't always use them.

Right.

And sometimes, you know, we, last year we, we had a secondary defense, a little bit of funky zone and we hardly ever used it right.

And we used it, we used it in the playoffs when we needed it.

But again, that was the result of, of the whole season just tinkering along with it, right.

And, and so I think your team, you need to know your team what they can handle and being able to adjust on the fly is a skill and it's hopefully skill you've trained all season long and not something you're just trying to develop in the last few days of your season.

Makes sense, right?

I think any team that has been prepared for something over the course of the season instead of just again, even if it's a different curveball or a different adjustment, if your team is used to making those adjustments over the course of the season, then when you throw a new one at them in a postseason, they're going to be much better off.

Go ahead.

Yeah.

And I would say back to the self scout element of, of adding something new, right?

Like you need to know your team.

Like, we're not going to throw a curveball that doesn't fit our team at all.

Like, we need to have some core tenets into it, like throwing that, you know, post trap from the base.

That's nothing really new to us.

We're already in position to execute that, right.

If we were going to throw something completely new at them, a trap from the nail, and we've never really talked about it, it wouldn't make sense.

So what do you already do?

What do you already teach?

And then how can you just add a little wrinkle to that where your players are going to Be already kind of in position, already have the mindset, the rotations ingrained in them a little bit and then you're just unlocking them

a little bit more.

Makes sense.

All right.

You talked a little bit about the self scout.

Right.

To be able to think about how's a team going to attack our defense and then adjusting what you do based off of what you think the opponent would try to attack on your team when you're watching film of your opponent.

So now we're talking about a more conventional scout of the other team.

What are some things that you look for that are potentially susceptible to a curveball?

What's something that just again in the past reference a couple things from past seasons that you've noticed about hey, Team X does this.

That's going to allow us to maybe throw this at them.

Yeah.

So when it comes to scouting, before I answer your question specifically, the first thing I just want to make clear, like the first thing I'm always focused on is in scout is making sure we don't give up the easy baskets that the other team generates regularly.

So however they're generating easy points, their key player and their team, we got to make sure we sure that we don't want to.

The team that scores more easy points is usually the team that wins.

Right.

And then to your point, where can we design some pressure in our scout?

So I'm going to watch every turnover, the best players thrown all year, every turnover, the second best player thrown, every turnover, the point guards thrown.

Just so I get a sense of where some disruption has led them astray.

Right.

And this isn't specifically turnover related, but when it comes to what your strength is as a team, sometimes your curveballs to cover up something that you're not good at, like maybe hiding a bad player.

And we've done that.

We've run a, a zone to man to make sure our worst defender was always on the weak side opposite of the play.

And the other didn't have a lot of.

So we're going man but out of a, a matchup kind of zone.

So we could make sure that whoever that worst defender was guarding was really out of the play.

And they didn't really have a lot of scripted sets that they could go to to trigger him in the action.

So that would be one example.

But another one would be, you know, at.

When I was at Hofstrap, I don't know, six years ago on the women's side, you know, we were limping into the playoffs, to say the least.

You know, no One expected us to go very far.

We, I think we pulled off two upsets.

The first one, maybe not so much of upset, but definitely the second one.

The reason we did that was a curveball we thrown.

We, we had a two, three zone tandem, two, three zone we had gone to throughout the year against that specific team.

It wasn't effective at all because they went to a more of a 2, 1, 2 alignment.

And in the tandem zone that really opens up the high post, makes those players really susceptible to those high post passes versus a set of a 1, 3, 1.

But so we knew they were going to be able to get the ball to the high post pretty easily.

And back when we first played them in the regular season, that opened up a lot of options for them, right.

Every time you get to that ball in the high post against the zone and but when we rethought about it, right, headed into the playoffs, one of our strengths was our big, our bigs, two of bigs were very great on ball defenders, right?

Some of the best on ball defenders in the league in that position at least.

And so we knew that the player they were throwing to the high posts, that was a match that we were willing to live with.

And so we were going to that 2, 3 zone not to really play it, but to invite the high post pass.

And as soon as that happened, everyone else was in, you know, face card denial and we were just trying to make this person beat us one on one.

And we went to that for a large portion of the second half and ultimately we're able to steal that game knowing what our strength was in a matchup.

Right?

We had one specific matchup and how could we isolate that and go to it?

That's not specifically forcing turnovers, but that hopefully is an example of throwing a curveball that was very specific to an opponent.

And what they're going to do to attack our secondary defense, it makes a

lot of sense there.

I think when you start talking about doing something off of your base and then when you look at a specific opponent, how can we take something that they do well or how can you take something that they do poorly and make it even more of an emphasis of trying to get them in those situations where, as you said, where they've turned the ball over in the past and again through your film work, you're able to identify those things and then make the adjustment from there.

I do think that the ability to make adjustments for a specific opponent, and this is just me speaking from watching games, my previous coaching experience and just Watching, especially at the high school level, I feel like the coaches who make game to game adjustments in the way they defend specific personnel or the way they defend a specific team, I don't feel like I see that nearly as often as maybe I should.

I see a lot of coaches that just every player on both teams gets played the exact same way, regardless of whether the player can shoot, whether they can put the ball on the floor, whatever.

Everybody's just kind of playing every single player the same way.

And then when I see a game where the coach has made those adjustments, has thrown those curveballs, I'm always struck by and I can't believe there aren't more teams and more coaches that do that.

Like, I went and saw, my daughter's a sophomore in high school.

I went and saw a friend of hers playing a game this year and a guy that I actually used to coach with is coaching one of the girls teams and two of his girls.

Basically when their opponent caught the ball, his two defenders were basically in the lane because he just said these two girls just never look to shoot.

And so he just completely backed off and packed the paint against some of their better players.

And his team was kind of undermanned and they ended up losing the game, but they stuck around for a half, probably longer than they had any right to because he was willing to make that kind of adjustment.

And I just, I told somebody that I was sitting with, I'm like, I just don't see at the high school level anyway, I just don't see that many coaches willing to throw those curveballs.

So if you were going to give, I don't know if advice is the right word or just encouragement to a high school coach.

And again, they may not have access to the same level of film and an opportunity and, and time that you have to go through a particular opponent.

But if you're trying to motivate a high school coach to throw a curveball for their upcoming state tournament play, what, what would you say to them?

I go back to the beginning.

I would say your floor is going to be set by what, what your base is, how strong you are at who you are.

But your ceiling is ultimately going to be determined by the answers you have in the postseason.

Like if something's not working, like you have nothing to lose at that point, your season's on the line.

Just telling your players to try harder.

That when you have a developmental, you know that we can, we can spend a couple weeks and you know, next practice we can, you don't have that Luxury anymore.

Like if something's not working, try harder is not going to be what's going to push you over the edge.

Like both teams in the playoffs, like in the tournaments are trying their hardest.

Both coaches have prepared their hardest, right?

The whole season's on display for both coaches.

The teams are at their ultimate must win mentality.

So you know, like you need to have something in your back pocket and maybe here's a stat that will crystallize it.

You know, I was doing some stat digging, especially on disruption, you know, forcing some timely steals.

So I went back to this year's, I mean last year's NBA finals, right?

Seven game series, okc, Indiana, all, all but one of those games was won by the team that won the sealed margin.

We go back to the NCAA tournament, right?

The championship games, the last 17 national championship games.

Only three times did a team win it without winning the Seals margin, right?

So if you want to win the most important games of your, of your season, the stats say you need to generate some steals, you need to generate some turnovers, right?

Like you need to be able to throw some curveballs to steal some possessions.

It doesn't have to be like looking at the national championship steel totals, like you'll be shocked.

Like sometimes it's, it's 2 to 4, right?

Like these are like the best teams, right?

And they know that protecting the ball is going to be ultimately what could win or lose them the game.

So it's not like there's going to be 10 steals in a game.

Sometimes there is, right?

But so it's not about gambling, taking your players heads off and having them run around.

It's can you just throw something for two or three possessions?

Not enough to hurt you if it doesn't go well, but enough to maybe take you over the edge if it does.

And I think it goes back to the point that you made earlier.

Not only is it the steel which stops your opponent from scoring, but oftentimes when you're getting a steal, right, It's a live ball turnover that turns into transition offense, which turns into some of the most efficient offense that you can put out on the floor is if you can get a layup in transition, you're going to get the most points possession out of that as you possibly can.

And so it's the combination of, yeah, we take away our opponent's scoring chance and we're also putting ourselves in a situation where offensively, as a result of that steal, we may have an advantage that allows us to score at a higher rate.

Than we might normally do if we have to set up our half court offense.

So I think those two again go hand in hand.

And I love the point that you made that so many games come down to a possession or you win by one or you lose by three or the games at overtime or whatever.

And that one possession swing, if as you said, you take away a three from the team on one end that they might have scored and you get a three in transition, that's a six point swing.

And so many games we see especially in the postseason, right, where teams are evenly matched and both teams are, as you said, they both want it.

Right.

Both teams are as motivated as they're possibly going to be.

Those little six point swings can make a huge difference and sometimes it only takes, as you said, a two or three possession little mini game to be able to sway the outcome of the entire game.

And I think that's a really critical point for coaches to think about.

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I think most games in general are decided by like eight to 10 points in the postseason.

Those are usually single digit games, even tighter like national championship game last year, two point game, final four three and six point game.

You know, it's, it's two possession, one possession games and that's when your season's on the line.

What do you have to go to?

And maybe not necessarily at the end of the game, but can you steal some possessions earlier as well?

And to your point earlier, right.

Right before this about, you know, maybe not seeing it enough.

Right.

These adjustments, these especially personnel adjustments and curveballs you can throw against certain matchups.

You know, one of the things I've been diving a little deeper into recently has been defensive awareness and I think there's a big lack.

You know, I've been doing some coaching polls on on Twitter, x Whatever and what I've been surprised to learn is that one of the biggest pain points for coaches is the defensive awareness of their players.

And that could be a huge limiting factor when you're thinking about putting in something new and you don't over.

You don't even trust what you already have in, right?

Because imagine telling your team you're going to trap and you got one guy not even knowing it's happening.

So, like, defensive awareness is kind of the unsung hero of.

If that's not developed, you're really going to be limited in what you can do.

You think that.

So I'm going to give you personal experience.

This is my experience as a coach of my own kids.

And so when my son was younger, I was always.

I always felt like whenever we are in any type of an aggressive defense, I would see a pass be thrown and I'm like, dude, how do you not.

How do you not get that?

Like, I just, I just can't.

Like, I don't understand how the ball is flying and you're still standing there, two seconds later, you haven't moved.

I don't get it.

How do you.

How do you get somebody.

What's the key to developing that defensive iq?

Do you think it's.

Can.

How much benefit can a player get from watching the film if they understand how to watch film, versus how much on court reps do they need?

Like, I feel like you can.

I feel like you need a little bit of both in order for it.

In order for it to work.

But I'm just curious, when you think of a player that you want to help them improve their defensive iq, how do you do that?

I think you said the key thing if they know how to watch film, right?

So a lot of times we get into basketball as fans first, right?

As coaches or players, right?

We start as a fan and as fans, we're not watching basketball to get better at it.

We're watching it as entertainment.

And usually for our players that we're coaching, that's the only way they've learned how to watch basketball is to follow the ball, right?

That's what the highlights showcase.

That's what.

Especially in the age of social media.

Like, you look at the shorts, right?

It's just these skinny verticals and all you can see is the ball.

Even if you wanted to see everything else, you can't see it.

You can only see the isolation.

So our, our players and everyone is being programmed just to focus on the ball.

And I actually showed this in the recent video I did on YouTube.

The beautiful game in the finals, beautiful possession of ball movement, player movement.

But then I showed what the Silhouette looks like if you're just watching the ball, right?

And this is what a lot of people do.

A lot of players we're coaching, that's all they're watching.

When they're watching basketball, that's how they consume it.

And it just looks like the ball is ping ponging around and you're like, I guess that was a cool possession, a lot of passes, but I don't really know what happened.

Like what happened to the defense there at the end.

Where was it?

Like when a player is only watching the ball, that's only 20% of the game.

That's two of the 10 players that are out there.

So if we can change how they consume the game right back to like no wonder they step on the floor.

All they, all the habit they have is just watching the ball.

So of course like they're going to be ball watching to lose their man or they're just going to be aware of their man and have no idea where the ball is.

That's all they've they've habituated to is focusing on one thing when it comes to basketball.

So I do think if we can change how our players consume it and we can teach that through scouting when we're showing film making sure that shift their attention away from the ball.

Don't let the ball hijack their attention.

I do some specific things as I was working with a player one on one about diagramming plays and stuff like that.

I know it's a coach thing, but it also helps players not get hijacked by the ball's attention.

So yeah, if we can change how they consume it, that will help us.

There are studies actually not in basketball unfortunately, but in soccer where the players who can watch film and then they stop it and they ask what's about to happen next.

And the only way you're going to answer that, especially in soccer, is by scanning the floor, not just if you just watch the ball.

I mean soccer has even more players in wider fields.

So the players who are able to anticipate what's happening next, doing a better job of scanning the whole picture.

Well, those studies show that there's a high correlation between the ability to do that and how good you are as a player, what level you're applying at.

So there is some correlational evidence there that how you watch the game, even just digitally will impact how you play the game.

So that's number one.

And then number two, I would say pattern recognition is a huge thing.

Right.

If this might be a bonus step, if I was working With a player by changing how they watch.

That's number one.

Teaching them some simple patterns would be number two, a bonus step.

You don't always have the luxury of addressing it with every player, but we know as coaches the game is really a pattern game.

There's a lot of predictable patterns in our game.

The simplest one I would show a player is a ball screen.

Like, okay, here's a ball screen.

Freeze it.

What do you think the role.

What do you think the screener is going to do next?

Simple.

They're either going to roll or pop, right?

I mean, that is really the two options, but that's anticipation.

And then I show them a clip of Davion Mitchell sealing the pop from the weak side.

Help.

You know, I show them a clip of Avery Bradley intercepting the roll pass, not because they're faster, but because they saw it number one and they anticipated it.

So it's not that they're faster or better, it's that they're seeing more and adjusting the things on the fly.

So being able to recognize patterns, right.

Like if I was to tell you, coach, there's a cross screen happening on the lane or a flex screen happening, what's going to happen?

Nine times out of 10, there's going to be a down screen that follows it, right?

Like they reverse it through the trail.

What's happening?

Probably a stagger screen, you know, like, there are some predictable patterns that players will learn through just playing a lot.

But hopefully we can speed that up by teaching them these.

These things.

Baseline, out of bounds screen.

The screeners probably come right.

Like.

Like that shouldn't be a surprise to our player.

Oh, when I didn't see that screen coming from behind, like.

No, that's what they do every freaking time, guys.

Like, there are some predictable patterns in basketball that keep catching players off guard.

So that's number one and number two.

And lastly.

Yeah.

How do we incorporate that on the floor?

There are some definitely buildup drills.

I do.

I don't.

There's some problems with the shell drill, but there's also some good.

Right.

And oftentimes awareness isn't taught through the shell drill, but it's a great environment to teach it.

Right.

Like if I was working with a young team, we're doing the shell drill, the ball might be holding up fingers every once in a while.

Their man might be holding up fingers every once in a while because they need to call out those.

Those numbers because they need to be aware of man and ball.

That's step number one for our team.

We're a little bit farther along, hopefully, than calling out fingers.

So our players, at any moment we're doing shell drill or walking through a scripted pattern, they have the freedom to backdoor if their man's not paying attention to them, right?

And so often you'll see that, right, because they're, they've lost sight of their man.

They're not scanning properly, they're not using the peripheral vision.

So step number one, when we get on the court, seat, ball and man, that's step number one.

Step number two, for a player that's developing, do you know where the other team's best player is?

Because that oftentimes is going to be where we're going to need you.

Right, so now you have to be aware of three players, right?

Where's your man, where's the ball, and where's the other team's best player?

If you can do that as a player, you're far ahead above a lot of other high school players.

And then, you know, the last step is, are you aware of the main action happening on the floor, even if you're not involved in it, can you see it?

Because then you can start anticipating and start pre rotating.

Like Draymond Green has talked about this and I show clips with him all the time.

It looks like he's coming out of nowhere with these superhuman sixth sense and anticipation skills.

But if we slow down the film, like he even said this in one film room, like, yeah, Pascal Siakam is on Jordan Poole.

Jordan Poole's not going to win that matchup 9 out of 10 times.

So.

So yeah, his name was flying off the screen.

He on switch with Steph Curry, but he knew at all times where his focus needed to be on the other team's best player, especially your worst defender.

So it's not that he was superhuman there, it's just that he knew what to pay attention to.

And so often that's really the limiting factor of our players.

Number one, how they consume it, can they pick up on patterns?

And then number three, can we layer that, can we build it slowly on the court by just increasing their awareness step by step?

I want to build off of two things you said.

But before I do, tell people on your YouTube channel, you have the quiz, the defensive anticipation quiz.

So, so pub that right now, tell people what they can do.

Players, coaches, you want to send, especially high school coaches, you want to send your player to take the quiz and have them go through it, but just talk people through that and then I'll kind of piggyback off what you just said a second ago.

Yeah, I think I have two important things on my YouTube channel.

Free, completely free.

Right.

Just, just out there ready for you to watch and do.

The most recent thing is an awareness masterclass, right.

20 minute video, my longest video ever, I think on my YouTube channel.

Just developing exactly what we said and actually like specific drills, occlusion test, padding, like things that I'm not going to spend time explaining, but how to develop this off ball awareness.

The perception test is specifically for on ball defense.

So we were just talking about all ball mainly, but on ball perception just as important, right?

Your ability to anticipate and predict your opponent.

And so this has been done in other sports, but it's never really been done in basketball.

And I actually used it with a lot of my own players before releasing it.

Basically what you're going to see is you're going to see another, an offensive player and it's in sequence.

So you're always going to see the same player like seven clips in a row.

So maybe you can pick up on some tendency and some pattern, but it's going to stop the clip and ask what's going to happen next?

And you're going to have to answer.

Right.

And that really shows you your anticipation.

And the players I'm going to tell you, coach, the players I sent this to that I know the scores were highly correlated to the good defenders doing well in the test and the defenders that needed some development not doing very well in the test.

So there, there definitely is a lot of mental skills that go into defense that have been under trained.

And that perception test is one fun thing you can do.

You can take, you know, 10 minutes of your time, pull up the video, write down your answers, you can submit them on the form@lockdown defense.com and it will show you your results compared to everyone else who's taking the test where you might be weak, where you might be strong when it comes to anticipating pattern recognition tendencies, things like that.

And then it will, you know, recommend some next steps for you.

Yeah, it's very well done and I think again it's something that I think players don't often do.

And it goes back to what we talked about a minute ago in terms of just understanding how to watch film and how to understand that the things that are happening that are important oftentimes are not what's happening on the ball between the ball handler and the on ball defender.

Not that those things aren't important, but so often a lot of the breakdowns happen Away from the ball.

And then when you were talking and kind of just going through some examples of things that you see when players are staring at the ball and that the out of bounds play, right.

The screen, the screener that's coming.

Two things, two things popped into my head that I, I still to this day, anytime I see it, I, I can't believe.

When you see the inbounder on a baseline, out of bounds, inbound the ball, and then the guy, the person who's guarding them underneath the basket just stands there and they pop out to the corner for a three.

I'm like, have you never, have you never watched basketball?

But I mean, I see that I would best.

I would bet I see that at least once a game in every high school game that I go to that the on ball defender just completely falls asleep.

And then the other one that kills me is on the offensive end of the floor.

So the offensive player, where the defender is completely, you might have a kid in the corner and the defender is sliding up a little bit in the passing lane, but is completely just staring at the ball, has no idea where their offensive player is, who's in the corner.

And that player just stands there and doesn't just cut that door for what would be an easy layup.

And I see it with players at all different ages, levels and abilities.

And so that's like one step removed from the player.

On offense, you've got to see.

It goes to what you said a second ago, where you got to be able to see the ball and your man.

Well, it's the same thing when you're on offense.

Yeah, you got to see the ball and know where that is, but you got to see the player who's guarding you and understand that, hey, they're not even looking at me.

Like, I have to know where to go.

And there's, I mean, we could go through a million, we go through a million scenarios of.

Right.

Of things that go on off the ball.

That if players just could perceive what's happening, that the amount of openings.

I'll get so frustrated with my own kids when they don't recognize those kinds of situations.

Just like, did you not see, like, how do you not know that they're not looking?

Like just.

It's one of those things that I think, to your point, that they have to be able to kind of rewire how they perceive the game.

And that's not always easy to do.

And I think the key to that is one, teaching them how to watch film, which requires somebody who's knows what they're doing.

And then two, I think a coach on the floor has to be able to point out those situations when they occur in practice and do it repeatedly and then be able to show the player on film like here you are staring at the ball or here you are your defender staring at the ball and you're just standing when you could be cutting into open space to be able to get a, get a shot.

So there's a, there's a bunch of different factors that go into it, but I think that the teaching part of it, right.

Comes first and then, and then getting out on the floor and making sure players can see it.

So those are just two examples that popped into my head as you were talking.

Yeah, I think, you know, I think the next frontier for basketball development is, is this mental awareness frontier where we spent so long in our profession.

Focus on the root skill, right?

Which has been great, right?

Like we've seen a shooting revolution.

We've seen ball handling evolutions, passing somewhat, playing off the catch.

Defensively, we're still kind of a little bit stuck in the ages of the two handed push shot in terms of what we're teaching typically.

But you know, it's, it's growing, it's growing.

There's definitely some, some progress on that end.

But in terms of.

And then recently we've seen, you know, a coaching trend which, you know, there are some faults with.

I'm not gonna bang on the drum completely for the constraints led approach and the small sided games approach.

I do.

I'm a believer in uses of it.

I think it's gone a little too far in its application.

But that was intended to value the environment and the decision making.

Right.

Making sure we're making good decisions and teaching decision making as a skill and supplemental to the skills.

And that's been great.

But the final frontier is the awareness, right?

Not just the decision, but actually what information are you consuming and scanning for.

That's the next frontier.

And I think the hardest part about that frontier is it's not only going to be solved on the court, it's going to be solved with, with things off the court as well.

With film study, with teaching players without a basketball, right.

How to understand our game that we love so much and how to get better at reading it and consuming the reads within it.

Right.

And I think that's the next frontier of basketball development, both offensively and defensively.

Yeah, I agree with you.

And I think that's something.

When you start looking at how the, how the coaching of the game and then I think about, right, all the training that we have, right.

All the players, everybody's got a trainer today that they're working with.

And so what, what the next value add right for a trainer is, can I take the players film and be able to show them some of these situations that we're talking about?

And then that goes to the next issue, which is if you're a trainer, do you have the ability to yourself be able to perceive and understand some of the things that you're sharing and talking about and then can you teach that to the players?

Are you able to take the knowledge if you do have it, to be able to share that with players so that they can then have it be translatable out onto the floor to be able to execute some of the things that, that we're talking about.

The other thing I wanted to ask you about is you recently put out and talked about in your article on, on X about just a survey that you did with coaches.

Yeah.

You kind of dug through, you dug through a series of questions and finally at the end you kind of came to the golden nugget of information that, that gave you a, maybe an insight that you didn't expect necessarily to get as you went through the process.

So give us the, I guess medium length version of, of the survey and kind of what, what, what conclusion, what conclusion you were able to come from?

What you were able to draw from that?

Yeah, I think that might have been my longest article ever.

But you know, that was a couple weeks of coaching polls.

I was having a lot of fun, you know, sharing polls on X and anyone can, can respond, anyone can follow obviously.

And so I just, you know, trying to get a pulse on, on what coaches are going through.

I ask questions that I want to know the answer.

I'm not like trying to do any political polls where I'm trying to catch people.

Right.

Like, but there are some funny things that I learned.

I already told you, awareness was a big pain point for, for a lot of coaches, which is something I didn't necessarily expect.

A funny one.

Just to give you the cliff notes.

The funny one was closeouts are the hardest to teach skill on defense, but also in another poll, the most overtaught skill.

So, so we have this, this economy where I guess we're over coaching closeouts but not doing it very well.

Right.

For coaches listening, you can answer that yourself, right?

Like what's the number one thing that breaks down in your defense?

And for a lot of coaches out there it was the on ball defender, right?

I think that's the common trend, like individual breakdowns, right?

Whether it's a poor execution of a coverage blown by on the ball, poor clothes out, things like that, like the individual defensive skill.

Another poll was how do you improve individual defense?

And the number one answer was small sided games, which you know, we can dive into a little bit.

But the number two answer was the shell drill.

And to me, like the shell drill is not where you're going to teach individual skill.

Like they're not going to get reps of guarding the ball in the shell.

The only thing the shell drill is great at teaching is positional and if you use it correctly, awareness and sometimes coverage, right?

But it's really, that's what it's its goal is, right?

To teach positions, awareness of rotations.

It's not about developing the individual outside of that small sided games can be useful, but by far and away what finished lasts.

I think only receiving like two votes was individual defensive work.

And to me that blew me away.

Like if I wanted to work with a shooter, like it's not just about making the right decision of when to shoot, it's about the skill, it's about the action capability.

If I'm not a good shooter alone, who cares what decisions I'm making in the game.

I'm going to miss anyway.

Like I'm going to miss the wide open shot.

Like I'm sorry to tell you, like we need the so much of the small sided game dogma that's been spent spread has really diminished the base level skill that the players are going into those drills with the what we call action capabilities in the ecological design that has spread this, this approach.

But they need to have the capabilities, right?

Do they have the explosiveness to move laterally, push off at a 45 degree angle to contain that cushion?

Do they have the core strength to bounce off a hit?

Do they have the ability to move their feet so that they don't open their hips and expose the top foot?

Do they have the ability to close out explosively to cover distance but then also break down and control their momentum and then have the ability to counter their movement?

Right.

These are all movement skills and defense is primarily a movement skill.

But yet we are refusing to Teach it that way.

We're using the shell drill in small sided games and that's good at some point, but it's not going to unleash lockdown defenders, right?

It's, it's not.

And then the very last thing, the very last poll that really sent me over the edge was let me pull it up so I don't get it wrong here.

I have it right here.

Don't worry.

I had a feeling you would ask me about this, so I, I, here it is.

What defense is mostly a what skill?

No, defense is mostly a blank, a skill, a habit.

It's about effort or athleticism.

Number one by a landslide was effort, right?

Defense is mainly about effort.

Listen, if your players aren't giving you effort, there's a bigger problem, right?

Like if your players aren't giving effort on defense, there's a much bigger problem.

It's.

Defense isn't a effort, soldier skill, it's a skill.

It's a skill.

It's not effort, it's skill.

Effort unlocks the skill.

Effort is needed.

It's the, it's the price of admission on the court.

But what about defense requires effort?

Well, movement, duh.

But like is containing the ball.

Effort is making sure you close out and then cushion to contain.

Effort is walling up properly.

Effort, like.

Yes, effort is a part of everything you do in basketball.

There's effort in shooting the ball, there's effort in beating your man one on one.

But if I said are one on one skills, mostly effort, you would say no.

And I would say, well, you're not going to get by anyone not trying.

And that would be right too.

So let's, let's take effort out of the equation because that's important for everything.

I can't get by a guy if I'm not trying hard, right?

So effort's important, but that's not what defines defense.

What defines defense is the skills, the training, the things that we're breaking down at lockdown defense, the techniques, the movement skills, the athleticism, development, all these, the perception that we were just talking about, the awareness, all that is a skill.

And to say defense is just about effort really diminishes the player who truly wants to get better at the skill.

I think that's a great point.

That last sentence that you just said.

Right.

Is so often I think players get typecast as this kid's a good defender, this kid's not a good defender.

And yeah, as coaches sometimes we just shrug our shoulders and say, well, this kid's not ever going to be a good defender and there's not much we can do.

And so hopefully they bring something else to the table and that's why we play them.

And that does, to your point, and I think it was something that came through loud and clear in the article is in, in so many ways that's a cop out that we would never use with any other skill.

Right.

We would never say, oh, this kid can never dribble.

You know, we clearly there are kids on your team that can handle the ball better than others, but we can always develop that.

I think coaches in general probably feel like I don't know how much of an individual defender I can develop.

I can develop a team scheme that maybe can quote, hide that defender.

But developing them as an individual, I think, I think coaches struggle for figuring out what does that look like and how do I help a kid to be able to move better, to be able to play the type of defense that maybe they want to play.

And so I think it's incumbent upon us as coaches to figure out what that looks like in terms of how can I help players on my team become better individual defenders?

And you've gone through a whole list of things tonight that we can do to try to help your players to become better.

In terms of learning how to watch film, in terms of the anticipation piece, in terms of just again, teach the movement skills.

What are things that you can do?

What are some typical movements that we do as a defender?

And can we train ourselves to do those at a faster pace?

Can we train ourselves to do those better?

Can we make our technique be improved?

And I think that that's something that, as you said, coaches, it definitely, let's put it this way, even coaches who are doing it probably aren't doing it enough.

Yeah, I think two things when you, when you said that, number one, offensively it comes natural to us, right?

Like we want to practice shooting because we want our players to make shots.

Like the plays are meaningless if we can't make the shot.

So we're going to spend time on shooting.

We're going to take a kid aside who's struggling, maybe putting through extra reps because that makes sense.

The better our shooting, the better our offense, the better our ball handling, the better our offense.

The same thing for defense.

Like the better your on ball defender is, the better your defense is going to be.

So many times our practices are layered with just rotational drills, shell drills and rotations and scrambles because we're saying like, of course we're going to get blown by of Course, we're going to need help right now.

I'm never saying, of course, like, that is the antithesis of what I believe in.

Like, I start at the point of attack first.

Well, how did that happen on the ball?

So, yeah, bringing our attention to the ball first.

The individual we need to build up because the more time you focus on individual defensive development, the less time you're going to spend in those rotations and scrambles, right?

The better your defense is going to be, your team defense is going to be, because you're going to have less breakdowns.

And the other thing I wanted to say is why what started me on this lockdown defense journey, right?

This happened probably 12 years ago now.

I started coaching for the first time, got my first fourth grade AAU team, right?

Young little bucks.

And one kid came to me.

I used to go every, every practice, you know, very early.

Any kids who came, you know, we would work with.

And this one kid I was working with a lot, developed his shot a lot.

And as a coach who was just starting, like, my goal was, could I master or at least try to master, right, every fundamental in basketball?

And it was really easy to find information when it came to shooting and ball handling routines and things like this.

So when a player came to me and said, coach, can you help me with my finishing?

I knew what to do almost, right?

Because there's so much information out there.

And so when this player came to me one day and said, coach, I really need to get better at defense.

Can you help me?

You know, 12 years ago, this floored me.

Like, I, I really racked my brain.

Like the only thing I had ever learned defensively, developing a player one on one, maybe some zigzag drills my coach made us do in high school.

And, and it really stumped me.

And I went back that night and I looked through all the coaching books.

I had over a thousand pages when I just started coaching and I, I, I must have missed something, right?

I didn't only 11 pages of those, a thousand plus actually talked about individual defense.

And it was just layered with try harder and classic zigzag drills.

And I went online, I couldn't find anything.

And it really frustrated me.

I didn't want to go to this player and say, well, you know what, kid, you just have to try harder.

I would never do that if a kid said, coach, help me with my jump shot.

Well, kid, you're just lacking some heart in it.

Like, you know, just try a little harder.

No, it wouldn't make sense.

I would be Crazy.

And why would I think any different if the guy wanted to help on defense?

Like if a coach said he just got to try harder, we should look at them equally as crazy because there's so much you can do to help players improve individually.

And it wasn't very out there when I first started, but hopefully I've been pumping out some content.

I know some other people have been pumping out some content when it comes to developing the individual defenders.

But the more you watch the greats, the more you realize there are some key patterns of things they do differently than, than what we taught.

As basic as the classic defensive stance and how no one uses that to the zigzag drill and how detrimental that is to footwork on defense.

We don't want to open our hips like that.

We don't want to expose a top foot like that.

So things like that, like there's a lot that goes into developing the player individually.

But we, I think we're, we're starting now to see this, this shift of valuing the defender and it might take a while to fully take root, but we're seeing it at really the NBA level with okc.

We're seeing at the college level teams that are prioritizing and valuing these role defenders a lot more than they ever have and teams valuing defense a lot more than they ever have.

And those teams are having a lot of success right now.

And that's going to hopefully trickle down to all levels of basketball where we appreciate the defenders just as much as we appreciate the sharpshooters.

Now that would be a great place for the game to get to, right?

And everybody loves to see offense and rightfully so.

And yet at the same time, I think when you start talking about winning

games,

man, if you have, if you have a great on ball defender or multiple great online def, you know, on ball defenders or you know, hey, put five great on ball defenders, all that, all that time you spend working on rotations and, and getting into different places to be able to help, right?

You got to do a lot less of that.

And your defense is clearly a lot stronger.

If you can defend the ball, it makes everything else around what you do defensively that much stronger.

And look, it's been a, I think an aspect of the game that's been under taught.

When you talk about individual on ball defense and is it something that we can work on, is there technique, is there athleticism?

I think the answer to that is yes.

And I think what you're starting to do with the videos that you're putting out and just the information that you're making available to both players and coaches, I think it's a great place for people to go to get a head start on what teaching individual defense looks like.

And what if you're a player, what are some things that you could do to improve yourself as an oddball defender?

And I can speak to, and I know you can as well, if there's any players that are out there listening.

And I know we've mostly been talking about this from a coaching perspective, but if you're a player and you're listening to this and you want to make yourself valuable to your team and to your coach, man, if you can guard the ball and keep people in front of you, the value in that skill is, I mean, ridiculous.

And it's ridiculous at every single level of the game.

I don't care whether we were talking about high school basketball, middle school basketball, college basketball at any level, and obviously in the NBA where the players skill level offensively is off the charts.

But if you can guard the ball, man, we got something.

Yeah, to, to that point, Coach, I think the big disconnect between Flyers and coaches, especially at the high school and youth level, is there's a big belief from the player's perspective that they just need to shoot better, score more points to get more minutes.

And in one of the polls I did for coaches, you know, over, I think, you know, 300 coaches responded.

What's the number one skill holding back players from more varsity minutes by a landslide.

I didn't expect to.

I honestly thought Shudi and bought defense was a landslide victor of that poll wasn't even close.

Like the next one was ball handling wasn't even shooting like, and then shooting.

And so a lot of players, when they get into the gym, what are they spending their time doing?

They're getting up more shots, they're getting up ball handling routines, they're working on their finishing.

All that stuff's important.

We want that as coaches.

We want players that can make shots and score.

And don't diminish that.

Right?

I'm not trying to diminish that.

But that's just such a small part of your game, right?

The offensive side is just half your game.

The other half is completely defense.

Like, you spend 20 minutes in the game, only 10 of it is on offense.

The other 10 is on defense.

But how much are you preparing yourself as a player to maximize those minutes?

And that's why you see this disconnect between players and coaches where coaches are starting to Value that more and more.

And it's holding back players who are devoting all this time to improving their offense when really it's their defense that's holding them back.

And it's the hardest thing to improve from a knowledge standpoint as a player.

You know, no player really knows how to go in a gym and get better at defense, but there's so many resources to do all the other skills.

So we're still trying to catch up on the defensive end of how to help players do that.

But there are definitely tools or definitely trying to.

I put out an individual workout.

You can do 10 minutes.

You know, if you're a player, just pull that up on YouTube, go through the 10 minute workout.

Trust me, my legs were sore the next day.

Video pants and you know, getting through the workout with you.

But that's how you ultimately are going to get better at the skill your coaches are valuing the most.

Yeah, I one other thing to go along with what coaches value and correct me if I'm wrong, this is just my own perception.

I didn't take a survey, I take a poll.

But when I hear the result of that, that coaches say what's holding players back from defense?

I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like coaches want players to be at a level where they are not hurting their team because they are an extremely poor defender.

Yeah.

Versus do they want their players to excel as defensive players.

It's like, dude, you're terrible.

I can't put you on the floor.

You're a horrible defensive player.

If you could just be average, then I can play you.

And I think that's still the disconnect from a coaching standpoint is in other areas of the game.

On the offensive end, we wouldn't let you know, shooter have the green light to be able to shoot any kind of shot they want.

But on the defensive end of the floor, I feel like coaches oftentimes are more willing to accept the kid who's mediocre because they're not going to kill us.

So I don't know if that.

Does that make sense?

I get what you're saying.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that's a good point to bring up.

Just to clarify the last statement I make.

Like again, like if you're a struggling shooter, the coach doesn't want you to see you go in there and jack up a bunch of shots to prove you're a good shooter.

That's the opposite of what he wants you to do.

He wants you not to shoot the ball.

And make plays for other teammates.

Same thing.

Like, if you're a struggling defender, the last thing we need you to do is go in a game and try and pressure the ball like a crazy man.

Like, now you're getting blown by.

Now you're exposing yourself even more.

And that's again, a disconnect.

And what the players think the coach really wants, they want this pressure defender.

When you think of great defense, a lot of players are thinking of the turnovers, right?

The steals, the pickpockets, the block shots.

A lot of defense is the absence of anything spectacular.

It's not the spectacular play, it's the absence.

It's the mundane.

It's the guy didn't even get a good shot up.

It's nothing easy.

And that's a lot of times when I work with defenders and we do camps, Level one, nothing easy that you're like, it's not sexy.

It's.

It's.

You're not going to be on the highlight reel, but you're not going to be the weak link of your defense.

And that's level one containment, hard finishes, things like that.

Being able to stay in front, not open your hips, cushion slide, wall ups.

You know, before we add any tools to your bag defensively, how to steal the ball, how to pressure the ball, we just need you not to get blown by, how to close out, contained, right?

These kind of skills, that's level one defense.

I'm working with a player right now, and for those coaches who say players just need to want it more on defense, like, I work with players all the time who want it.

Right.

And this is maybe not something that's common for other coaches to see a player come to you who really wants to get better, right.

They're seeking you out for a reason, and yet they're not great.

Right?

This happens all the time.

There are players all over the country who want to be better at defense that aren't.

And so these are the things that, that we need to address.

And so, yeah, I'm working with this player right now who's phenomenal offensive player.

But like you said, you know, is a question mark on defense.

And right now we're just working on level one stuff.

He just makes sure.

Make sure you're not the weak point, make sure you're not constantly causing help rotations, making sure we can add some activity on the ball without getting blown by.

Right?

Because we don't want comfy quarterbacks either on the offensive end.

So we have to have some level of activity, but without putting ourselves in harm's way.

So, yeah, and this player is constantly maybe trying to overextend the proof, right.

That okay, I'm getting better at defense.

That's not what we need right now.

We need you to be solid and then we can build on that.

Yeah, it's well said.

And I think it's something that if you could get players to understand that, right.

That there's, there's a base level of confidence, competence and then you can take it from there, right, where you can be a more impactful defender in different ways or once you get to that, that basic competence level that, that you're talking about right there.

Mike, conversation has been awesome tonight.

I feel like we've hit on just a ton of things out there that are valuable from a defensive standpoint for players, for coaches.

And like I said to you before we even jumped on, the stuff that you're putting out on your YouTube channel, I think is tremendously valuable for players and for coaches from a defensive perspective.

So before we wrap up, share how people can connect with you, share the YouTube channel, social channels, everything that you have going on out there.

And then after you share that, I'll jump back in and wrap things up.

Yeah.

Well, first, if you have any specific questions, you can always email me@coachlockdown defense.com you know, feel free to, you know, maybe you have a big playoff game, you want some, some someone to bounce ideas off of or you want to have a question of something we covered here today.

Definitely shoot me an email.

I have a ton of resources you can find on YouTube for free on X for free.

Follow me lockdown defense at YouTube we Mike underscore Jagaki on X.

And then if you want to go even deeper, right.

I have a subsack which I'm posting articles and film rooms.

There's a paid and free tier and then there's also a bunch of products.

On my website, lockdown defense.com we have a whole academy section for players who want to get better at defense.

Over a hundred hours of defensive content, from four week workout programs to film sessions, to breakdowns to drills.

Everything that a player needs to get better at defense is right there in the academy.

And for coaches, we have clinics.

We have a book, obvious two books, Lockdown Defense.

The most recent clinic I just want to plug is what we've started the conversation focused on, which is designing disruption.

Right.

How can you add some wrinkles to your base defense to force some turnovers, especially for the playoffs.

That was over an hour and a half clinic all focused on specific ways you can force turnover.

So that's definitely something I'm excited to share.

Coaches who are out there, players who are out there listening, make sure you go and check out Mike's stuff.

If you haven't checked it out already, it's fantastic.

You're going to find a tremendous amount of value and everything that he does, both his free stuff, his paid stuff, make sure you check all that out.

Mike cannot thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule tonight to join us.

Really appreciate it.

And to everyone out there, thanks for listening and we will catch you on our next episode.

Thanks.

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