Joe Stasyszyn is the director of Unleashed Potential, a basketball skill development company, based in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He is also a USA Basketball Player Development Coach, Speaker and Clinician at Coach Academies, Gold Camps, and Clinics around the United States and around the world. Joe was also formerly the National Director of Basketball and Youth Fitness at 24 Hour Fitness, where he managed programs in over 450 facilities nationwide. This position gave him the opportunity to work with countless elite NBA and WNBA coaches and players. Joe is a 20+ year veteran coach at the Duke University Basketball Camp.

Joe began his coaching career as an assistant coach at Dickinson College and later was the head boys’ varsity coach at Carlisle High School in Pennsylvania for 10 years.

On this episode Mike and Joe discuss the critical importance of deliberate practice in basketball coaching and player development. Joe emphasizes the need for coaches to implement intentional and measurable training strategies to enhance player performance. He shares that true improvement stems not merely from repetitive actions but from a structured approach that includes competition and feedback during practice sessions. The discussion further highlights the global nature of basketball today, with an emphasis on the collaboration between international coaches and the wealth of knowledge shared through USA Basketball initiatives. Throughout the episode, we explore the profound impact that a dedicated and passionate approach to coaching can have on athletes, regardless of their geographical location. This exchange of ideas serves to elevate the game as a whole, as we all strive to cultivate a higher standard of excellence in basketball.

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Make sure you’re subscribed to the Hoop Heads Pod on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and while you’re there please leave us a 5 star rating and review. Your ratings help your friends and coaching colleagues find the show. If you really love what you’re hearing recommend the Hoop Heads Pod to someone and get them to join you as a part of Hoop Heads Nation.

Have your pen and paper at the ready as you listen to this episode with Coach Joe Stasyszyn from Unleashed Potential & USA Basketball.

Email - jstasand1@comcast.net

Website - unleashed717.com

Twitter - @coachs717

Foreign.

Podcast is brought to you by Head Start Basketball.

You have to have feedback whether it's measuring against time, going against another opponent.

That's why I like our competitive edge model, because when we do shooting, we compete.

We have contested shooting.

How many contested shots did you hit?

You got to measure those things almost to the point.

I'm not saying you have to do this, but this is like the extreme example.

When you're missing a shot, are you missing more on the right side of the rim?

Are you missing more on the left side of the rim?

Are you coming up short?

Most of the time, that's the feedback that makes it deliberate.

Joe's decision is the Director of Unleashed Potential, a basketball skill development company based in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

He's also a USA Basketball player development coach, speaker and clinician at Coach Academies, Gold Camps and clinics around the United States and around the world.

Joe was also formerly the National Director of Basketball and Youth Fitness at 24 Hour Fitness, where he managed programs in over 450 facilities nationwide.

This position gave him the opportunity to work with countless elite NBA and WNBA coaches and players.

Joe is a 20 plus year veteran coach at the Duke University Basketball Camp that was started under former head coach Mike Krzyzewski.

Joe began his coaching career as an assistant coach at Dickinson College and later was the head boys varsity coach at Carlisle High School in Pennsylvania for 10 years.

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Have your pen and paper ready as you listen to this episode with Coach Joe's Decision from Unleash Potential and USA Basketball.

Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads podcast.

It's Mike Cleansing here without my co host Jason Sunkel this morning.

But I am pleased to welcome back to the Hoop Heads pod.

Well, for what I believe is his fourth quote regular appearance, but many, many appearances on the Coach's Corner Roundtable, Joe's decision from unleashed potential and USA Basketball.

Joe, welcome back, man.

One of the original Hoop Heads right here.

Thank you, Mike.

I love being on with you guys.

Yeah, you and Jason started this thing.

Like you said, I was one of the original guys and I knew, I just knew that this thing was going to take off and I enjoy listening to, you know, everything you guys, all the people you guys have on there.

I'm a learn it all guy.

I learn off everybody.

So this is a tremendous resource for basketball coaches, not only United States, but around the world.

I work with coaches around the world.

I tell them about this all the time.

This is just a.

You guys do a tremendous job and I'm thankful, really appreciate you having me on again.

Well, we're appreciative of those kind words and we're always thankful to have great basketball guys like you be a part of what we're doing here at hooped.

So, so let's start by jumping into what you've been doing since we last talked.

I know that you sent me an email.

We've talked back and forth and you were doing a lot of work internationally.

We do a lot of work with the Duke men's and women's basketball program.

So just start wherever you want to start.

We'll dive into it and see if we can't pull out some of the things that you've been doing that can benefit our audience of coaches.

Yeah, well, you know, as you stated, you know, we're still running our Unleashed.

You know, my son and we've done, he's done a great job that, that program has grown tremendously since the last time we talked about.

We now have four part time coaches.

You know, we have three full time coaches, myself included.

When I'm in the country and I'm not working with USA Basketball, I also help out over there here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

So, you know, and as I spoke to you a little while ago, we now have, it's amazing, we have over 100 kids, boys and girls players playing some level of college basketball right now that we work with, you know, on a regular basis.

So, you know, we're really thankful to have that thing taken off.

And like I said, that keeps Me very busy locally when I'm not on the road somewhere, you know.

But another.

Other than that, my USA Basketball, I'm still speaking nationally at their coach academies with coach Don Showalter, who I work very closely with, also still doing the goal camps.

Our goal camps have really, really taken off.

You know, they're the top, you know, sixth, seventh and eighth grade, even ninth graders, you know, in the country that we are sort of like looking at to maybe, you know, get a little radar on some of the younger players for our junior national teams.

Because that's, you know, that's what they do worldwide, you know, fiba, you know, and around Europe, they.

They start looking at these kids early.

That's what we do.

So, you know, that's.

That's also something great that, that I love doing with USA Basketball.

The other thing is, you know, I'm always out looking, you know, helping to evaluate for our junior national teams on the East Coast.

You know, I get.

I get to as many events as I can, keep in touch with Coach Showalter and some players and stuff like that.

So on the usa, and, you know, that's.

That's some of the stuff that I been doing and continue to do.

And, you know, we always say USA Basketball is a gold standard.

So, you know, that's.

That.

That's just been really, really great.

And our youth and coach development is really going well.

You know, we have those big tournaments now, USA Basketball tournaments a couple of places across the country during the summer that have really taken off.

So again, you know, I always like to call out Coach Show Walter, because that guy, man, you talk about the gold standard, he is the best of the best.

Very close friend of mine, like I said, I work closely with him, and they don't get any better than that.

So, you know, he does a lot of stuff internationally, obviously, too.

But the other, the other big thing that I wanted to talk about, because I think this is really cool, and I've been doing this for a few years, but now I'm taking one of the lead roles in this.

And this is in conjunction with our USA Olympic Committee, sort of like USA Basketball, the Olympic solidarity around the world.

FIBA is involved, the NBA is, and we have the NBA involved, the NCAA involved.

And what that is, it's called iCab.

It's the international Coaches Apprenticeship for Basketball, and it's held at the University of Delaware every year.

And I just came back, we did about, you know, I did a couple days on site, and we've been working with these coaches.

They're national team coaches from around the world and very high level coaches.

And they have to apply for the Student Olympics, solidarity and FIBA and the US Olympic Committee.

So it's a pretty prestigious thing to get accepted.

And what they do is they come into the United States and they spend about three or four days on site at the University of Delaware.

And that's where I first get to meet them.

And I work on the court and off the court with them on player development, coach development, team development, all those things, sharing my knowledge.

And we had, we have coaches from each national team, coaches from Egypt, Estonia, Poland, Saudi Arabia, you name it, man.

Every year we have like 10 or 12 coaches from different parts of the world, which are, which is just tremendous.

And they come in and I spend, we spend three or four days with them.

Dr. Matt Robinson, who's a professor, professor at the University of Delaware, it's run through his program.

He does a tremendous job too.

The guy is phenomenal.

He does a lot of stuff internationally with, with fiba, with soccer and, and basketball, different things like with the ICAB here.

So then after that, and we also bring in, we had Tommy Shepard, longtime general manager in the NBA.

He works closely with us.

He, he comes in those first couple days and he talks about, you know, how the NBA works.

And we have people from the WNBA and then we have, you know, NCAA athletic directors involved, just teaching these national team coaches what USA Basketball is all about.

And like I said, I'm very fortunate to do what I do.

It's one of the coolest things that I get to do.

And then after that, after they leave, we match them up with Division 1 programs across the country.

Like, we had a couple of the guys, I think the coach from Denmark and a coach from, from Poland.

We sent them up, the national team coaches.

They went up with Shaka Smart at Marquette and they, and they spent, up at Marquette, they spent a couple, spent like a couple of weeks, you know, involved in their program in all aspects.

And they have assignments they have to do.

So we, we pair them up with like Davidson.

We have people down there with Lehigh.

We have them all over the place.

Villanova, women's.

So.

And then they come back and then I go back to Delaware and I, I touch base with them like once a week to make sure things are going well.

If they have any questions how I can help them, they come back and then we spend time again at the University of Delaware, debriefing, going over everything.

And then we eventually they turn in all their assignments and they eventually go back.

But I'M telling you, Mike, it's just.

I'm very fortunate to be able to be that involved in this program, just a tremendous program.

All right, so I have two things, so I'm going to ask you first, kind of from a standpoint of your role, and what are some of the things.

I know obviously your focus is on player development, but what are one or two of the key things that you try to get across in terms of your philosophy of player development that you want them to take with them when they go back to their home country?

What are the key points that you're trying to get across them?

And I know there's a million different things that you could go in different directions.

You could take this.

But just if you could kind of boil it down and condense into what are the most important takeaways that you hope they grab from you that they take back to their home country.

Yeah.

So, you know, in doing this a couple of years, one thing I have learned is they don't have a whole lot of resources, a lot of these.

I mean, we're very fortunate here in the United States, man.

We.

I mean, almost in some ways, we're spoiled.

I mean, our facilities, our resources, you know, and the first part of this, that.

First thing I'll answer this with is the biggest thing that I stress to them is coach development, that they have to develop their coaches first.

Because as we all know, good player development starts with good coach development.

I mean, coaches have to know what they're doing, you know, and that's one thing I've learned from them or found from them is they don't have the luxury of having a lot of help.

So they literally have to start by, you know, within their federations, finding coaches, number one, who are going to be committed, number two, who are going to want to learn.

Because one of the things that I have found in working with them is they have coaches that are set in their ways, and they don't want to try new things.

And it's like, nah, this.

You know, you might want to.

Some people call them old school.

I always say, you know, we can't be old school.

We can't be new school.

We got to be one school.

We got to take a little bit of the old, some of the new, and put it together.

And that's one of the things that I try to.

To work with them because they.

They have a lot of struggles with that, just getting, you know, people to be committed.

You know, people buying in on what they're trying to do.

They get pushback sometimes.

And then the other part of that is the resources.

And one of the things I do with a mike is, especially when I'm on the floor, I teach them to have to be their own performance coach, their own strength coach, their own skill development coach.

I mean, I, I have a lot of background in, I've had a lot of personal training certifications, cross as, I have my CrossFit certification, I've had my NAS, NASM personal training certification.

And I did that for a reason, because I'm a performance coach also.

So I teach them how to build speed, agility, quickness into their programs because they're not like Marquette where they got their own, you know, strength, strength coach, they got their own performer, they got a strength coach, they got a performance coach, they got a nutrition coach, they got all these people they have to be at all.

So what I learned very quickly a few years ago when I got started was one of the biggest ways I can benefit them is, is teaching them how to be all in one, do be able to do it all yourself.

Because at the end of the day, I'll never forget I had a coach from Africa, the Sudan or somewhere a couple of years ago.

He said to me, coach, I have a question for you.

He said, how can you help me with this situation?

He said, we have one basketball court, one full court, we have two baskets.

And he said, in any given night or day, I have 150 kids I'm working with.

So how do you work with 150 kids on two baskets, one court with maybe one or two coaches?

So that's a real challenge.

So that's, that's the thing that I, that I stress with them.

That's one of the main things that, you know, they have to really be creative in what they do.

They have to be multi at the multitask.

I mean, like I said, you're doing it all in one.

And then the, you know, the other thing is that I really work with them in on is something I'm going to talk about here in a little while.

It's called deliberate practice.

How to be very, very efficient in what you're doing.

You have to be very intentional what you're doing.

When you're working with few facilities, few resources, few coaches and a lot of players.

So I'm teaching them how to be very deliberate and intentional in their practice planning, in their development, planning, all those kinds of things.

So I'd say they're, and that's the thing that they really want.

They're like Coach, help us.

How can you, you know, how can you.

Can you help us on these areas?

And, and these, and these people are, you know, we.

We have, you know, male and female national team coaches, tremendous coaches who do a tremendous job, but they're learning all they want to know, man.

They.

Everybody views as, you know, everybody views us.

We're the gold standard.

I use that all the time.

They want to know, you know, how's ua, USA Basketball do things?

Because we obviously win the most gold medals and all those kinds of things.

So they're.

They're very open.

But.

But, you know, the interesting thing, Mike, is this, too, is I'm learning from them, and I tell them that straight up.

I'm like, listen, I'm a learn it all.

I don't profess to know everything.

If you, if you feel like you've known everything in basketball, then you shouldn't be coaching basketball anymore, because we all are learning all the time.

And that's.

That's another.

That's a huge benefit for me that I get on the side when I'm.

When I'm helping them.

So hopefully that gives you a little direction, like what we're.

What we're doing.

That's my aspect of what I do with them when.

When I'm working with them.

Absolutely.

So the second part of what I wanted to ask you is that's your part of the development, what you're sharing with them.

What are some things that they're coming to USA Basketball looking for?

I know you mentioned a couple questions, a couple things that coaches brought to you and said, hey, we need help with this or we need help with that.

What are some other things that, when you think about the main driver of what they're looking for, are they looking for X's and O's?

Are they looking for organization?

Are they looking for culture?

What are some of those areas that they really want to be able to improve their coaching when they come over as a part of this program?

Yeah, that's a great question.

Because honestly, to answer that, they're looking for all that.

They're like.

Because, you know, a lot of times they say to me, here's the biggest issue that they have.

A lot of times, here's what they asked me about, is they have a lot of club programs over there, club teams.

And I get this from almost every.

Every single national team coach from around the world that comes here to work with us is they get pushback from the clubs.

They're like, well, coach, how do you.

How do you guys get Buy in to have the team, the players play for your national team.

When we try to get our players play for our national team, we have club coaches fighting us saying, no, they can't.

We're not going to allow them to go.

We're not going to allow them to miss their, our club, our club program to go play for national team.

And I look at him, I'm like, I'm like, really?

I mean, that's the national team.

You don't get any better than that.

You got to play in the national team.

So they want to know, well, how do we get, how do we get our players to do that?

And that's when I explained to them, I like, listen, you know, we have these high level EYBL AU teams and you know, they're the best of the best.

You know, the Adidas shoe teams and Under Armour teams and all that.

I said, but when these players get asked to go to training camp to possibly play for our U.S. uSA junior national teams, they all go.

It's like, it's not even a. I mean.

And then, and then I tell them the story about.

And Coach Showwater and I talk about this all the time.

I tell him the story about, you know, Coach Showwater uses this like, he talks.

He had Jason Tatum, he had a lot of these, you know, Bradley Beal, all these guys, different guys that he coached when he won 10 gold medals.

And he said to a single person, these players tell him the best thing they ever did.

And I'm talking about McDonald's All American team, Jordan Classic, whatever you want to say.

The thing that they say was the best thing that they ever did was play for their USA Junior national teams.

Beyond a.

Not one person said it was at something else.

So I give them that story and tell them, listen, you have to somehow get through these club teams.

Like these players need to play on their, on their junior national team.

And the only, and the only thing I did tell them this.

And this is what happens with us sometimes.

And this year was the exception.

Our U19 sometimes aren't.

Don't, don't get me wrong, they're always very strong, but they're not, as always as strong as our U16s are.

U17s because when they're U19, they're going into their freshman year in college.

And a lot, some coaches, not all coaches, some coaches on the high level will say, nah, you can't.

We want you on campus taking classes, getting a head start.

So sometimes we lose some of our best.

Unite.

Don't, don't get me wrong, we still have great 19 players there and we did this year, we did very well.

But sometimes our best players can't come because they have their college commitment.

So I tell them that also.

But that's, you know, and then getting back to culture, they want to know, how do we do things?

How do we get buy in?

How do we get players to buy in?

Because a lot of, a lot of times I get coaches say to me, well, our best player, they know that we don't have.

We, they know that we're not as blessed as you guys are to have, you know, the greatest players in the world.

You can pick and choose who you want.

Some of our best players know if they, they don't, if we don't play, they're not gonna, we're not gonna win.

So sometimes that's a big hurdle for them.

Getting them to buy in and being able to hold them accountable because they're like, hey, you need me.

You know, we're here in the United States.

We've cut, we've cut players who are ranked number one or two in the country because they weren't a good fit.

But we are still able to field great, great teams because, you know, I always tell these guys, these guys and girls are like, listen, we only pick 12 players for our team.

We have, that's not even one per state.

So it's like, you know, we could pick and choose.

We don't, if you don't have a good fit and you have, you have an attitude or you have bad body language, we will cut you.

We will not take you.

So, and that's one thing when I go evaluate and that's the other thing they want to know, how do you evaluate players?

So I could go on for days about this, but I, I, I give them what coach show Walter and I, the things that we look at when we go to evaluate a player, if we see bad body language, we don't care what your ranking is, that really means nothing to us.

We'll cross you right off the list.

Okay?

And, but they don't sometimes have the luxury of that.

So it's a little bit, you know, you gotta, they gotta sort of like, you know, tweak it a little bit and pick and choose how they're gonna, how they're gonna do things.

Because it's not like here, they don't have the resources, they don't have the same, you know, high level players that we have.

I'm talking about like, overall they have some very good players, but not to the depth that we have.

And that's, you know, that leads me to one more thing.

I'll let you jump back in.

And we, and I talk about this all the time.

The reason we do so well, a lot of it is because our first five are always very, very good on the floor.

But our second five, they're just as good as our first five.

Whereas the other teams, they might have five.

These teams, you know, these, these national teams, they might have five really good players.

But where we get them is the second group.

Because the second group, we don't have any fall, we don't have any fall off in our second group, but they have, they have fall off in their second group.

So that's something we talk about too.

They just want to know the ins and outs, how do we do things, how does it work here in the United States?

You know, and I try to help them as much as I can with all those things that maybe they can adapt and use.

That's, that's part of that.

The depth of players here in the US is.

The depth of players here in the US is, it's, it's not comparable anywhere else in the world.

Even if you take the top, whatever, seven, eight guys maybe.

But once you get beyond that, the depth that we have in terms of player talent here in the United States is like, is like nowhere else in the world.

When those coaches are there in Delaware, how much of what you're doing is things on the floor where you're demonstrating drills or you're going through stuff on the court versus how much of it is classroom based and just kind of talking through and having discussions and presentations.

Yeah.

So the, to give you an example of the layout.

So the first day that I'm there, the first day today, they come in like the night before, then I'm there for their first full day.

I usually will spend a whole morning.

We use the University of Delaware's practice facility.

They're very, you know, coach there is.

Martin Inglesby is so nice to let us use that at facility.

And we have some, we have some coaches that go there.

This will lead to another thing.

We have some coaches that actually will stay there and shadow his program.

And a women's program, you know, that'll be their assignment.

But anyway, so I'll spend the first morning there on the floor and basically I'll tell you what, it's like, it's like lightning.

And we're, we're on the floor.

I'm using the coaches as demonstration demonstrators.

Some of the Coaches are videotaping everything.

I will take them through a couple hours of just my model of deliberate practice, competitive edge, show them how to get more efficient use of their time.

Because part of that model, the competitive edge, is that I speak on USA Basketball when I speak around the country.

And different than around the world is we incorporate competition into skills.

So you're not only working on a skill, we're competing with, whether it's passing, shooting, ball, handing.

There's a competition, everything we do.

So they're getting.

They're getting both.

So I'm trying to teach them how to be more efficient with their time and more deliberate and intentional with their time in their practices.

And it's really interesting.

Like I said, they soak it up.

I mean, they're.

I got them actually doing it, you know, demonstrating it.

And like I said, they're videotaping it, and we share it.

And then what we do is, you know, we'll go back and then I'll spend, like, the Next, you know, Dr. Robinson will come in and talked about.

Talk to him about different things in terms of basketball organizations and how they work and leadership and all that stuff.

And then I will spend time in the classroom going over, like, best practices of being a coach at all levels and share all those best practices with them on, you know, practice planning, writing, you know, writing, you know, making practice plans.

How do you organize a practice more efficiently, all those kinds of things.

And then the cool thing about it is, like I said, and then.

And then they'll.

When they come back, I'll do maybe another session with them in the classroom on team development, coach development.

And then.

And then when they go to their assignments, they're taking, like, analytics.

We do a thing on analytics with them.

They're taking.

They have to do their own analytic thing at the practices at Marquette with Shock and Smart, and they're incorporating.

Then they.

They draw from them, and then they take all this stuff and incorporate into their own program.

You know, obviously, they get.

They don't have 10 assistants.

They gotta.

They gotta, you know, lessen it a little bit.

But that's what's so cool about it, because they're getting a little bit of everything.

Me on court, me off the court, Tommy Shepard in the classroom down there or in the convention, you know, in the hotel, convention center down there with us.

You know, they're getting a little bit.

Then they're going on site and getting that stuff.

So that's how that.

That's how that works with me, what my role is.

Oh, and Then one more thing.

I'm sorry, Mike.

Then the other thing is, like I said, every.

Every week while they're on assignment, I'm calling them.

I'm doing zoom calls at every assignment and just going over, hey, how are things going on the basketball end?

Are they including you in meetings enough?

Are they getting you involved and.

And all that kind of stuff.

So we talk about all that kind of stuff, and then, like I said, we bring them back together.

They have to turn their assignments in, they have to make a presentation, they debrief all that kind of stuff, and I'm involved with that, too.

Then we have little breakout sessions where they'll share what they did at their site and try to, you know, see some similarities, some differences and all that kind of stuff.

That.

That's.

That's my role.

Also a little bit about the selection process, like you mentioned.

Okay, Shaka Smart at Marquette is going to host some guys.

How do you, as USA Basketball and coach, show Walter, how do you guys go and.

And talk to the coaches whose programs are going to kind of open up to the participants from around the world so that those coaches can come in and sort of embed themselves in those programs?

What are those conversations like with.

Because again, we all know that sometimes there is people who are very, very open about having people around them and their program and their practices.

And then we know there are other people who are maybe a little bit more closed when it comes to that.

So just talk about that process of finding the right coaches and the right programs here in the US to pair up with these international coaches.

Yeah, so Dr. Matt Robinson, he spearheads this whole thing.

It's his, you know, he runs the whole program, so he's the one who actually contacts coaches.

And again, to your point, that's a great, great point because a lot of times we have.

We have coaches that will say, well, you know, why can't we go to Carolina?

Why can't we go to Duke?

Because, you know, we have to be careful because we want them involved.

We're not just sending them to be spectators sitting there.

We want them in every.

As all the coaches meetings.

And like you said, some coaches are just close.

Like, no, we can't.

We can't facilitate that.

You know, so Dr. Matt Robinson, what he does, and through the years, we have.

We have programs that we know will like to take them and they'll continue to take them.

And then, you know, he'll reach out to maybe Shaka at Marquette.

Marquette's like, oh, yeah, man, we would love to do this because, you know, as you know, man, the international game, look, all the players, we, that's just a whole nother hour we could spend.

I work with the players on the high coaches and players on the highest level.

I don't think you'll be shocked, but our coaches might be shocked.

How many international players are on these rosters on the high majors, mid majors, low me D1, D2, D3.

So it's a big thing today.

And that leads me, that leads me to another point.

So like I said, Dr. Matt Robinson will go and he'll contact coaches and say, hey, is this will be a good fit?

Is this not going to be a good fit?

Where can we put these people?

But on the other end of this, coaches, they're using this to their advantage in the United States.

So if I, if I have the coach from Norway and I had the coach from Poland working with me, I'm Shaka of Marquette.

Guess what?

They might have some really, really good players over there that I'm going to get it in with those players.

So it's, it's a win, win, honestly, you know.

You know, shame on those coaches that don't want to do it.

I don't.

We don't haven't had many coaches that don't want to do it, but we know who to ask to.

We know some of the really, really high, high hot, you know, high majors and not.

It doesn't.

I mean, Marquette's a high major program.

Not saying they're not, but I'm saying a lot of times, you know, some of these other programs, it's not going to be a good fit because they just can't give them the attention that, that maybe they want to or not.

And Shaka, Marquette was phenomenal.

I'll tell you what, these guys from Poland, Poland and Denmark, when they came out, they told me, said, coach, it was amazing.

It's a shocker.

Just literally opened up the whole thing to him.

It was, it was, it was, it was incredible.

They said they had experience in their life and most of them all say that.

Everywhere they go, they said they came back to say it was just tremendous.

So that's, that's how we do it.

Dr. Robinson goes, does that, I think.

When you talk about, again, intentionality, right?

I've heard you say it a couple times, and I think that it talks to the preparation that you do before you go in and speak and do your clinics with all those coaches.

It talks about selecting the right programs for those guys eventually to go and kind of embed themselves into.

And then you take that.

And one of the things that I always come away impressed by with any college coach that I'm interviewing here on the podcast is the amount of.

And I think this is what people who are outside of the basketball world don't always understand is the amount of preparation and intentionality that coaches have in terms of planning, practice, making decisions, recruiting, how they run their program, both from a culture standpoint, from a X's and O's on the floor standpoint, and all those things that I think sometimes there's a perception that there's not as much time that goes into it outside of the purviews of a three hour practice and the two hours on game day.

I don't think the average person has an understanding of how much time goes into preparing a team and just going through the entire process of coaching.

And so I think when I hear you talking, what I keep coming back to is intentionality.

And then I want to piggyback on something that you've mentioned a couple times, which is the idea of deliberate practice, right.

And I know that a big part of deliberate practice one is intentionality, right?

Making sure that you know exactly what you're trying to do and teach understanding how you're going to teach it.

But then I wanted to get your thoughts on something that's a big part of deliberate feedback or deliberate practice that I think sometimes gets overlooked, which is the feedback that a coach gives while the, whatever the drill, the activity is going on.

So talk a little bit about your own personal philosophy in terms of giving players feedback while you're going through and you're putting them through their paces.

How do you make sure that they're getting the feedback that they need in order to be able to make corrections to get the kind of improvement that you want to see in a player.

Yeah, man, you're speaking my language now, Mike.

That's why you guys are so great, man.

You, you just leave me right into something I was going to say, you know what?

And I always say this about deliberate practice feedback.

I call it the unsung hero of deliberate practice.

Because, see, and again, I could spend a whole hour on deliberate practice.

But I'm gonna give you the nuts and bolts here.

So we call regular practice just going out.

Just call that mindless repetition.

And you know what I had.

And it leads into something else we'll get into shortly.

I had a conversation with Denise Dillon, who's the head coach at University of Illinois women's basketball, one of the best coaches in the country at any level.

Men's, women's, whatever you want to talk about.

Okay.

And we got into this conversation because I work with their staff also on deliberate practice.

And, you know, I. I always say this.

You know, regular practice is like the.

The opposite of.

Of deliberate practice.

But you have to start somewhere, right?

Like we talked.

I talked to this about.

With.

About her.

To her, with this.

And, you know, sometimes you got to stand there and do your form shooting, or.

I get that.

That's.

That's the basic thing.

That's where you start.

But at some point, it has to become deliberate.

Yeah.

You got to make sure they're deliberately getting balanced on their footwork, on their shot.

You got to deliberately work on their footwork.

You have break it into chunks.

You got to measure it.

Okay.

You got.

There's.

It's systematic.

You have to have some form of measurement.

You talk about feedback.

You have to measure things.

And I know a lot of coaches, like, are now measuring things in practice and doing a lot of that kind of thing, you know, like doing some analytics.

And again, I like analytics.

I don't.

I don't.

I don't go completely by analytics.

I think it's a mix of both.

Can't just be.

You can't just be all measurement.

It has to be something look and feel, too, you know, but you have to have feedback whether it's measuring against time, going against another opponent.

All right?

Competing.

That's why I like our competitive edge model, because we compete.

Like when we do shooting, we compete.

We have contested shooting.

How many contested shots did you hit?

You know, and you got.

You got to measure those things almost to the point.

I'm not saying you have to do this, but this is like the extreme example.

You.

When you're missing a shot, are you missing more on the right, on the right side of the rim?

Are you missing more on the left side of the rim?

Are you.

Are you coming up short?

Most of the time, that's the feedback that makes it deliberate.

Rather just go out and say, I. I love this.

I say this all the time.

Players come to me all the time.

Well, coach, I got a thousand shots up today.

Okay, that's great.

Did you get one perfect.

Did you shoot one perfect shot a thousand times?

I'm not talking about makes.

I'm talking about, were you on balance every time?

Did you have the proper footwork every time?

Did you have the proper release every time?

I'm really big on that, and I.

Baba Ol Doten from Maryland.

I mean, He's.

He's tremendous.

6 10.

I've been working a lot.

I've really spent a lot of time on deliberate practice with his footwork and his shooting.

One of the things that I. I hear repeatedly, people I look at him now are saying, oh, man, he's for 6, 11.

He has tremendous footwork.

Well, I deliberate practice that with him every time that I'm with him.

And it's different.

It's different.

That's what I mean, you know, it's what I show.

We'll get to this shortly.

Leads into this.

What I do with Duke staff on the men's and women's side, like I do with Denise Dillon staff at Villanova, we work on deliberate practice.

I break down it into segments and I get.

And you got to give feedback on their balance, on their footwork, on.

I make them.

I call it.

Earn their shot and make them make different movements.

I don't teach any moves.

That's a waste of time doing.

We don't do any ISO moves, okay?

To me, that's.

That's garbage.

And it's a waste of time.

I will teach movements and footwork and deliver practice all day long.

Okay?

And that's.

And again, getting back to your.

Your feedback, you gotta identify their weaknesses.

You gotta measure things.

You have to set up some kind of system where you break things down into chunks.

So I'll start with balance.

I start with four.

I go as far as Mike is working on pickups, different ways of picking up the ball.

Okay?

How many shots do you make?

When I throw the ball outside your body and you have to pick it up and bring it in and shoot it, okay?

That's all deliberate practice, man.

That's.

That stuff.

It's uncomfortable.

And, you know, you have to give feedback on that so that hopefully that answers your question, like, in a nutshell.

I could go on and on about that, about the feedback part alone.

But you have to find small ways to help them improve and hold them accountable to it.

That's the other thing, is the accountability, okay?

They have to have their best effort every day.

Can't come in one day and say, I'm just going to go through the motions.

No, we got deliberately.

We got again, back to our word.

Intentional.

I'm big on you being intentional.

I'm big on using force.

I'm big on doing things on purpose.

We don't do anything.

Not on purpose.

Okay.

And I think that's how you get.

I, I know because I've seen it and that's what I've worked with Duke staff and men's and women's and Villanova staff on is this idea of breaking things down to segments and deliver practice and giving feedback.

Having a coach, that's why the coach's part is very important.

We can all go out and shoot a thousand shots, but we don't know what that looks like.

You know, what are they doing when they're out there doing that?

Just going through the motions.

What are they doing?

So they need that feedback to really, if you want to go from average to good or good to great, that's what you really need to do.

And again, I just spoke on this in Kansas City for USA Basketball at their academy and I got a lot of great feedback.

Talk about feedback.

I got a lot of great feedback on that.

A lot of questions from coaches.

They want to see finishing off a two.

That's a whole nother.

That's a whole nother issue.

And I showed them how to do deliberate practice because you could tell players you need to learn how to play off of two feet and like, okay, coach, yeah, I got it.

No, they don't.

I can tell you a story about that.

I'm not going to mention names, but one of the players on Duke last year when I was at their practice, you know, early in the season before I met with the staff, they're like, coach, watch and tell us what you see.

Well, one or a couple of their players wasn't just one.

Couple of them are very good at it.

Cooper Flag and Conanipple were tremendous playing off to.

There are a couple other players who were not very good at playing off of two.

Well, they got that rectified by mid season and, and a couple of them ended up going to be on, you know, first round draft picks for second round draft picks.

So deliver practice works.

I know that.

So that's like I said, I go on all day about deliver practice.

I'm really passionate about that because I think it's a, it's a game changer, man.

I'm telling you in all sports, not just basketball.

All right, so quick follow up on that.

So you're working with a player, right?

And you're working with them on pick your pick, your pick your skill.

You're working with them on footwork, you're working them on, on a pickup, you're working with them on balance, whatever you want to do.

What's an exact quote from coach decision when they're doing something?

What is something, word for word that you would say to a player when their balance is off or when there's something incorrect with their shot?

What are the things that you're actually saying to the player?

Give me an example or two of something, a quote that Joe would say to a player when you're working with them that would help them to see, hey, I'm making this mistake and I need to fix it.

Yeah.

So the biggest thing is that I say this all the time is they got to play with force.

So a lot of times their balance is off because their footwork.

Footwork.

They're not playing with force.

They're not being aggressive enough.

Okay.

A lot of times they're not coming into their shot aggressive enough.

They're coming in, okay.

Yeah.

And here's another one.

Casual never works.

Like, I will not accept being casual.

Don't be.

You can't be casual.

So I'm always telling them, use force.

Do it on purpose.

Be intentional, nothing casual.

You come casual into your footwork, your balance is going to be off, your footwork's not going to be aggressive.

Staying in your shot, you got to be intentional and staying in your shot.

All those things, I mean, I, I, literally every single aspect, I'm hitting them with, you know, just these, these target words.

You got to use target words.

You can't be out.

You can't stop them and keep explaining.

No, your footwork, you use force on your footwork, you enforce on your balance.

Weren't intentional.

You, you, you, you, you didn't, you didn't.

You didn't even.

Shooting it on purpose.

You didn't shoot it on purpose because the further you get out, the more explosive you need to be.

So they're the kind of words that I use and the kind of things that, that I, that I tell them when I'm working with it.

Force, Intentional on purpose.

You know, th.

Those kind of things being being aggressive.

The best players use the most force.

And here's the other thing I use with them all the time.

There are two superpowers in basketball, okay?

And that's footwork and shooting.

In my opinion, separators, superpowers, whatever you want to call it, the best players are the best footwork, all right?

The best players use the most force in any, in any sport, okay?

And then, and then basketball specific shooting is a separator.

And that's what I get from all the coaches that I work with, all the coaches that I Talk to internationally, at the highest levels, nationally, NBA, whatever they shooting is a separator today.

Players that can shoot the ball.

So that's.

They're the things that I really focus on again and I, I really break it down into parts and I, and I use buzzwords, whatever you want to call them, target words that stick with them because, because they're going to remember that stuff.

So many players tell me, they hear my voice in their sleep saying, stay, stay every shot they shoot.

Because you have players fall out of their shot.

They dance, they're dancing around.

I said, don't.

I don't want, I don't want to see you dancing after the shot.

Stay in your shot.

I have another Division 1 player, drives me crazy.

Right now he plays in the Patriot League.

I'm not going to mention his name.

Great kid, actually might have a shot for the NBA.

I work with him.

He's from Canada.

And sometimes he doesn't stay in his shot.

He's a, he's at half.

He releases the ball from three.

He's at half court before the ball even gets to the rim.

Like, dude, what are you doing, man?

What are you doing?

Why, why are you running back to half court?

The ball hasn't got to the rim yet.

Like, you know, so we're working on that.

So yeah, they're all little, little parts.

But, but here, again, here's the difference between good and great.

The details matter, right?

Yeah.

You might be an average or good shooter, you want to be great, then you got to deliberately.

And it's uncomfortable.

It's part.

I got to keep saying you.

It's not a comfortable activity.

You got to be deliberate in every little aspect that you do.

That's what the great ones do.

Yeah, I'll give you another example.

So you probably don't even know this.

I'm going, I'll throw this one at you real quick.

So there's a Cleveland guy that's now part of my family from the Cleveland area.

Norse Cole, two time NBA champion from the Miami Heat.

Just married my daughter a couple months ago.

So he's a Cleveland.

He's a Cleveland State guy.

Went on, played with these guard with LeBron and those guys and I.

And he still plays, you know, professionally different places around the world.

So I'm working out with him.

And one thing that he's always adamant about, and as you reason I'm bringing this up, the reason he is, he's always adamant about is doing something till he masters it.

You know, this a guy who has two NBA Rings, play for the Heat, right?

He wasn't guy on the bench.

He played, right?

So he says calls.

He calls me Big Joe.

Big Joe goes, I got to master this.

This drill.

Like, we do the footwork.

We do all the intentional stuff.

He goes, I got to master this part before I want to go into anything else.

That is key right there.

Yeah.

This is a guy who's played at a high level in the NBA, obviously, and very successful, and he.

He still knows I gotta master something before I move on to something else, whether it's footwork, balance, whatever the case may be.

So that's deliberate, right there.

Yeah, that's a perfect example.

No, absolutely.

It makes complete sense.

And I think one of the things I liked about what you just said, and I just want to clarify it for coaches that are out there, is you talked about teaching with buzzwords or teaching with phrases, right.

That you have, whether it's, hey, you got to play with force, right?

Well, the first time you say, hey, you got to play with force to a player that you never worked with, they have no idea what that means.

So you go through the teaching process of having them to understand what it means to shoot the ball with force or to play with force or.

Or a particular footwork technique.

And then once you've worked with them for a little bit now you can just say that one word, and they know exactly what it is that you're trying to do, which, again, rather than having to, at every rep, explain, well, you should have done this, or you got to do that.

It's.

You've taught it, and now you can use that phrase or that buzzword in order to just be able to snap them back to what it is that you want them to do.

And I think that's where you get into, right, Being intentional, being efficient, and sort of developing your coaching vocabulary so that you can work with the player and not have it just be you.

A running dialogue of talking through the entire thing.

It's just a matter of a quick, hey, we need more force there, or, hey, you got to do.

Whatever.

Whatever those buzzwords are that you use, is that.

Am I.

Am I adequately explaining kind of what your process is?

Yes, Mike, you explained it perfectly.

And one thing.

I'm so glad you brought this up, because one thing that biggest mistake coaches make, okay, is they tell them what to do, but they don't show them what that looks like.

Okay?

I'm big on that.

That's one thing.

That's one thing I told the.

I tell the national team coaches all the time.

You have to show them.

Like I said with the two playing off two feet, you tell a player that, okay, coach, I'll do that.

They have no idea what that I'm talking about.

Guys.

There were guys at Duke that needed work on that.

There are guys in the NBA that don't know how to play properly off two feet yet.

So they might be great athletes.

They might be great at this aspect or great at that aspect.

But you have to show them.

Once you show them, like, I'll literally stop the workout and I'll show them what coming into your shot looks like, coming into good balance, what that looks like.

Playing with force and again and what casual looks like.

I show them the difference between casual and playing with force.

Casual never works at any level.

They must play with force.

And I'm not talking about change of speed, change direction.

That's a whole different, whole different object.

But I'm just saying in general, playing the game, passing with force, throwing strikes, okay?

Rather than throwing balls off their legs or whatever, you know, you know, there are things that you have to show them.

This is what a strike looks like.

This is what, this is what, you know, stride stopping and pump faking, reverse pivoting, coming back.

This is what that looks like.

I have a whole series I do on playing off of two feet that I showed with the USA Basketball thing in Kansas City and I use with the national team coaches, Duke, whatever, you know, that I use all the time.

Because that's a mistake that a lot of coaches make, especially young coaches.

I call, I say they're telling them more than coaching them or showing them how to do it, because you can't assume they know anything.

Trust me.

And again, I'm fortunate.

I worked with people at the highest level.

These guys don't know.

A lot of them don't know what that looks like.

You have to show them what that looks like.

Again, I'm not mentioning names.

I could.

I.

Some have very high level players that you'd be shocked, could even get to the basket, know how to stride, stop properly, right?

And then reverse pivot and go back or step through or whatever.

Okay?

That, that's just something that, you know, they're learned behaviors.

You have to teach them what that looks like.

So I'm glad you brought that up because if I could stress anything today, it might be one of the most important things I tell you today as coaches.

Show your players what it looks like.

Don't assume they know.

They do not know.

They don't know.

Don't Assume anything, show them what that looks like.

Then you could use those words, use force, be intentional, do it on purpose, stride, stop, come back.

Then you know, all those things you gotta, you gotta, you gotta just show that.

That's, that was a really great.

Oh, here's one more I want to add to you.

So give you another example.

Deliberate practice.

And what I'd share this to national team coaches.

Malawatch, the big guy from Duke, right?

Last year, last year he's in the NBA now.

Ended up being, he's gonna be tremendous.

I'm telling you.

Just watch what happens.

So he played soccer all of his life from Sudan.

Never had to use his hands.

So he grew up so fast.

He grew so fast that his hands were not behind his footwork.

He had great footwork.

So last year when I was a Duke in the year, you know, Justin Robinson, who then was a player development coach, he's now who I've been working with for the last two years.

He's now the player development coach for the Lakers.

That's a whole nother side story.

Called me up when they said, coach, I won't be able to work with you anymore down here because I just took a job like oh yeah, the Lakers.

I was like, well, I guess I did okay job you now you graduated the Lakers.

So good for you, man.

I was happy for him.

But anyway, he said to me, can you help us?

He goes, they won't pass him the ball because he can't catch.

This is the beginning of last year.

And I was like, okay, I got an idea because I do performance stuff.

We have these handheld med balls we use.

They're squishy, they weigh two or three pounds.

So I brought one down to Duke and I was showing Justin Robinson and he's like, oh man, I love it.

I'm going to get one today.

So he ordered one and I showed him what to do with it to help us.

His eye hand coordination and stuff.

Well, I go to the Syracuse Duke game up at the Carrier Dome last year.

Not whatever it's called now, whatever dome is.

And before the game I'm there and I'm down on the floor.

Here comes man, man, they call it, man.

Malawatch comes out for his pregame warmup.

My man has the medicine ball, but he's going through his whole routine.

Well, guess what?

By mid season, that dude's catching everything.

They're lobbing to him, right left.

He's crushing it.

Next thing you know, he becomes a fees of first round draft pick.

You know, if he wouldn't got that, that down.

And I'm not saying it's.

It's all me.

It's not me.

I mean, yeah, I gave him some tools to use some ideas.

Obviously, Justin did a tremendous job with them, but that was a big help in his deliberate practice to be able to catch the ball.

And I saw it, like I said, I just laughed at myself.

He's down there before the Syracuse Duke game going through his routine that, that we worked with him on.

So that's really, that was really cool.

So that's, that's the benefit of deliberate practice.

By segmenting things and, and just breaking it down to make them great rather.

Than good, it makes sense.

I mean, again, right, if you're intentional about what you do and you get your teaching points, and then you're able to just do it in a quick fashion and efficient fashion while you're going through the workout.

So you don't always have to stop and explain every little thing and every little detail.

You've explained it.

Once the player internalizes it, you attach a word to it.

Now you just say that word, and the player knows what correction they have to make or what they're supposed to be looking for, and it just helps the whole thing be more efficient.

It makes complete sense.

Anybody who's worked with the player, it seems like it's, it seems like it would be common knowledge or common sense, but as you and I both know, sometimes just in the heat of battle, things go in a direction that maybe you don't always anticipate.

And I go back to that word that we've talked about a bunch here today.

Intentional.

Right.

If you're intentional about what you do in every practice and every drill and every rep, you're just going to get a lot more out of it than if you're just mindlessly kind of going out there and as you said, getting up a thousand shots.

Okay, great.

Not that that's not beneficial in some way, but are you going to see the kind of drastic improvement that we all would love to see from our players without the deliberate practice and without that intentionality?

Probably not.

Is the answer correct?

I, you know, it's almost like you're fine tuning.

You know, a lot of people will work on things, but they won't fine tune.

Okay.

And that, that.

It goes back to what I said earlier, that, you know, greatness is in the details.

You fine tune.

And again, players go, oh, coach, you're changing my shot.

No, I'm not.

I'm not changing your shot.

I'm going to fine tune your shot.

I'm going to fine tune your balance.

I'm going to fine tune your footwork.

I'm going to fine tune your release.

We're not changing anything.

We might be adjusting and fine tuning.

That's if you look at it as a negative thing.

Oh, you're changing?

No.

Yeah, well, we're just fine tuning.

We're trying to make it better.

You want to.

You want to be average or good or you want to be great?

Good is the enemy of great is what I always say, too.

I have all these things, I give them all the time.

Good is the enemy of great, man.

If you want to be good, go ahead.

Greatest in for everybody.

If you don't want to fine tune anything, okay, then be average.

Be good.

That's okay.

That's okay.

Okay.

So that, that's.

That's been my approach, and I'll be honest, Mike, I'm telling you, you know, I've seen a lot of success with it.

I. I just have.

I mean, and again, it's nothing new.

Like, a lot of times coach come up, you know, there's a lot of different things out there right now, you know, and some of it's.

They're giving them different words, but it's not new.

Okay?

This isn't new.

I mean, they're.

They're like.

I. I think I read a story about Tom Hogan, like the golfer way back when, who did deliberate practice and stuff like that.

It's not like, you know, Joe's decision didn't create deliberate practice, but it got lost.

Okay?

It's like you said, dude, somehow it got lost.

And now I'm trying to, you know, apply it to basketball in different ways, and I'm seeing great results.

I mean, you know, I'm not out here promoting something that I haven't seen.

Results.

I'm really big on results, production results.

I mean, I'm.

You're doing something that's not working.

You're not going to be taking.

You're not going to be flying you all over the world or doing whatever if you're out here preaching something that nobody's getting better with.

So it's like, you know, I've seen what it does.

I've seen results.

So that's why I continue to.

To use it.

So, you know, and again, you know, kudos to Duke.

I've long relationship with them, with Coach K. I mean, he's one of my mentors, you know, very, very good friend of mine, you know, Coach Show Walter, Carol Lawson staff.

They sit There, they take notes when I'm there showing them this stuff.

Their assistants are sitting there and they're filming.

Justin Robinson's filming everything.

You know, Denise Dillon's there watching her staff's working with me, taking notes.

I mean, these people are, they're, they're learning all.

And that's why they're so great.

You know, I've heard show speak so many times and I'm always taking notes.

And he, you know, I always tell him, I learned something from you every time I'm with you.

And he says to me, I learned something from you every time with you.

So, like, yeah, you know, we both have heard each other so much.

We could probably give each other's, you know, speeches or whatever, but that, that's all part of it.

You.

I'm working with a lot of people who are great, learn it alls.

And that's, you know, that that's what I am and I know that's what you are.

We never stop learning off of whoever we're working with.

But, you know.

Absolutely, absolutely.

Okay, talk to me a little bit about the relationship at Duke and, and, and first of all, again, maybe go back and just kind of refresh people's memory who either haven't listened to your first couple episodes or just maybe have forgotten just how you got connected to Duke in the first place.

And then talk a little bit about your role there and what, what you've done and what you continue to do.

Okay.

Yeah.

So it's funny because I recently came across this.

I forgot I had this.

So when I was in high school, played high school Carlisle basketball.

Carlisle High school, Pennsylvania.

Then I went on, did a PG European prep school in New England.

Coach K was the head coach at West Point at that time.

And he said he used to send his assistant, Chuck Swenson, who ended up being assistant with Tommy Amaker, Michigan stuff.

He was a young grad assistant.

He was at every one of my games for Coach K, West Point.

So I still have a handwritten letter from.

Hand signed letter from West Point.

They recruited me, they wanted me to sign up and all this stuff, you know, end of my PG year and, you know, people look at me and I say, oh, I can't believe you didn't go.

Coach K. Like, well, nobody even knew Coach K was at that point.

I liked him, he was great.

But I wasn't sure that's what I wanted, the military service, all that stuff.

So I decided not to go there.

That's where I first met him, you know, and it's interesting because two years later is when he left.

So he would have been a Duke my last two years, and I still would have been at West Point then would have had five more years, five years of military service, too, to do.

So, I mean, it was okay how it worked out.

So, you know, then I coached with Carlisle and all that.

And I know he was.

He was recruiting, you know, some people.

Carlisle, Jeff Lebo and Billy Owens and those guys and stuff like that.

And then just through the years, when I became head coach at Carlisle, many, many years ago, I wrote him, I said, coach, remember me?

I'd like to come work at camp.

Well, now over 30, I worked his camp for over 25 years.

So he retired.

Now the only camp I still do in the United States is John Shire's camp because of my relationship with them.

So, I mean, back when Coach was coaching, I was assisting.

I was helping coach Chris Carrawell, who's now associate head coach at Duke, and John Shire, I was helping him with some player development.

And, you know, I've been close to their staff forever.

Then when Justin Robinson got the job, he was playing professionally in Israel when all that broke out a few years ago and he got out of there and Duke brought him on his player development coach.

And they asked me to mentor him.

They're like, coach, you know, you please, you know, work with Justin.

Justin's super tremendous.

Learn it all.

Tremendous coach.

Well, I mean, speaks for itself.

The guy's now player development coach at Lakers.

So I worked with him for a couple of years when I was down there and, you know, just coming to practice, hey, Coach, what do you see?

You know, what can we do?

How can I make these guys better?

Different things.

So I've been doing that for the last couple years till he left.

And then I got.

I was in.

I got a call with Mike Shraggi, who's administrative assistant for John Schar.

He's with Coach K staff now.

He's with Mike, our John Shire staff.

And he said, hey, when you're down here in a couple of weeks, we want you to spend some time with.

With Jace McCain.

I was like, okay.

Jace McCain has been a graduate assistant.

He's Jared McCain's older brother.

He's a graduate assistant at Duke.

And then when I got down there, I realized what was going on.

So I was down there, I started working with them.

They just named him the new player development coach for Duke.

So they wanted me to start, you know, mentoring him a little bit and working with him.

So now I'm Doing that where Jason's doing a tremendous job.

He's a great young coach, learn it all guy.

He played out and I think he played college basketball out in California somewhere.

Was.

Was a good player, very good player.

And then he got a grad assistant position at Duke.

Finished that.

Now he's a player development coach.

So now I'm spending some time with him, you know, numerous times when I go down there.

So that's how that all.

I mean, I got a long relationship with Duke and Coach K and that whole staff.

And it's like I always tell people it's like my second home.

So then one thing led to another and I ended up working with Carol Lawson staff.

Okay.

You know, while I was down there, hey, do you mind working with us?

So Tia Jackson initiated that.

She's her associate head coach.

Tia is a tremendous coach.

They have a tremendous staff.

So they asked me to show them, work with them.

So I go down.

When I am down there, then I'll jump over to the women's side and work with them on a lot of this stuff.

My footwork, my deliver practice, my shooting.

And I'm doing that off and on too, through the years.

Usually more so during the off season than during the season because they're just so busy.

But they have their own player development coach, Pierre, who does a great job and he's at all.

He's a learn it all also.

So like I said, I do that stuff.

They're.

They're taking notes, filming.

They're, you know, using what they.

What they could use.

You see, my.

My stuff is systemless, Mike.

That's what I tell people.

This, what I'm showing you.

I'm not.

I'm not showing you X's and O's.

I'm showing you you can use this in any system.

The balance, the footwork playing off of two.

It doesn't matter what system you run.

That's why I really like it, because it's adaptable to anybody, anywhere, any.

Any system, any team.

So that's.

That's how that all transpired.

So the only other thing I wanted to mention too, and it's up to you how much time we have left, but, you know, I'll ask some more questions if you have.

That is what I'm currently doing, like internationally.

I'll be leaving in January for some stuff, so I don't know what else questions you had about any of this other stuff, but.

Yeah, no, go ahead and jump right into that.

Yeah, no, go ahead and share that.

And then we'll we'll dive into that piece of it.

Okay.

So Coach Showalter and I, we've sort of been crossing the ocean different ways.

There, there, there's, there's a group called Combine Global Academy.

They hold these combines worldwide and they like to bring in, you know, they bring in coach show Walter.

They, he was just in Slovenia.

They've had him in Australia.

Uh, I'm going, you know, to help run these combines where we, we handle the player development part and we help evaluate their players and it is, it's a tremendous, I'm very fortunate to be able to do it.

I know Clay Moser who was in the NBA as an assistant coach and he was in college as a coach and you know he's doing some of it and some other people.

There's like three or four of us that are doing it right now.

And so they're sending me, I'm going to Wales first week of January and what happens is they're running these combines for the best players in these countries.

And again remember basketball is global now in the United States we got a lot of international players so everybody wants to come here and play.

So they're bringing me to Wales for a two day combine here and they do all the NBA combine stuff, the measurements.

I, I'm not directly so much involved in that but they have me as a head coach running player development for the, all these players.

They're top, top level players in Wales for two days and then they do the measurements and they haven't played five on five.

They're live streaming it to college coaches in the United States because everybody, you know, that's just the way it works now.

So I'm doing that.

So then in February I'm going to Norway do I'll be there for a three day combine in Oslo, Norway.

Coach Show Walter did it last year.

They asked me to come do it this year in Oslo where I'll be there for a week and same, same format.

And then recently I just got asked to go to Dubai in April.

Dubai is trying to make a big, you just probably if you heard about this, like they're just, they're having a big tournament in a year or two in Dubai at the high, high level college basketball teams and there's a whole bunch of high majors that already jumped on that.

I don't, I don't blame them but they're bringing me to Dubai for a week.

I'm going this with a different group though.

So this, I just got contacted by this group in Dubai to bring me over there for a week, and I think they're going to bring some college coaches over there, too, and just, you know, we're going to run a clinic, sort of like a combine type thing, I think, from what I understand.

And I'll spend a week over there doing a clinic over there.

So I'm really fortunate.

I mean, I'm just.

I was in Hong Kong in April with a group.

This past April, I was in the Netherlands to go to Italy.

So my internationally.

My demand has really is really skyrocketed.

Very fortunate to be able to go and, you know, work with some of the best players from around the world, all different parts of the world, so.

And also working with these national team coaches.

The coach from Poland, you know, I'm excited to go to Poland.

At some point they're going to have me over there and possibly Egypt and, you know, so it's really.

I'm getting.

Literally getting the best of both worlds of all the world.

So very.

I'm very fortunate and thankful for working with these great programs, organizations, coaches and players.

What's the best part of working with players from outside of the United States?

Is there some difference between just going through the process?

Obviously, in some cases, there's a language barrier, but just talk a little bit about maybe the coachability of players overseas and just some of the experiences you've had in these different places that you've been.

Well, again, you know, the biggest thing is, like, you were in high demand.

Like I said, I'm in high demand.

But it's USA Basketball.

Everybody wants to be like us, you know, and I.

And when I go to these places, you know, they're so dialed in, they're locked in.

Because like I said, sometimes I think we're spoiled with the resources and the things and the coaching and stuff that we have here.

And they have great coaches over there.

They just don't have as many of them.

That's.

That's to me.

And there's no knock on them.

They have terrific coaches, somebody, you know, some of the best coaches in the world, including the United States.

But a lot of times they just don't have enough of those coaches, you know, to share, to learn from.

And that's, you know, one of the reasons, I think, that, you know, they really like to bring us over there, you know, coaches in the United States, USA Basketball, you know, because they know that, you know, we.

We work with the best of the best, and they want.

Everybody wants to be that, you know, and the margin is shrinking.

I'm telling you, you know, coach and I, we all talk about that.

Because here's a question that we get all the time.

Why would you guys want to go over there and help players from other countries?

And here's the standard answer.

Coach Schoen, Walter gives us the answer, and I give the same answer.

When the world gets better, we get better, right?

You guys are forcing us to get better because they're getting better.

I mean, we have a lot of players from international players in the NBA.

And like I said, some of these college rosters, half their roster are international kids on the men's and women's side.

I personally, not even getting paid.

I don't want paid.

Nothing like that.

I've helped some international players come to the United States and play college basketball, and I received nothing in return.

Like, no, I, I don't want anything in return.

I'm doing this to help you.

You know, they all want to come here, but they're so the biggest.

To answer your question, they're so d. They're so locked in because they have a, you know, a different motivation.

And let me say this because I know this is true.

Also.

A lot of college, A lot of college coaches and college programs, they want some international players because they don't come over here demanding huge money for nil right now.

Some of them do who deserve.

They should because they might be the best, one of the best players in the world.

But you're, you're, you're, you're.

I won't say, I don't mean average in ability, but your average international player that comes here, they're not going to come, walk through the door and ask the head coach, hey, I'm not going to come to your school unless you give me a million dollars.

Now, if they're one of the best players in the world, yeah, they could do that maybe, but they're just appreciative of having the scholarship, the full scholarship, being able to come here and get a college degree in the United States.

That's what I'm saying.

It's so different.

That's what people don't understand how the world, the world basketball landscape works unless you're in it like I am.

You know, you start to appreciate, understand their, their motivations.

They have a different motivation.

They don't have the same motivation that players have here, you know, with some of our demands and things like that, because they just don't.

They don't have those resources.

That makes sense.

No, it does.

And I think, again, the opportunity, right, to come and play Whether it's college basketball here in the United States, just for a, as you said, the education, the opportunity to be exposed players who either, a, maybe want to have aspirations of playing in the NBA if they have that kind of skill level, or just to be able to come and play here in the US at the college level and then be able to go back to their home country and play professionally, which I'm sure boosts eventually their income when they become a professional player.

And it's one of those things where I look at the international game, right?

And I, I just think, to me, it always ties back to, you know, you asked the question of, like, well, why, why.

Why do you do that?

Why did.

Why does coach show Walter do that?

Why are you trying to help players in other countries around the world get better?

And I think a part of the answer, in addition to what you said, is always right, that you love the game of basketball and Coach Showalter loves the game of basketball, or people ask me, why do you keep doing the podcast?

You've been doing it for seven years.

Why do you do it?

Well, like, I can never give back to the game of basketball what it's given me.

And I just love the game.

I want to share it.

I want to make the game better.

And that's part of the reason why I do what I do.

And I think it's part of the reason why you do what you do is you want to see the game get better.

If you can impact coaches in other countries, right, then those coaches can impact players.

And if you can help a player come over and get a college scholarship and play their college basketball here, and then maybe they come back and go back to their home country and they pass their knowledge on to a younger player that they get to mentor eventually at some point.

And the whole port of.

Part of it is it just continues to help the game grow and get better.

And then, as you said, it then pushes us here in the United States to get better.

If you look around internationally and you say, okay, well, these teams keep getting better and better and better, and it gets harder and harder and harder to be able to win a gold medal at whatever level you're talking about, whether you're talking about the.

The youth basketball and the 16, 17, 18 year, or you're talking about the.

The men's national team or the women's national team.

It's just every year it gets more difficult because the world is getting better.

And what that does is just raises the level of the game everywhere, including here in The United States.

And I think that's something that when I look at the basketball community, one of the things that if I had to put a theme on, the number one thing that I've learned from this podcast is just the number of people who are involved in basketball that just love the game and want to see the game grow and improve.

Because basketball has had such a tremendous impact on their life.

And I know you feel the same way and you think about just so much of your life with yourself, your kids, the things that you do on a day to day basis, how much of that all centers around the game of basketball.

I mean, it's the same way for me.

I'm either at my kids games or I'm working with them or I'm doing a podcast or I'm working camps and working with other people's kids.

Like that's just the day to day ebb and flow of my life comes through basketball.

And for you, somebody like Coach Show Walter, it's the same, it's the same thing.

And it's a way of again making the game better and giving back to a game that has given you so much.

And that's, that's what I always come back to.

Joe, you're spot on 100%.

I love the game of basketball and I always go back to this.

I share this all the time.

Remember Coach K once said to me, if the game has been good to you, you have to be great for the game.

And that's, that's what I live by.

The game has been so good to me, I'm not going to stop.

It's funny, I run into people all the time, around town, here, wherever I go.

Coach, how long are you gonna do this?

I'm like, let me ask you a question.

Why would I stop, right?

I love what I do.

I don't care where it is.

I, I coach players.

The same with farming.

You know, if I'm in Hong Kong, but I'm in the Netherlands, which I was.

When I'm in Wales, when I'm in Norway, I'm gonna come with passion.

I'm gonna help impact people.

I'm gonna try and make them better.

I'm gonna develop relationships.

That's what it's all about, man.

You know what?

Yeah, you forget about, it's a global game.

You forget about when I'm over there, I'm not USA Basketball, I'm just about, I'm a basketball coach, right?

And I'm here to impact players and make them better, you know, And I always say If I leave you better than what I found you when I got there, basketball wise, then I've done my job.

Let's forget about whether I'm a USA Basketball coach or you're from Norway.

You're.

Because I work with all those coaches.

Italy, Italian coaches, coaches of Norwegian.

All over the world, I work with coaches.

It's like, you know what?

I'm like, you guys, I'm no different than you guys.

I'm just a guy that loves the game of basketball, and I'm gonna bring it wherever I go.

I'm gonna bring it one time.

My daughter always laughs.

She goes, calls me to Juice man because I did a clinic at the Hoosiers gym, I think.

And after, after the, the clinic, Coach country says, man, I got a name for you.

I'm calling you the Juice man because you bring the Juice.

I'm like, yeah, that's me.

I'm gonna bring the Juice Man.

I'm gonna bring it everywhere I go.

Whatever I do gay basketball, as long as I'm still walking this, this earth, I'm gonna bring the juice if I could still.

So, yeah, to answer your question, Mike, I do it for the love of the game.

Like I always could.

Think back what coach said, you know, Coach K. And it's been good to you.

You got to be great to it.

And that's exactly what I try to do.

I try to bring the best of me when.

Every time, Every time I can.

So to your point, man, you're spot on.

That's why I love you guys.

I know you guys are the same way, you know, and I'm, I'm here for you guys no matter what, anytime you want to talk or, or what have you.

Yeah, the Juice Man.

I love it, Joe.

That's.

That, that's, that's a good, that's a, that's a good nickname.

You got to get that.

You got, you got to get that on the back your.

You got to get that on the back of your shirt, man.

The Juice.

The Juice man in quotes.

Get the old fashioned T shirts that you print that you print yourself.

I like it.

All right, well, is there, is there anything else?

Yeah, there you go.

That's.

It.

That's.

That's it.

Right?

Maybe you can get Tropicana or somebody to, you know, to be your, to be your sponsor.

You have to, you have to go about it that way so it.

Well, I don't know if there's anything else Final point or anything that you want to hit.

If not, why don't you share how people can get in touch with you.

Find out more about what you're doing with unleash potential with, with USA Basketball, social media, email, whatever you want to share and then I'll wrap things up.

Yeah, yeah.

So if you want to get in contact with me, my email is.

And, and, and I try to respond to every email.

Sometimes I'm a little bit late because it depends where I am in the world, what I'm doing.

But it's J S T A S J Staz and and the number one@comcast.net feel free to reach out to me if I can help you out in any way I can.

I'm on X Also I'm on.

Oh yeah, I'm on Instagram.

It's J underscore S T A S Y S Z Y N. And let me check out.

I don't even know what my ex.

Let me look at my X. I.

Know, I know what it is.

Joe.

Joe.

I know what it is because the, the first like the first 25 guys that I had on, I used to recycle all the episodes all the time.

So I know yours.

It's coach S717 at coach S717 is Joe's, is Joe's Twitter or X.

So, so you got it out there so you can find, you can find them right there.

You got it.

Got that, got that one memorized from having gone through it so many times back in the day.

So I appreciate that, Mike.

Yeah, my, my son and my daughter, my daughter in law, they're like dad, man you got to get better with this social media.

I'm not, not a big social media guy but I do what I have to do on there.

But I left that all up to that.

So I like, I like it.

All right, Joe, Joe, cannot thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule this morning to join us.

Really appreciate it.

As always, great to talk to a fellow hoop head.

Lot of fun.

Appreciate your time this morning and to everyone out there.

Thanks for listening and we will catch you on our next episode.

Thanks.

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