Awesome to welcome Boston Celtics assistant coach Joe Mizzoula to share the game with us. Mizzoula joined Boston's coaching staff in 2019-20 after being head coach at NCAA Division II Fairmont State University, where he guided the team to a 43-17 record over two seasons. In joining the Celtics organization, Mizzoula returns to the Northeast where he served as an assistant coach for the Maine Red Claws of the NBA G League during the 2016-17 season. Mazzulla attended West Virginia University where he played collegiately for all four seasons under head coaches John Beeline and Bob Huggins. Coach Mazzulla, welcome to the podcast.
Thank you for having me, Chris. I'm so excited to hear your thoughts on so many things, but let's start with this process where you got an opportunity to be interviewed for the Boston Celtics head coaching job, and let's talk about that. You know, it was a blessing, you know, Brad gave me the opportunity. for the experience.
And, you know, coming off being a head coach for two years at the Division Two level and then back to being an assistant, it's definitely a change in mindset and a change into just how you approach every day. And, you know, the interview process helped me kind of just get into the head coaching mentality again, get into the organizational aspect of it, just how you do things. And it was just a great opportunity for me to get organized and, you know, philosophies and really how to be a better teacher.
you know, if and when the opportunity comes to be a head coach, you know, how will I be a better teacher? How will I have learned from the things that I learned my first time around as a head coach and better apply them, you know, to the next job? Well, it's a really cool thing to hear.
And what I'm curious about is, can you give us some ideas of what type of questions or what areas they ask you about that maybe we wouldn't think about? Obviously, you know, they'd ask you about your philosophy a little bit like that. But what are some of the in-depth things that we might not think they would ask? Yeah, just how you would run a training camp.
You know, what's your schedule like on a day-to-day basis as far as what time you want to practice? You know, the little things that you don't think about as a head coach is, you know, when you're on a three or four game road trip and you're coming back, what time are you practicing the next day? You know, little details like that that really make a big difference because it affects the temperature of your team.
And that stuff's so important. And, you know, outside of that, just how are you going to teach your philosophy? I think, you know, one of the reasons why I had a passion to get into the professional level is I think the coaches are such great teachers.
And, you know, with being a great teacher, you have to have good curriculums. You have to have your checklists. You have to have, you know, your retrievals, things that you're going to constantly go back to to make sure your guys are learning and staying sharp. And so, you know, ever since I've gotten the NBA, it's been a great challenge. and just becoming a better teacher and being organized and what that means.
Well, we're going to talk about becoming a better teacher because I know that's a huge passion of yours. And I love hearing about that. Maybe let's go back a little bit because, you know, you've had a chance to play for basically three Hall of Fame coaches as well, or coach with three Hall of Fame coaches and John Beeline, Bob Huggins and Brad Stevens.
And I know you've been around countless other great coaches. So I'm curious, what are some of the takeaways from being around coaches of that success? and that level of teaching, coaching ability.
Yeah, you know, you mentioned a passion for teaching. I think, you know, I'm grateful to the people. Like you said, there's a lot of other coaches in my career as a player and as a coach that have helped me get to where I am. And you just can't, whether you want to be a great player or a great coach, you can't do it unless you have great people around you. And I've been fortunate enough ever since, you know, my dad coached me in middle school.
My high school coach has won 13 state championships. I was part of a successful AAU program, so I've just always been surrounded by great coaches, and that's really helped me. When you get to Coach Beeline, you know, I think there's no one way to be successful, I think, is the thing that I've learned.
And with Coach Beeline, his development process is tremendous, just the way he breaks down individual development, you know, how he gets his teams to just build basketball IQ, especially on the offensive end, how he teaches guys to make reads. You know, he just he's great at making each individual player better, whether it's a point guard or wing or big. And, you know, he was tremendous at that.
And, you know, Coach Huggins, a lot of people think there's, you know, major differences between him and Beeline. And they're not. They're both very smart. One just communicates differently.
And one errors on the defensive side of the ball. And, you know, where Coach Huggins was great is the relationship aspect. And, you know, I've actually talked to him last week about this.
I take more. from how he managed relationships from him than I do from other professional coaches. And, you know, he was great at knowing how to coach his star players, knowing how to coach his role players.
He was great at managing the community and the administration. And, you know, he never got personal with his relationships. So as mad as you see him on the sidelines.
You know, he loved you and communicated with you just as much as soon as practice was over. And, you know, Coach Stevens, I think everybody knows how good he is, X's and O's. But what was a blessing was to just see him prepare on a day to day basis.
You know, his process. I think every head coach has to have a process, a process of how they retain information, a process of how they communicate that information. And, you know, he's one of the best at that. And just watching him prepare and process was a blessing. It's so much fun and such great experiences that are going to set you up for your future coaching experiences.
And another future coach or another past coaching experience that you just got the opportunity to do was coaching the Boston Celtics Summer League team. So can you talk about that experience? Maybe let's start just from a preparation standpoint.
Can you give us an insight into what goes into preparing for a Summer League coaching job? Yeah, I was grateful for that opportunity. And like I said, coming off of the interview, it was a.
It was an opportunity to kind of build off some of the things that I had presented, along with working with Coach Emei and the new staff on what we thought was important for the future of our roster and just blending those two things together. I was grateful, you know, he allowed me to just kind of have free reign with it, you know, him and I talking. So that was great. But there's just, I think there's a lot more that goes into it than people think. And I think, you know, for me, I tried to take it as serious as I could because it was an opportunity to be a head coach again.
And I had missed that. You know, and I think it starts with what your roster looks like. The first part was, you know, how am I going to get the best out of each individual player? You know, so I think once you dissect your roster and understand what each guy needs individually, then you can kind of, you know, just kind of put that into how are we going to, we have to define Summer League. And, you know, that's, I think, the biggest thing that we did on day one was we defined what Summer League was about.
And, you know, it was about a creative environment. It was about a hardworking environment. And it was about just an environment of development.
And if the guys embraced coaching and embraced development, you know, we were going to have a fun experience. And, you know, that's the overall goal of summer league is to have a fun experience. So I think it starts there. Well, I love hearing that. And a few things jump out, but the number one thing that jumps out to me is creative environment.
And I'd love to hear more about what that means in the context that you're saying it. Yeah. So I know, you know, Doug Limov, he's been on the podcast before and he's a tremendous friend of mine.
And then... You know, he's probably, outside of basketball, been the biggest influence on my coaching career just because of the way he teaches, the way he communicates, and how we process things. So, you know, really wanted, I got with him towards the end of the summer, and we started working backwards on where I was as a head coach a few years ago to where I needed to be to have a, to help, you know, the Celtics have a successful summer league.
And, you know, I think it started with getting away from goals and having, and having objectives. And, you know, one of the things we talked about was a simplified principles of play. And it's in his book. And for people that haven't read it, I think it's the most important book for any level of coaching. And, you know, we broke down the simplified principles of play, which is from his book.
And you're only doing four things within a game. You're either attacking, you're transitioning to defend, you're defending or you're transitioning to attack. And I tried to keep everything in those four categories. And that's where the creativity came from.
And once we have those four categories. And you have to have you have sub phases of each one. And, you know, we can we can kind of break that down and go through with it if you want. I don't want the answers to be too long. Well, I do want, of course.
And the other part that goes with this creative environment, you follow that with player development. And those two things do go hand in hand, right? Providing creative opportunities for players within an environment where mistakes and this permission or freedom to be creative is a part of it.
And that does jumpstart and help player development, doesn't it? I mean, I think it's one of the most important things. You obviously have to always maintain simplicity in the fundamentals, but you have to be creative in your communication. You have to be creative in your objectives, and you have to be creative in your approach to each guy.
And I think the way we built our practice plans, I think the way we built our development workouts were tailored to each individual player, so they had a sense of ownership, you know, and that was key was getting the guys. to come in every day with a sense of ownership towards their own careers, towards their own development. And, you know, we did that with kind of our pre-practice stuff and the workouts. And then, you know, we build ownership as far as what we try to accomplish as a team, you know, just through the structure of our practices.
So the other part that no doubt is a big challenge for you because you're a learner. We know that you're a great learner. So this process of simplifying applied to you as well, in terms of you have all these ideas, no doubt that have generated over this last since you last was there were a head coach.
So I'm imagining that this process of simplifying was so important for you in order to teach what you thought was most important for these players. Definitely. And probably my biggest weakness is, you know, whether adding too much, whether learning too much, I think you can learn too much. I think you can retain too much information. And I tend to do that as a coach.
And that was like when I got with Doug, it was like, OK, you have to trust simple. And I didn't always trust that until I saw Brad work as a coach. And, you know, I always felt like you had to add another set going into a game to give yourself an option to score. And you had to. come up with a completely different workout or you change your practice plan.
Like one of the, one of my weaknesses is I get bored with the practice plan. So I just write a new one just for my sake, nevermind the players. But I do think there is, um, there's a lot in boredom, you know, and you have to be able to go through that stuff.
So, you know, Doug, our first challenge was like, we've got to be simple. We have to be consistent. And then we can find small windows of creativity, small windows of adding things. But if we're not simple and consistent, then we're not going to be able to. you know, achieve what we want to in such a small window of, you know, three weeks or whatever it was.
Well, and talk about that small window, like you really do have limited time. But in a way, you get multiple practices consecutively, which doesn't always happen in the NBA season, either after training camp. So you had this time to be able to build something with this team.
And what were the challenges in that really short time to get your team ready to play? You know, I think I think just retrieval, you know, I think it was, you know, having a curriculum was was was relatively easy in the sense of what do we want to accomplish every day, you know. But then it was like, OK, once we accomplish it, when do we retrieve that practice? And then how do we know and trust that our guys have grasped it? And, you know, in such a small window, I think practice started August 3rd and our first game was like the 8th, I think, or the 7th.
So like you had you had just that window. So it was, you know, can you process and communicate the information? appropriately, whether it's in film or on the court, how the guy's going to retain it.
And then when do you test them on their retrieval? So let's, let's talk about that because this is, this is what we want to talk about. Retrieval practice leads to retention.
So maybe give coaches a better idea of what you mean, maybe with an example of retrieval practice. You know, I think if you look at a concept of, you know, one of our concepts was in our attacking phase of the game. It was just move the ball with speed.
So our number one objective was like, can we get into our spacing in the first five seconds of a possession? And, you know, the number one first thing with that is you got to give your team opportunities to achieve that objective. So we had to play a lot.
And, you know, when you have the objectives and you have to measure them and, you know, it kind of goes back into do you coach during practice or do you coach after practice? And I think you coach after practice, you you measure during practice. So in the playing, you know, we just charted how many possessions. did we enter our spacing in the first five seconds? And that was just a different way to communicate pace.
It was a different way to communicate expectation. And it gave the guys something to work towards because if we could get into our spacing in the first five seconds, then we can get to our options. And so it was just, you know, trusting that we could, you know, retrieve that objective every single day and hammer that home on a daily basis before the games.
So... What's often not understood is people think that we learn through repetition, but we more learn through almost forgetting and then retrieving it so that it becomes permanent. And that's really this process of retrieval practice, right? Is that you have to balance it with not doing like just daily repetitions, but almost daily repetitions at the point where they're almost forgetting so that they retrieve it and it leads to permanence. And that's tricky, isn't it?
And that's the art of this. It's tricky and you have to trust and I think it first starts with your language. You have to develop a language that guys can understand. You know, they'll pick up on the language, they'll pick up on the small concepts that you have if you name them. And you know, Coach Beeline was great at that.
He had, his was the animal kingdom. So there was, you know, every animal imaginable, every color imaginable he used towards his offense. And to this day, I still remember it. So there's science in that, in creating a language. So you create a language through your film.
You create a language through your breakdown drills. You create a language through playing. And I agree with you. I think there's two parts of forgetting. I think you have to retrieve it right at the end of practice, and then you have to retrieve it again at the beginning of practice.
And that was the key of, like, what do we want to retrieve? You know, what do we want to make sure the guys have embedded before we move on to the next thing to make sure we're effective on both ends of the ball? So a big fear for many coaches is. this reduction in intensity, thinking that if we're not practicing 100%, that we're not getting better.
But what you're talking about is a little bit different. You're not saying, obviously, we don't want to practice with intensity, but you're saying this retrieval practice doesn't necessarily require us to always be 100% intense, does it? No, and I've struggled with that as a coach.
I do think in order to master something, you have to be able to do it at game speed. That's the term that's thrown around. You have to be able to do it at game speed. You also have to be able to do it unexpectedly.
So I think that's where retrieval is super important. Okay, we're playing live. but it's not just this one concept it's live and you have to be able to uh we have to achieve these three objectives not just this one and so i think there's a time uh for maximum intensity but i do think a lot of the learning happens in that middle ground where it's not a walkthrough and it's not live and it's more um set at a pace to where the guys can can go at a level to where they're getting better but they can also go to a level to where they're they're thinking and they have to feel that they're thinking you know and if they don't feel that um then they're not going to even know what if they're retrieving the information or not. They're not going to know if they're forgetting the information or not. So I kind of err on the side of that sweet spot of intensity slash learning.
It's great to hear. And the other part that I want to get your feedback on is feedback. How did you notice and help players understand that they were now getting better at something that you were teaching? So I think that goes into the objectives. And two exercises there.
The first one was... to start our first team meeting it was hey listen you know this is going to be an environment of learning so we're going to i'm going to cold call you i'm going to call on you when you don't expect it and this is where doug helped me as well and you're going to have to take us through the film so make sure you're you're attentive enough to know what's going on because you're going to be the one talking through it so i'm going to call on you and you're going to have to talk and we created that environment i think that's that's part of development and that's what that's how i explained it to the guys was like listen if you can't process this information and take yourself through it, then you're really not grasping it. You're not retrieving it. You know, so it's more than just watching it on the film. The second piece to that, and this was super uncomfortable, was I recorded myself during practice and I actually sent it to Doug and, you know, we went through it and, you know, you realize when you listen to yourself coach how much wasted coaching there is.
And then you realize key moments of of how important feedback really is. And was that feedback quick? Was it necessary?
Because sometimes feedback, you're complimenting somebody of an expectation, not of exceeding an expectation. And that's where things can get tricky. So those two exercises were really key to the feedback loop.
Recording, I love that. Peer review, someone independent of your team organization, reviewing what you're doing, that's tremendous. And I hope all coaches seek to do that. I want to spend a little bit of time on cold calling, which I'm a big fan of cold calling, and Doug highlights this, so people go research what Doug talks about.
It's tremendous. But I'm curious then about creating this environment, because the one challenge in cold calling is sometimes players are very uncomfortable because we're putting their ego on the line, so to speak. So we have to create this environment where mistakes are okay when they answer. And as you said already, you gave them a preamble, a warning that this was going to happen. So they were prepared and understood this was going to happen.
What else was important? I think just the communication, the relationship aspect. You kind of know going into a film session who you're going to cold call and why.
And I think that's another thing that Doug helped me with was a lot of times we don't know when or where we're going to stop the film. You know, so one of the things that Doug helped me was before the edit that we had going into Summer League was scripted in the sense of I knew exactly when I was going to stop. I knew what question I was going to ask. And I knew what answer I was looking for.
And I didn't always do that as a coach. And maybe coaches are smarter and better than I am at it. I'm not.
I needed to. There were times in the past as a head coach where we would watch the film and I didn't know whether I was going to stop it or not. But each clip had three components to it.
It had when are we going to stop it? What are we looking for? What's the answer? And, you know, so I would have just one on one conversations with the guys that I was going to cold call, you know, to give them that opportunity to be prepared for that.
So it wasn't. an ego check. But, you know, like the, the one thing that I was also grateful for is I had been around these guys for two years, almost, you know, six or seven of them.
So we had that relationship. So they trusted that, Hey, this is an environment of, if I can answer this question, if he's calling on me, it's an opportunity for me to grow as a player. And that's what summer league is about. Well, I love that, that art of coaching again, that you cold calling is cold calling, but you can still prepare your players for an advance. And I was definitely keen to do that.
And then, as you said, your veteran players, once they understand it, they're the ones that help carry it for newcomers and for your rookies, so to speak. Right. So I'm imagining a lot of them relied on the veterans to be able to understand what was going on as well. Yeah.
And that other key of knowing where to stop the film, knowing what question to ask, and then knowing what answer you're looking for was like a difference maker. And it also applied to our drill. So our practice plan, you know, template was, you know, here's the drill. Here's the objective of the drill.
Here's a couple of things that can go wrong that you can anticipate that are going to go wrong. And then when they go wrong, how are you going to get it back, whether it's with a question or a comment? And going into a drill knowing that, okay, hey, this is going to go wrong.
Watch this. Be ready for it. Here's the question that you're going to ask to bring awareness to it, you know, was a game changer for me as well. Well, I love that insight.
And I hope coaches, again, play around with that a little bit. But essentially what I felt near the end of my career was my practice plan was far less important than my film plan. And that's exactly what you're speaking about because those are the times where individually or in a group you can really highlight things that help improve and check for understanding and help as you said move players beyond their level that they're at yeah definitely so we talked about simplifying principles of play so do you want to spend about you know a short burst on each of those simplified styles of play yeah so there's four of them we had attack and then if you're not attacking you're transitioning to defend and then you're defending and then you're transitioning to attack so You know, Doug worked with me on this and there was just, I had three phases for each and that's how we built our drill.
So our attack phase was, you know, the first one was move the ball with speed. And, you know, that's the principle. And the meaning of that principle is our offense is built on speed of the player, speed of the ball and speed of the decision. So you're involving all three.
And then the question to that principle when it wasn't met was how quickly are we creating an advantage, you know, with our speed. And so that's kind of how it was broken down to principles, to meanings, and to, you know, questions to be aware of. The second phase was hunt consistent advantages.
And, like, what does that mean? It means, like, be committed to creating space and taking space. So, like, once you create advantages, and that's where the spacing comes into play there.
And then the question is there is, like, where is the advantage? Where are you? Where is your man? And then it was just the third principle to that phase of attack was just force defensive decisions.
So create tough decisions with fast cuts, quick passes, purposeful dribbles. And like, how did we question that was how easy was it for us to score or hard? How hard was it for us to score?
And, you know, that's kind of how we built our attack phase mentality. So you communicated this player, this to players in multiple ways. Can you talk about some of the different ways that this was communicated to players throughout the process? Yeah, I mean, I think you go about it in your principles.
and your meaning, I think that's where the language comes in. And you have to define what your objectives are so that you can, A, build awareness to it for the players, B, measure it, and then C, you know, whether you want to tweak it a little bit or, you know, retrieve it. And then I think it just comes from your drills. And, you know, this is where we had to keep it simple for me because I like drills probably too much.
And it was just a simple concept of if we want spacing in the first five seconds, then we just do a drill where we space. we get a rebound and we get into our spacing in the first five seconds and then we build awareness to okay you know they have to find the advantage that they're creating you know i don't want to give them the answer to it and that's just we had a first five second drill where we did that um you know how we did it in a five on five setting was and i stole this i didn't get it it was five on five shooter touched the baseline for five minutes straight and to me that is like everybody should do that one drill. If you had to only do one drill for practice, it's that one because there's so many components that go into it. You're constantly in a five-on-four situation, so you're having to communicate.
You're in all four phases of the game the entire time. Defensively, there's a disadvantage, so you have to communicate in your matchups. Offensively, you have to think about your shot selection because you know you have to touch the baseline and put your team in at disadvantage, so you don't want to...
take a bad shot that forces your team to then be in a disadvantaged situation. And so that one drill, I think, really defined our pace. It defined our attack mentality heading into the games.
Yeah, it's great. It's great to be able to get these insights. And then building into some of these other teaching concepts that have influenced you and your coaching, and one of them is game models. Can you explain what a game model is?
Yeah. Doug worked with me on that as well, and it was just how can we replicate the exact situation, the exact spacing, and the exact decision that the players are going to have to, one, be aware of. They have to define those on their own.
Once they define them, they have to be able to execute and hunt that advantage and create that read. So the game models were just like, this is exactly what the game is and here are the answers to it. And then you have to build, you know, just awareness to that.
And that was one of my favorite parts of Summer League. So you're creating a scenario that's most likely to happen for your team, and then you're playing out of that scenario? You know, so in that game model, we'll play out of that. But I think what's more important is drilling out of that, drilling out of the game model and then film out of that game model.
And when you can do all three of those things and the guys can talk through it themselves, that's when you build, you know, I think basketball IQ and the ability to make reads at a fast pace. Well, and the other advantage of creating game models is that you have game film to evaluate from practice, don't you? Yeah, exactly. And, you know, you're just able to...
to be more concise in your film. And then you're able to, to really, I think just help the players because they're not sitting there, you know, watching 10 to 15 clips of situations that they're not really in a lot. They're actually seeing exactly what we did in practice.
Here's the exact situation. This is how we should have attacked it. Use the correct language, you know, to, to talk yourself through it.
And that'll help you execute. The other teaching concepts is principles of play or principles of the game. That's you've covered already. Yeah. So the objectives as well.
And then the fourth one is then how do we communicate this with our staff? And that's a part you talked about communicating with players, but managing your staff was obviously a big part of this process of being the summer league coach, wasn't it? I had a great staff. It was a lot of fun. I had a couple of guys that I had worked with before and then a couple of people that I hadn't worked with before.
So it was very important that we had these game models and simplified. principles in place so that we were all on the same page and we knew what we were measuring. We knew what we, what our objectives were, and we knew just how to build off of that.
So, you know, once I think you, you have that and you communicate it to your staff, Hey, here's exactly, you know, if you're working on the offensive side of the ball, you know, here are our objectives offensively. This is what you're measuring. This is what you're emphasizing. This is what you're looking for in film. It became easy for us to kind of be on the same page as far as teaching it.
So talk to me about. debriefs? Cause that's a big part of this teaching process is staff debriefs and player debriefs.
And maybe, I don't know which one you want to start with, but talk to me about the importance of this. And, you know, Doug helped us become more efficient in this, but a staff debrief, I think should happen relatively quick after a session. But the key is staff debriefs, I think, is what you do during practice. And this was something that, you know, Doug shed light on for me was you really shouldn't be coaching as much during practice.
And I know that sounds weird to say you should more be measuring, you know, how are we living up to the objectives that we're setting? You should be more reminding the guys of the principles of play, reminding what the objectives are. And then, you know, note taking and, you know, having questions that you want to ask after practice that are going to help for your film. And that was different for me to do during training camp was less talking more.
uh reminding and and more teaching and then more writing down and then when you get into your staff before you're able to say okay what went well here what did it and you know how can we make it better and you have all those measurements and you have those questions that you can then decide what's most important and how do we answer them did you explain to players your process because for them that might be different than what they've experienced before from a certain coach especially coming from the collegiate level uh no i think i just relied on the communication before practice, relied on really the template of our practice, I think was important. And that kind of showed guys like, okay, this is what we're trying to do. And, you know, when we practice, just, you know, we did a pre-practice development for 45 minutes of each group, which, you know, that's where everything was tailored for each individual player. And in the last 15 minutes, it worked on what our offensive concept was of the day with retrieval.
The second half of practice. was a little bit unique in the sense of we would warm up and then we would use both courts. And we would be working on both sides of the ball at the same time.
And so we broke down our practice into the four phases of the game. So if we're working on our transition phase of transitioning to defend and transitioning to attack, I was on one court with the defensive coaches and we were working on fix-it situations. Three-on-twos, four-on-threes, five-on-fours, rotations, closeouts.
communication. The other end of the floor was working on transition offense and starting with defense. So the defensive Rebound into the transition offense, into the initial transition defense spacing. And we did that for, you know, 14 minutes, seven each. And then we played a transition game.
So we immediately went from our objectives and what we're trying to teach. Now you have 15 minutes to solely focus on this aspect of the game. So in those examples, you're balancing coaching and measuring.
The first part is what you're saying is coaching. And then the second part is this opportunity for players to perform and for it to be measured, whether they're retaining it or not. Exactly. And, you know, if you've done your coaching in the, in the breakdown sessions, they know what they're looking for and they know how to get there.
It's just a matter of, are they disciplined in, in, you know, achieving those objectives. And then that gives us coaches the opportunity to measure it. So were you creating game models in these breakdown situations? And then I'm assuming also. it was essentially guided defense or guided offense to be able to stimulate their decision-making on the other side?
So we did a little bit of that, but we did more of that in our pre-practice breakdown than we did during the practice itself. The practice itself was strictly objective based. You know, we're in our transition phase.
Here's what you have to do. You've got to get, you know, into your spacing in five seconds. Defensively, you have to get everybody to the line of the ball.
and force three passes. So that was our main defensive objective was if the other team can make three passes, then you're forcing them out of transition, and that'll give us time to rotate and get matched. So we just, you know, the defense go ahead. No, was that on air, or how was that done?
What do you mean? So when you're talking about your offenses working on getting into the objectives or the phases or the defense getting back in transition, is that on air, meaning they were just simulating it, or was it actual live? live situations versus say, you know, a defense or an offense?
The defensive segment where we were working on fix it situations was live. The transition segment was like 50 to 60% because it was more about spacing. It was more about here's what we need to get accomplished.
And then we were, then we went live after that. That's great. And I love the part about obviously bringing it together. you know, sometimes we teach things, but then we don't give players an opportunity to be able to actually work on them in a game context.
And that's what you were constantly trying to do is connected back to the game context. Yeah. Connected back to the principle of play, connected to the game model, given time to forget it.
And then, you know, based on what your measurements were, do you go back to it later in the practice or can you go back to it to start the next practice? And like, that was the unique balance of, of, you know, coaching in my opinion. Yeah, it's great stuff. And it again, speaks to the teaching process. which is so part of your teaching language and your learning language.
You mentioned that you love drills. What are some of the things that you learned about drills that help you? And then maybe some things that didn't. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if I love them, but I'm always trying to find like just something a little bit better.
And so it could lead me down a rabbit hole at times of like, well, that wasn't good. And I should have just kept it more simple. So I do think that again, the drills help. your objectives you know what are we trying to accomplish here i don't think uh it goes back to what doug helped me with you can't perform and learn at the same time you can only do one or the other and too many times as coaches our communication is intertwined during their performance we're trying to teach them and you can't teach during performance and so i do think drills are necessary to teach um you know to build awareness to you you know, what the guys need to work on, build awareness to when they're going to use it. And then, you know, I think after that, they don't have a purpose at all.
So it's just finding that balance of, you know, what drills are most effective in, you know, creating awareness to situations. How are you going to use this? And then now put them in an environment to where they have to make a decision to use it.
I might suggest the one other purpose, which I know you value is that sometimes you use a drill to reconnect an idea. right? Something they may not be doing well. And that's another part that Doug talks about it differently, but it's the same idea.
It's a reconnection. It's not, it's not teaching. It's not learning.
It's just reconnecting them to the context of say a closeout so that now we have to use it this way in a game. Yeah. And I think that's what shell drill is, right?
Like it's, it's a, it's a, it's a, you're building connection, you know, especially we switched a lot in summer league and if we didn't want to go live and if we didn't want to. necessarily walk through we wanted to get something out of it we use shell as like okay let's get reconnected to our switching objectives which you know what is the person on the ball doing what is the person off the ball doing here are the four actions in today's game that might give us problems in our switches let's execute the proper switch so i do think shell in a sense can be live and you can you can create different things out of that. But I think you can also always go back to it and just reconnect our team to our principles and our objectives.
Well, let's talk about Shell because I love Shell. We're all good with Shell. The challenge for Shell is that when you consider it, this is the thing that's teaching them. But to me, it's like, exactly, create a game model, let's say, of a switching situation.
And then we realize we're not switching very well. So then we can go to the shell to be able to reconnect them, as you said already, with the switching objectives. And then you can come back to the game model. Yeah, I think the game models have to come first. And then I think you use your drills, you use your shell, you use certain things to reconnect back to.
And really, that's like another opportunity for retrieval, right? It's like, OK, we're in this shell situation now. It's slowed down.
You understand the position that you're in defensively. What do we need to do? And it's a reminder.
OK, we need to make sure. you know, we switch up and we switch under. Okay, three reps, switch up, switch under, you're dead. So I don't think, I don't, I think your reconnection shouldn't take longer than five to seven minutes. Or shorter sometimes.
Yeah. Yeah, or shorter, and then get them back into a game model as quickly as you can. Well, I love this.
And sticking on shell, because coaches can all understand that the difference between retrieval practice and memorization, and that's one of the challenges when we're doing multiple shell reps, players, especially on defense, can kind of memorize what they have to do because it's repeated over and over in exactly the same way so there's not as much variability or randomness that leads to this retrieval practice yeah and like a perfect example is you know we always do the one where you know you throw it to a coach he takes two dribbles left two dribbles right one way to just make it less memorization is you throw it to a coach you don't know which way he's dribbling you have to take away his dribble and something small like that just you know gives the guys an opportunity to make a read on the defensive end And you can do that in one-man, two-man, three-man situations as well. And that's kind of what we relied on because of our switching. We just had a shell where it was a step-up, it was a dribble handoff, it was a pistol, it was a flip.
No matter what it was, we had some randomness to it. But at the end of the day, it was focused on your switching objectives. Well, and again, I love this because we're not talking about changing what you do. We're talking about a drill makeover or adding to what you do.
And your ideas for adding to shell are great here. You know, because we're trying to avoid this memorization. And one simple way you just mentioned is just to mix different potential actions that come out of the shell.
So the defender doesn't know what's coming and they have to retrieve it and figure it out at that time. Yeah, exactly. And it could be on ball. It could be off ball. And this applies to defense, but it also applies to offense, doesn't it?
Can you talk about some of the ways that you do it on offense? Yeah, I think, you know, when you talk about, you know, one of the areas we anticipated was, you know, teams are going to switch a lot. And. you know, there's different switch reads that you can have.
You know, we were talking the other day, everybody always starts their pick and roll offense with the big being back. And that's just not the case all the time. And, you know, so I do think it's important to say, hey, you know, we're going three reads out of the three coverages that you're going to see the most. It's three versus the back, three versus up to touch, three versus switch.
Here's what you do. And, you know, on the other side of the floor, okay, three reps, you don't know what coverage it is, execute the the principle of play that we talked about on, you know, during the read section of it. And so just like going right back to what you just work on and giving them an opportunity to, you know, test their retrieval, I think is important. And this follows the principle of following feedback with action. And the action can sometimes be video, but obviously in this case, it's getting back into gameplay.
The most simple thing that Doug talked to me about was when we give feedback as a coach. the player doesn't use it for like two minutes later, sometimes a day later, sometimes five games later. And, you know, so we think we're coaching because we're giving all this great feedback, but when's the next opportunity that he's going to be able to use that feedback? And that was huge in our practice planning was Doug helped me with recreating. And I don't know, you probably have a different term for it, but you see a possession where a player makes a bad read or two or three players are in the wrong spot, whether it's offense or defensively, and you stop and you recreate that exact play in order to make sure the guys understand, you know, what was the proper, you know, read on this particular play and they have to go through it.
I use recreate. That's exactly the word I used. Yeah.
And it's totally that. And it's, it's speaks to this point that when you are going to coach in the context of the game offense versus defense, that You correct, you recreate, you cold call, you ask a question, whatever it is, but then you follow that with the action. So players get a chance to apply it.
Yeah. And you just don't want your feedback to go to waste as a coach. I didn't really realize that Doug helped bring that to light.
I've seen this at countless practices where coaches give great feedback, great information to players, but then they just move on to another thing. So a player never got a chance to actually apply it or even digest that feedback in some way. And that kind of makes that mute, doesn't it, that feedback?
Yeah, it just doesn't give them an opportunity to retain. what they're trying to learn in that particular point. And then if you can't retain it, the retrieval becomes harder.
Well, and I also love that you've balanced this and you talked about that, that it's, it's, it's, you're balancing that type of coaching with basically no coaching in the sense that you're just measuring. And then the feedback is going to come, I assume later in film or some type of team session the next day. Yeah.
It comes with your recreations. If it's really important, like if it's a, if it's a transition drill and you give up, you know, a corner three, and then you give up an open layup, you have to recreate, you know, why we didn't rotate and where the rotation should come from. But if it's simply a read, and it's something that you know, that the player understands, then that retrieval can come in a film session later, it can come later in practice, it can come the next day. So I think it's just a balance of, you know, how, when does it need to be retrieved?
And when's it most important to do it? What did you find the hardest part of recreating in the moment is for players? Patience, having to do it over.
And, you know, we talked about it a little bit. I didn't give them the term recreate, but I did say, listen, we're going to have to go through some possessions in order to make sure we're retaining information. And I use that word a lot, like you've got to retain this.
So I think you explain the why and the players understood, okay, we're doing to retain this. We're not doing it so I can hear myself coach. You know, it's a little bit easier, but it's still the patience. I'm like, all right, go back. Let's see it again.
You know, what did you do here? And then sometimes it becomes so obvious that they're almost mad that you had to recreate it because it's like, oh, yeah, that makes sense now. And you go back to that ego check.
It's like they see that it was easier than they thought it was. OK, but let's talk about that, because that's such an important point. What you just said, when you start to say hold, recreate and you start to talk to a player and they already know the answer, that's learning. That means they understand the situation.
And I think, again, sometimes we want to hear ourselves talk as coaches. But in that example, is the best thing just that, okay, we know this. Okay, let's move on. Or what is your advice there?
I think it depends on the player. If you feel that your team sees, you know, the mishap or sees the read, then you don't even have to explain it. But at least going back to that, you know, point of here's where we messed up because you're building awareness to it.
They take ownership by saying this, this, this. Okay, now the one thing I learned on recreations was like you play out of it right away. And I got this, you know.
a little bit from soccer where it's like, okay, we're in a recreation. We just talked about it. Give me the ball.
I'll give it right back to you. And we're playing. And now you're playing out of that same situation that you just messed up the same result. You know, the same situation may come up. There also may be a different read out of that, but it allows the player to, you know, sometimes it's like, all right, take the ball out of bounds.
No, we're playing right from here. Recreate it, go live and you play. So I developed that. concept like 25 years ago when I did my master's because of rugby coaches because rugby coaches again if you think about this this violent sport they couldn't just start it and then assume that situation was going to happen so you had to recreate the situation to run for safety and to to make sure that what you wanted to coach actually happened and I'm glad you said soccer because it's obviously dominated in a lot of soccer coaching as well yeah I mean we can get a whole nother podcast on you know, the correlation between soccer and basketball. But I do take a lot of, you know, what they do as coaches and really what they do.
Because Doug is a lot of, he trains a lot of soccer coaches. And in, you know, studying the game of soccer, studying their coaching and studying their development, there's a lot of similarities you can take between soccer and basketball. So I know a big thing for Doug that he's highlighted for a lot of coaches is the value of perception.
And this, this, the trials of looking or gaze or scanning, whatever you want to call it. So I'm curious then knowing the importance of that. What are some ways that you brought that to the attention of your players?
This process of perception, even before decision. In the sense of what should they be looking for? Yeah.
How did you highlight it for your players? I mean, I think it's, I think you have to build your, I think it really starts with your language, but it starts with your, you know, what I call. and we put an edit together of situational awareness. And so we made an edit of here are the situations that you're going to be in on certain parts of the floor, offense and defense.
And we just watched that. And we just built situational awareness. Once we got to the court, it's like, okay, you're in the corner.
Your butt's to the baseline. What did you see in film? What are your reads in this side of the floor when I pass you the ball? And now they've kind of already known that because they've built into awareness. I know if I'm in the corner and my butt's to the baseline, my point guard's going to pass it to me.
And if my defender's above me, I'm driving baseline. If he's below me, I'm driving middle. So...
Before you even get on the floor, they already see that that's coming. This is great. And situational awareness, let's give an example. Let's say it's a slot ball screen working on offense. And you're basically talking or you're showing your players on film or you're talking it through.
And then showing them who they should be looking at to be able to make the decision. Because that situation will dictate what comes next. Is that what we're gathering from this? Not only who you should be looking at, what's the coverage? Yeah.
I think initially the coverage is going to... is going to dictate what you're looking at. And so that, I think, is pointing that out initially. And once they understand the coverage, now they know what they're looking, now they know what their read is. And that plays a part into the situational awareness as well.
From the offensive side is, okay, you have a slot ball screen. Here are the three or four things that can happen based on what the coverage is. This is what we're going to work on today when we get out there. Make sure you're ready to see those reads. So the other part of...
this that I want to get for you, which I know is super important for all of coaching. And that's this concept of positive framing, which is we're still coaching you. We're challenging you. We want you to get better, but we still want to pray or frame it positively for a player in this development process. So can you talk about that balance as well?
Yeah. I mean, I think that's huge because as you're coaching and holding guys accountable, you don't want it to sound condescending, which another weakness of mine is it can come off condescending at times. Um, you know, and I think that helped when I heard myself in recordings, it was like, here's a better opportunity for positive framing that I missed. You know, I could have approached this better, but I think it really comes down to, are you holding them accountable to one, who they say they want to be as a player and to what the objectives are. And, you know, when you have a objective based coaching, it really changes the game for the way you communicate and really the way your players execute because they know what they're.
they know what they're trying to achieve each and every single possession. You know, so I think those two things are the most important, holding them accountable to the player they want to be, hold them accountable to the objective. And players value that, don't they?
More than you think, especially at the professional level. You know, when I left college, you know, a lot of my college coaching friends thought it would be difficult to build the relationships or coach or, you know, hold accountable these guys. But... these are some of the most coachable players I've been around, you know, because they want to be great.
They know there's another level that they need to get to, that they want to get to, and they're looking for just the relationship aspect, the accountability aspect to get there. So another thing I want to circle back to, as you mentioned, is these player development portions of your practice template. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because individualization, the specificity of training for players is so important at all levels. but especially at a level like yours?
Yeah, I think you, like it goes back to the ownership. The guys have to know, you know, so that they're getting better, that this drill is to help them become a better player. It's going to give them an opportunity to increase their role once the NBA season starts. And so, you know, those sessions were, you know, 45 minutes. And, you know, the first 20 was that individually based.
And, you know, whether it was this one player needs to work on this, so he's at a basket with. two coaches by himself or these two guys kind of have similar games they need to work on x y and z so they're at two coaches but they're at a basket with you know three coaches and so that 20 minutes was for their ownership and then the last 20 to 25 was where we worked on our offensive objective of the day so if it's you know pick and rolls and you know to talk about go back to the retrieval aspect if we did pick and roll reads one day we didn't do it again until you know the uh, practice later. And so the second day was driving, driving kick reads. And so I wanted them to forget those pick and roll reads, go into the driving kick reads, come back to that.
It's awesome. Cause I want coaches to hear this again, is that you you've made a distinction between individual player needs and then player needs within the team concept. And both of those apply to player development for this player to be able to get better in play.
And they, they should go hand in hand. You know, if you have two players that need to work on, you know, just their execution on a dribble handoffs, you then have to find. areas within your offense to put them in that situation.
And that's kind of where your reads come from. That's where your offensive sets come from. So that was the challenge of you want these guys to get players as individuals, but how do you mirror that into what your offensive concepts are?
So, and then the other part of that is that my understanding from that would be as a player, that would help build their self-efficacy in you as a coach. Because you've shown that you care for their individual needs and for their role within the team at the same time you're developing them. Yeah.
And I think it builds ownership. I think it builds connection between you and the player. The player knows you care about their career. He also knows, like, at the end of the day, you're a coach.
You got to do what's best for the team. And I think players respect that. But they just want to know how am I, how can I get better?
How can I, me as a player, help this team get better? And I think, you know, a lot of coaches are. are going that way now, but I think it starts with the individual first before the team where that wasn't always the case from coaches. It was all about team, team, team.
At the end of the day, it is about the team, but you have to make sure each individual player is like, wants to be on the right seat. And if he's not, then you're not going to, you're not, you're never going to get to a team. So something I wanted to ask Doug, and I didn't get to ask him was, was more in depth about this background knowledge. Cause Doug's huge on background knowledge.
So I'm curious from your perspective, coaching a summer league team where certain players would have a better background knowledge of the system and you and everything else, but then other players that would be completely new. And I'm wondering what were some things that you did to help players develop their background knowledge? I didn't do anything. I was fortunate enough to have five or six players that had been in the system.
So I just relied on them to just do it. Do it right, do it professionally, and they did. They did a great job, and everybody else just kind of fell in line. So I do think background knowledge is important, but I think if you surround it around enough people who know what they're doing and hold themselves to the expectation, I think it will naturally work out. And that's kind of what we had.
So between having the players that have been there, between their buy-in, and between your language, I think if you have the proper language, that stuff takes care of itself very quickly. No, it's great to hear. The other cool part to that was we had two players that spoke broken English.
We had one player from Israel and one from France. And I had a couple of guys on our staff that were able to reach that language barrier, which was important. It was great to have them.
But I do think the environment, the language, and the expectation of everybody around them just helped them. You'd be surprised what guys learn when they can just observe it being done right over and over again around them. Well, this stare to learn concept, which obviously Daniel Cole and others made popular, but there's tremendous value to that. Even without understanding the language, those players, I imagine staring and watching, as you said, the five or six players that really could model it for them, probably sped up their learning more than anything you or I could ever do as a coach. For sure.
Yeah. Yeah. It's a lot of fun to be able to have that type of environment and that type of learning environment. Let's move on a little bit to then you as a summer league game coach, you're coaching the game. Did you approach the game similar to how you approach practice in the measurement phase?
Yeah, it was just reminding them of those. We had worked on it for five days. And, you know, I do think there's different parts of the game that you have to focus on, but it all came down to the four phases of the game. What are the one or two objectives we want to accomplish?
And reminding the guys of those objectives during timeouts. And I knew because of the talent that we had, if we could get into our spacing in four to five seconds. And if we could force the defense to make three passes, you know, we'd be in position to win because of then, you know, how our guys were trained during the training camp of once we get into our spacing in five seconds, we know all the options.
Once we force three passes, we're a set defense. We know what we can take away. And so it was easier to communicate to the guys how the game was going. So those objectives could be communicated because they knew the language. I'm curious then, what was the balance between communicating what they were doing well versus what they could do better in those type of situations?
I think that comes down to what Doug helped me with was how do you frame your questions? Because you don't want to tell them what they're not doing well. One, they probably don't know. Two, they might not understand.
Or three, they might not agree. And so it was how I had framed my questions. So if we weren't meeting our objectives, you could.
come at them and say, what do you think has gone wrong on the last four possessions? And hopefully you've done your job as a coach to where they know. You know, or the second part is like, why haven't we gotten to our space in five seconds in the last four or five possessions?
Do you realize that that's the difference in the game? And so I think you can frame your questions to help them, you know, raise the level of their game. Well, I love that, that them arriving at the conclusion themselves is, again, more powerful than if we give it to them. So in those situations, in timeouts, for example, or halftime or pregame. Was it cold calling or were they more open-ended questions?
More open-ended questions. You know, I think people process the game differently. And, you know, I didn't want to say, you know, hey, such and such, why aren't we getting into our space?
And he may not even have been involved in the play. So then his answer is going to be different. So it's more of just an open-frame question. Whoever wants to take it can take it. And sometimes you asking them a question empowers them, but then they also want to hear the answer from you.
And, you know, so you wait and see. And then if they if they don't say anything, then they're kind of looking at me saying, tell us. And then that's where then you've gotten their permission to hold them accountable and, you know, just create that environment for that.
Well, I think you started this whole thing by basically saying it in not so many words, but that it's never going to be the same thing for them. And we never want it to be the same thing. So if you're always asking questions, you're never giving answers. That's not good. We want to balance all those as well.
because you have value as a coach and so does your staff as well. So sometimes us directly or implicitly telling them is important as well, isn't it? Yeah, they want that. They want that balance. They want to be held accountable to the highest standard.
And I think as a coach, it's finding that space of when to do it and then when to help them do it themselves. Well, I think coaches can understand from listening to you the consistent language. the consistency of the expectations and being able to come back to the different phases of the game for them to be able to understand what you're talking about.
So then let's go to the end of the game. Game debriefs. Maybe one of the most overrated parts of coaching is this post-game.
So talk to me about what we should be thinking about in terms of giving post-game debriefs. I'll tell you, I was so bad at those. My post-game edits would be way too long. I would have too many notes, too many things to focus on.
And I'm still not great at it. But, you know, Doug and the summer league experience has helped me improve on it. And again, I know it probably sounds like a broken record, but it just goes back to your objective based approach where, you know, you have to figure out the why.
Why did we win or lose the game? You know, and then, you know, where is a breakdown in our objectives? And based on our team, you know, if you go back to the game where I think we had 33 assists. we were in our spacing in the first five seconds on like 60% of our possessions.
And so then with the type of players that we had, we knew we could just make the right read. And so everything, our postgame edits were built offensively and defensively on those three objectives. We wanted to be, you know, first five seconds, we wanted to be in our spacing, we wanted to create an advantage, and then we wanted to force the defense to make a decision. Those were our three categories for every postgame edit.
defensively it was we wanted to force three passes we wanted to be physical in our switching we wanted to make sure that we protected the rim so everything was built around those three things and that's really all we went back to this objective-based coaching and again again maybe coaches are sitting there going wow this is way too simple but it is that simple right because your players probably valued the fact that they very much understood what you were evaluating or what you were measuring and keeps the emotion out of it, right? Like, if your team doesn't get back on defense, you know, you can objectively go to, you know, why didn't we force three passers, and you could find 10 possessions on why you did it. And then the players start to realize that's important.
But if you don't have that objective, and you get too emotional, like we don't run, we're not getting back, we're lazy, we don't care, then, you know, that helps me as well. So having an objective based approach eliminates the emotion out of it, to where you can strictly coach, you know, the execution of it. And then you use your relationship-based approach to have the effort and the buy-in.
But the majority of your coaching at this level is going to come from the execution aspect of it. Well, I'm glad you brought that up because that almost is a default for us as coaches to blame the effort. But more often than not, it's not the effort. Players aren't trying to screw up. They want to do well.
It's more, again, either they don't have the understanding or they're not able to do it yet. in terms of that. And then keeping that perspective has to be important for us as coaches, isn't it?
They don't, they're not able to do it yet. Why? Because of they don't have the right mindset or they haven't developed the habit of doing it, you know, and the mindset comes from the buy-in.
of, you know, the relationship that you have with the coach, with the system. Do you believe in this? Does it work?
Is it realistic? And, you know, and then the habit piece to it of, are you drilling it enough? Are you talking about it enough? Is it important to you?
You know, so I think it goes back to those two things more than it does effort. Coach, I mean, so many of us that watch the NBA, I mean, we fall in love with the special situations, the ATOs, et cetera, like that. So this is your opportunity to show off all your great plays and all the ATOs and all that stuff. But, you know, can you talk a little bit about this situational basketball and the importance of that? Because, again, a lot of us who watch the NBA see the importance.
We probably overvalue it. But anyways, it's part of the process. So can you talk about situational basketball?
You know, going from my first head coaching to this opportunity, I wanted to get better at calling timeouts, when to call them, why to call them. you know, what to get out of the timeout. And then I wanted to win certain situations. I felt like as a team, we could get 10 to 12 points on situations. And so we put a situations edit together, and part of our training camp was just situational breakdown.
And it stemmed around three for twos, two for ones, and we're not calling timeouts unless we absolutely need to. And, you know, I do think timeouts are necessary. but I think they're also do more harm than good.
And, you know, I wanted our guards to really be able to take advantage of the three for two. I think one game we had like 12 points. We won a three for two segment, seven to one, and that broke the game open for us because we were able to take advantage of the last, you know, 58 seconds of the game. So that was, you know, the other piece to that was the guys bought into it because it was them thinking the game and it was fun for them. And so those three things I think were key for us in summer league and created some buy-in for the guys.
Well, I love this because it creates, again, these small games within the game that we can speak to from a competitive standpoint, regardless of the score, right? That you want to win these certain situations. And over time, that's going to build your team's efficacy, their belief in it, but also their ability to be able to execute in those situations, isn't it?
Yeah, and you can script it. So we knew in a three for two. We knew we were running this play in a three for two on defense. We were going to try to blitz if we needed to.
And then the second play, this is what we were getting. And then we're going to get the ball. If you run your three for two correctly, you're going to get it, which I think is better depending upon what your roster is.
Everybody in the two for one situation wants the ball at a certain time. I wanted it under seven seconds. I didn't want to walk it up or have the last possession.
I wanted to have the last transition possession. And so we knew, okay, in a three for two situation, here's how the last five possessions are going to go. If we run it right, you're going to get the ball with six seconds left, get to your spacing in five. If you're in your spacing in five, you can make the right read.
And I think the Denver game at the end of the first half is what we executed well, you know, for that seven to one. So when you talked about scripting it, is that something you script in the walkthrough, you know, or is it consistent throughout the whole time that your players knew what was happening in the three for two? We scripted it in practice where like one of our games was just a three for two game. It was there's a minute play and you got to do this on defense. Look for this.
The second possession of the three for two. Look for this. Look for this defensively.
You'll get it with six seconds. Make a play. And that's kind of how we drilled a segment of our of our practice. Very cool to hear that. And then in terms of ATOs and stuff for you, how did you take this mindful of a billion plays and decide which ones?
want to be able to use? Yeah, that was hard. I'm sure it was hard. I really just came down to I found like my 10 favorite plays for every player on the team.
And before every game, I picked three of them for each. And I just had it on the bench. Here was three plays for every single player on the team that I think they liked and that I liked for them, and just kind of recycled those.
But You know, I didn't focus on that as much as I did when and why I would call a timeout. You know, obviously, in the first game against Atlanta, I think the most important timeout was the one down four with a minute left. And it helped us get a good shot. We said if it was a one possession game, we were not calling a timeout. So in the Atlanta game, I think there was 10 seconds left and a sound out of bounds.
We had gotten a steal. And I think in a. situation like that everyone's looking for you to call a timeout being down I think we were down one or two and we said no like we're not doing that and it was a one possession game we got a steal we bring it down we get a quarter three which then gives us the lead going in.
And I think that mindset of better than a timeout is an opportunity for us to create advantage and teaching the guys that I thought was more fun than any play I can draw. That is a lot of fun. And the fascinating look at coaching at the NBA level, coaching in summer league, and obviously the teaching process and what you took away from Doug, because I think that's a curiosity since I did the podcast with Doug, is just a lot of people trying to figure out how to apply it. And you gave so many great insights into that.
Is there any other advice for people that obviously love the book like I do and want to try and apply more of Doug's concepts? I think just trust simple. I think that's important. I don't always do that.
I think the second piece to that is, and I learned is when we're trying to be simple, we think the work leading up to, you know, the training camp is supposed to be simple, but it's the opposite. There's so much complexity into narrowing things down. How are you going to develop your principles of play?
what are your game models like that's a hard it's hard hard work and you know it becomes simple after you go through that rigorous you know mindset of how do I organize all this so you know trust simple understand that it's difficult to get to simple you know but once you're there trust it and you know I do think like I said why I came to the NBA is because I think it's some of the best teachers in the world and you know I'm still learning every day how to become a better teacher And I think that's what separates coaches, you know, is the ability to teach. I'm so grateful for our communications. And I know everyone now is really excited to learn more from you and to watch your career, Joe.
Thank you for sharing the game with us. Yeah, thank you. And, you know, the Summer League was fun.
It was fun because I worked for a great organization. I had a great staff. The players, you know, bought in.
If they don't buy in, it doesn't work. And I just had great people around me. So, as I said earlier.
You know, coaches and players can't be great unless they have a great environment. And I've been fortunate to always have that. So grateful for that.
Thank you for allowing me to share the game with you today.