Core Theme: Relentlessness as a Systemic Identity
Coach Francesco Tabellini (Basketball Nymburk, and now newly hired Paris Basketball HC) joined the show this week for a terrific conversation detailing how his team embodies a relentless identity by “canceling the pauses” between offense and defense—turning transition into a competitive advantage and effort into a game model. He emphasizes philosophy first, then structure, with a laser focus on execution speed, effort, and player autonomy. Here are three main learnings from the show…
1. “Cancel the Pauses” – Relentlessness as a System Identity
Tabellini’s core philosophy is built on eliminating the transition gap between offense and defense. He defines his system by speed, intention, and player ownership.
🗣️ “Relentless basketball is the ultimate goal… we are trying to cancel the pauses between defense and offense, and offense and defense.”
This shows up in:
- First-three-step sprints and no-catch zones in transition.
- Cutting hard even in transition to collapse defenders.
- Corner 3s always green-lit because they’re system-generated.
2. “Tagging Up” is the Effort Thermometer
“Tagging Up” {🔒} is both a tactical tool and a culture check. It fuels second possessions, enables immediate pressure, and serves as a visual indicator of team buy-in.
🗣️ “Tagging up is how we erase the pause—and how we evaluate effort. If we’re tagging, we’re locked in.”
Implementation tools:
- Assign a coach or player to track tags every possession.
- Practice design must support it with short, intense segments.
- In drills…”No tag, no point.” Rebounds are rewarded.
3. “Hedge-and-Plug” as Controlled Chaos
Their ball screen coverage is a “temporary switch”—a way to be aggressive without giving up easy paint touches. At times, it trades some analytic efficiency for collective activity.
🗣️ “Hedge coverage isn’t always the most efficient—but it gets under your opponent’s skin. It’s about impacting the game, not containing it.”
Key elements:
- Bigs hedge as far as needed to stop the ball—sometimes 3–4 steps.
- Guards focus on ball, not screen direction.
- The three support defenders react in sync; help covers the slips and skips.
Transcript
Dan 02:16
Coach, we wanted to start with a quote that is from you that we found in a recent article and interview that you did that we loved and kind of describes how you all play. And the quote is, relentless basketball is the ultimate goal, and relentlessness is the word that describes the whole soul of what we do. And with that quote in mind, I wanted to throw it back to you to start and talk about what that looks like. I think we’re going to kind of start from the offensive side here.
Francesco Tabellini 02:44
I want to give some credits to Dickon, the guy that made that article, because he made me and, say, us look so better that I felt almost ashamed. So he did a great job, but relentless.
It’s a world of mine. We pinned this world in the locker room, and it’s something we are trying to transfer to all the people that are part of our team. It describes the soul, as you said. I feel like the main purpose is the idea of canceling the pauses within the game, especially those pauses that separate defense from offense and the offense from defense. That’s the first part. There are tools. We are on a daily basis trying to achieve this result, but all the people are really responsible for that. In general, during this conversation, I will use we to describe what we do, what we think, not because I’m mythomaniac, or I need to use pluralism, my status, but really because everything we do is a consequence of teamwork.
It’s not only a lot of my ideas behind what we are trying to put on the court, but there’s a lot of work of my coaching stuff, and not only the coaching stuff, but also the players, because I’m really encouraging them to embrace the process, to take new ownership, and when they do it, then they become a driving force for the change. So I feel like some of my ideas during this amount of time, the end result of what basketball Nimberg showed on the court, it’s not only my ideas, because some of my ideas had been proven wrong by my fellow coaches or my players. So we made changes based on their talent, their vision, and their suggestions, and that’s the reason why I’m saying we. So we were talking about relentlessness, right?
I was talking about how to raise the pause between obviously the defense and the offense, which is kind of for uptempo teams, it’s quite common topic. We have, let’s say, many rules and we have many tools, but the basic idea, we try to keep it simple, and we are simply trying to run faster than our opponents. We are saying, let’s win the race on every single possession. It starts from first three steps every single player is making as soon as the possession starts, and then there’s no catch zone for the outlet pass, and then we are trying to sprint in front of the ball, trying to pitch the ball ahead, and then put pressure on the rim with drives why we are using the cuts also in transition. We are trying to fill the corners in order to take corner trees also in transition as well. So we have many tools, but behind the whole idea, there is people that are competing their ass off in order to run faster than their opponents, and they are doing the heavy lifting, and I need to give credit to them. It’s like it’s easy to be standing along the sideline and telling them to win the race. It’s not tiring, so this is one part. And the other part, the pause between the offense and the defense, I mean, the main tool is tagging up. It’s a great tool. I was saying I didn’t invent anything. I think you guys talked plenty of times about tagging up, and it’s a great tool, and it’s not only about putting pressure on the offensive board.
Francesco Tabellini 06:25
It’s not only providing you extra possessions, many more shooting chances, but it’s also a great way to erase the pause because if you’re really tagging up and everybody’s doing it and you are making the pairs and you’re able to match up quickly, then you will be able to apply instant pressure on the ball as soon as the possession is changing. We are really trying to press full court on every single possession.
And then we are also trying to encourage, let’s say, the players that are tagging the guys that are not ending up with a ball, with a rebound, to be able to shift from the pair into the team defense and being able to put up an instant trap in case the defender of the ball ender is doing a good job in putting pressure on the ball. So we are stepping all of a sudden into a running jump just out of the tag, you know. It’s not every time. It’s not in every game. It’s influenced a lot by the level of activity, the level of commitment. And despite, I think we kind of set a pretty decent standard. Still, from my standpoint, it’s clearly visible when my team is 100% focused, 100% ready, and the focus influences a lot the toughness, as you guys know. And then watching the tagging up and the efficiency of our tagging up, especially the way in which we transform the tagging up into the full court pressure, it gives an instant picture of the level of intensity and commitment that the team is ready to play on the court on that specific game. That’s very, very visible. So for us, it’s extremely useful indicator also to evaluate the effort of the team.
Dan 08:18
I love to go back to something you said in the beginning when you talk about canceling the pauses of the game, the relentlessness offensively. You mentioned in transition, corner threes, cutting, and I think you said no catch zones.
Could you go a little deeper on the organization of now that quick first three steps in transition and the no catch zones?
Francesco Tabellini 08:39
So every single player, except of the rebounder, is supposed to try to win the race. So we emphasize those first three steps, because you need to do those steps automatically, like really trying to take off, actually. This is one of the words we are using, trying to take off in order to create the advantage. And then as soon as you create this momentum, this dynamic advantage, then we are trying to understand where to run, which spot to fill, and how to use this dynamic advantage. We are really encouraging our point guards to receive the ball higher than the free throw line extended. It’s really important. And we are trying as much as possible to run through the pass and really have a go catch, also full court, and exploiting the dynamic advantage. And then obviously, there are people that are running in front of the ball, and then as much as possible, we are trying to pitch the ball ahead. And when we pitch the ball ahead, this is the type of dynamic one-on-one we want to explore as much as possible, because there’s the chance of really playing one-on-one without helping defense. And that’s precious.
But at the same time, when teams start adjusting, and the wings are pulling the defenders out to the arc, then there’s a lot of room. And so the point guard or whoever is receiving the high-hearted pass is encouraged to try to break the lane and drive to the basket. At the same time, in case it’s not possible to drive to the basket right away or not possible to pitch the ball ahead, we are also encouraging at least one player to play, we call it 28 meters cut in order to put pressure to the rim. I think I named it after listening to Lassie Tovey’s podcast, and it could be, I think so. So this is another tool. I would say that this cutting situation in transition in our system is the main one that we are using when a drive is not happening. Sometimes we are encouraging people to put pressure in transition with a cut, because usually if you have, for example, you’ve got two people on the same side, and if you’re really trying to win the race, most likely there will be one defender, more or less in between these two guys, and if you cut, you then, you’re making the defender commit on you, and then it will create an open three-pointer in transition for your teammate, or the other way around if the defender is scared of the shooting threat. Even better, we’ll get a layup. This is one of the cuts we are really encouraging, but you wanted also to talk a little bit about these concepts, not only in transition, if I understood correctly. So in all the other situations, in general, we define ourselves as a race and pace and space team. So this is like the things we are privileging. For example, if we are able to drive, the general purpose is to stress the floor as much as possible to provide the defender whoever he is the chance of breaking the lane, avoiding stunt helps or reaction of the defense that are trying to collapse. But at the same time, in order to create a better spacing, especially in modern basketball, with a lot of athleticism and athletes that are able to be in between two players and fly while the ball is flying, arrive with the ball, and then x outs in modern basketball if a team is playing through defense, can be quite efficient. So we are trying to encourage while the drive is happening, always someone to play a cut. And while the drive is happening, there’s someone trying to put pressure on the defense with the cut. And we privilege usually the baseline cut because most of our drives are middle oriented, especially if two people are in front of the ball, we are always encouraging the corner guy to play hard cuts along the baseline in order to dunk the ball or also to give the chance to the closest guy to the ball to drift to the corner.
But at the same time, when there’s baseline drive, we are also cutting from the opposite slot. We call it the OKC cut. And I would say we are doing it a little bit less than the baseline cut because of the number of times that our baseline drives are happening, but also because of the personnel. Sometimes in that position, we have pretty small players and obviously they feel more comfortable in staying on the arc.
Pat 13:28
I’d like to follow up on the baseline cut with the drift when you’re able to bring the middle on penetration. You know, in talking to coaches, I guess sometimes we’ll hear, not pushback, but like, well, what if it’s a shooter in that corner?
Do you always want him to baseline cut? And then also, if they baseline cut, and with the middle penetration, and maybe if there’s a roller or a big behind them, do you worry at all about there being too many bodies in the paint when you’re asking that corner guy to make the baseline cut on the penetration?
Francesco Tabellini 14:02
I think way better coaches than me are still trying to find the solution to your question, so I will try my best.
Pat 14:10
All good.
Francesco Tabellini 14:11
So, about the personnel for sure, that’s really important. First of all, we are trying to build a system in which all the players are feeling comfortable with taking a shot. Obviously, recruitment is important because if you have players that cannot really shoot the ball, then it can become a problem. But in an environment in which every single player has decent shooting abilities, I truly believe that the confidence and the trust you’re giving them is making the difference. So, for example, letting them drift to the corner and encouraging them to take the shot and then sending all the people with the tagging up and giving the shooter the feeling that in case he’s missing the shot, there’s at least 60% of chances that he’s going to miss that shot. Most likely out of this 60, I don’t know, 50% of the times he’s missing, so 30% of the times he’s shooting and then he’s missing, offensive rebound might happen. That’s really encouraging people to be self-confident and take shots with a no-brainer decision. I believe it’s really important.
At the same time, I really believe that in case you have a non-shooter, then you need to encourage him to be always the guy playing the cut wherever he is with a shake alignment in this scenario. I kind of experienced this scenario last season. We had a foreman that during the season really struggled with the shot and we tried to encourage him all the times to play a cut and I think it can work. It takes obviously at least that the player is equipped with a high-level basketball IQ because then he needs to understand earlier because the corner guy is usually ready to cut as soon as he has the feeling that the ball handler is going to try to go downhill because that’s the timing. The guy, in case we have a non-shooting guy in the slot position and we want him to cut with a slash cut, then he needs to communicate with his teammate and I would give him the responsibility to make the first move. So to play the cut and then deciding either, I don’t know, just cutting to steal a layup or breaking the cut into a contained screen for the shooter that instead of staying in the corner is lifting a little bit towards the break. That could be a solution but, as I told you at the beginning, in an environment in which all the players are able to take a shot, I prefer encouraging them to take those shots and making them feel comfortable in that situation.
Like we are saying also, I don’t know, usually you have two passes in a row that are happening then out of the second one, feel free to take the shot every single time because at the same time if you want to be a driving-oriented offensive system, so if you want to put pressure on the paint, to the rim, with the drives, you need to create those drives and the best way to create drives is making the defenders commit and they’re not going to commit unless they don’t feel you as a shooting threat. And that’s one of the things we are encouraging, so take shots on the second pass, like really take shots on the second pass or if the spacing is allowing you to do it and if you, let’s say, quick enough in reading the situation in advance, maybe start moving earlier and while the first pass is happening and the guy that is supposed to pass the ball to you, he’s about to throw the ball, maybe you can start to move towards the ball, the one that you guys, I think you call it, stampede action or go catch or run through, we usually call it simply shortening because actually it’s when I was coaching in Pertus Bologna Academy back in the days, really back in the days, the head of the academy, Giordano Consolini, was really into reading the situation while the ball is flying, not make decisions after the catch, not making decisions on the catch but making decisions earlier than the catch in order to create that dynamic advantage that can make the difference in providing you with a pain touch. So at that time, we were always talking about making the pass shorter, like running through the pass or those situations, we were saying it in Italian obviously, but still, I simply translated into shortening and we are saying shorten the pass and that’s what we are trying to do.
So we are privileging the pace and also the ball movement and the more the guys are able to read the situation in advance, the more they will be able to shorten the pass and take advantage of the stampede action.
Pat 19:27
Just following up on that baseline cut still looking at the baseline cut with the drift. What is your experience been? Or do you have ever any concern when it’s a middle penetration? The guy’s cutting along the baseline and there’s either a big in the weak side dunker or rolling because it was a pick and roll that broke the paint Is the benefit of the cut greater than any concern you may have with too many guys in the paint?
Francesco Tabellini 19:51
In general, it’s very important that all your decisions as a basketball coach are relying on some philosophy and something bigger you are always relying on, so all your decisions can be rooted on something. For me, for example, as a coach, it’s always more important to have activity, to do something, to be active, to feel involved, to make a movement, to take a decision, a quick decision, especially at the beginning of the season when the system is being built, it’s always more important than the right decision. And then practice after practice, field meeting after field meeting, we are trying to make those quick decisions better and better and as close as possible to the right decision. But if I have to choose, I’m trying always to privilege activity, energy, effort over being precise.
I think it takes a lot of practicing, a lot of being together. I think one season is not enough to be able to do everything with the maximum effort without making mistakes. Obviously, mistakes are always happening, but I’m talking about spacing-wise, decision-making-wise. So as a coach, you need sometimes to accept mistakes in case those mistakes are done because the players are trying to give effort, they are trying to do something. I’m always saying, I’m not scared of a team that is doing too much. I’m not scared of two people cutting at the same time. I’m more scared of people staying on the three-point line and watching what’s going on and waiting for someone else to solve the problems. This is a very important tool for my decision-making.
So I believe, I think this is the main core of my answer to your question, Patrick. But also, I feel like it depends. Because for example, if you have a very good mid-range player, a guy that can take a lot of pull-ups, for example, which is not our case, or at least that’s not the scenario we are encouraging, because I rely on numbers and obviously everybody knows that mid-range shots are less efficient than other types of shots. But at the same time, you need to understand what kind of skills your players have and possibly you need also to have someone that can be a mid-range threat because otherwise the defense is going to adjust and make you pay the price for your choices all the times. But I was saying, if you have, for example, a very good mid-range pull-up shooter, then most likely you will encourage your bigs to set better screens or longer-lasting screens because you want to provide him the separation that is required in order to create the balance for taking his pull-up shot. In this scenario, you don’t have to fear anything about the baseline cuts because it speaks for itself. At the same time, I feel like if you’re really cutting aggressively and you cut early, at the moment in which the driver is breaking the lane, you still have the time to clear. It happened many times to us that this guy cutting along the baseline was bringing his defender with him, but the defender, since he was cutting pretty aggressively, like full speed, was not able to understand what was going on around him, so he was not able to help on the drive of the user, let’s say, of the ball handler. Or it happened to us that while this guy after the cut, after being under the rim, because we are always telling, don’t stay, we need to clear and relocate out of the three-point arch, you cannot stay after the cut. It happened that, I don’t know, we were just lifting the alley-oop to the big and the big was dunking while someone was running along the baseline, and it didn’t influence at all the action.
So, I feel it can happen, but as I was telling you, I prefer having people doing things and then adjusting on the fly in case the defense is doing something, then you’re always on time to tell someone, hey, in this scenario, maybe better not to do it than being in the need of teaching someone to do something that’s not going to happen with the speed, with the size-iveness that is required to be efficient.
Dan 25:52
Coach, this has been awesome so far. Thanks for all your thoughts there. We want to transition now to a segment on the show that we call start sub or sit. And so coach, if you’re already, we’ll dive into this first one. I hope I am. So this first one, we briefly touched on this earlier in our conversation about tagging up, and I know that’s something that you all do and our listeners are probably somewhat mostly familiar with tagging up where you’re sending, you know, all five or at least four to the class on the high side. So this first question has to do with tagging up killers or we’re tagging up isn’t as good. So these tagging up killers, your start would be the one that kills tagging up the most hurts your team the most if this happened. So option one is poor shot selection offensively. Bad shots are hard to tag up. You can’t get to the high side of that. The second option are just undisciplined routes by your players going on the low side, not going to the backs of guys being undisciplined in their tags. The third option is leaving their tags too early in the back court. So ball is rebounded and guys try to start switching to their other matchups and let the offense get a catch. And now they’re going downhill. So start subset, poor shot selection, undisciplined players or leaving tag too soon.
Francesco Tabellini 27:20
Start with the last one, leaving the tag early. Because leaving the tag early, again, we’re talking about philosophy. If you really believe in effort, if you really believe in activity, in doing things and impacting the game with your attitude, I think fixing mistakes is one of the main things. Staying in the tag and putting true pressure on the rebounder is the best way to fix someone else’s mistake. For example, if the rebounder is a good passer, but his guy, his own defender, the guy that was tagging him up, it’s putting true pressure on him. He’s really attacking the ball with the arms, with hands, physically attacking the ball, then he’s not going to be able to pitch the ball ahead in case there’s a leaker because someone fucked up the tagging up. And that’s extremely important for me.
The effort, the shared and consistent effort of all the players that is providing the chance of fixing mistakes. Because mistakes are happening all the game long, both hands of the ball, and especially if your system is risky. If you’re pushing the tempo, the effort, the choices, the basketball choices to the limit in order to be always faster, more aggressive, and so on, then obviously mistakes are happening even more. But if there’s the will of fixing mistakes, then you will turn the situation into an advantage. Like somehow your mistakes will push opponents towards speeding up the tempo of their game, but your will, activity, and relentlessness in fixing those mistakes that generated their advantage are going to fix it and turn it into an advantage for yourself. And then I would put as a sub the second one, because obviously if you’re a corner guy and you’re not tagging up on the eye side, it can be a suicide action. Or if you’re even worse, if you are the slot guy and you’re going past the tag very aggressively, and then you’re not rebounding the ball, then okay, there’s a lot of fixing, there’s a lot of activity, but still you’re kind of coming at it. So I would put this one as a second one.
And as a third one, the poor shot selection, not because I am underestimating the importance of proper shot selection, but for two main reasons. First reason is because I feel if a team becomes really disciplined, really tightly knitted, and everyone is truly on the same page, then it’s not a matter of not accepting on the fly the decision making of a teammate of yours. Because then if you give up on tagging up, it’s usually because you feel like, okay, that shot, I don’t like that shot. That’s not the shot that we would like to take. But I feel like if you really, and I’m not talking about me, because it’s not only the coach. For sure, the coach can help, but it takes a lot of effort from all the people around coaching staff, but also the management and the players, especially the players. If everybody is truly on the same page, then you’re doing the tagging up despite the poor shot selection. And you understand that still it’s important that you do it because it’s part of the system. And then it’s going to be the timeout is going to be the first break within the game is going to be the field meeting to bring everyone on the same page is exactly the same. We were talking about the two players cutting at the same time. Mistakes can happen because you’re pushing people to go to the edge.
And then if someone like that is running as fast as he can, that is putting pressure on the ball as hard as he can, then he’s not taking the best decision, you need to forgive him. And you need your teammate, your player, and you need your guys to forgive their teammates because of the mistake in selecting the shot. That’s the first reason. And I believe that’s, again, connected with the old picture. Picture is better than a philosophy. And the second reason, it’s because I believe if you’re doing, I don’t know, maybe I was really lucky with this group. And for sure I was. Especially this past season, we were able to create a very nice group of people. Working together was always nice all season long. So I was lucky for sure. But at the same time, if you are trying to bring to your team unselfish players, players willing to give effort defensively, to make the extra pass, to sacrifice their body in defense. Usually those guys are willing to make one more pass. Those guys are willing to quickly try to understand which are the shots we want to take, which are the shots we don’t want to take. So my experience, this is not like big. So that’s the reason why I’m saying most likely I was also very lucky with the recruitment. So my experience, especially this season, is like that I needed to push people to take shots and never, never the other way around. Honestly, I remember very rarely myself telling someone, Hey, this is not the kind of shot we want to take. But I remember myself plenty of times, really plenty of times, I would say on daily basis, encouraging people to take shots. So I feel like this is a topic I will say.
Dan 33:10
Pat and I were talking a little bit beforehand about we both have experiences with teaching tagging up and some of the trials and tribulations of implementing the system and that’s hence where this question came from. The question I always have with tagging up is how do you evaluate it, whether it’s working, who’s doing it well, are there stats, are there numbers, is it film? At the end of a game, end of practice, how do you know whether or not you are tagging up well? What measurements do you use?
Francesco Tabellini 33:38
First of all, we come back to the coaching staff and the collective work. Having a person that is dedicated to this specific aspect of the game is extremely important. We have a very young guy in the coaching staff, he’s Serbian, his name is Mihailo, and he’s 2005-born. Actually, he just finished his high school, and he joined us for the season, he’s still at university, but he’s also coaching at the same time. And it’s his first experience as a coach, or as part of a basketball organization. But for sure, he’s not shy, he’s a quite talkative and loud person. So I feel it’s very, very well-fitting to what this task is demanding. Basically, he’s supposed to remind all the players to tag up every single time a shot is happening, and that’s very important, I feel like.
Because in the past, I tried to do it myself, I could not. Actually, there’s so many things you have to care about, and also, actually, basketball is not rocket science, but there’s a lot of things. We film practice, we are rewatching practices, and also we are trying to teach out of the practices collectively with the whole team, but also individually with the single players. But again, when I was trying to handle all the information by myself, it took really a lot of effort. In the practice, you don’t have just one team. We have two teams, we have each single possession, you have ten players, it’s not five, and it’s making it more complicated, and then there is the offense, the spacing, the pace, and then there is the defense, the pressure, you know, the shift, and there’s a lot of things. And then sometimes, tagging up, if you’re not prioritizing it, there’s a huge risk of letting it slip out of your mind. At least for, I don’t know, like a couple of possessions, and then you’re losing the feeling about how it goes. For me, the main thing is having someone that is taking care of the tagging up, and that’s really important. Mihailo was not able to stay with us the whole season, because at some point he had to be back in Serbia for university, so he stayed for three, four months, and I think it was visible that we were lacking someone fully dedicated to tagging up. So this is the third thing, I would say, and the second one, he is holding people accountable, always starts from making them understand how much important it is for the success of the team, of your spirit and, you know, basketball philosophy. Then it’s gonna be easier if everybody understands how important, how much you can impact the game through the tagging up, because people who will start to take ownership and will start to be teaching it, to be like with their effort and their voice and their advices, there will be a motor of change.
This is also very important. Then obviously, as I said, there is the film meeting, and in our film meeting there’s always a chapter about tagging up. And if you don’t want to end up in the film meeting every day, it’s better if you do it. Then I’m not saying that we have some players that are a little bit more reluctant to the tagging up, it’s always due to experience, to habits, skills, the way you are. Also your physicality, because for some people, physically tagging up, like really pushing someone through the paint looks somehow, you know, unuseful. They feel like, okay, I’m doing a couple of steps, and then I will use my quickness to get all those 50-50 balls on the long rebounds. So we are trying to be better and better and better, but I feel like it takes truly, it takes a lot of time, a lot of commitment, and I think, as I told you at the beginning, the tagging up is really a great indicator, a key indicator of how much your team is locked in in that moment, in that game.
It’s visible, it’s really visible. At the same time, the transition points are also, but I would say, less, because people like players, people in general, they like more to dunk the ball in fastbreak than they like the tagging up. So obviously, even though they’re not in their best shape or their best day, they will still kind of run the floor, because at the end of the day, they love basketball, everybody likes to shoot peas in transition, everybody likes to dunk the ball in transition. So I think it’s easier to erase that pause within the game, like the tagging up one is a little bit more complicated.
Pat 38:25
Talking to you and talking about the theme of relentlessness, I can imagine every day in practice, you guys are doing transition and you’re going up and down in the drills. But early on in the season, when you really want to check for understanding of tagging up or stress the tagging up, are there certain drills, a-drill, go-to drills that you use to, like I say, check for the understanding drill, the habit of tagging up?
Francesco Tabellini 38:51
That’s a very on-point question because the tagging up is really influenced and affected by the structure of the practice. I will try to explain what I mean. I believe in general, in basketball, it’s not about just tagging up. In general, it’s not the drills that are making the difference. I think the drills, especially the very specific drills, can create the idea, those drills can create the big picture. They can make people understand how things are working, why we are doing things, and so on. But you cannot implement a habit like tagging up in a live situation, in a game situation, just through the drills. That’s one of the main mistakes I was doing at the beginning of my coaching career.
I was doing every single day a fastback drill, and then I was thinking, yeah, that should be enough. My team should run like crazy, and we were not running at all. Then I realized, Phil, someone helped me to understand, it was, again, Giordano Consolini, that as a very demanding person, especially at the beginning of my coaching career, I was not able to stand mistakes. I was not able to think next as a coach. If you’re not able to think next as a coach, your team, your players will never be able to think next. Because if every single time someone is making a mistake, you’re stopping the fastbreak and pointing the finger and trying to hold every single time someone accountable or threshold the dumbness of the mistake he just did, that’s not going to lead anywhere. And then I could not be surprised of my teams not running as much as I would have liked. I believe drills are important, setting the tone, but at the same time, you need to be accountable when the life bar is happening, when the 5.1.5 is happening, and when you’re coaching something else, when your first target is pick-a-roll defense, when your first target is coming off offense, when your first target is spacing or whatever, or hedge and plug or whatever. In those scenarios, you need to be able to hold players accountable for the tagging up. This is the main task, because if you’re not able to do it when you play 5.1.5 in practice and their focus is oriented towards, I don’t know, the picks out movement or whatever, then how are you believe they’re going to be able to do it when you’re in the crunch time and it’s a tight game and it’s impossible. So it’s just about consistency and trying to make sure that everybody is doing it on a daily basis, but on every single possession. Now I’ll come back to the structure of the practice. One of the most challenging things we had to face was how to make the structure of our practices not influence negatively the tagging up. Why? Because we are really trying to be an up-tempo team, but more than an up-tempo team, I would describe what we are trying to do as effort-oriented environment. So we are really trying to, we’re saying empty the tank on every single possession defensively and offensively. So there’s no, theoretically, it’s not always happening. It’s not like we are not even close to be great. We reach the decent level. So if you want to push people to sacrifice and really try to empty the tank on every single possession, then you need to keep the practice a little bit shorter than usual. But at the same time, you need to structure the drills or let’s say the five on five drills or the breaks in a way that is manageable for the players because you cannot go under percent for five possessions in a row. It’s not going to happen.
It’s not possible. And it’s not happening in the games also. Usually it’s not like five possessions in a row without a break, without a foul, without an inbound, without anything. So we are really trying to divide our practice into segments. When we play half court, for example, that’s quite short. We are always putting two or three possessions in a row. So we are trying to implement the relentlessness also when we practice half court. So we are connecting things. Can be like change of possession or can be like two or three consecutive possessions offensively or defensively. Then if we do, for example, two floors, OK, most likely we go three floors. That’s like the three floors are like a big part of our up and down practices. Then we seldom do four floors. But I would say three floors and two floors are a big part of our practice. And then there’s game shape, scrimmages, or something. But always short and also during the scrimmages. If the number of possessions is going like consecutive possession is reaching, I don’t know, four or five, we are usually stopping for some bullshit foul or something. We are trying to sub people before they get exhausted. So they feel the empowerment and they feel the privilege of being faster than their opponents because they are fresher than their opponents.
So they will go all in. So we’re saying if a big part of your practice is two floors, for example, let’s put it into an extreme way. That’s not because I think we do way more three floors than two floors. But still, if it’s two floors, then 50% of your possessions are going to be an ending possession. There’s no, the tagging up, it’s like it’s losing a little bit the meaning and the purpose of connecting offense to defense, giving relentlessness to your basketball. And that’s detrimental, obviously, because everything that’s not helping to be better, it’s helping you to be worse. That’s a very important task for the coaching stuff in order to solve the situation. I think we are trying different tools because, yeah, it’s extreme, it’s two floors. But even if it’s three floors, one third of the possessions are possessions with no tomorrow. It’s just the ending part. And players know it. It’s not easy to ask, especially the experienced ones and the ones that are, you know, they have habits. And to go tagging up hard if it’s over, more or less. So there are tools. Obviously, you can reward the offensive rebound with a point, especially the one, for example, the long rebound or out of a tip-out or second touch, because that’s exactly what tagging up should lead to with a point.
Francesco Tabellini 45:50
Or you can use the other way around a techno basket situation. So competitiveness, like obviously, but the basket is not going to count unless there’s at least four players. Okay, we are not talking about the shooter now. At least four players that are not tagging up and really reaching the body of their opponent in order to make the tagging up happen. These are tools, but if you guys have suggestions, I would be really pleased. It’s an important topic. And I don’t feel like we already found the solution.
Pat 47:38
All right, Coach. Well, thank you for being so thorough on that answer. We want to keep it moving. We’re going to go to our next start sub sit from tagging up to defense. And we also know in studying your team, watching your team, you employ a lot of the hedge and plug, you know, hedging the big guy out, tasking the guard with them, plugging kind of the short roll. Our question is, we want to give you three different types of screens that an opponent will use against the hedge and plug, and which one is the toughest to defend, in your opinion. Tough to hedge and plug against is option one, the flip screen, when the big will flip the angle last minute. Option two is when they’ll re-screen, so provide a second screen. Or option three is when they don’t set it, they slip out. They’re just going to run up, slip out of the screen, and not really look to set it at all.
Francesco Tabellini 48:30
That’s very tough, those three are true problems, all of them for the hedging plug coverage. Let’s say, in general, I would say the slip is very important. I would start with the slip. Then I would put the flip, because the flip is creating problems to every single edge coverage, it’s not just hedging plug. It’s more general, so it’s widely applicable, I would say, to every single aggressive coverage on both screens. I would keep the screen and re-screen as last, because I feel it can be tricky, but it takes a huge amount of commitment from your opponents in order to exploit this situation consistently on all the game long.
Very rarely, I’ve seen this happening all the game long. I’ve been watching a lot of teams using the edge and plug coverage. It’s happening quite often that the first couple of possessions, opponents are trying to re-screen, because it’s an ATO, because the coach just told them, and so on. But very, very rarely, I’ve seen some team consistently doing it in order to put pressure on that edge and plug coverage all the game long. I think it takes a lot of effort. I would say disadvantages in losing the flow, losing a lot of things, losing a lot of tools that an offense might have are outnumbering the advantages. I feel you need to fix it first couple of possessions in order not to, but then it will fix itself. The game is going to fix it. At least that’s my experience. Talking about the other two topics, I would say you were saying flipping the angle, it’s pretty tough. We are trying to do it consistently also in the practice, so players are getting used to it. But basically, it really helps giving your users, the defender, the defender of the ball under, the task of focusing on the ball, like building a wall between the ball and the rim, or without focusing too much about the screen, not channeling the ball too much towards the screen. I feel, in my opinion, it’s not a priority for sure. It can help, but it’s not a priority because at the end of the day, if you’re trying to hold people accountable, if you’re trying to push people to stay in front of the ball and you’re really rewarding solid one-on-one coverage with players trying to not get blown by, then the moment before the picker is not going to be much different. Just try to be aware of the personnel. Obviously, if someone is reject-prone, you need to be ready. But at the end of the day, you will have or reject-prone players, or you will have players that are most likely going right. It doesn’t matter if both screens are about to happen or not. This guy is going to try to attack you, and he’s going to try to attack you with the right hand most likely. You need to be ready, you need to be focused, and you just have to be in front of the ball. You build a dynamic wall between the ball and the rim. The second part is really pushing the bigs, the guys that are guarding the screener, to be really attached with their player because that makes the difference. In case a separation is created, then they will need to increase the speed because obviously the offensive player needs at some point to slow down in order to set the screen. It’s not possible to do it full speed. So if in the moment in which he’s slowing down and maybe flipping the ankle, you’re very close to him, really no separation at all, no window, then you need to have obviously mobile bigs. Because otherwise, if you’re trying to hedge with non-mobile bigs, then it could be complicated. I believe if they are very, very close, if there’s no separation, no window, they will be able to use the slowing down moment of the momentum of the big of the opponent to be able to fix their position and their edge. Then we are always trying to implement communication. And I believe worst scenario, if you’re not able to really impact the ball the way we want to be, like really attack the ball, then we prefer rather than halfway hedge, we prefer a switch like it’s just you can fix it through a switching defense. Actually, I believe in general, edge and plug. It’s a very nice tool. I would consider edge and plug a temporary switch because the purpose is in the very moment in which the big is attacking the ball and is somehow guarding the ball ender. At the same time, the defender of the user is backing up with the big. So it’s a temporary switch.
And so if you’re doing it consistently, then you need to have doesn’t matter switch or edge, you need to have for sure, some pain protection. You need to have a last guy or channel guy, a goalkeeper, you need to have someone protecting you from behind. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a switch, or if it’s an edge, doesn’t really matter. The rules are completely the same, the way we are taking care of the pain is the same. So I feel like we are trying to be all the time, sometime, we are trying to be aggressive, and really impact the ball and keep the ball in the channel can be side channel, mid the channel. And if we are not able to do it, it’s way better to switch. That doesn’t mean, okay, sometimes we’re going to switch, sometimes we’re going to edge, we are trying to edge, sometimes opponents are good. And sometimes opponent are faster, sometimes the coach of the opponent is very smart. So you need to be able to react and to fix the mistakes that are not generated by your tempo, your speed, or like your lack of focus, but from the tools and the smartness of opponents. So that was the second one.
And then the slip is the most dangerous when a team has a very mobile roller and extremely fast ball ender that can also shoot, because if a blender cannot shoot, then people are backing up. And then it’s hard to slip screens. But if the defender is supposed to stay close, if the ball ender is so fast, that doesn’t need much of a screen to gain an advantage, then the slip, it’s pretty tough problems to solve. It’s very hard to fix. It requires team spirit. And sometimes the offense is so good that they’re slipping the P and they’re going downhill. Then it’s not mandatory that every single time someone is going downhill, there’s going to happen a layup or a dunk.
Francesco Tabellini 55:46
Maybe the activity, the energy, and the relentlessness of the team defensively in this scenario are going to be able to fix. It’s the same as the short roll. Short roll is not a disaster itself when it happens for the defense. Out of short roll, you can give a steal and dunk the ball in fast break, because it’s not the easiest situation to handle. If the big is really recovering fast and aggressively, and all the other players are ready to collapse and be on the passing lines, if you have size, if you have athleticism. But for sure, if you’re doing this kind of defense, you should have a little bit of size and athleticism. Otherwise, it’s kind of, again, a suicide. So it’s just a matter of fixing the situation.
And then, obviously, hopefully, not to let the short roll happen three times in a row. That’s 100% important. That’s, I think, for me, it took a lot of effort to start thinking this way, to go against my nature. I’m pretty proud of the improvements I made from this standpoint. So I want to tell you, I feel fixing mistakes is an extremely important part of basketball. I believe everybody’s making mistakes also in life. And the way in which you are able to react to others’ mistakes, to your own mistakes, is really staying true to yourself, and really giving the level sometimes of the person you are going to be able to be.
Pat 57:16
Thanks for being so thorough on those three types of screens with the slip. If the defensive big is, is close with the screener. So, you know, they’ve managed to follow the screener up there, right? With the screen, big slips out. Are you still preferring to have the big apply the hedge or to have the big follow the slip and then trust that the guard still protects the REM stays in front? Or like you said, then just have great defensive effort on the backside. I guess what are you trying to tell your big to do if they arrived green on the slip out?
Francesco Tabellini 57:49
Thanks a lot of decision-making from them. It’s really important. But I believe if you’re really encouraging the guards to put pressure on the ball and to be focused on one-on-one defense, then it helps a lot. Obviously, if you’re asking the players to channel the ball, to push the ball towards the screen, then it’s going to be a problem. But if you’re trying to create an environment in which everybody is responsible for his own opponent and trying to be in front of the opponent, then we risk a little bit more, obviously, on the reject. But at the same time, you’re not giving a dynamic advantage to the offense. In general, I prefer my bigs to be aggressive. And even though there’s a slip, I encourage them to edge. In general, I prefer all the times is, again, connecting what we’re talking about at the beginning. We want to be aggressive because sometimes, analytics-wise, it’s not edge.
Edge is not the most efficient coverage. If you’re dropping, we’re talking about mid-range shots. If you’re dropping, you’re probably pushing your opponents to explore this mid-range area, and then you will be able to collapse more. So on the other side, edge coverage is usually creating or paying touches or priests. And that’s the shots that we want to take enough. And so, why to do it? It’s all about trying to be extremely aggressive and push your opponents out of their comfort zone, forcing them to release the ball, to let the main ball under pass the ball to someone else, or just push them to make a couple of passes, and hopefully, if the team is really locked in, making them fear we are going to make a deflection out of those passes. And then that’s getting under their skin, and then the speed of the pass is going to be decreased, and they’re not going to do those passes automatically. I don’t know, they’re not going to do pass ahead and skip pass to the shooter out of the edge in case you are plugging and crowding the passing lines, and you have a pretty athletic and smart player that can sometimes just deflect the ball with other players, stepping quickly into the fast break. And if you punish a skip pass out of the edge with a dunking fast break, next skip pass is going to be less automatic, under person. So it’s going to be more careful. So I believe, in general, if you want to be aggressive, if you want to speed up the tempo of the game and impact the game somehow, you need to make choices.
And this is one of the choices I’m privileging, unless we see that the teams are slipping, and they are very far from the ball, then obviously, we cannot even talk about ball screens. But in case they are going close, so like we are trying to push the defender of the user to plug as soon as he sees his teammate edging. So basically, it’s contemporary movement. So I feel like you can impact, even though there’s a slip, it can be. Then you need to react. But at the same time, I don’t want to go too long, but I feel like also the edge and plug is a great tool. I really like it. And obviously, we are using it a lot. But at the same time, it depends a lot on opponents. For example, there are teams, because edge and plug is a way to be aggressive, but at the same time, not expose yourself to the short roll, mainly, right? This is the first goal.
I feel like there are some teams, they don’t have a great short roller or a great short roll player. So why decrease the level of aggressiveness on ball just to discourage a pass that most of the times is not going to be the most dangerous one? Or because this guy is not able to take a mid-range shot, a floater or something like this? Or because he’s not the best passer? So letting him receive the ball one meter inside the three-point arc sometimes is not so bad. I feel like sometimes you can handle it because it helps that it happens that, for example, if you keep hedging and plugging and then you discourage this pass, but your opponents, they, for example, have a great ball under, great one-on-one player, great shooter out of the dribble, and they don’t have a great short roll player, then you keep hedging and plugging, and they will just freeze the ball in the best one-on-one player, and they will attack you dynamically once the big goes away. So it’s a lot personal related. We are not making that many adjustments, especially when the season goes till the end, when you’re playing teams more than once in a month or play of time. It’s important to make adjustments regarding the personnel.
Dan 01:02:42
Makes a lot of sense. How much of the decision of how many steps to hedge or stay with your man is based off of the communication between the big and the guard and also the area of the floor the pick and roll is taking place on. So would you still hedge and plug when the ball’s say farther away from the three point line versus as it gets closer to the operating area, it’s maybe more of a quick show and recover versus a two step hedge. Is it solely based off of the communication between the big and the guard as to what they’re going to do in that ball screen?
Francesco Tabellini 01:03:14
I would rely again on the big picture, I think the nuances are there, but I feel the main thing is doing it as long as it takes you to be able to stop the ball, like to really impact the ball. Sometimes it’s enough. One step, one step and a half. Sometimes it takes three steps. And sometimes I would say that the times in which my bigs are more aggressive and they’re edging, I don’t know, three, four steps, it’s usually because they’re very locked in. And it gives a lot of energy also to the teammates. And I feel like I don’t want to discourage them to be too aggressive if we will see that they are just like, as a decoy, they are trying to play the ball screen half court. And then make us run like crazy from the painter to the corner and putting their best shooter in the corner. And, you know, like then you need to react. But in general, unless you really see a purpose, you really see some scheme there. I feel it’s better to let people be aggressive and trying to impact the game this way and then fix things on the fly and be active. sIt’s very risky because you need to be aware of this. Sometimes when we are not 100 percent connected because you need to be locked in, all of you, it needs five players. When we are not, we end up in looking dumb. We are looking dumb on the court and nobody wants to look dumb on the court, especially coaches, I feel like, because the players are among other players. But the coach is alone standing there. Thank you.
Dan 01:04:55
Coach, you’re off the start, sub, or sit hot seat. Thanks for going through those scenarios with us. That was a lot of fun. Coach, our last question that we asked all the guests is, what’s the best investment that you’ve made in your career as a coach?
Francesco Tabellini 01:05:07
I would say has been never giving up on other things, on other interests, on other aspects of my personality besides basketball. I feel like it really helped me during my, let’s call it experience. I feel like career is a bit too much still. It really helped me being, I would say, a normal person.
I hope I’m trying to read books, not necessarily basketball books or self-improvement books. I’m reading novels and I’m watching films, not necessarily basketball films. I would say not many basketball films. I don’t know, I’m trying to talk to different people and trying to get in touch with as many and as different people as possible is always an enrichment for the way I see things and I feel it really helped myself to stay true to myself, to understand people better, to be able to communicate better, to grow as a person because I feel like if you’re able to grow as a person and I’m trying to grow as a person and I feel like one of the things I’m really thankful to my colleagues and to my players is that they are making me on a daily basis a better coach but a better person as well. Every single day I have to talk to people and smart people and they are pushing me to be better and I feel like in my experience being a normal person, someone able to listen or to connect things, to have different interests, it’s something that is bringing value also to my coaching abilities because at the end of the day we are dealing with people like obviously we are here we are talking about Exynos and Exynos are very important we are not underestimating the importance of Exynos but at the same time we are human being and being a good human being is something that is recognized by the people around you and being a person that is able to talk to people it’s sometimes more important than the pick and roll coverage and the tagging up I feel that’s the biggest investment and the most rewarding so far because it’s making me I hope the person I am and little by little a better version of myself.
Dan 01:07:37
All right, Pat, wow, that was a ton there, speaking right to our hearts. So I’m tagging up and hedging plugs and pace and cutting. And we just kind of trifecta today, the coach.
Pat 01:07:47
Absolutely. Awesome conversation. Really enjoyed it. I mean, Nimberg this year is one of my favorite teams to watch. So it was a real privilege to get coach Francesco on.
Dan 01:07:55
Yeah
Pat 01:07:55
I’ll give you the honor of the first pick here of what was your favorite takeaway or first takeaway, my favorites too strong of a word and so it was all pretty good.
Dan 01:08:04
Yeah, this is going to be tough to narrow to three, but I think I’ll focus in on one part of our first bucket, and you and I were talking beforehand about pace and relentlessness. We had that quote from that interview, and I think that was a great place to start, to just kind of get his overall thoughts on it. And then we kind of zeroed in on the cutting, which maybe we’ll get to in a second. But I really liked the quote, and it was set early, and I think kind of bled through the entire conversation, but canceling the pauses is an underlying quote and theme from that first bucket of playing relentlessness, and why they play the way they do, and then how that almost like one quote, one line dictates a lot of the strategy of how they play on top of it, from tagging up the hedging and plugging to the pace of the play, that canceling the pauses of the game, I thought was really good. It reminds me a lot of the conversations we’ve had about great teams being good in the conversions of the game, these tiny moments where we’re switching from offense to defense, rebound, outlet, all that stuff. And that recently had Kellen Samson on from Houston talking about trying to dominate these sort of tidbits of the game from their standpoint at Houston. So similar concept, just a different way to look at it. I really liked that thought and that quote as it then lent itself to then how they are going to do that, how they’re going to beat teams with their first three steps, how they’re going to cut and transition, and how they’re going to slip out of screens and all those kinds of things. And before I kick it back to you, the other interesting part of this, before we get to maybe some cutting and all that, was his thoughts on shooting the corner three, giving confidence to players who maybe aren’t great shooters, but like why it’s still a valuable shot. And I thought that was like a really good part of the conversation too, in that first bucket, it doubles down on the relentless nature of how he coaches. If you’re on the court and I’m trusting you with minutes, then this is part of how we play and you need to be ready to shoot that shot. And if the player is not good enough, then he’s not going to play him. But I like that discussion too, because it was a different way to attack the shot selection conversation. Listen, if we’re going to generate this look by how we play and how we cut, even if you’re not a 46% three point shooter, you need to shoot it because even if you miss it, we’re tagging, we’re going to get it on the backside like it just built into it. I thought that was an
Pat 01:10:23
Excellent point he made that you just brought up with encouraging shooters and that maybe the freedom that tagging up and provide some guys that might be reluctant to shoot. And I know he kind of gave the mathematic, I think we talked about it too with some coaches, you know, even if you’re missing, you’re going to miss 50 to 60% of your shots, but then you’re tagging up, you know, the chances that you get an offensive rebound and generate another possession. But looking out of the way that tagging up is almost providing somewhat of a safety net for like why you should be shooting that shot because we’re going to send four guys to the glass and we’re going to try to get the offensive rebound. And even if you miss best case, you’re making it. And I think that just made a lot of sense in my mind and maybe provided some freedom for some guys that are also, I mean, I think players were like, no one wants to miss and fail and do it routinely. But if you can constantly encourage them and just, you know, build the trust that this is good for us and that we have this system to support you on that shot, tagging up, you got to let it fly.
And then the other conversation with this and that I really enjoyed was then when we got into, I mean, on that drift, the baseline cut and conversations that we’ve had, I mean, we’re seeing that cut all throughout Europe, you know, and we have this conversation too, like with Coach, rather have two cuts than one, it does more good if you’re cutting violently and hard. He said like that defender is going to be so occupied, he’s not going to pay attention to really what’s going on with the ball. And so there’s not going to be so much problems as one would think if baseline cut middle penetration roller behind or big men in the dunker, six guys at the rim, you’re just not going to really run into that problem if you’re cutting with the right force. I really liked his thoughts there. And I thought he shared a great quote or his philosophy on top of this relentless attitude is that he’s not scared of a team doing too much. Rather he fears doing too little at times, you know, rather having guys just stand and wait for other players to make plays. He says it’s more important to be active and take a decision and feel involved. I also thought that was a good viewpoint on it. Get yourself involved, be part of the team, be active.
Dan 01:12:26
Correct. And I think you and I, you know, we’ve watched his team play this style that you see a lot where they’re just like this relentless downhill attacks and slips and stampedes. And he did kind of bring up that if you’re philosophically going to create opportunities via the drive versus some other way offensively, then you need to be really good with teaching spacing and cutting and these kind of play after the play things. And I thought that was really good because I kind of related that to back in the day, Stan Van Gundy’s second episode, which I feel like we quote on here a lot in this recap. Stan has not paid us to do any of this for him.
Pat 01:13:06
He’s doing just fine on his own without it. Yeah, he doesn’t.
Dan 01:13:10
Yeah, exactly. We go to that because it was such a good episode, that second one of his. But when Stan talked about philosophically, he believes basketball is played inside out and there’s different ways to create inside out opportunities. And one of them is a drive. Obviously, you can play through the post, your cuts, all that stuff. Underneath all of this stuff that Coach Tabellini was talking about today, they are creating the advantages via the drive. So everything is revolved around getting guards downhill into the paint, and that’s how they’re going to play inside out. And I just kind of took that layer back from it of how smart he thinks about Coach Tabellini I’m talking about, how smart he thinks about all these little areas of the game when it comes to playing that way. Okay, so Pat, let’s move on to point number two, and I will kick that back to you.
Pat 01:13:56
The second takeaway I think has to be tagging up. This was another conversation we were excited to have teams tag up. He hit on it early. I think we had to hold ourselves back not to just dive into the tagging up conversation right away, but he did not disappoint. I’ll give you probably the early takeaway I had from the conversation when he got into what kills the tags the most, the leading the tag early. He talked well in all three of them, but I really liked the point where he said, for a number of reasons, we all go through tagged up, like not physical enough. Maybe you’re late to tag up, maybe a little bit not disciplined enough, but you can’t leave them in transition if he gets the rebound or if they get the ball. And I think that viewing it as a way to make up your mistake. So, okay, the tag wasn’t great, but then at least you got to locate, you got to press up after the rebound. Like, yeah, you didn’t push them, you didn’t scrum it. You weren’t going to get any offensive rebound, but you got to make up for that mistake by getting there and helping the rest of your teammates out to be on the ball if it’s there, or if you’re on strong side. That was, I thought, like a really good point. And he spoke really well on why he valued that enough to start it. I liked that fine point he made. The tags aren’t always going to be perfect, but hey, you got to be there when that team gets the rebound. Like, you got to be on your man, because if not, you’re a detriment to your teammates and our ability to build our transition defense.
Dan 01:15:16
I’ll just pick up on where you left off with his start, which was leaving the tag too soon. And I guess just in case coaches didn’t pick up on it visually listening. I mean, we’re talking about when you go, you tag, and then instead of staying with your man in the back court and not letting him get the outlet, players will just start running back in transition. And then all of a sudden the rebounder can turn, throw it to that guy. And now all that you’re trying to accomplish in the tag up is gone because- Yeah, you’ve taken away no pace. You’ve taken away, yeah. I thought that was his speaking on this was so spot on today because like I said, you and I both have experience with trying to teach this. That is a hard thing for players honestly to grasp sometimes early on in this. For those of us that have tried it, it’s super important. You tag up and a lot of times I think the guys say like, well, if I tagged up and it was like not my man or it’s a cross match and they start trying to fix it too soon and you’re giving lane runners time to get out and you’re giving the guy a chance to outlet the ball and come downhill, you ruin everything. And so like I thought that was just really well spoken by him because it’s so important. It’s almost, you don’t know that’s a problem in tagging up until you start to teach it. And then it’s like, oh, this is an issue that we’ve got to solve. And so I thought he spoke really well on that.
Pat 01:16:31
Yeah, I agree. And moving it forward, I thought he had great points you need to consider and how you think about practice structure. I think you can do things that are counterintuitive to tagging up or to like, building the habit. But then you also have to think and again, it’s not until you do it, how many possessions you want to run in a practice one, you can’t do too many to kill the guys, because again, you know, with his philosophy, this relentless major, like it is taxing the tag up, pick up and run. So it’s thinking about how many possessions transitions you want to do. But then if you go too little, you’re cheating your team’s ability to get valuable reps. And then especially that last possession when everyone knows the place dead after this, no one tags up. And so thinking about how to incentivize it, I, you know, I thought the no tag, no score is a great way. I like to like rewarding, you know, you can reward the offensive rebound or just like rewarding a tip, because obviously, within tagging up, like being able to tip, it’s important. So tip plus one, you know, tip and offensive rebound plus something like that to just to continue like not waste the rep.
Dan 01:17:39
you’re entirely right. That last possession, they don’t tag. And I think I’ve learned that we’ve done some of the no tag, no basket stuff. I really like the rewarding maybe with an extra point. We keep talking about CLA type constraint stuff, but that is like an actual one that I feel like works where, hey, you give them an extra point or you don’t give them points for not tagging, they’ll go more often.
Pat 01:18:03
I feel like you can’t give the players the option to tag or not tag. If you’re going to tag up, you’ve got to be tagging up the whole time because there’s going to be slippage immediately and going back on your point about having a coach there and when that coach isn’t there, you notice the slippage start to creep in. And also, as a head coach, another great point makes sense when you think about it. You just can’t do it as a head coach. Yeah, okay, I’ll take the tagging. As I really like to start, you’re not just coaching one team and five guys, you’re coaching two teams, five guys or more, three teams, 15 guys. There’s just no way you can be accountable for it. But at the same time, no matter the focus of the drill, tagging up always has to be the focus included too. Whether it’s pick and roll defense or you said spacing, but there’s always tagging up as like 1B.
Dan 01:18:53
when we get in conversations with coaches, a lot of the questions arise like if team’s going to tag up, hey, do you have some favorite drills you like to do and all that. And I think you and I have talked about some and there are some good tagging up type drills, but I think the overall theme from any coach that’s done it well, there’s no drill for tagging up. Tagging up is everything you do. It’s always in every drill. You can’t ever go away from it.
Pat 01:19:18
All right, Dan, we’ll keep it moving. I’ll throw it to you for the final takeaway.
Dan 01:19:21
Well, another terrific segment, the hedge and plug, start, subset, and you and I have seen it much more in Europe, especially over the course of the last couple of years. And I know we, you know, first went over this with the deep dive stuff with Thomas Isalo, just seeing it spread and teams use it more. I liked, it was later in the conversation, his like philosophy, basically saying the hedge and plug one is it’s a temporary switch and looking at it from that lens. That’s why it’s unique to tag.
And it’s also why I think it’s a unique coverage because it is sort of like this temporary switch while you’re being aggressive on the ball. And then I think there was a lot of gold in there about like why you would and would not do this coverage and where he would move on from it. And he talked about the short roller versus the guy who’s a terrific ball handler and the considerations within that stuff. And so whether a coach listening to this is going to go back and use the hedge and plug, which I think you and I both think is a really great coverage to have in your toolbox for a variety of reasons. And then why you would do it, even if it’s not analytically the supposed best thing. I can kind of pause here because I think you wrote that down too, but I thought that was like an interesting, for someone who obviously is analytically driven on a lot of parts saying like, okay, I get this is probably not analytically the best thing all the time, but we’re still going to do it because of the benefits elsewhere.
Pat 01:20:43
And just to pick up on that point, I’m glad he brought it up. Cause I mean, it was a question I was going to ask because I think we got that sense offensively, he really thinks about the analytics, attacking the rim, shots of the rim, drawing, kick out threes, but then yeah, analytically, you know, you’d think, well, the hedge is going to give up maybe some short roles, some pain attacks, some threes, but he spoke on it very well. And it boiled down to, and I think, you know, this is what a lot of coaches we talked to about like what really then is important to them. And to him, it was activity. He’s not scared of the team doing too much. He values activity and being disruptive on defense. That’s where he feels like the value of the hedges, even if at times they’re going to maybe put them at a disadvantage, analytically speaking. So, you know, when the push came to shove analytics activity, he chose the activity on defense.
And I thought that’s a really important distinction. He made a course for why, but that all coaches are going to have to make in terms of what they really value when it comes to certain strategies or certain coverages, one other important distinction when talking about defending slip screens and flip screens on the ball is deciding if you want to be. Defend the ball one-on-one, be like a one-on-one defensive stance square on the ball, or if you want to try to channel ball handlers into the screens, you know, lock their hips and be ready to fight over and how he talked about that distinction obviously plays a major role in the flip screens and the slip screens. Cause if you’re going to channel, yeah, you’re going to be, you know, vulnerable. If at the speed of the game, the offense executes a good flip, a good slip, and you’re going to give up a straight line drive, but also at the same time, if you want to go one-on-one keep square on the ball, you could open yourself up to some reject at time. I thought that was an important distinguish. And then I liked, he’s obviously a one-on-one on the ball telling the on-ball defender, not to necessarily think so much about the screen, but think about plugging between the ball and the rim, having that as a focus in terms of trying to solve some of these more complicated screening actions that arise. I thought it was also a really nice point coach Tatalini made. I agree with.
Dan 01:22:51
Yeah, Pat, there’s so much here as we start to wrap this up, any misses from your standpoint that we could have gone deeper on.
Pat 01:22:59
Yes, I would have loved to basically go deeper on everything, the easiest miss to say. I think on our last start sub sit when we talked to the ball screen coverages, I would have loved to have just kind of flipped it quickly because I think they do a lot of really interesting stuff with not only these shortening past stampedes in the ball screen, but also with the flip screens and the slips and just how he views ball screen offense. And again, kind of now with getting downhill, the analytics of it.
Dan 01:23:26
Yeah. Anybody that wants to see some of that.
I mean, we did do a deep dive on their stampede catches in like the middle third of the floor, which isn’t the ball screen stuff you’re talking about per se, but it is, well, sort of like leads out of some of their ball screen stuff.
Pat 01:23:42
With that, we’ve looked at driving the flip and you and me have talked about it recently in the last couple of months. I mean, you’re seeing so much of those kind of flip screens.
Using the ball screen really as a decoy and not asking the point guard necessarily to navigate coming off the screen, but more so just like using the ball screen almost to get the big out of the rim and hopefully open up a gap. Watching Coach Tabolini’s teams, he I think is thinking about these things as well. And so I think it would have been a cool conversation if we could have got to today. For sure.
Dan 01:24:10
I’ll just give a quick miss on my end, of course not from Coach Tabellini, but it was an interesting kind of side note in our first bucket. He talked about playing one-on-one versus non-set defenses and a player’s ability to make plays in those situations being like a key and I think that makes a lot of sense. Like when you’re talking about constructing an offense to push the pace to make quick decisions to shorten the pass, play through stampedes, you’re in a sense getting your team into one-on-one-ish situations, but not the way that maybe we think of an ISO 101. Can you beat your guy one-on-one when you have a slight advantage when you are catching it on the go, these go catches, and he’s okay with his team playing in one-on-one situations if they are generating the pace and the space so that those one-on-ones are like really freaking hard to guard and the defense isn’t in a shell. I think that’s the point he was making.
The benefit of playing this way is because you’re going to get one-on-one situations with not a set defense, there’s not two defenders stabbing at the ball and a guy at the rim. It’s not a miss, it’s just more of like, oh, that would have been interesting to see what does that player development look like, what are the situations that they really look to attack one-on-one and be aggressive and play through the stampedes and get their shoulders by a guy. Then it’s like a team-generated ISO that works and that’s how you can sell it to them to make them play hard.
Pat 01:25:32
Make them run hard, but those first three steps are a little bit easier to run when they think they can play one-on-one or get a dunk, but that tagging up and spring back, the buy-in’s not easy out.
Dan 01:25:41
Well, once again, we thank coach for coming on and for all his thoughts today. Congratulations to him on all his success as well. Thank you everybody for listening and we’ll see you next time.