🎙️ Underrated Coaching Lessons from John Patrick
In our conversation this week with veteran European head coach John Patrick, we explored the philosophies behind his pressure-based defenses, disciplined offenses, and no-frills culture-building. Known for turning undervalued rosters into playoff contenders in Germany and Japan, Patrick blends structure with freedom and toughness with teaching.
Here are 3 underrated coaching lessons from the episode:
⚙️ 1. Offense Prioritizes Structure Before Freedom
Patrick believes in giving players structure—not to restrict, but to unlock them. His offensive systems (horns, floppy, delay) create rhythm and spacing, especially for players adjusting to international play.
“Structure gives freedom. When guys know where their teammates are, they can play faster and more instinctively.”
🧩 Key Insight: Flow isn’t what happens when you remove structure—it’s what happens when structure removes hesitation.
🧠2. Drill Decision-Making, Not Just Technique
Patrick’s practices emphasize reading the game under pressure. Whether it’s guarding a closeout or attacking a trap, players are taught to think while executing—not just repeat reps.
“A player might be technically perfect, but if they freeze when the picture changes, it doesn’t matter.”
🧩 Key Insight: Decision-making beats technique when the lights are bright.
🗣️ 3. Leadership Is Shown in Response, Not Volume
Patrick values leadership that shows up in the hard moments—being benched, missing a rotation, or sitting during crunch time. He watches not just how players talk, but how they respond.
“If you’re only a leader when things are going well, you’re not a leader. You’re a performer.”
🧩 Key Insight: Leadership isn’t volume—it’s consistency under stress.
Transcript
John Patrick 00:00
I like going into a group and saying, like, what is basketball? And then, you know, we’ll move on with my team on this, you know, we’ll say, what is good defense? And then I like this old Bobby Knight theory that the power of thinking negative. So what beats you at the end of the shot clock? What beats you at the end of games? Almost always you’re talking about, do you finish the possession?
Do you get the rebound? What is a stop? A stop is not playing good defense the first 10 seconds. It’s being persistent. The commitment to winning is what I love about getting a group together. And I would like to instill that with my coaches and my team that I don’t care if we have five point guards out there, we’re going to find a way to win.
Dan 02:13
And now, please enjoy our conversation with Coach John Patrick. Coach, I feel like we’ve known so many people that have worked for you or know you, and we’ve been fans of your team for so long, so thank you very much for making time for us today. Thank you for having me.Â
John Patrick 02:38
Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to be on and as I’ve said before, it’s a great resource.
Slapping glass is one of the things I recommend to all young coaches who ask me what they need to do to get into the overseas market and I love your podcast. Thank you, Coach.
Dan 02:54
Appreciate that. Coach, we wanted to start with this. We will definitely talk defense in this show.
It’s something that you’re very well known for, but we wanted to start on the other side of the ball with you and your thoughts on building an offense, offensive considerations basically, when you’re building a team sort of through your defense or when defense is your team’s identity, what does the offense look like from teaching points to analytics to all the things that go into a good offense? And what your thoughts are, especially when you’re trying to build it out.
John Patrick 03:27
This is a great question. People would maybe be surprised, but when I’m building a team, assuming that I’ve recruited the guys and assuming that there’s a limited budget, I asked my assistants to put together names that are all around offensive players or guys who can play multiple positions. Now, we usually can’t afford big guys or really true point guards who run high-level teams because I’ve been at clubs that had smaller budgets, had lower third budgets in the league. So if you think about every centimeter costs more, and if you think about experience as a point guard costs money on the market, then we’re talking about a lot of guys. Of course, we’re trying to get value.
We’re playing money ball, but we want guys who play all around, meaning offensively all around. And then my job is when we get this group together that we think, okay, it’s the best value for the money, then we’re going to teach them defense, and then we’re going to see if we can pressure because there’s advantages in pressuring, what kind of pick and rolls we can play, what we can switch. But my teams have also been the leading scoring team in the league for many years in the BBL and in Japan also. Winning is the job. It’s not necessarily to hold teams to under 60 points. Now, if we’re not that talented on offense or if we have injuries or if we’re going to have trouble scoring, we’re going to have to say, hey, look, guys, I love score. The fans love it when you score, but we got to win. So we’re going to focus more on the defense because defense is going to be our way to win.
I just wanted to start off that by saying, if you get five guys that are great on defense that can’t dribble, shoot, pass, or remember what to do on offense, you’re in trouble. It’s all a balance and it has to do with how much money you have also in our overseas world where you have a limited budget. You got to pick your poison in and also sometimes choose between two good all around players who are wings or one good point guard with the same money. So you have to balance a lot of thoughts going into the season. And sometimes we get lucky and get guys like Taylor Rochester or Tom Walkup or these guys, Nick Babb to start the season. And they’re like, oh boy, we hit a diamond in the rough. But oftentimes you get what you thought you were going to get. And that is inexperienced offensive players who work their tails off. And then it’s going to be more like, okay, we need to get the defense together because we need to win in 35 days. We have 35 days to put together the offense defense. Every scheme we have, we better start with defense because we need to win or we’re in trouble.
Dan 06:37
Coach, if I could follow up on pace of play offensively, you press trap a little bit, you’re great in the half-court, offensively, what do you think about with how fast you all want to play as it relates to your talent level, right? You kind of mentioned the talent level of being able to score, not score, and how that connects to your pace.
John Patrick 06:57
Very much so, I think if you talk to higher level coaches, and coaches have dealt with this for a long time, or smart young coaches, you’ll also get that it’s connected in a lot of ways to other things. You know, the two teams that went down in the pro A, and the two teams that went down to worst teams in the BBL had the highest pace. So it doesn’t always give you an advantage.
And as head coaches, we’re trying to get advantages. I think our team was fourth or fifth fastest pace. We didn’t have a lot of size. We had a ton of injuries, and I was really proud this season. We should have gone down, and we ended up with 27 and 19 was our final record, and beat some really good team, beat some Euro league teams. But it was so important to evaluate before each game, do we have an advantage with pace or with slowing it down? You know, it’s always nice to think you can slow down the other team or speed up the other team. But sometimes you go play two or three games in a week, and the first game you have an advantage speeding it up. Second game, you might need to slow it down because they might be really, really good, and you might be tired, and maybe they didn’t have a game two days ago like you did. So we have to have that conversation when we’re watching film and also with the players and say, hey, look guys, we got eight guys healthy. They got 12 guys that are healthy. We’re tired, they’re fresh. So let’s slow down the pace. It doesn’t mean that we’re walking the ball up, but it doesn’t do any good if you’re exhausted, and maybe your point guard’s got a sprained ankle, and you’re trying to full court press and set press release screens and run every time. So it’s an important consideration.
Pace is great if you have more athletic guys and also just guys that can play in this fast paced environment. I played in college from Mike Montgomery. We made it so tedious for the other team. We were setting screens. It was long shot clock, 35 second, 45 second shot clock. I forgot by now. We would run three different systems in one shot clock against athletic team, more athletic teams. That was a huge advantage, just slowing it down.
I also played for a coach who played for Rick Pitino, one of my first professional playing jobs, and we sped it up. We had a bunch of 6’4 guys, and this was so much fun to speed it up, and another team had, maybe had in the old style, had two centers and a small forward that today would be a center. Three big guys and two guards, and they just couldn’t bring the ball up. No team could bring the ball up against us, playing full court pressure. So that’s the deal with your advantages, and when I played it to Matha and we had, we were 16 deep. Of course it was good to run and jump. When I transferred high schools and went to Sidwell Friends, we were still really good, but we had to consider that in a different way and be more disciplined. At Stanford, we were super disciplined and really took care of the ball and talked about offensive rebounds.
John Patrick 10:16
I think before you go and say, hey, we wanna play fast, you gotta think, do we have an advantage to play fast? Do we have the personnel to play fast? And then you can go from there.
Pat 10:25
Continuing this pace conversation and looking at the personnel, earlier you mentioned too, sometimes given your budgets, you can’t always get maybe an experience for general point card that you want and maybe sometimes you go with two wings because of how the market is and what role then does your capabilities at point guard play and how you think about pace, whether you have an experienced point guard or maybe you’re trying to point guard by committee. It’s a very
John Patrick 10:52
good question. I’ve recruited teams where I thought I was getting one point guard and three wings and we ended up getting four point guards. Nick Babb played in college with another wing guy named Tyreese Holly Burton and so he got pushed off the ball sometimes and we realized, oh my goodness, this guy’s a small forwarder or Tom Walkup who played at the four in college and who was just so committed to the team. He would play anywhere.
He’d play center if he’d do anything and he ended up playing a lot of points. Now he’s the point guard for Olympiacos. These guys had the skills. They just played on teams. Were they in college? There’s a lot of speedy little guys who pound the ball a lot and sometimes there’s guys like Doron Perkins or Tom or Jalen Smith who are on the wing who are natural floor leaders and they just didn’t get to do it until some coach like me get, you know, they show up and you realize, oh my goodness, this guy’s good and so I would rather have long versatile two, three, four guys who turn out sometimes to be point guard like than to, I think it’s a gamble to get too many ball pounding point guards because a lot of times these guys aren’t very good passers either.
They’re fast and they’re head down and I think you guys know this and a lot of your guests have commented before. It’s really tough to make assumptions how guys are going to play at a high level in Europe after they’ve played in college because the game is so different or how they play in the first division here after playing in the G league. It’s almost a different sport. There’s a lot of teaching that goes into it and a lot of individual practice, but some guys are ready from almost day one and some guys it takes almost the whole season to get them to make some of the reads that you’d want a point guard to make in fast paced basketball.
Pat 12:50
What are some of the reads with the guards that struggle you had to work on throughout the season when like you talk about the reason with pace.
John Patrick 12:58
I would say the basic things that I try to get our youth coaches to work with too, and is there an advantage to push the ball? You don’t want to go through the wall.
Do I push the ball ahead or do I swing the ball or do I penetrate? Are you dribbling with your head up? This is something that I am sounding like a real old fart, but I was lucky. I played at DeMatha and I played at Sidwell, and I played for a Hall of Fame coaching college, and there was a lot of tough love going on for us guards. If you didn’t have your head up and see guys running ahead, it was always the guard’s job to set up other people. And I would say nowadays, there’s a lot of scoring point guards in college. And if you watch college ball, which I still watch a ton of, you see a lot of guys open that aren’t getting the ball. That’s one of the first themes coming here is, you know, push the ball ahead. If somebody is open, of course, KYP, you don’t throw it to a center who’s maybe not looking at the ball, but we do like to get the ball moving and swinging and move side to side. And that’s really, really tough for some of these rookie point guards.
Dan 14:09
Coach, I know that you’re a very detail-oriented coach defensively when it comes to all parts of your defense and guys are playing so hard and their attention to the scout and the handwork and all those kinds of things. Do you look at offense the same way?
John Patrick 14:24
No, good question. Having been a player, regardless if it’s playground ball or A, I don’t think anybody played more playground basketball outside than me. I’m probably wrong. I probably have an argument with a lot of guys my age.
But I lived on the blacktop outside growing up in DC, and I still love to play. I think there’s a huge value in letting guys be creative on offense, and attacking mismatches. If you have them, letting guys play. I would say I’m more of a stickler on spacing and seeing the ball being aware. But my high school coach Morgan Wooten always said, if you have more possessions, that means you get offensive rebounds, you turn over the ball less, then you can afford to miss some shots. I believe that too. I’d like guys to play with some freedom on offense, and with some joy. On defense, we want to be actors and not reactors. But the same thing on offense, we want to be actors and not reactors.
Pat 15:30
Coach, I’d just like to follow up. You mentioned obviously on offense with giving them freedom, but you will hold them, let’s say, accountable or you’re a stickler with the spacing. Again, in terms of working with some guys that maybe are younger guys coming to Europe, how is the spacing changing going from college to Europe and what are your spacing considerations that you think about?
John Patrick 15:51
For each player, it’s different. I’ve had players who were high school, all Americans, NBA drafted that could do things with the ball, but were completely unaware. It’s about each player’s habits. Some of these guys who were pretty good, shaken and vacant, were really poor.
They run down the court out of bounds. They were not only unaware of how far they were away from their teammates, they were unaware where they were on the court or didn’t look for the ball, or didn’t run the court if they didn’t have the ball, didn’t look for the ball until they got into their spot. There’s different levels of awareness. But we try to start with some of the drills that I did in high school and college, two on zero spacing drills, three on zero driving kick drills. We only have 35 days for the Americans in preparation. We have to touch on these things and test them, and then guys who especially struggle with it, do extra individual sessions with these guys where there’s less stress than there would be in a team situation. So I’m really big on using the individual time to work on these habits that are sometimes embarrassing for guys to work on in a team situation.
Pat 17:10
Within this 35-day window, when you have a short period to put a team together, when you’re, again, building your offense, do you think more when you’re talking with your staff and how you want to build your offense through teaching through concepts or teaching early just through plays? And, you know, you’ll have them run plays so they get familiar with spacings you want, and then kind of giving them the freedom from there or from day one, just giving them kind of the concepts you want to play out of.
John Patrick 17:39
I don’t think it’s a secret anymore. Ten years ago, I wouldn’t have told you this, but we get together, my teams, when I’ve been in Japan, I did it and here I’ve done it. We get together, we have a practice, and then the next day we have a game. The very next day.
So we get together and say, hey, do some team building, and then they show up the next day, and then we play a game. So we want to see what they do in a game, and I don’t want to give them too many instructions, just go out and play. And then I find that you save a lot of time if you can teach with video and then give them a structure afterwards. And for example, if we get scored on with a pick and pop, talk about that, watch it on film or whatever. Offense, defense, rebounding. We start right away. We just don’t have time to not play games right away and get feedback. So we try to use that 35 days and have at least 10 practice games and at least two scrimmages also, controlled scrimmages where the video feedback and cutting up the film, individual feedback for the players.
It’s hardcore, but I think they really appreciate that and coming in at the end of August or the second half of August, rather than lose their summer break and come in and kind of be exhausted and have a two month pre-season. I found that’s been really gotten positive feedback about guys coming in and say, oh, let’s get to work, not wasting time rather than come in and have conditioning and go real slow.
And I think it helps having a sense of urgency too. We put in every set that we’re gonna see over the season in defensive drills over the first two weeks. So guys heads are spinning and we’re talking about what they gotta do, but of course we use those elements in our offense as well. But in practice games, we’re playing to win and we kind of get used to moving on.
Okay, let’s learn from it. Boom, we cleaned it up. Let’s move on. Great job, go home. We’ll see you tomorrow. And I think developing on the move really fast pace helps guys during the season also to just turn the page faster instead of dwelling on, oh, can we discuss this or discuss that? We don’t have time to discuss it. Let’s just clean it up and go.
Dan 20:06
I love that playing a game on day two, did you ever do it differently and I guess what made you decide to start doing that?
John Patrick 20:13
You’ll hear this from pretty much every former player that they want to take things that they liked from their former coaches and use those, and don’t do things that they didn’t like. I felt flogged a couple of times in my playing career by the long pre-seasons and conditionings and you’re waiting, okay, the first game is only two and a half months away and let’s go to the track, then let’s go run in the hills and whatever. I always thought as a player, the summer is for separating yourself from your competition, and when you get together, it’s team time. I don’t think guys like to give up their summer break at the beginning, in July and August to go through 5 on 0 stuff or shell defense. We need to do that stuff. So I had coaches who had us go through different forms of conditioning and two days, three days, running everything, and I’m more about short and sweet and pushing each other, but also sometimes less is more. I don’t like to have really long sessions.
Dan 22:24
This has been awesome so far. Thanks for all your thoughts on the offensive side of the ball. We want to transition now to a segment on the show we call start, sub, or sit. We’re going to give you three options around a topic, ask you to start one of them, sub one of them and sit one of them. And then we will discuss from there.
So coach Patrick, if you’re all set, we’ll dive into this first one. Let’s do it. All right. So coach, we are going to go to the defensive side of the ball now for you. We’re going to give you three different actions. We call this tough to defend and these are three actions that are tough to defend when you’re trying to hedge. So trying to hedge ball screens. These are three things teams might throw at you and your start here would be the one that has historically been the hardest to guard. So start, sub, or sit. First option is RAM screens or someone trying to screen your hedging big before they get to the ball screen. Option two are flipping the ball screens. So trying to flip sides. Option three is Spain or stack action. So adding a third player in there that’s popping out. So start, sub, or sit. Tough to defend when hedging RAM screens, flip screens, or Spain screens. I mean.
John Patrick 23:37
All of the above. I’ll say the slalom with changing the angle of the screen. We’ll start with that. I think that’s something that we do on the third or fourth day of practice.
We start once we’ve gotten going on communication issues and how important the pick and roll is, because you can’t have your point guard looking for where the screen is, but the guy on the ball has to communicate what direction he’s pushing. So depending on your coverage, if you’re icing, if you’re pushing middle, you’re still going to have to point. That’s a basic thing. Unless you are Shane Larkin in your garden, a really, really slow guy, you can’t afford to just react to what he does and play flat. You got to push in a direction, the direction of your choice of your coverage. And now when the big comes and I call it slaloms, when he slaloms or fakes one way and screens the other or a hot oven on one side and screens on the other side, you need to adjust and the big has to communicate that. So I think that can be really tricky. And again, all of this defensive strategy is confidence. It’s just like offensive one-on-one ability or offensive team ability. I think if you focus on covering these slaloms as a normal element, it is a normal element nowadays, but if you treat it normally and like, okay, it’s tough to guard, but we’re going to get it. And you get the habits of communicating and the habits of staying high, a low flat coverage is going to open up a lot of options for the offense, whether the guy’s slaloming or not. So first you got to get, if you’re high flat or if you’re hedging or whatever you’re going to do. And then if you are hedging and they come up and they’re slaloming, you don’t have to buy the screen to the point guard’s back and he’s going to get good at spinning under it too, if you practice it enough. So I think the defensive confidence and their ability to recognize elements like this, and then the footwork, having the tools or at least the solutions available to them, it can help you guard it, but it’s tough. If you know a team is hedging and your big is fairly quick and good at faking and your guard can save his dribble a little bit or is wiggly enough to keep your guard off of him, it’s really tough to guard.
Dan 26:08
between the Ram screen and the Spain screen, you have a sub and a sit, which one would be harder between those two?
John Patrick 26:15
Ram screen, I think, is easier to just switch going up into it. If you’re determined to hedge it, then that would be really tough. We call that a brush is like a 2-5 brush, this RAM screen, or whatever, a 3-5 brush or 4-5 brush. Again, if you’re not good, if you stick or hug screens, then that can get really ugly for you on defense, and then you’re going to be late, and then you’re going to have the same problem everybody has if they’re too low, which is you’re going to be scrambling.
Spain, if everybody’s a shooter, when Trincuri had Darius Miller and that whole Wanamaker and those guys, when they were running Spanish pick and roll, it was like, it didn’t matter what you did. You had Daniel Tice and Elias Harris and all these guys. It was really murder because everybody could shoot, everybody could slip, basically. I think the Spanish pick and roll, because you got more guys now who fly out, they’re not trying to set it. I’d say 80% of the time now are slips and fly outs rather than sets. Again, if you could recognize it and you’re going to hedge it, it’s about defensive confidence. But if your guys are confused and don’t recognize what it is, you’re not going to be good at guarding any of those elements.
Dan 27:32
Coach, historically, you using the hedge, what advantages or what philosophical reason has been for you to use that as often as you have? I have.
John Patrick 27:42
Actually used it every season. We use it in the backport. Basically, for those who don’t know my system, we practice half-port elements on the full-port. So we pick up full-port, whether we pressure and trap in the backport is a different thing, but we want to have these kind of rules for guiding the offense or slowing down the offense, sometimes trapping the offense in the backport, which requires you to hedge in the backport.
But you need the personnel. If you have Jason Boone, when I got him, he was coming from a fourth league team. He went to NYU 6’6″, 6’7″. He was 270 when I got him. But when he trimmed down to 245, he was unbelievable hedger. John Brockman probably could have been a linebacker in the NFL, all-time leading rebounder at University of Washington, 6’6″. Incredible athlete. He hedged and he got back in the same motion almost. So really, really fast and a quick change of direction. But if you have bigger guys, when I had Jack Cooley, you can’t hedge with him in the half-court. So then it’s a question whether you’re going to play directions or play high and flat and get help with walls. So I think it really does have to do with your personnel. And I’ve been lucky enough to have some good big guys, but then I had to change my defensive strategy when those big guys are in because they weren’t fast enough to get back the way they weren’t fast enough to step out and put them in foul trouble.
Even if they were disciplined with their hands, their feet were slow and they had trouble getting back with the right technique. So I’ll recruit the best team I can, and then we’ll decide how much we’re going to hedge. I like to have it in your pocket. Sometimes you need it, and then sometimes our three men ends up playing the five so that we can speed teams up if we need them to.
Pat 29:37
Coach, you mentioned a couple times the importance of being high and then you talked about relying on your wall, if maybe you’re going to drop your big, if we can just follow up a little bit and how you think about building your pick and roll coverage with the other three defenders behind the ball screen.
John Patrick 29:52
Yes. I would say this is when you’re talking about higher level teams and Euro league teams. This is a normal conversation.I’ve talked to a lot of NBA assistants and NBA coaches. Of course, the defensive rules are different. But for us, if you’re talking about a wall guy, that means a pick and roll going at the two side. You can next, you can drop it with a big and next it. You can have a high flat wall with a high flat hedge, which really is like a wall there and going over the top. You can be in drop coverage, but that allows the point guard to turn the corner and really see what’s going on so that’s not advisable, unless your big is just too slow to get up there. If you’re going at the two side, you’re going to have the wall, you’re going to have the 45 guy, which is the corner man’s defender on the side that the ball is going to, and then you’re going to have the lift man on the side that the ball is going away from on the one side. You see all variations of that, including unawareness. You have VBL teams and teams in every league that couldn’t answer what they do, and a lot of college teams that won’t know what their wall guy is supposed to do. That’s where I think you really separate higher level defensive teams with average and poor defensive teams is how detailed they are, and how good they are with their hands up. Where’s the wall guy’s hands? At the end of the day, all these details are, do you give up easy points in the pick and roll? Good teams don’t give up easy points on the pick and roll. Some of it has to do with personnel, but Patrick, what you just said, these other three guys are crucial because it’s just a fact. Because of exhaustion or talents or size, it’s really tough to guard two on two. Two on two solutions are fine if your personnel is far superior to your opponents. But if not, if you’re in a low budget situation, or you have injuries or something, you better have a good rotation and you better have good rules from those other three to take away the windows, and take away the pocket passes, and make those low percentage looks from the offense instead of high percentage looks.
Pat 32:10
If we can stay on this situation, attacking the two-man side and continuing to look at the wall, you mentioned a lot about, you know, the importance of defensive confidence. So when you look at that wall defender, is his responsibility the same regardless of the coverage on the ball? Or if you’re going to be more aggressive and the ball is his wall, is he more towards his man versus, like you said, dropping where maybe it could almost look like he’s nexting? Or is it consistent regardless of coverage?
John Patrick 32:37
That’s a very good question. I teach it now a little bit differently than I taught it before, but we teach it first high and flat. High and flat’s the basic coverage. Your screener’s defender needs to be on the line of scrimmage. Kelvin Sansom called the line of scrimmage, so right with the toes on the line of the screener, your forklift, your hand there on his waist, outside hand up. They understand what the basic positions are. Same thing for the lift guy, same thing for the wall guy, same thing for the 45 guy. This is your basic position. Then if the big man front pivots and hedges, that affects where the other three guys go. If you hedge, you’re creating a situation where the point guard hopefully has to pass it. If it’s a good trap and then you have to have the elbows covered and you have to have somebody in the hole on defense, if you drop the big, then you need to have your wall guy more in the next position to prevent the easy penetration. Each coverage will have adjustments, like you asked, but if you don’t have a solid base, they’re not going to be able to make adjustments.
If you just say, okay, you’re the wall guy and you’re over here, then for sure, it’s going to be difficult to adjust and say, okay, now we’re hedging. Instead of high and flat wall in this position, you’re going to drop a step and not front pivot, but cover the elbow. I have assistant coaches who have been head coaches and I’ve been lucky enough to talk to some Euroleague coaches too. They’re very concerned about this stuff. I think lower level guys, say second league, third league, whatever, four defensive teams aren’t concerned about it, but I think it can be a huge advantage to be solid on defense in these pick and roll situations because we know how much we see pick and roll. It’s just we see it all the time and sometimes if your team can’t cover a basic two side or one side pick and roll, you’re in big trouble.
Pat 34:41
And we can quickly just flip the situation so the ball is now being attacked towards the one man side yeah again looking at how high do you want that defender. The be when the ball is being driven at him with no one behind him to support his help or his stunt.
John Patrick 34:58
Again, we practice this in the full court first because loading up, there is always a relation to the basket. If somebody is setting a pick and roll 90 feet from the batter, 85 feet from the basket, you’re not so worried about the guy who set the screen getting a roll and then dribbling it 80 feet for a layup. You’re very concerned in the half court. In general, what does loading up mean? Jumping to the ball, ball you man principles, and at the moment that this pick and roll occurs, you need to be in your spot. If you’re late, Josh King and I joke about this all the time, but the guys that are late, it’s like you have a rope around your waist and it’s tied to the trailer hitch of an 18-wheeler. You’re going one way and the ball is going the other way, so that’s not going to feel too good. You do need to be loaded up early, so when that ball comes out, your momentum is going with the ball. That’s a basic tenet of those other three guys in pick and rolls in the back court or in the front court and on every single coverage that you need to be loaded up early with your hands prepared, taking away the windows or taking away the laser passes, and then you have a chance in any coverage to get it. But it is a relation to where it is on the court. We would jam and go under if it’s outside of shooting range on a one-side pick and try to force them into a two-side pick and roll in a lot of situations.
Dan 36:37
Pat and I were talking a little bit beforehand, and one of the things I’ve always respected watching your defense or just great defenses in general is late in the shot clock are really good in these things too. So it’s one thing to come down and first 10 seconds guard a pick and roll where everybody’s more set. But when they’re changing sides of the floor, moving tags, and they do set a RAM screen or someone slips and these guys aren’t in the exact positions, you still don’t give up easy baskets like you mentioned in the pick and roll. And are there coverage solutions to when things aren’t perfect that you think about or work on so that you can still not give up the things you don’t want to give up, I guess, later in the shot clock?
John Patrick 37:14
That’s a great question. I do a mind map. I’m sorry, I want to start a little bit before those situations, but the first day of practice, I’m a total geeked out basketball guy, so I love going into a group. It could be kids or coaches and saying, like, what is basketball? And then, you know, we’ll move on and with my team on this, you know, we’ll say, what is good defense? And then I like this old Bobby Knight theory that the power of thinking negative. So what beats you at the end of the shot clock? What beats you at the end of games? And we’ll discuss that in, you know, what we’re writing on the board or my sister or I are writing up what the guys say. Almost always you’re talking about, do you finish the possession? Do you get to rebound? Everybody’s seen situations at the end of games.
I saw one today that cost the team a chance to advance in the playoffs where they play great defense. And then another guy comes flying in and just gets an easy offensive rebound tap in. So this is part of orientation and just your whole team mentality on defense is what is a stop? A stop is not playing good defense the first 10 seconds. It’s being persistent. You get used to being uncomfortable. That’s part of the confidence of defense. And we want to take pride in finishing possessions of being smaller, but stronger, communicating better. But the whole goal is to have the other team react and for us to finish these possessions to get stops. So first of all, it’s the philosophy. And then you got to be in shape. You got to have fresh guys or guys that are used to pushing through guys that care. I’m stating the obvious, and I know I’m preaching to the choir because you guys talk about it quite a bit, but the commitment to winning is what I love about getting a group together. And I would like to think that if I went and played pickup ball tonight, I could get my four teammates and I to find a way to win that game. And I would like to instill that with my coaches and my team that I don’t care if we have five point guards out there, we’re going to find a way to win. And we’re going to find a way to make the other team uncomfortable when we’re on defense, doing something, we’re going to figure it out. So I think that’s competitiveness. And when the game’s over, it’s too late. So let’s enjoy playing defense and get stopped. And we’ll chalk that up, that kind of mentality.
Pat 41:04
All right, coach, our last start sub sit for you. We’re going to stay on defense and we call this tough to teach one-on-one defense. So looking at one-on-one on the ball, again, preparing for you, talking to coaches, some of your tenants, which one is the toughest teach when looking at one-on-one defense, is it the footwork technique? Is it the handwork technique or is it positioning on the ball? Wow.
John Patrick 41:29
It’s all great stuff again. It’s all the above you guys know your stuff But I’m gonna mess up this answer for you because I’m supposed to start some but a lot of guys can move their feet And not keep their hands up a lot of guys can put their hands up and then they can’t get low and so This is the trick.
Can you do both? Can you get deflections while you’re in a defensive stance? Those three things that you just said are our first 45 minutes of practice Pretty much every day in the preseason. We do 45 minutes of defensive footwork positioning some of it’s in a two-on-two set pick and roll for it, but guys have different habits and I think the footwork habit is something they can do on their own and the hand work habits something they can do on their owning the spacing and Especially if you’re pushing directions and you’re trying to push guys to their left hand like not fouling the shooter and Pressuring without fouling has to do with all three of those things, but it’s a confidence thing But the spacing is sometimes really scary for even experienced players knowing when not to foul or how not to foul and Still to disrupt is an art that takes time to learn
Pat 42:47
What clearly stands out with your teams is your level of physicality, your level of pressure, and then that you really emphasize getting your hands up and not falling. So when we look again at the hand work, maybe the footwork technique.
What is it that you’re really valuing or what is it in that 45 minute sessions that important that your guys get right so you can be physical, be a pressuring team without constantly falling or over relying on your hand.
John Patrick 43:14
That’s what is so important. It starts with being able to get in a stance. Can you do a front squat with your elbows parallel to the ground? A lot of guys can’t. A lot of professional basketball players can’t do it, but they can do it after about two weeks with us. Can you pick up your feet in a defensive stance and sprint two steps and stop? These are really bonehead things that guys maybe didn’t take pride in before or didn’t recognize before, but it’s key to defense. It’s key to be an effective on defense.
Even teams that have charted deflections, a lot of times they’re lunging deflections, so it’s a gamble. I had a guy, I’m not going to say his name, blue chip recruit, went to a blue blood school, started unbelievable NCAA career, and couldn’t get in a stance and didn’t know how to deny. We worked for two weeks on denying and stealing the ball without front pivoting and gambling. At first, he was embarrassed, but he recognized that he’d played 20 years of competitive basketball, and four years college basketball, and at the highest level, and NBA, and he had trouble denying. He had trouble seeing the ball in his own man, and trouble getting the ball without gambling. But he was way more confident and way more effective after we worked on it.
I think a lot of coaches overlooked that, a lot of players buck back at first on it, but that’s where our youth players or guys that have been in the system before who, a Jaylen Smith or a Tom Walkup, who says, hey man, this is great stuff. If we’re leading the league in scoring and stuff like that, not because we play good half-court offense, but because we get so many easy steals and stuff like that, then of course it’s easy for them to want to work on it.
Dan 45:11
You mentioned earlier, and we’ve kind of talked about spots, pushing a direction potentially, whether it’s in the pick and roll or an isolation situation. As we’re talking a little bit about positioning and footwork and all that, with forcing a direction over the course of your coaching career, where have you found it most beneficial?
Is it from a systematic approach to like, we’re going to force everyone left and systematically that’s going to be a better way for us to play? Or is it like more of a personnel decision of a certain guy in a scout report to push a certain way? Have you found one or the other or like the layers of pushing a direction to be beneficial?
John Patrick 45:47
I think it’s hugely beneficial. Now with Synergy and all these programs, you can get stats on it also, but there are very few guys that don’t have a preferred direction. A lot of left-handed guys prefer to go right. I had one of the best players I’ve ever coached and most competitive guys I ever coached was a left-handed guy who can’t go left. He cannot go left.
He played in the NBA, he played in the highest level of college ball. He’s still playing and yet it’s wild. In our team and practice, he would really, really struggle because we always push guys to their weekend, which happened to be his left hand, but he couldn’t go left. So I think it takes a little scouting, but I think it’s hugely effective. If you see the way that Royce O’Neill guards James Harden, Royce was really good by the middle of the season. End of the season was unbelievable. Guarding shooters for me, he really bought into it and watching him guard NBA snipers and how he covers their strong hand, it’s proof.
We do it. You can guard a 6’9 shooter with a 6’1 defender if you have good hands. Again, it’s not always the sexiest thing to work on, but it’s effective and we also see examples of the opposite of guys giving up, getting on roller skates, I call it, against Turkey jerky guards who can pull up and it’s avoidable. You can stop that with solid direction footwork and handwork.
Pat 47:20
Say i was pushing left what considerations do you think about if any then when it comes to directional defense and how you want to close out on the ball and is there any the struggle with teaching guys if they have to change their hips or you know get to a side when just attempting to make the close out.
John Patrick 47:38
This is a great question and starts with the basic athleticism of players. We’ve had the luxury here, I had the luxury of being in charge of the youth program for a long time where we worked on this with under 12, under 14, under 16, and then we had a whole swarm of guys from our youth program that played BBL all at one time, who played pro even though they were in high school because they could play the defense we wanted to, and part of that was that they were really good with their one-on-one footwork and closeouts.
Again, the basic would be pushing a guy to his weak hand, and so you’re closing out with your right hand on a left-handed shooter and your left hand on a right-handed shooter. That can be super confusing for a guy that’s never thought about, you know, 24-year-old professional rookie who’s always closed out maybe pushing outside, no middle, something like that. Also, some guys have trouble thinking, okay, my left, his right, my right, they’re looking at their hands. I can understand it if it’s the first time they’ve ever done it, but it’s super effective. I had this explained to me at a Nike camp about 20 years ago. I was the director of grassroots basketball for Nike in Asia, and a NBA coach said, hey, look, when you dribble to your strong hand and shoot, you have to twist into it so it gives you an extra second to react on defense. So if I’m right-handed and I drive right, I have to spin into my shot and I actually spin into the defense. But if you’re going left with your right hand, you can just pull. You can step back, you can pull. So if your hand isn’t in the shooting pocket when a guy’s going to his weekend, he’s going to pull it and it’s going to be too late. And it makes perfect sense, but I hadn’t thought about it until then. And then I started teaching, I stole that, which, you know, I steal everything. None of this is my original idea, but it really works. Again, this year, we were the best defensive team in the BBL and one of the best defensive teams in Europe, but it wasn’t like rocket science because we had so many injuries. It was about covering the pockets and the windows and the pick and roll and not giving up easy catching shoots. It was just some basic stuff that we worked on since the preseason that we did until the end of the season.
Dan 50:07
Coach, great stuff. You’re off the start, sub or sit hot seat. Thanks for going through. We knew we’d get to defense. That was tough. That was fun.
Coach, we got a final question to close the show before we do again. Thank you for your time and all your thoughts today. This was a blast for us.
John Patrick 50:22
Thanks. It’s a lot of fun for me too, in the offseason to talk to you guys. Thank you, coach.
Dan 50:28
Coach, our last question that we ask all the guests is, what’s the best investment that you’ve made in your career as a coach?
John Patrick 50:34
I think it was probably going places that I’ve never been to learn about basketball. I made an investment to go to Belgrade in 2003. I’ve met some coaches at a Nike camp, and I went over with a young guy. My roommate actually Darko, who’s now the head coach of the Toronto Raptors, but at the time he was just an under 18 coach at Red Star and went over there and watched practice for a week or 10 days, and it was unbelievable. It totally changed my philosophy about how to develop players. I’ve learned a ton from being in Japan, where I assumed incorrectly that I knew more than people in Japan knew when I went there. Actually, I ended up learning a ton about footwork and how to develop smaller players. Just getting more athletic. So my investment was unexpected, but it was going to new places and learning a ton from just being in a different, uncomfortable environment.
Dan 51:42
All right, Pat. Hey, I was excited for you towards the end there. We got been a while. We got to close out conversation at the end.
Pat 51:48
It has been a minute and I didn’t even dawn on me until you brought it up. So, it was a total package in terms of what I could look for in a podcast today.
Dan 51:56
100% awesome to have coach Patrick on today. As we mentioned on the show, you know, watched his teams. I mean, you’ve obviously seen him up close being over there in Germany and we’ve had ex-assistance who are now head coaches like Josh King on, David Gaylon, who’ve been around him. And so we’re very familiar with his teams and his style of play.
His teams are always fantastic defensively, which was something we got into, but he was great today. It was great having him on.
Pat 52:21
Yeah, it was cool to be like you alluded to so close to it in terms of watching it and having an opportunity to play against it at times from different coaches that have come from his program in his tree so that finally kind of get the opportunity to sit down with them pick his brain. And get into some of the details of defense and then of course i think as we kind of get in this wrap up also looking at the other side of the ball i think he’s talked a lot for sure about defense and we don’t want to skip that but In the opportunity to know building off of our conversation with coach helen samson which also come from another defensive minded program just. What coaches should be thinking about offensively or when you’re according to defense or thinking more playing through your defense what the offense looks like and so before i feel any of your thunder daniel throw to you for the first takeaway.
Dan 53:11
First, I’ll just double down on what you said. We thought it would be interesting to start here, and it was, just to hear a great defensive minded or defensive leaning coach historically, what he does offensively. And he did mention too, he’s had years where they’ve led the league in scoring. So it’s not like his teams have, it’s not always a rock fight, like his teams can score as well.
I think the takeaway and the interesting part that I took from the first bucket centered around pace of play and the higher level decisions that a coach at his level is thinking about how it interacts and connects to every part of how you want to play from a strategic to a philosophical standpoint. And that it’s not just, oh, let’s just play fast because we heard it on a podcast somewhere. You got to deeply consider how the pace of what you’re doing affects all parts of your team. And he mentioned some things too about that they can adjust the lever of the pace based off of if they think it’s strategically advantageous against that opponent. So it’s not just like they’re always at zero or they’re always at 10. It’s kind of like a dial for them where if they can play faster against certain opponents because they’re more talented or they want to speed them up or name the thing, he’ll think about doing that versus if they need to slow it down. You also ask some good follow-up questions about if your point guard is a really good point guard or is a jet. Well, we’ve had conversations with coaches who have had like a pretty good jet point guard. So it’s like, well, it makes sense to play that pace. So I thought it was like a good nuanced conversation and thoughts from him about, yeah, hey, it sounds good, play fast, guys love it, all that kind of stuff. But you got to really think about this, think it all the way through and how it affects your offensive rebounding, transition defense, and the stamina of your guys and what’s your bench. It was both my favorite part of the first bucket and it, I’m not going to say it’s a miss by coach Patrick, but I could have gone deeper on all these little parts because I think that is a real consideration when you’re thinking about pace. So we could go deeper on that even more. Completely.
Pat 55:15
I thought coach Patrick gave, like you mentioned, really great considerations when looking at pace and really what advantage it can or cannot give you. And I thought it was interesting to, you know, studying his teams and knowing of course how disruptive they want to be on defense and that if they have the personnel, they’re looking to press and to trap. So it’s not just like a blind like, yeah, we want to be disruptive on defense and press trap, like, you know, speed them up. So we’re going to play fast on offense. I thought that was like a really interesting dichotomy.
He shared and kind of going through his thoughts, then it’s not just a blind application of pace and what he really considered and he raised some good points from his past experiences and, you know, coaches we’ve talked on, I mean, I think we think of coach Ben McCollum that he’s been on teams, coach McCollum’s coach teams that are really what you could say pace averse and we’re just more prioritized being methodical and the tedious nature of that and I use tedious in a good way, but just like how it grinds also the defense down, you know, and not from a sense that they’re just coming at you in waves, but like they’re going to make you defend three, four actions. And it also kind of then as connected to later in the conversation, we talked about finishing plays, you know, testing teams, yeah, maybe the first five, seven seconds, they’re going to be at their best, but you get to that third action, you know, and maybe that’s where the advantage is and what coaches need to consider like, you know, maybe we’re not going to be able to break them in that, you know, their transition D or they’re going to have the athletes to get bodies and wall up. But if we’re consistent enough, methodical enough in our offense, get them to that second third action, are they going to have the discipline to stay solid and then maybe that’s where we can exploit it. So again, really interesting from just looking at pace from playing on both ends of the spectrum. And then now, you know, here now, maybe ways you can slide the dial, I mean, I don’t think he’s referring to playing completely fast, so just basically walking it up. But like the margin that coaches should consider in terms, okay, let’s try to play the fastest we’re capable of versus, okay, let’s slow it down to what our capabilities are.
Dan 57:23
For sure. Pat, let’s move on to our second takeaway with Coach Patrick and I’ll kick back to you.
Pat 57:29
My second takeaway was coming from your start subset when we talked about different ways to attack hedging defense through the flip screen, the Ram screen, the Spain. And I liked the thoughts he shared on flipping.
You know, I think we’re seeing it a ton and we had a good conversation as well with coach Tabellini on defending the flip. Yes. But within that and throughout the course of this conversation. And as we moved through defense, he kept coming back to the importance of building confidence and like, if they’ve just seen the action over and over and over again, the ability then to defend it, to maybe sniff some things out. I mean, that was my big takeaway. And I think whereas we talked about offense where he kind of played more through just giving them freedom, some concepts, I think what he alluded to here is he kind of flips it where he’s early on, like what actions are we going to see and just drilling those constantly. I think he alluded within the first week, you know, they’re already talking about different sort of whether it’s this flip screen, Ram screen, Spain, you know, and just getting it to them early and it’s going to be ugly. It’s going to be a struggle, but it’s just all in that effort to build the confidence and, you know, I know we hit a lot on like technique and strategy, but I think it kind of rang true throughout the whole defensive conversation. It was all about building confidence and communication.
And once you’ve got those things, he or any other coach can figure out, yeah, does it make sense? The hedge does make sense to drop how, you know, the other part of this conversation, the wall, where should the wall be like? But it’s all like this foundation rings from like, just giving them the reps early, putting them in these situations and just getting them confident as quickly as possible to increase your affectivity and defending whatever the action may be. In this case, the flip screen.
Dan 59:14
He had a good quote within this, good defensive teams don’t give up easy baskets in the pick and roll. Definitely true.
And I think when you ask them follow ups about the triangles off the ball, like the other three defenders, and we got into the walls that they’re trying to build and the considerations of going to the two side versus the one side. And at the end of the day, you could tell that’s the lens that a lot of coaches at his level have to look at the pick and roll through of like, we can’t give up easy baskets here because players are too good at those levels, though they’re going to torture you if you’re not really solid. You’re giving up the shots that you want them to shoot rather than be at their mercy. And so I think I had asked him the question of about being great later in the shot clock and your team staying connected through the whole 24 seconds to the end. I think he gave the story about when you ask teams like what beats you and what hurts you and kind of like working back from there and getting to the point of, you know, we can’t give up easy baskets. So, no matter what happens in the possession, the core principles of our defense, like you just mentioned, like they have to hold all the way through these possessions, they have to finish in these ways.
Pat 01:00:19
And one other point I enjoyed that he made and I thought spoke pretty honestly to is when we were talking about the wall, we hear it all the time that you want to keep the pick and roll two on two or even man to man keep it one on one, you know, you don’t need a coverage, you don’t need a help. And of course, that should be like the underlying principle in terms of getting your guys on the ball to defend and the big be active and physical, but it clearly going to happen.
It’s going to happen a lot. And the importance he emphasized on the triangle, the shell behind it, or even this wall defender and that that is what really separates the better defenses or the defense that are thinking about that, how they wall, how they tag and really being disciplined on it. And really, again, building confidence of it is probably going to, at the end of the day, be the better defensive team. I like just that point that he made that, you know, in his eyes, these are like the separators to it’s thinking about the wall and the triangle. All right, Dan, I’ll throw it to you for our final takeaway.
Dan 01:01:16
So I’ll go to your start sub-sit, and I’m going to go to specifically the follow-up I had about pushing directions, forcing left or forcing a player that we canned, basically. Because I think his answer was kind of wrapped up in there too with the handwork and the footwork. And I think you can imagine how good his teams have been defensively over the years. He is just maniacal about their feet and their hands, and you had a good follow-up about not fouling. They’re just really, really good at that.
And I think it’s always interesting when you then try to apply that to when you’re forcing a direction. And in my experience, mostly from poor coaching by me probably, but when you start forcing a direction, sometimes those technique things not go at the window, but players are more focused on just the direction they’re forcing rather than sometimes really being good on the ball and their feet being good or their positioning. You got to really be locked in on those things too. And I think it’s maybe where there was probably even more interesting stuff to go down with him about demanding their hands and their feet and their positioning when you are going to force a direction. And I’ll pause here because I thought that was an interesting part of that conversation and considerations for defenses.
Pat 01:02:29
Yeah, this is why Coach Patrick is known for just being such a good defensive-minded coach. He spoke really well on the importance of the footwork, the importance of the hands and deflections and the pushing left. But he did acknowledge, yeah, it’s confusing for guys at times with the closeouts and what hands and where they’re forcing and why the importance of being low but keeping your hands up and guys that can keep their hands up but can’t get in a stance. And what came across is, I mean, of course, why it’s important and the reasoning, it’s just you got to do it.
And that’s why I say it takes time, it takes effort. And then I think you see, while in the offensive end, he’s going to give them some freedom, let them play more in concepts because they’re going to spend 45 minutes on footwork technique and hand technique. And then they’re going to drill the closeout technique and the directional because he knows it’s not easy. He gave a couple of different stories of guys that coming over haven’t been able to stay in a stance or you see them get deflections, but they’re lunging, which puts you also out of position. And it’s the importance of the details, but you can’t skip them without putting time in. I believe him and we’ve talked to Coach King like it is 45 minutes a day for the first couple of weeks, because it’s important to them. And so to me, it goes back to your philosophy, whatever you want to value, it’s just you just got to emphasize it and you got to do it. There is no magic bullet. And I thought Coach spoke very well on the importance of why he values these things. Of course, we didn’t have a two hour podcast to get into all the details of the foot angles, how you stop and how you rotate your hips. But the essence is there. It’s just these guys got to get confident in doing it.
Dan 01:04:05
I think throughout the show, it became more and more apparent that so much of what he builds upon are these base principles about not losing. I think he mentioned the Bobby Knight quote about the negative thinking. And he also had a good quote in the beginning when we were talking about pace and he was saying, winning is the job. So that is what you’re trying to do every game.
So these things are adjustable because you’re just trying to beat that team that night. You’re not trying to just look good on the stat sheet over the course of the season, trying to win that game. And then going to this question now, the simplicity of the closeout and the directional defense and not fouling. I mean, he knows most possessions are going to end in a closeout situation if you’re playing really good teams with really good guards and all that. So no matter what they’re doing on the ball, ball screen stuff, there’s probably a closeout that’s created. So spending a lot of time on that closeout. And then at the end of it too, not giving up easy baskets on fouls at the rim, those things right there, closeouts and not fouling, I think most really good defenses you would look at and say they’re pretty darn good in those areas. And so for him, I’m sure there’s so much time and energy and effort. Hence 45 minutes to start the training stuff, because at the end of the day, that’s going to be what your team is in all the time, every possession against good teams. It’s going to be
Pat 01:05:20
be their separator. It’s gonna be what sets them apart and distinguishes them and there’s just no way around it. They gotta do it.
Dan 01:05:27
Yeah, absolutely. Pat, we’ve kind of sprinkled in some areas that we could have gone deeper on, potential misses, not from coach Patrick, of course, just things that were interesting that we didn’t quite explore anything else from your end.
The one thing,
Pat 01:05:41
As we wrapped up here, I wish I had followed up when we were on the push left conversation. And when we’ve had it before with coaches, I think Coach Henderson about pushing left. When you’re on one side of the court pushing left to the baseline, but then you’re on the other side pushing left to the middle and maybe tying in the wall conversation we had, I guess how that plays into your rotations behind the ball. It’s definitely easy to say we just contain one-on-one and we don’t worry about it, but it’s going to happen.
And I guess what are the considerations there? Of course, when it’s a baseline drive, we can kind of put that in our head how we help rotate out of that. But when it’s a middle, how much are you committing on the ball? Where’s the help coming from at the rim or from the wall guy? So wish I’d followed up there, maybe tie in both those conversations we had with the push left in the wall.
Dan 01:06:30
You brought up coach Matt Henderson, whose pod was great on this. I think he mentioned on that podcast that in thinking about this is where they eventually got to at least that season, sort of just blitzing out of their ball screens or hedging, no matter what, working on how you would hedge both ways. That way your players aren’t having to overthink.
Pat 01:06:49
Yeah, there becomes a uniformity to the coverage.
Dan 01:06:51
Yeah, well, once again, we thank coach Patrick for coming on and sharing today. Thank you everybody for listening and we’ll see you next time.