Guillaume Vizade on Limiting PNR Turnovers, Offensive Rebounding Tactics, and Developing Young Talent {Vichy Clermont}

Inside the Episode

We headed to France on the podcast this week where we had the pleasure of diving into a ton of great topics with Vichy Clermont Head Coach, Guillaume Vizade! Coach Vizade lays out great nuggets of wisdom and teaching points on:

• Limiting PNR Turnovers: We started the conversation with Coach Vizade’s thoughts on building the fundamentals of a great PNR team, and specifically, how he thinks about limiting turnovers. In this conversation we discuss spacing, role clarification, reads, moving North-South to East-West, and much more. Terrific thoughts throughout. 
• Offensive Rebounding Tactics: During the “Start, Sub, or Sit?!” segment we heard Coach Vizade’s ideas on offensive rebounding and where and when he prefers to send players to the glass. His club is one of the best in France’s Pro B division this year when it comes to offensive rebounding, and his thoughts on the “corner crash” and much more are worth the listen.
• Growing Young Talent: Coach Vizade and his club are known for their ability to turn young, talented players into great pros, and we had fun hearing how he thinks about developing these players as they mature. We walk through meaningful playing time, surrounding them with other good players, and more.

Transcript

Guillaume Vizade 00:00

Transition moments are always been interesting points for me as a coach. Transition moments, like from offense to defense, defense to offense. It was my key point to develop my philosophy as a coach. I say, for me, the opportunity out there. You’re gonna be a good defense if you transition well in defense. And you’re gonna be a good offense if you emphasize and develop the quality and the ability of the players. 

Dan 01:52

And now, please enjoy our conversation with Coach Guillaume Vizade. Coach, thank you very much for making the time for us middle of the season. We’re looking forward to having a conversation with you today. 

Guillaume Vizade 02:14

Thanks for having me. That’s a great time and great opportunity for me too. 

Dan 02:17

Thank you, Coach. We’d love to dive in with this question and this conversation with you, and that’s eliminating or cracking down on turnovers within the pick and roll and running an offense that’s high rate of pick and rolls, getting it into it quickly with good pace, but then also, you know, making sure that you’re not throwing the ball out of bounds and all over the gym and having turnovers and how you think about those two things, playing with structure and playing without turning it over a lot. 

Guillaume Vizade 02:46

I think that first of all, that’s not the purpose, like not turning the ball over is not the goal, it’s more consequence and a good and positive consequence. So the way you’re bringing the terminology on what you want on the pick and roll and also the spacing you build around the pick and roll and the time you’re going to spend practicing the pick and roll at the pace you want, in the situation you want, if you want it early, if you want it isolated, one player, two players in the back, in the middle, it will help you decrease the number of turnovers. And also, of course, the quality of the players, but in my situation, I bet on a lot of young players, some of them are not like recognized as pick and roll pro players, so it’s part of the process to go through moments, situation during the year where you’re going to have turnovers. But if you stay stuck in only that negative aspect of the pick and roll, it’s certainly going to impact the mental of your players and their capacity and freedom to make the right reads and also the right passes. And it’s a subtle combination and I really think it starts from day one. 

Pat 04:02

I’d like to just start with you said defining the terminology you want when you put together your pick and roll offense, if we can just start there, elaborating on what kind of terminology you like to set forth. 

Guillaume Vizade 04:12

It’s good to start with that point because it’s the first week of our practice. I’ll start the year with the different problems we’re going to face into our offense, especially into our pick and roll situation. For example, this year I got a good shooter of the pick and roll as a point guard. The name is Trey Boyd. So I say the first problem we’re going to face is hard hedging. We’re going to put different defense we’re going to face. We’re going to want you to release the ball. So we need to be organized this way. You’re reading going to be easier. So we start implementing the short-roll offense against the step-out. And we start moving on the technical abilities at two, at three, four, five. And it’s going to be one practice.

And we’re going to take time to say, okay, the first really is the small advantage around the pick and roll. And what we want to create is the biggest advantage. So during the first pass, we need to work around the mobility around the pick and roll. For example, when we play on short-roll situation, we play on baseline cuts. The ball is high on short-roll, so we cut from the bottom. When we’re going to move into the low post situation or the drive baseline, we’re going to cut from the top. 45, opposite 45. So that stuff we bring together. Let’s say the second situation we’re going to face are the switching defense. So day two, we’re going to say, okay, perhaps we’re not going to switch early pick and roll, perhaps not what we want in the first situation of a set play. But at the end of the position, we know we’re going to face this. So that’s going to be the second big problem.

So we’re going to move on this. When we play against the switch, if it’s early enough, we play single side with a flash from the low man from opposite side. And we try to find the high low. Not possible. The guy cut and follow through to the corner. Boom, wrong pass to the top. Eyes on situation. But we need to move around that. So when I talk about terminology, you say, okay, we’re going to use those words and we’re going to work it. And during the first week, we talk about the defense and the problems we face, but we’re not putting defense because the guys are still in the situation. They just start back practicing. So it helps also a lot. The young players to only focus on the spacing, the timing, the locations, and where we say, okay, that’s a top pick and roll. That’s a slot pick and roll. That’s a side pick and roll. Eisel and stuff like that. Sometimes it feels basic. But when you have different people coming from different environments and also guys with their first year as pros, it’s really important to make it understandable from everybody. 

Dan 07:08

You mentioned how you have a guard that’s a great shooter out of the pick and roll and how you’ve thought about how that changes or doesn’t change how you play the pick and roll as opposed to maybe having a guard that’s a tremendous passer or tremendous downhill driver. When you have someone that’s a shooter, how you think about setting up your pick and roll around a great shooting guard coming off that screen. 

Guillaume Vizade 07:29

the balance has to be made that a shooter of the pick and roll gonna find a lot of situation okay for him to shoot it. You need to balance it with the rest of the team and sometimes the team needs to make him play off the ball and more in the spacing and use him even if it’s the primary ball handler and pick and roll player sometimes I even put non-specific ball handler and playmaker around the pick and roll and just use him to put his defender as safety or as a tagger and this way we use him differently to find a balance but at the same time it’s important to value that quality because we can value it early on pick and roll create a small advantage on the break and there’s a lot of mistakes on the pick and roll coverage early for example we like to add it it’s easier on the move to change the angle of the screens to change the angle of the guy coming off to try to defend the pick and roll and it’s opening some gaps also we try to move the spacing around this way it gives more freedom to that ball handler to be able to separate to snake to split to have a really big role of creativity his shooting skill sets are opening some creativity of the dribble and for me it’s really important for him to develop this to go to the next level because he’s going to be defended on his primary quality so to achieve his goals and move forward in his career it’s important

Dan 09:14

Coach, if I could circle back to turnovers for a second within all this and ask you another question there about the types of turnovers that are of most important to you to eliminate early. And what I mean is, you know, a player coming off and trying to thread a pass to the roller or try to throw a lob to the roller or trying to find a shooter on the opposite backside or a cutter or, you know, a bad shot being considered sometimes a turnover. Like earlier on when you’re implementing this, what are the turnovers that you find your team making that you find needs to be eliminated as quickly as possible so your team gets better? 

Guillaume Vizade 09:52

When we do that terminology part, we try to help understand what is a good read on the pick and roll against that type of defense. So for example, if you play on the diagonal pass of the pick and roll with two guys in the back and a strong safety. So the corner guy is wide open and you try that pass, it will be okay. And it’s part of the deal that the high level pass. As soon as it start with a good reading and a good try, it will be okay. It’s like a quality shot. If the guy take it and miss it, it will be okay. And everybody needs to understand why is it okay and why we need to try harder.

And the opposite, if we turn the ball over in situation we don’t want, that will be the teaching part. We will stop and most of the time we will use questioning with the players and trying to have their reading of the situation. They say they explained their why, and then we can come back to why is it like a bad turnover for us. And we try to move, but that’s a situation where I don’t want to go too hard, too early because the process of developing young talent is way more complex than that. you

Pat 11:12

Coach, on that note, developing the young talent, or you’ve defined the terminology, you defined like, what are the right passes you want? Like you said, maybe the first week, it’s more 5 on 0. As you start to move now, how do you build the offense? Will you work 3-on-3, or do you think it’s best just going 5-on-5 and playing through it? 

Guillaume Vizade 11:30

We use a lot of five-five to four-on-four, three-on-three, two-on-two, and come back. Or sometimes we start from one-on-one to five-on-five, all the practice. I like to have something we do, like a main chapter in the practice. And then after we come back on shorter stuff, like drilling, let’s say, for example, we implement our motion offense. We got a pick and roll motion offense, and we’re going to start doing it in the drills in the warm-up, and we’re going to build it from one against zero to five against five. It will be like 40, 45 minutes in the practice.

And then perhaps we’re going to come back on what we have done on defending the closeout situation during eight minutes. Then switching the pick and roll, eight minutes, three different topics, small topics, and then we’re going to play live when we’re going to mix the two things. The main part and the little topics we have done. And it will be it for the after pre-practice, after practice will be a different topic. 

Dan 12:37

Coach, thinking about your pick and roll spacing and whether you want to play more through outer third pick and rolls like with an empty side or playing in the middle third, reverse like the different ways and spacings you can play around a pick and roll, once everybody kind of has the general sense of the spacings and the ball handler and all that, as you build your team, how do you think about where on the floor you want, say, a majority of those pick and rolls to take place? 

Guillaume Vizade 13:03

We like to have an offense with moving from a side pick and roll, empty side pick and roll, to a top pick and roll. And we play and develop a lot of short-haul offense, so having a try on the iso pick to play on the short-haul. And if we can’t, we move the ball to the top, play a second pick and roll, and we get the first roller who go under the basket to have kind of a 3-2 alignment. And this way, we can have an opportunity of short-rolling on the side, and after another opportunity to short-roll at the top. And that’s the continuity of offense.

You can do it and continue to do it. One of the options we have is that instead of having the second top pick and roll, we can swing it with the big and go from side to another side. That’s easy to move from one to another, for example. But after a lot of the plays we can have, when we go out of the place and take a decision, we try to jump back on our feet on that spacing. So it’s like the beginning and the finishing. We can build that on the transition, and we can play through that flow. Or we can call a set, start, for example, with, I don’t know, a zipper action top pick and roll. And we’re going to try to play around that top pick and roll. And then we can jump into the motion. We get the top, short-roll, and then we get the side. And we find back the same spacing. And I think that it helps the young player, especially, to play with more freedom during the year and make better decisions. Because that situation, they have repeat and they are familiar too. I think that’s a way of reducing the turnovers, if I link the two subjects. 

Pat 14:53

And coach, with a team that’s maybe struggling with decisions in the pick and roll, what considerations are you taking to the tempo at which maybe you get into that first pick and roll and try to attack out of that first pick and roll versus let’s use the pick and roll maybe to shift the defense and then play to that middle step up, or then maybe we can attack and have more success with our decisions. 

Guillaume Vizade 15:15

I’m really a pro of up-tempo. I’m tracking to play up-tempo. It’s been seven years. I’m in the Pro-B league now. Always have been ranked in the top three teams in possession per game. So we try to use every situation as an opportunity to play up-tempo. So my practice plan linked to this is that if we want to play up-tempo, we need to practice it more than always. This way, we’re going to make a decision in a pace where we practice more than always. And we want to bring the opponent in a situation where they play seven or eight positions more than they are usually playing. So it will be more like tracking the turnover ratio and see if we can bring the opponents in the same area of turnover ratio or beat them at that game. And the goal on that is that we practice a lot of free-on-free, full court with up-tempo, four-on-four, five-on-five. It brings a lot of the young guys of my club practice with us. This way, we can have three different lineups of players. Most of the time, we practice at 13, 14, 15 with all the guys really involved, at least during one hour, 15, 20, during the two-hour practice. So that’s really something important. So we try to keep the ball in movement, like having quick decision. And okay, sometimes perhaps you’re going to mess up the offense a little bit. But I really believe that if we build the right team chemistry in the quick decision, in the spacing and everything, after the flow of the game, it’s going to offer us a lot of opportunities. And in the last seven years, we always have been top-ranked also in scoring and in efficiency, no matter what position we have been ranked at the end of the season. This is also important for me, that our identity is stable, no matter if we have been ranked a third in the division or tenth, it has been mostly the same in the offensive production. 

Pat 17:23

Coach, how are you helping them with the decision on that first empty side pick and roll when to move off of it as far as when maybe your point guard your ball handler is getting stuck trying to explore too much and it’s like hey no like it’s not there let’s move off of it and get to the second one. 

Guillaume Vizade 17:37

Yeah, we try to take the decision of the first dribble attacking the pick and roll. Like, if you want to go deep because the guy protect low drop and you attack the pick and roll, that can be the right decision where you go. Like create, force the guy to really defend you. Create the two against one and perhaps we got a finishing. If we play against defense, perhaps we go, I don’t know, a soft edge, like a quick show situation. Okay, first dribble, you make him defend, he got to defend, perhaps you can re-attack or you release and we move that way on simple concepts. But if everybody do those little things after he flows mostly naturally. 

Dan 18:20

Kind of zooming out of all of this for a second and just how you arrived at wanting to play this style, uptempo, quick pick and rolls for you personally in your past, how you got there to say this is the way I wanna play. 

Guillaume Vizade 18:35

It has been a slow process. I’ve spent a lot of years with the youth teams and the transition moments have always been an interesting point for me as a coach. Transition moments, like from offense to defense, defense to offense, it was my key point to develop my philosophy as a coach. I say, for me, the opportunities are there. You’re going to be a good defense if you transition well in defense, and you’re going to be a good offense if you emphasize and develop the quality and the ability of the players. And 20 years ago, it was less common to open the game on transition, having the bigs, but one or two dribble to pass or sometimes transform themselves into point guards. I think that coming to the U.S. every summer, seeing the young prospects, helped me develop my philosophy into some kind of position land basketball in those seconds. And after with the quality of the players I’ve had, and especially at the pro level, I’ve started working a lot into that pick and roll offense and some teams in Europe were doing it. And in the EuroLeague also, for example, I took a lot from them in the last years, for example, and this year he’s doing it again with Fenebache. Coce do this, he’s running a lot of full court plays, warlike transitions, he flows a lot into his motions, and I really think it’s interesting, and that’s something I’ve tried to learn and implement myself. 

Pat 20:08

Coach, when trying to implement these full-court transition offenses, the level of freedom versus structure that you need to have, like you mentioned, is it positionless? Is it the five needs to always be the rim runner? How you think about the alignment, so when you do transition and you want to play full-court offense, how you think about setting it up and just getting into the right spots, the right actions. 

Guillaume Vizade 20:33

So we try to win some precious seconds into the decision making of the outlet. So we want to have the rebounder opening up to the game, fronting the full court and having two options with the two guards running on the side and the two other guys running. The first one I still play with two guys in the middle because I’m still with a generation of guys where it’s really natural for them to run in the highway. But we don’t consider that four and five need to have a specific job on this. It’s okay for us to have some versatility on this. And we also have some mobility where it’s a wing or a guard as a rim runner. And perhaps it’s going to look for a low post situation early in transition. That’s also something where the guys need to recognize those situations. And we spend a lot of time to work on this. And as soon as we understand the spacing on the outlet, bringing the ball up on the side, we understand this and the continuity. Now I move to the second step. Before doing this, we have moved north to south. Now we want to move east to west and then run the pick and roll offense. And that’s something important for the guys because I think in terms of education, we understand that way. Then we move on the side of the defense. And now we create a difference from the pick and roll. And it allows us to perhaps having also some freedom on the fast break situation, on the dribble drive situation, drive kick. And of course, that’s also a freedom situation, like you were saying. But I’m more into, I want to control the defensive options and give some freedom into the offensive side. 

Pat 23:10

Coach, when you say you want to get the ball east to west, is that really then the freedom is on them, whether through the pass, whether through the drive, or is it through a certain action trigger that you want to get it east to west then after they go north south? 

Guillaume Vizade 23:21

if you got a playing touches off by the dribble, it’s okay to have drive and kick out and we play around that advantage. If not, I’m more into the swing for two reasons. First, you can give opportunity of high lows sometimes. And also, it involves the bigs in touching the ball. And I really am a strong believer that if you want your bigs engaged, they need to be connecting into the passing game. That’s why also I use the short ball offense because it brings the big to take decision and not only decision on the finishing on the low post. So having him on the swing, my top big become like a ponger because after I got two options, he can swing and play the motion away or he can swing, screen away, and we directly jump to the top pick and roll. So it gives him a little bit of decision where he’s not stuck into just going A to B. He got two options. And I think that for the brain of bigs, sometimes it’s also something where you build up confidence. 

Pat 24:28

Tying it back together now with the pick and roll offense and helping decision making, limiting turnovers. You mentioned a couple of times you want to play through the short roll. So I guess maybe it’s a skill development question. How do you help with the decision making of the big when he receives that short roll pass? 

Guillaume Vizade 24:45

It’s a big thing because for us, especially with, let’s say, the young French player, it’s most of the time a skill that developed really late, not a lot natural for them. So it’s a major part of our program. We try to have a lot of routines like some vitamins before the practice where they do self-passing, catch, and try to engage, to shoot, to catch and play. So a lot of guys get vitamins where they got 10, 15 minutes to do that by themselves. And after we do it in the drills, it’s important to develop that mentality that when you are aggressive enough on the catch, it’s interesting, but you’re going to be a good decision-maker when you can see off the catch. And being able to separate your eyes from the catch on the short haul is really a key thing because having a big who can catch and read at the same time, seeing the rotation coming or seeing where the opening are, I think that’s the key point. Because if you do that after, you can come back on your shot, you can go on your catch and play, or you can play on the swing and go for a bigger advantage for shooters, especially when sometimes people try to rotate really hard on the short haul and you need to be ready. So you need to be ready on your eyes and also ready on your feet. And for the bigs, the coordination of the two, like catching away, being flexed, and also separating the eyes. If we do that, I think that after, it will help the guy during through his career. 

Pat 26:29

Coach, what do you tell them with the dribble bad decisions happen when they start dribbling and how you kind of help them when to use their dribble for the big? Yeah, for the staying on the big in the short roll. 

Guillaume Vizade 26:39

It’s a decision where we want to dribble towards the baskets or towards the defenders. The over dribbles, for me, are not really interesting in that situation, and sometimes guys make the confusion that they catch and play to the basket, okay, they got this. Okay, they understand why they need to attack and dribble, engage themselves, finish strong. Some guys have some good physicality to finish the basket, dunking the ball. But when they want to play away, they most of the time dribble to a space. And this is a really bad habit that we are fighting through every day because it’s really hard if you, for example, you receive the ball on the elbow, on the shortfall, and you want to play the ice or pick. And if you dribble directly to 45 degrees, it’s going to be really easy for the defender to go under you and reconnect with your teammates. But if you attack towards the defender, it will open a second angle, and perhaps the first short hold was the okay pass, and now we get the second short roll, it’s going to be like a really good situation to take a decision for your teammate or for you. 

Dan 27:57

We want to move now to another segment that we call Start, Sub, or Sit. And so we’ll give you three different options around a question, ask you to start one, sub one, sit one, but coach, if you’re ready, we’ll dive into this first question. I am. Okay. Coach, right now as we’re recording this conversation, you guys are second in your league in offensive rebounds per game, one of the top teams, offensive rebounding wise. And so we wanted to ask you a question about offensive rebounding. And so these are three different options on an offensive rebound situation that what you think was most important for a team looking to gain extra possessions via offensive rebounding. And so option one is a player crashing from the corner into the key on a jump shot option two is your opposite. Dunker spot, big being able to seal on postups or jump shots to get a rebound in that opposite Dunker spot. And the third option is on free throw misses, Xing, or some kind of action to try to get a miss on a free throw. So start, sub, sit those three offensive rebounding schemes. 

Guillaume Vizade 29:08

Dunking spots opposite of the shots. Even there’s a BS on the statistical facts because we know that people have tracked the numbers and it’s not accurate that it goes damaged out there, but at least you put pressure on the rim. So I keep that one. That’s my best one. I will sub the situation on the corner crash. I like to overpopulate the rebound. Okay. I prefer having more people than no people. And sometimes the corner guys got the qualities. Like we talk about free NDs, but sometimes free NDs are free NDs and rebounders. And sometimes it’s good to get them involved into that. And I will sit the technical part, like the screening of the free throws, because for me, it’s more small tactical where it will be really easy to implement that on the catch if we need it. 

Dan 30:06

Coach, loved your answers here. I’d love to follow up and ask you a question about your sub, which was the corner crash on the jump shots. And if there’s any specific teaching points for you and your team on that corner crash, does it matter to you how they crashed from that corner to, like you mentioned, overpopulate the lane on an offensive rebound opportunity? 

Guillaume Vizade 30:27

It’s like for the cuts, you go into an empty space. If you got a guy in the dunking spot and you’re starting from, let’s say, the corner or 45, you go through the middle. And you try to create that triangle on the offensive rebound, at least with two other teammates. And if you got a big ceiling in the middle during the shot, for example, and you are in the corner, then you’re going to go through the baseline and put pressure on the rim with that angle. It will be kind of the same reading as the cuts. 

Pat 30:58

Coach, we talked earlier about how you thought about the transition part of the game, and that defensively, you were more inclined to have maybe a little bit more rules, a little bit more structure. So just building off of the offensive rebounding, I guess, you know, how many are you trying to send? And as we talked about, whether it’s from the corner, the dunker, and how you start to build your transition defense from there. 

Guillaume Vizade 31:20

Is the same link for us. Like we try to also put people on the rebound to be really high to put pressure. So we want to stop the ball at the same time. For some people, it’s two different goals. But for me, it can be linked together because the best defense is when you defend zero second for me because you got extra possession. So the ball was in the air, doesn’t belong to anybody, you catch it, you have defense zero second. But even if the opponent catch it, best case scenario, you score from the offensive rebound. So now you can set up the defense full court. Second scenario, you lost the rebound. If you lost the rebound, you can still put pressure of the rebounder and slow down is decision making on the first pass, which is at the pro level, you have done a lot of the job to not take a fast break. So now you need to slow down the ball to have a transition defense situation on the transition defense situation. We more into we pressure the ball and the other players need to defend the gaps. And at the same time, they connect at least visually with their players. As soon as we control this and we break down the rhythm of the opponent, now we want to contact people. So we come back to contact, to denying, and we try to stick under the non-aggressive picks. Non-aggressive picks, it will be like on entry where players are not really playing it or situation where people use the ball screen to just get into the offense. And also because of the pressure, we try to have people out of their range and this way gave us the opportunity to stick the situation, go under and after it’s important for us to make the opponent lose one or two seconds doing this. And we want to change the spacing and the angle of the screen. Most of the teams, when they play a pick and roll, they want to have that typical guy in the back of the screens. They want to have those guys in front of the screens. If you change the angle and force them to go on the other side, the relocation can be a problem. So we want to use that moments to jump from a situation where the offense try to take an advantage to a situation where we make them lose seconds. We have the opponent point out to over dribbling the situation, disconnecting from his teammates and create frustration. 

Pat 33:56

Coach, that’s really interesting. I just like to follow up on that point. If they get it to the three point line, would you still be inclined to go under because of the same advantages you said that maybe the point guard over dribbles, they change their spacing. 

Guillaume Vizade 34:08

No. If the location is around the line, it’s still our A defense. If it’s around the line, we’re going to be aggressive to the ball and we can use three tools. One step if it’s enough, two steps if it’s needed, switching if it’s a big agency. The location going to determine this, but the aggressivity of the ball handler going to be also a demeanor. And after we get a special caller for the good ball handler who shoot the ball off the pick and roll, we’re going to say, for example, those player in the scouting, we read those players. It means that we’re going to use the two highest intensity step outs or the switch. We’re going to consider that quick show is not enough against them. For example, we want them to release the ball. 

Pat 34:57

And coach, you also mentioned just the non-aggressive or maybe the false action pick and roll. You’ll just go under. Is that coming more from a scouting perspective or how are you helping your guys kind of say, like, this is just them to enter their offense so we can go under it? 

Guillaume Vizade 35:12

Yeah. Also help me to introduce that there’s some stuff we’re going to accept. Like our defense is not a perfect defense. Opponent’s going to find situation and they’re going to make baskets. But if we are eight, nine meters away from the basket, pick and roll. And the guy stand up and chat and make it, I will take it from me. I can make mistakes in defense too. So when we make the defensive rent ability on everybody, I got my line too. Let’s see if I’m going to be more finished this year than you guys. I don’t know. 

Pat 35:46

All right, Coach. Moving along, our next start subset for you. As you’ve mentioned throughout, you have a lot of young talent. So this start subset has to do with developing young talent, but finding meaningful minutes for them in the game when you have a young player.

So start, sub, or sit the most impactful way or the most used tactic strategy you’ll use to find the minutes in a game. Option one, we call stealing minutes, getting them in end of quarters, start of the next quarter. Option two would be, we call it lineup protection. So making sure they’re out there with a steady ball handler if they’re another guard or, you know, just with the starting core group of guys. Or the last option is favorable matchups. So knowing you can put them out there because they have someone on the opponent they can guard and defensively you’ll still hold steady with them out there. 

Guillaume Vizade 36:38

I would say first putting them the B options, I will pick that one where they are in the lineup, you want at the moment you decide. I think that’s the best option. This way you can repeat it and have a continuity during the season and they’re going to develop. I will stop the situation of stealing minutes because I think it helps building up the mentality for the young player and also give them the opportunity to steal and stay if they do great. I will sit the situation on the matchups because they got enough pressure with their own situation than dealing with the matchup situation and I think they are greedy enough and they wanted enough to don’t care that much about their matchups and they’re going to try to overperform against matchups who are perhaps at the beginning of the game. Everybody going to say like, okay, this guy is going to crush the young guys and they’re going to show pride into that naturally. So I’m not using that one that much. 

Pat 37:42

Coach, if there’s anything else, you think about balancing, obviously winning, you’re at a professional, very high level, winning, and also, like we’ve talked about here, giving these young guys meaningful minutes so they can develop and not just a plus 20 down 20 minutes. 

Guillaume Vizade 37:58

A culture of the team that I try to build and sell to recruit players with my management is that we’re going to help develop young talent. So I would say it’s a 50-50. It’s perhaps easy for me to answer that, but when we recruit somebody, we help him and tell him, are we going to practice? Are you going to play? And trying to make it clear. So we want that part. We can organize it, structure it, and we can control it. The winning part is a consequence of a lot of other things, especially we need to stay in the league. We need to do some performance to have some fans and to develop the sponsor and everything. But I think that we have a win in the long term and perhaps the club have a win also, even if I’m going away in the culture, because we have been able to do what we have to commit. We commit to do stuff and through the last years, we have had a lot of young guys, young French players, and the fact that we respect the deal, we have signed with them in moral deals and also on everything. I think it has helped us a lot. It helped us a lot in every past season, because now every year we got several talents they want to come and try to play for us. 

Pat 39:27

Coach, with younger talent, if you really want to build them up to develop them, they need to play versus it’s not enough just to have them practice the whole year, but ride the bench and not really get in-game minutes. 

Guillaume Vizade 39:39

They need to play. Even if some of the steps are out of the paying time and those steps are needed and on the long term where we need the practice, where we need the routines, where we need the post practices, that’s for sure. But during the practice we need to be involved, take decisions during the practice and also doing it in the game. I believe into the frequency of this.

If the guy knows that he’s going to have a window and perhaps one window per period, at least one in the first half, one in the second half, he’s going to build up a lot of things. Sometimes his mistake is going to shorten his playing time, but he’s going to have a second window. Sometimes his quality time is going to give him extra minutes, perhaps the second one won’t. But at least it helps developing him. And after, I think you need a plan where a young player, if you believe in his evolution, you need to have his situation evolving. Perhaps you get somebody, you put two passes away from pick and rolls, then you try to play in the back of the pick and rolls, then you try to play him as a ball handler. I don’t know what evolution, but perhaps an evolution on what you expect from him on the court, perhaps there’s an evolution into the minute he has to do the same jobs, but things need to evolve. If it’s static, I think that you lose the young talent because you’re not helping him going through the steps he’s supposed to have. At those moments, he can be legitimate to change the environment for a young player. 

Pat 41:26

Coach, you mentioned that their minutes, you give them these windows, maybe some mistakes shorten their windows. Do you hold them to the same accountability as your professionals, your veteran players, or I guess, where’s the line in terms of mistakes where it’s like, all right, he’s a young guy. We got to let him play through it versus, all right, this is a mistake. His window is going to be shortened today. 

Guillaume Vizade 41:45

I think that treating everybody equally is sometimes a fantasy. I don’t really believe in treating people with like that communism system where everybody gets the same. I know I’m human. I got some bias by myself and also the attention, sometimes the love and the help I want to give to the young players. It won’t be the same with another player. And I don’t want to bring me playing a role to try to treat equally those situations.

Because for me, they are not. But at the same time, there’s some stuff and some mistakes. There are mistakes of the team. We were talking at the beginning on the mistakes, on the readings, on the different pick and roll situation. And if anybody of the guys are not following the rules of the team in terms of spacing, of cutting and stuff, then on this, we treat equally the mistakes on the team

Dan 42:46

Coach, you’re off the start, sub, or sit, hot seat. Thanks for playing that game with us. Enjoyed your answer there. That was a lot of fun. 

Guillaume Vizade 42:52

Thank you. 

Dan 42:53

We got one more question for you as we close the show before we do really appreciate your thoughts today, like I said, middle of the season, you coming on and making time for us. So thank you very much for doing that today. 

Guillaume Vizade 43:03

Okay, no, thank you. It was a really good time. 

Dan 43:07

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? 

Guillaume Vizade 43:14

I would say the first investments is to have been always someone question himself and try to improve and learn from others. And it helps me opening some doors and opportunities.

And one of the biggest opportunities I had in my life was with an NGO called Giving Back. I’ve worked and helped the program almost 10 years and we were helping some kids going from Africa, from France, from Europe to the US through our AU program during the summer in Vegas, then participating for the best of them to the Adidas nations. And then a lot of them have received some scholarship in the NCAA. A lot of them have done pros. And through that process, I’ve certainly teach a lot, but I’ve learned more because perhaps I’ve given some, but I’ve received way more. Because culturally, I have opened my perspectives, my vision of life. I’ve been able to travel, meet a lot of people in Africa, in America. And this, I think it has been like a time investment because as soon as I finished the season with my youth team, I was jumping into the program, April, May, June, July, August. During all those years, I was not taking any over holidays or stuff, but this journey has been amazing to me. I’ve been able to meet people from the highest level in the world. Some guys have played in the NBA, a lot of them have played in Europe and amazing people around that. Also, people who have helped us into the program, Rising Money, it was like really amazing. 

Dan 45:01

All right, Pat. Gosh, just kind of getting right into this right away. It was a really enjoyable conversation as we’ll get into and, you know, really, really nice guy off the air. We haven’t had a whole lot of coaches from France yet on the show. And so I appreciated hearing his thoughts and the different philosophies on how to play. And he also has really cool connections to the U.S. Like we touched on just a little bit, him running an AAU program for about 10 years. He was telling us after the show out of Vegas. So we had some good laughs about the AAU scene in the U.S., him coaching in it, but then also being back in France and coaching. So let’s just dive right in for you. What stood out to you right away? 

Pat 45:43

importance. I mean, we hit on it with everything terminology, but really just kind of simplifying it, especially we’re looking at through the lens of like turnovers, making decisions easier. And so that kind of jumped out at me as we got into it, just simplifying. And, you know, he kept hitting on it. He had a young team and that really it’s the first week. It’s not even with defense. It’s just, we’re going to go five on ill. We’re going to define what the pick and roles are and define how we want to attack different coverages. So not a huge shocker, but yeah, just keeping it simple and taking the time to just kind of walk through the big global vision of where they want pick and roles, how they want to attack, and then starting to layer in all the nuances, the defense, the skills. 

Dan 46:23

I think maybe taking like a step out for a second and our prep for this with him and I guess why we went to that with him because we were able to get connected to him through a mutual friend and KJ Smith who’s been on the show is now working for him and has said nothing but great things about the program he runs and whatnot. And so we were able to kind of pick his brain about what Coach did well. But then you and I have been on a film watching kick about turnovers and specifically in the pick and roll, but we’re really looking into where the team struggle and where they turn it over in the pick and roll. And then to this conversation, watching their film, talking to KJ, talking amongst ourselves with a young team that runs the pick and roll really well, just his thoughts on that, the turnovers. And I think he talked about a lot of things really well. And I loved how he said, starting with the terminology and the spacing and those things. And like always, what sticks out to me is and what you and I usually take away from these conversations are just little nuggets of teaching points around whatever it is that they do. And so there was one nugget in there, it was a bunch, but one just to start was the beginning and finishing spacings and basically how that spacing should look early, whether it’s kind of like a full court look as they flow into the offense or run an empty side into a middle and then they end with a similar look. That was really nice nugget. And then I’ll just add one more. I really liked the starting North South and then getting to an East West in transition. That’s a really nice visual and teaching point too. I just think for flowing into an offense. 

Pat 48:03

Yeah, and to add the one thing I kind of highlighted to when we got into that north, south, east, west and transition and like the first dribble decisions that he teaches his guards, because I think we’ve talked about it before, just the struggle of you play that drag screen that just takes forever and goes nowhere, especially when a lot of teams, and as he mentioned, are trying to also then play to that secondary step up or play to a second side to get it back to the point guard. And yeah, I thought that was really cool. Well, cool. A good teaching point was cool. Cool. It was cool. It was pretty cool. He had to be there for it. Yeah. Yeah. Good teaching point just to help your guards. And again, in this umbrella of simplifying decisions, helping with turnovers of just, you know, after that first dribble, it’s either are you going to attack the rim then attack the pressure on it or right as he called make that release pass. Yeah. 

Dan 48:56

I guess circling in on all this too, the beginning, the finishing, the re-spacing, that early decision, we about a month ago did a breakdown on pattern-borne re-spacing and use of a ghost flare screen late in the offense. And it reminded me of that, of just you run your initial action, you run your stuff. He was really cool. I use it too. He had some points about alignments and that stuck out to me about the alignment stuff. I think just adding on to what you said and maybe just pulling back. The whole conversation, one of the main things I took away too was he talked about transitions within the game, like offensive rebounding to defense or spacing to re-spacing to spacing again. And he talked about how he thinks that’s really where teams get good is in these moments where if you become a good transition defensive team, then your team is good defensively. And I like that. I think you and I are always interested in those little moments in the game and how coaches coach that, teach that, and think about that. And that was another thing that stood out to me is the tiny transitions within the game. Just moving to start, subset, the offensive rebounding question for us came out of the fact that they are such a great offensive rebounding team. And I always feel like with these podcasts, anytime some team does something really well, there’s usually a lot that goes into doing something well. And that stat stuck out. I liked his thoughts on the corner crash and the dunker spot stuff. Yeah. 

Pat 50:21

Yeah. And my one other takeaway too, from this was when we started talking again, going back to the transition and now with the transition defense, and he mentioned that they’ll go under when they’re non-threatening or they’re up really high beyond the three-point line, which makes a lot of sense, but I like to spin on it, but that it changes the angle and forces the offense to play out of maybe a new alignment that they weren’t comfortable with or weren’t really prepared for. Another interesting point to look at the advantages of why we go under, not only is it far out, but now we’ve changed the angle, forced them to react and play out of different alignments. 

Dan 50:57

Yeah. Just real quick, as we round this out, an area I would have gone deeper on how we had more time. He mentioned a couple of things on the defensive side that I just thought those would be interesting threads to pull on. One was the colors for pick and roll schemes for players, which I know we’ve heard before, but I always really enjoyed that teaching point of like, you know, this guy’s a red, this guy’s a blue, really simple color-coded things within the pick and roll for players on the fly, on the court, to know how they’re going to defend those. That was one I thought we could have went down. And then he says something interesting when he was talking about transition defense and basically getting back, you know, getting set. And then after that, he talked about making contact. I think that with players to like get back and make contact,

Pat 51:45

Yeah, it was, it was filled the gaps and then to find contact, I think after the initial rust was neutralized. 

Dan 51:53

Yeah. And maybe there’s not a lot more there, but I just thought like from a philosophical standpoint of players, they get back, they sit in a gap and then you’re kind of in a gap and you’re just at the mercy of what the offense is doing. And I liked how we talked about get back, fill gap, and then make contact sort of like a physicality to transition defense. And he talked a couple of times about pushing them a different angle, like little wins to either be more physical, make them be a step outside of the space they don’t want to be in, make them change an angle so it’s less threatening. I know that’s how the best defenses do it. And so I just liked that comment he made. And if I understood him correctly, I’d like to, you know, talk with him at some point about that more. How about you? Anything missed or looking back? 

Pat 52:36

Looking back at my notes, he talked about a little bit when he asked the question about playing with a shooter in the pick and roll and how he finds that balance and he’ll take him off the ball. And he mentioned just moving space. You know, I know we hit on space a lot, but more so I was thinking moving space, how he then tries to move spacing and alignments in a game. And obviously we talked a lot about working with them, developing decisions, but how, yeah, he thinks about changing the space around a pick and roll. And more so I think it probably gets into the alignments, maybe the play calls and what he thinks about that. I would have liked to have gone down that rabbit hole a little bit more, especially when we were on that shooter conversation. 

Dan 53:14

Just to piggyback on that, I think some of the film we watch, like with the spacing of that, if he knows the team’s like, let’s say in more of a drop, whether you set that screen higher, so your guard come off and have a window to shoot the three rather than shoot a pull up to, I know like back a couple of years ago, we talked with then Dallas assistant, Jenny Bussek, now she’s with the Indiana Pacers, but she talked about how they would just set screens higher for like, yeah, lamello ball, because then bigs and drop that he can come off and he can shoot a three rather than shoot a long two. And so, you know, if you have a shooter in that pick and roll, whether you just keep pushing out higher, so they have a window to shoot it rather than at the three where they’re in drop it to two that you don’t want to shoot as much. Well, this was like all these really enlightening, a lot of great stuff from coach. We appreciate it. Thank you everybody for sticking around and listening and see you next week. We’ll do this again. 

Pat 54:13

Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Please make sure to visit slappingglass.com for more information on the free newsletter, Slapping Glass Plus, and much more. Have a great week coaching, and we’ll see you next time on Slapping Glass.