We were joined on the podcast this week by the Head Coach of the G-League’s Birmingham Squadron, TJ Saint! In this very detailed conversation we dive into a variety of topics including building a connected offense, “hot stove” screens, “mastery days” in practice, and discuss guarding “Delay Action” and defensive rebounding riddles during the always fun “Start, Sub, or Sit?!”
Transcript
Tj Saint 00:00
It’s not the action, it’s the players in action. And that’s something that we gotta get better at is having special player defense for certain guys. To the point, I’m thinking about how to rework our shootarounds and walkthroughs, because we do go over a special play here and there where let’s say you do it and walk through and they run it the one time a game or two times a game, but you guard it perfect and you’re like, great, that really paid off. And then the really good player comes off like an organic whatever and you didn’t read it right, you didn’t show right or you didn’t drop right. It’s fucking.
Dan 01:57
And now please enjoy our conversation with Coach TJ Saint. Coach, we’ve gotten to know each other a little bit over the last few summers out at the Summer League, shared some fun video sessions out there, and we’re really excited to finally get you on the podcast. So thanks for making the time.
Tj Saint 02:23
Yeah, thanks for having me guys. I am excited to be here. You guys do awesome work. I’m a big fan of the show, so it’s good to be on here.
Dan 02:29
Coach, we wanted to start with this. You had the best offense in the G League this year, regular season offense, fourth best, I think, statistical offense in the G League all time. I believe we’re looking at some of the analytics. So a great offensive year for you all and wanted to dive into what you call, when you send us some stuff, your offensive fingerprints, the building blocks, how you built this whole thing out this year with Birmingham Squadron and sort of got it to the level that it was at the end of the season. So we wanted to start there. Your offensive fingerprints for this team.
Tj Saint 03:06
I think a lot of it really starts with alignment with our GM, Adam Barnes. He’s a college scout or director of college scouting in New Orleans, and then he’s our GM of our G-League team. Ironically, he and I have known each other for 15 years, went to the same college. So when he got the GM job, we really were in alignment with the way we wanted to play and the type of players that we wanted to get.
And obviously, it’s more about the players and personnel you get than the coaching, in my opinion. But the way I work and the way my mind is, and has nothing really to do with basketballs, I just find out what is the outcome that you want to get, and I reverse engineer everything backwards. So if you say, hey, somebody wants me to build a bicycle, I have no idea how to do it. So I just find a bicycle, take it apart, now I know how to build it, and I go backwards from there. So it all starts to me with having some type of identity. Who are you? What do you do? How do you do it? The who we’ve talked about is your personnel. How you do it is one of the ways that I wanted to implement my personal identity from the head coaching position into our team. And that’s two sectors or two adjectives that I wanted to bring to our team, which is being fierce, which is being relentless in everything that you do.
And then being a champion, which I stole the quote from Bill Walsh. He used to be the president and head coach of the 49ers. I’m sure everybody’s heard of him. But champions act like champions before they become champions, which is a reverse engineering philosophy, if you will. And so throughout that, building our G-League team, you have to have a set of standards and I call them bars that you have to get to. We actually call it rack the bar, which actually stuck this year. So I might have run with it again. And that’s being the most ready team, being the most attention to detail team. And then the third and most important part, which is connecting to the offense is being the most connected team. And it’s not a stack that you can kind of tally, but people who know the game, even fans, when you watch a team play, especially on the offensive end, you can tell if they’re connected or not. And so that to me, as a coach and building out a team and everything comes after being connected, it’s the most important thing we do.
And it’s very easy to watch on the offensive end. And so again, with the reverse engineer piece, the fingerprint kind of label that I gave things we talked about as a staff this year is I wanted other coaches who played us, other players who played us that after the game was over, they thought that we were a really high pace, connected offensive team. And the fingerprint is kind of the thing that you leave behind, which is literally what a fingerprint is. And so I wanted that feeling or that outcome to resonate after somebody played us. And then we kind of built it backwards from there.
Dan 06:11
I wanted to ask about the players that you wanted and specific skill sets or traits that you thought were going to fit with the way you wanted to play. So.
Tj Saint 06:24
Obviously in the G League, we are, at least the Birmingham Suadron, we’re here to serve the New Orleans Pelicans, right? We’re here to help them and make things streamline for the players, two-way players or the assignments that New Orleans sends us. So we build the team essentially around who we’re told is probably gonna be assigned a decent amount of the year. And then any two-way players that we get, we really only got one two-way the entire year. So we built the personnel around that. Obviously we value character, so high character guys. We wanted high IQ guys if we could. We wanted a lot of shooting around the guys that we thought we were gonna get assigned or two-way to us. So we kind of built it backwards from there. So we did have a mindset of going in, of having a lot of shooting on our team. And then we needed a couple of five men. And it was fairly traditional in the way of, we had two-way point guard, we had a couple fives, not really shooting fives per se, but the traditional, you know, lob threat pick and roll type stuff like that. And then we got a lot of three and D wings around them to kind of build the team traditionally. Now with injuries and call-ups that just obliterated our five spot throughout the entire year, we had to really learn how to figure out a different way to play small, which I had some ideas. We had some ideas of staff going into the season, but as you know, you get into a year and things morph and you find things and, you know, you create new things. So that was a real challenge, but I think something that throughout the year is really gonna pay dividends for myself and our staff down the line and what we kind of discovered going small.
Pat 08:06
What concepts or ideas, what worked, what did you discover about playing small after the season that you guys had?
Tj Saint 08:14
Yeah, other than it’s very difficult to rebound on the defensive end. That’s the thing, I know this is about offense, but that’s the thing that I’ve struggled coaching for two years, it’s just the rebounding and it’s something I’ve just started to really dive into and try to figure out a different approach in teaching it. And I mean, totally different approach. Let’s say you’re landing on some runway and you have to do a go around because of the wind. I want to come in from a totally different runway. I’m trying to really rethink how to do that. But what we discovered, and this is interesting, especially at the pro level, is certain guys, and I’m sure you guys have experienced this in your own walks of life, but when you play small, there’s this, I don’t know what you call it, stigma about who’s the five. And if I’m a certain player, I don’t want to be a five. I’m not really a five. So you have to like build out your small ball lineup, in my opinion, especially in the G league, when guys are looking at themselves as like maybe a wing to get called up or four, whatever four even is nowadays, I don’t even do those numbers. I call it the trigger spot. When we play small, different guys, I can just put them in the trigger, which kind of is a five sometimes, but we try to do some different things out of that. And what one of the main concepts that I really tried to do is isolate X5, whoever X5 is on. And that’s why you had to change the trigger because we can’t control who the other team puts their five on and try to do action to one side to then create a closeout on the other side with that trigger spot.
Pat 09:51
If I’m following you it was action on one side to create a closeout for the trigger man against the x5
Tj Saint 09:58
Yeah, so that’s one of the things we can do the other things we can do is run some of our basic normal offense Which we would run with the traditional five and just put that trigger spot there so they have more free flowing You know, there’s more pops We did some we call them maydays So like anytime there’s a pelican Anytime you run into a guard to guard slip out like if you slip and pop we called it mayday If we old we called it push so within like a play call I could call like for mayday and they knew That it was going to be a pop or I could call for push for one of our alignment offenses And they knew it was going to be a roll and the roll I tried to do it The term I have for it is like hot stove if you put your finger, you know, you’ve done it We’ve all done it or maybe we all haven’t I did it as a kid and I was an idiot But touch the hot stove and you’re like, you know As soon as you touch it your finger goes up because it’s hot and that’s what we tried to do with our pushes is Hot stove it into rolls Take action that way and then you get more skilled players catching it in the pocket and then they can make decisions out of that And again, we had a lot of shooting so you had to guard essentially everybody from three on our team except the five.
Pat 11:07
With that hot stove screen, we are beginning to see it more and more. I guess what is the benefit? What have you found or why are teams doing it more? Why are you guys doing it? It’s gaining popularity. So what is the advantage of doing the hot stove screen?
Tj Saint 11:21
It’s funny. I would have said a few years ago, people don’t practice guarding it, but we practice guarding it all the time and it’s still difficult. I mean, I remember being in Detroit in like 2015 and thinking about all the scouts and all the different games, and that was still like the hardest thing for us to guard back then. I think what it is, the guards, because it’s so random and they’re used to being a little bit off their man and some sort of help. And if you can get into like a Mayday or push randomly, and they’re a little bit late, most guards aren’t used to dropping. Most guards aren’t used to being up to touch. And so they either switch or stay and they’re so worried about their man that you can create some sort of advantage with that notion.
Pat 12:04
On this hot stove screen, are they rolling, popping out to the perimeter, or are they short rolling into the key, into the pane?
Tj Saint 12:10
So yeah, the hot stove would be more like that’s like a concept So the Mayday is a pop the push the role they can kind of do either or I can make a call You know out of a play push or Mayday Which they know what to do and that’s part of our structure and how we you know vocab the offense But yeah, the hot stove is just like sometimes you see it all the time Guys just run by and they might pop and they just tap their hip But if you know, they’re gonna roll We literally want to take both hands and kind of hot stove it into like the short roll area the nail.
Pat 12:40
And with the technique when you’re going to hot stove it for the role, is it like they kind of push off and it’s just like they’re just straight backpedaling into it. I mean, there’s no opening or turning, right? Kind of like they push off and backpedaling.
Tj Saint 12:52
Yeah, you want to just tap. I mean, literally like a hot stove. And that’s why you use vocab to really make it resonate and stick. Because I think that’s one of the things that you can do to better have your culture, your vocab better is have your own sticky words that are a little bit different.
But yet you just tap and you keep vision of the handler. It’s not a quick turn where you go like this and lose vision. And it’s not a full reverse pivot, old school screen. It’s just kind of what you said, you just tap and kind of back up into it.
Dan 13:24
Coach, love to zoom out for a second on some of this stuff and talk about install, learning all these things for your guys that are going up and coming back down, and your thoughts that over the last couple of years, going from assistant to head coach of just installing these things, whether it’s 5 on 0 , mostly 5 on 5, smaller game stuff, player development, I’m sure it’s all a little bit of that stuff, but your preference to make this stuff stick.
Tj Saint 13:47
our player development a little bit differently. Some of it’s because we only actually had two baskets to work at in the gym that we practice at. But the other part of it is, there’s a lot of emphasis on just 1 on O with a coach and a basket. Guys do it the entire off season.
And we did that a little bit, but we did a lot of group work in our player development. So we’d split different groups, half the team would be in the weight room, half the team would be on the floor for player development, 15, 20 minutes. And most teams do that, but we did a ton of conceptual stuff. So we’d have days where we would install certain things. And that was a lot through training camp and early, and then throughout the season, you want to install things. So instead of doing a lot of free practice, walk through this and everybody just walks through, then you warm up. We did that some, especially on defense, but we did a lot of our install NPD and then repped it within the group, but within the offense, so we could get them used to playing five on five better once we got the practice. It’s something I always wanted to really try to see if it would be better. And I think it is. Now you got to balance the issue of guys really want individual attention too. So we did some of that after practice and then we’d have install days where we do something new. So three different concepts here, install days, we had mastery days where we would do things that we already knew or already had been installed and just try to master them. And then we had days that we called get what you need or individual days. We would send a text out the night before when we sent all the practice information out, hey, tomorrow’s going to be a get what you need day. Text your individual assistant coach or your PD coaches and you guys work it out from there. And it’s kind of a self-directed player directed day.
Pat 15:43
And what size groups, was it three on three? Predominantly, did you ever go to four on four? And also, did you break the groups up based off of, I mean, maybe you mix in position, skill, or was it bigs, guards, you know, a group of guys that are going to play together?
Tj Saint 15:56
Yeah, that’s a great question. We did not just do it with bigs and guards. There was a lot of times three on three, but we’d be out there as coaches to like to defend or token defense. So we always have a big in a group, we’d always have, you know, some sort of way and we’d have like a hand pillar. So that’s how we kind of laid out the group.
So we actually had a mini team out there to work on different things. Now, on some of the days where it was, you know, the mastery days, it might be a little bit different. And if we’re just doing some repetitions of things we’ve already done, or if we’re just doing a million, we call them touches, but pin down work, things like that. We tried to blend the group to have like a team out there. Because again, there’s a lot of emphasis placed on just 1 on 0, and I get it, I get it. But when you get out there, there’s nine other guys on the floor and you’re playing with four other teammates. So going through, you know, my coaching journey, I just thought player development could be implemented a little bit differently. And so we did a lot more group work than probably normal.
Pat 18:05
On these mastery days you mentioned that maybe you’ll have coaches defending I guess how live are you getting and how are you thinking about maybe helping the guys actually read the concept and just how you thought about maybe structuring drills so guys are actually retaining and learning.
Tj Saint 18:21
Part of it is we never actually fully went live in PD except some days some of our coaches got really competitive and it got kind of live and we had to kind of tone that down a little bit which a lot of fun you know a lot of talking back and forth with the players but that was a lot of fun I think to answer your question is how much do I think about it all the time I think about the reads all the time and that’s really what we did primarily within that we would get out there and you know we don’t have any film necessarily watch but we would go through certain things hey like if we’re playing and let’s say we got a couple days before we play okay see blue I’ve already gotten the report from the assistant I’ve already gotten the film what do they do on all the typical type actions or things we’re gonna go so I already know what we’re gonna face so we would guard it exactly like what we were gonna face for the next two days in PD we do it in 5 on 0 versus coaches the same thing whatever we’re about to do or whoever we’re about to play pick and roll coverage pin down coverage if a guy likes to overplay you know we’d really designate our coaches to really mimic the team we were about to play as best as we possibly can I think we got pretty specific on it and I think that helped because once you do one day of it I rarely actually I don’t unless I absolutely have to for certain reasons like with an assignment I don’t go live the day before games so there’s a lot of versus coaches the day before games but once you let’s say you practice a day you go five on five you’re live give your normal practice you have the day before the game where you do a ton of versus coaches stuff even in 5 on 0 up and down we’ll throw coaches out there they’ll be in pick and roll coverage we have a whole system of how to attack the different coverages that’s very simplified and then by the time you get to shoot around so the day before the game here’s how to do film we’ll show the team’s identity which is analytically driven so whatever their identity is you’ll take the top two or three max things of their identity that analytics show show that team so they get in their head like hey this team’s an offensive rebounding team hey this team shoots a lot of threes hey this team has the most drives in the league so they get that in their head so we go through shoot around everything essentially except some of the special plays we walk through is review from the last two days so then after shoot-around we watch the personnel they go take their naps they get lunch whatever they do I don’t really know don’t really want to know we come back they do the free game warm-up the assistant coach will show specifically the actions that we walk through that morning only on film so like it’s again review review review and then I’ll show how we’re gonna attack them which is review from the last three days we got in play
Dan 21:09
But going back a touch to the get what you need days, what does that look like on a get what you need day? Someone walked in your gym and saw this is that type of day. What’s everybody doing, coaches, players, on those days?
Tj Saint 21:21
The reason we sent it out the day before, so we can organize it. So it’s not like eight guys walk on the floor one time with two hoops, which is crazy. You’d walk in and you just see one on Oh, with the assistant coach, because not everybody, I can’t remember a single day that all like 10 to 12 players just did something because some guys play higher minutes and they just get what you need. If you need a little rest, take that it’s on you. And I think giving players the latitude to decide on that is huge, especially at this level.
You just walk in and see a pretty organized on either end, 1 on 0 type workout. Now, there could be two guys max at each goal at a time, but just working on finishing, I call them confrontational drives, doing some of that stuff with the pad and shooting. You just walk in and see the four different coaches working with guys, 1 on 0.
Pat 22:12
With the Confrontational drives, what are the important finishes to you, or is it all pretty player-specific?
Tj Saint 22:19
Yeah, some of it’s player-specific. I think you only really need a couple finishes.
When I was like a young trainer, Drew Hanlen was my college roommate at Belmont. We used to work out kids here in Nashville. Drew had a book and we had, I don’t know, 8,000 different finishes. And today we’re going to work on these 13. Back then I was like, yeah, this is great. We’re going to dribble four balls at one time. But really, I think you only need a few. I think you need something that’s over the defense and around the defense. The other one I would say is when you’re kind of by them and you can kind of extend, but that one’s pretty easy to kind of get in somebody’s head. I think you just need a couple different ones based on who you are, where it’s around or over. And that kind of depends on the player, the athleticism, the size. Mine was probably a pull-up jumper because I’m 5’10”, 170. So that’s kind of how I view finishing.
Dan 23:12
somewhere in the middle of talking about the scout days and things like that. You mentioned that you had some simplified pick and roll reads and I know it’s probably a larger conversation, but I’d love to just touch on that and what maybe the simplification is for your guys on the pick and roll stuff.
Tj Saint 23:28
Everybody knows what a blitz is. I treat, and I try to implement this with the players, a blitz, and we call them corrals, which is an up to touch, not necessarily stained with like a blitz, the exact same, literally the exact same. Anytime you can reject the screen, there’s no real backup plan. So we want to try to reject any of those.
And what I’ve found going through my career is especially in a blitz, anytime you know the team is going to blitz, the guard, I remember doing this as like a walk on when I was a player or even in high school, you feel the five is going to take care of a lot of it in a blitz. So you kind of aren’t as aggressive, because you know you have that help. And versus a blitz, I’ve noticed that you can really reject even more. So we look into that. And then I call it SSS after that C, shake and short. And so we’ll be going through five on oh, we’ll be going through stuff versus coaches. I say it in games, I might call, I don’t know, angle for whatever reason, it’s something super simple when I have that call technically, but and I’ll be like, you know, Darren Seaborn, we call him DB, DB angle, SSS just to remind him, and he knows C, shake short, C is the pass, like if you’re coming off the pick and roll against a blitz or corral is the one right in front of you, the one that you see. So SEE, shake is the one right behind you. And then the short, short roll, similar to a switch, C, shake short, exactly the same thing. The other two we do against a red or a switch, what we call it is if we know we have an advantage in the post, you know, we look at punch, we look to really see and then punch. So that’ll be kind of a game plan thing going in. And then one that we kind of really got into last year and then implemented more this year was called drive the wake. I don’t know what you guys call it, where you basically come off a pick and roll, you roll the big switches onto the handler, you know, the guard who’s switching onto the five man is basically he’s just got to hold the role, like he’s kind of one on one right there. So for a brief moment, a little bit more than a brief moment, that entire role, it becomes four on four for a decent amount of time. And so a guy who might be on the elbow kind of on his guy, as the roles happening, who now needs to be at the nail, you can kind of drive back against the grain on the roll to the paint. And then, you know, it opens up a lot of times you can get layups or you can get late kickouts because it’s four on four for a second. We kind of discovered it last year and it kind of turns into shell drill for a second, like the old forum for shell drill. And that’s not kind of how we phrase it, but driving the wake against the switch and then drop trying to do more of the sticky words is against the drop. The first thing you’re doing is HH hang or hostage. So the hang dribble, right? You just kind of basically you palm it and hopefully the ref doesn’t call it for a minute, but you palm the basketball. And what that does is you give the five an extra half second to roll, which gives him an extra half second to get even or behind his guy, right? X five against a drop. Or if he does that, it gives you a half second that the low man might pull in. And our read with a drop is if our five gets even with their five throw the law, as soon as he’s even throw it, that’s the read. Okay.
And then if the low man does come in, you can spray and do all that other stuff, but we have like pretty fundamental things that we do, you know, the Gore top screens, one of them for different guys. We couldn’t really get trade jemisin for the first 20 games of the season to roll quicker. So we just started before talking with them. You know, you discover those things about players really try to systemize stuff against each coverage. And like I said, the two days leading up or three days in the G league leading up into a game will work on that in PD specifically. When we get to five on Oh, we’ll put coaches out there and work on that. And then we kind of influence it in the five on five. And you just keep hitting the same things over and over and over until it kind of systemizes. And the guys don’t really pray.
Dan 27:28
Great stuff. I just asked real quick what you do on a under with all this stuff if the defender is consistently going under one of the things we do.
Tj Saint 27:35
do this year, I think we were second or third in the three-point percentage. So to go with that, we would grade every three. So our video guy, we want to shoot 40 to 45 threes a game. We went into the season. I wanted to definitely shoot over 43 threes a game. Then we got into the season looking at the numbers and I was like, oh man, we need to shoot like 50. We need to shoot more. And it actually dipped back down.
We got Krlo Matovic towards the end of the year, who’s a five-man draft pick of the Pelicans. So he took more shots that weren’t three, so it kind of dipped a little bit. But Jodie Meeks, one of our assistants, they’re all clipped and he grades the threes each night after the game. Green, yellow, red. And those are a little bit different for each guy. We didn’t want to ever really shoot over four reds a game. And a red is like a dribble three that’s contested or heavily contested three. Under four seconds on the shot clock, there are no reds, no matter how bad it is. Those automatically go to yellow. Yellows are kind of dribble threes that might be mildly contested or spot up threes that are mildly contested. Those are a little bit different. So like Jalen Crutcher is one of the best dribble three point shooters in the G League. If not, he might actually finished as number one. His dribble three is green. We get really micro with each guy and what your red, yellow, and green are. And then green is obviously like a spot up uncontested in rhythm three.
To get to your question, based on who you are, we might take the three. But the thing that we try to do, and we had Dereon Seabron as a two way who, you know, teams went under a lot. And we did this all the time in PD, we had to talk to the bigs about this, is you want to aim, if you’re the five or whoever, even the push guy made a guy, you want to aim for air. So you want to aim below where the defender is. We called it aiming for air. You want to get there because as they go under, if we think if you aim for air, they start to move under. Now you got it. Okay, now it becomes an over. So that was our first concept is trying to aim for air and then get out of that as quickly as possible on a roll or a pop. The other one is, yes, we would re-screen, try to do some of that. Then a lot of times, especially like if they would pressure and then try to go under, we would chase and go get, I don’t know what you guys call it, but pretty typical concept. But the aim for air thing was the main thing we really tried to do.
Pat 29:56
When you did do the rescreen, what was the coordination timing, you know, was the ball handler kind of, was it a long rescreen? Was it a quick rescreen?
If the shape of the court was changing, did you try to cut, you know, get two behind, get one in front? I guess kind of getting more nuanced into when you were on a rescreen, I guess what you were stressing.
Tj Saint 30:16
Yeah, it’s a good question in the flow of everything. I didn’t talk about it a lot. It makes me actually think that I need to do that more.
We really didn’t discuss it all. I kind of let the players feel it out a little bit. We didn’t have a lot of moving screens. It was not really an area that just jumped out to us. One of the concepts after doing this for two years in the G League and we get a lot of young players in the G League. So they need, you know, coaching and development. That’s kind of what it’s all about.
I noticed that if as a coach, not trying to take control, but if you can give guidance more in games, it’s better for them. I called a re-screen, a called re-screen that we could attach to one of our players rifle. When we had certain plays, we could attach the rifle to it. And what that did was obviously when you come off a screen, you know, you’re going to one side of the floor and that would pull in low man, whoever that is. And then when you re-screen, the low man changes very quickly. So I was thinking over the summer, like, man, why don’t we just use this as a concept rather than it’s going to happen randomly. But what if we attach this to some of our stuff and the players know it’s going to happen.
So we know change the low man. So we would go into certain sets. We had blah, blah, blah, rifle and we’d go this way. But everybody knew what the play was. We knew the low man was going to change. And so we try to get guys on that too.
Dan 31:33
This has been awesome so far. Thanks for all your thoughts.
We want to transition now to a segment on the show that we call start, sub, or sit. We’ll 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, if you’re all set, we’ll jump in this first one. Coach, I actually wrote a start, sub, sit in the middle of our conversation because you brought something up in the first part about thinking about your defense and rebounding for next year. So I’ve got to start, sub, sit thoughts on becoming a better rebounding team. And these three options on what you’re thinking about may help lead to being better rebounding wise. And you mentioned going off a different runway next year. So option one is your pick and roll coverage, starting with how you guard pick and rolls and where guys are drop, hedge, switch, whatever it is. Option two are tagging responsibilities, who’s tagging from where option three is the block out versus not block out decisions, whether you’re going to always block out or just go and get it. So start, sub, sit when you’re trying to become a better rebounding team. What’s most on your mind?
Tj Saint 32:46
Let me start the last one, whether you’re going to be a traditional blockout or go get sit the pick and roll coverage and probably sub the tagging responsibilities.
Dan 32:56
or dive into all those three. Is there anything else that I didn’t just mention that you’re thinking about when it comes to rebounding for next year?
Tj Saint 33:03
a lot. We haven’t been very good at it for two years.
And some of it was personnel related with the fives, but that can’t really be an excuse because the G-League’s changing all the time. The thing that we got to figure out, we worked on the box outs every day. We actually called it Finish Him. I don’t know about the Mortal Kombat. That’s another sticky word we had. At the end of Mortal Kombat, the guy’s kind of like…
Dan 33:25
Yeah.
Tj Saint 33:25
moving around. That was literally what we called it.
Finish him. That’s the last part of the possession. I think like when the shot goes up, just the inherent habit of everybody to just look and walk in, killing that habit. The look, you stand straight up and you just kind of take a few steps towards the rim and most threes, I think it’s like 70, 75 to 80% of missed threes go to that upper half circle area above the nail analytically. So it’s like trying to figure out that spot too. There’s a lot. We could do this for hours and hours. This literally has kept me up at night.
Pat 34:04
Are you thinking more about training your guys to go to spots like the shot goes up? Of course, if you’re not in the paint, running to spots, knowing spots to get to versus the shot goes up, try to go hit someone.
Tj Saint 34:15
Yeah, usually what I’ve tried to do in the past and have not done a great job of it is get whoever your one man is to that spot I was just talking about because usually ones don’t crash. And so if you’re one can get the rebound it ignites your break right away you know there’s no outlet come quick strikes some of that and then trying to hit.
But keep the bubble as big as possible of the other four guys you know because for whatever reason it just and this is like PTSD for me right now even talking about this stuff I couldn’t figure out how to make it a habit you know so that’s why we did it every day we did the traditional stuff we emphasize that we talked about it we couldn’t go through a set guarding anything without finishing him. So that’s what kind of gives me the notion i gotta approach it from a totally different angle.
Dan 35:08
Sorry about bringing this up on air, but I think But I guess some of the thoughts on your sub too and the tag Responsibilities and there’s so much pick and roll action at the higher levels and you know guys rolling who’s tagging and a Long three goes up and maybe a smaller guy is stuck in the tag I guess some of my thoughts on that question for you You know thinking about who’s tagging from where and how they’re able to then maybe get back to rebound
Tj Saint 35:41
Yeah, it’s again, stuff we worked on, like in a drop, if we knew that there was a five man who was a really efficient offensive rebounder, we would, you know, say shot goes up, you drop, either shoots like a midi floater, he throws it back, somebody shoots a three, the low man, whoever it was in the drop, we would double box out, if you will, the five and we’d be called that hulking, like the green, I don’t know, or DC, I don’t know, I don’t watch hulking, but like the green guy, again, another order, hey, we’re going to hulk on this guy, we would do some of that. Then again, you take that away.
And then the guy who maybe has to X has to get the guy in the corner. And I don’t know, I’m literally going to study it totally differently this year, because like the stuff traditionally, and I’m going into it, this won’t happen, but I want to go into the season, I’m assuming we have the worst rebounding team in the league. So like that can’t be an excuse to be worse, you know, maybe we’re not going to be first, but how do we just get to 15 in a different way?
Pat 37:17
All right, our next Start Sub Sits for you. We’re going to turn to the defensive side of the ball and talk about the delay action and which one of these three delay action screens would be the toughest to defend.
Is it tough to defend? Option one, the flare screen, up out of the corner, they hit the big, they flare. Option two, would it be where the big you’ll see sometimes fakes the handoff, throws ahead to a ball screen or whatever, the next action. Or option three, you see too now the hook screen with the corner coming up and hooking around the screen, the wing back into the flip screen to send the 45 back to the ball or to the handoff.
Tj Saint 37:58
To be totally honest, I think the flip is probably the least toughest to defend. One, you don’t see it as much. And for whatever reason, if you know it’s coming, guys get pretty locked into that. So that’d be a sitting that, subbing, probably the flare or the chest, and then starting the traditional go down pin and come off like the, or what’d you say? Keeping it ahead. Yeah, because a lot of times when you do that, the guy who’s the first, the screener, he like relaxes, he gets off the body and you become less physical. And now you get into the empty side, kind of lower pick and roll. I think that’s where I’m following you guys. And then teams are so much used to doing that and playing in that action that they’re actually more efficient. Like they just know the reads better. I think that’s the hardest one, to be honest.
Pat 38:50
From the beginning of the action where it is that pin down or the screen, the split cut. How are you talking with the guards communicating the switch or who has the rim cut, who has the guy going up? I guess the responsibilities with those guards in the action.
Tj Saint 39:02
It’s very difficult. It’s so interesting. My first year in the G, I was like, why is this taking 30 games for us to get? And then even this year, I’m like, why is this taking us 30 games to figure out? So as soon as the guard throws it to the five and you’re in delay, we call it auto, but a lot of teams do call it delay. All four other guys, what we teach get to the body because you don’t know which side he’s going to. And we basically say five, you’re guarding the five one on one. Now, like, if you can’t do that and we have to make an adjustment, we do because there’s nobody in the shifts or the gap at that point. If all four guys are hugged up on the body, we will bet on a five driving against our five. I’ve taken a whirling, dervish hook shot. Hopefully we rebound, but probably won’t rebound it. You know how that goes. That’s the first thing. And then our coverage in it on the pin down is we call it red to disrupt is on the pin down. You want to take it all the way. If they get close enough, we switch it red and then we really try to disrupt that hand off to then try to, if you disrupt it, maybe it gets denied or what it really does with the pressure on the five is they go under flip and now you’re into like an angle pick and roll. That’s kind of our coverage with it.
Pat 40:15
In that scenario, if we take it further, so you go red to disrupt, and let’s say it’s a shooter, so you’re going to chase hard, you also see now those zero cuts, you know, where they curl off, I guess what is then the strategy, your thought behind defending if he zero cuts and not getting up layups.
Tj Saint 40:32
to pressure five in general. There might be a game plan thing, but in general, our system would be to pressure the five. So that low man, we call him, again, more sticky words, we call the low man the cure. Let’s say you got a lot of stuff going on. He can cure it at the end. That’s on the low man. And again, we’re forcing five. Obviously, his guy would be open. We’re forcing five under duress to try to make a skip pass, which we’ll try to live with.
Dan 40:58
Have you found that it’s gotten easier to guard people seeing the actions more? Is there anything that at the G league professional level, you have to work on it more? I mean, I guess just overall trying to guard this action that’s more popular throughout different levels of basketball.
Tj Saint 41:12
Well, it’s not the action, it’s the players in the action. I think the specifics, and that’s something that we got to get better at, is having special player defense for certain guys. It’s really not the action that kills you. To the point I’m thinking about how to rework our shootarounds and walkthroughs, because we do go over a special play here and there where, let’s say, you do it and walk through and they run it the one time a game or two times a game and you guard it perfect and you’re like, great, that really paid off. And then the really good player comes off like an organic whatever and you didn’t read it right, you didn’t show right or you didn’t drop right and it’s a bucket. It’s really all the defensive concepts within your pick and roll, your handoffs, your catch and shoot defense, your drive defense, your transition defense that the really good players expose. So, again, it’s not delay, it’s the players in delay.
Pat 42:04
Appreciate you sharing the vocab, your sticky words. Are you getting feedback? How are you know if they’re sticking? .
Tj Saint 42:11
Film. We do team film, kind of having the Socratic questioning method, right? I’ll say it by a name, like Crutch, Jaylen Crutch is one of our players. What is this? And he might say one of them. And if he’s not, that gives me feedback to be like, okay, we need to do this more, or like I’ll hit him with the sticky word. You can kind of get it when you get feedback and film a lot, because the guys start saying it. And really, whatever you’re emphasizing, if it’s those words, eventually it becomes, if you do it enough, it becomes the language, but you can’t deviate it all. You can’t get outside, like we call it anytime, another sticky thing, two on the ball, right?
If you have two on the ball, you want to move the ball. So like, I kind of akin it to like, getting married versus getting engaged. If you get married, you got the ring on the finger, like you’re in there, it’s damn near a trap. We just want to get to the point where we engage the defender. You know, you can still like call off the marriage, you know, you’re just a gate. It’s not totally done yet. So you engage them and you move it. And we call those E2s, getting that concept. We’d be coming down in 5 on 0, I’d be like, all right, you know, we got to get to angle backside, go E2 on the low man, play out of that. You know, they’d start, you like do this and they’d be calling you, hey, make sure Brock E2, E2, like just kind of becomes who you are.
Dan 43:30
Great stuff. Love all the terminology. You’re off the start, sub, or sit hot seat, thanks for playing that game with us. We’ve got one last question for you to close the show, but before we do, really appreciate you coming on. Congrats on a great season. And thank you for sharing all your thoughts today with us.
Tj Saint 43:45
Thanks, guys. Thanks for having me. A lot of fun.
Dan 43:49
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?
Tj Saint 43:56
You know, I’m from Indiana, where basketball is just a part of the canvas of the state in general. So you just grew up around it, and it’s a big deal. Even people who don’t play on their high school team, they just play. I think just having that background that people have invested in me as I’ve gone along. And I’d say early on, I really made it intentional about who I wanted to be around and who I wanted to invest in to the point where I’ve told this story before. I was a walk-on-at-Mercer, the Atlantic Sun conference at the time, and Belmont was also in the Atlantic Sun. They would run through the league every year, and say a term, and say a term. And so we practiced one day. We’re going to play in at home the next day. So we practiced. They were going to come on after us. I like ran the locker room, showered, changed. And I don’t feel bad saying this now because I’m good friends with Rick Byrd, but I snuck up top to one of our suites in our arena and watched practice. And I was going to tell anybody I was doing it, but I just wanted to see how they did things and the way they practiced, how focused they were, just how they even walked in the gym. And it wasn’t that long of a practice, but I was like, man, this is why they are the way they are. And so our coach got let go my sophomore year, and I just emailed Rick Byrd. You don’t know me. I was a walk-on. I didn’t score a bucket against you or anything like that. But I’m looking to make a change. I want a coach in the long run, and I would love to be a part of your program in any way possible. He wrote me back a week later, and I was shocked. Went up there, met with him. He knew I wanted to coach, so he made me like a student assistant, but still used me as a practice player, like a lot. But I got to be in coaches meetings. And the point of the story is my biggest investment is in the people I really tried to work for when I was younger. I wanted to work for Rick Byrd. I worked at Butler camp the next two summers because I wanted to learn under Brad Stevens, whether I was getting paid or not, and took an unpaid GA job with him. I got super lucky, but the intention about that was the first two summers really wanting to be around them, putting a face with a name so they saw me working camp. And by the time I was ready to graduate, they knew me a little bit. Coach Byrd helped me get in the door there and interview and talk to him. And I was sleeping on my husband’s couch in their basement for an entire year, making almost no money, just coaching kids on the side. But I think the biggest investment I’ve made is trying to be around the right people. And from then on, Stan Van Gundy, I got lucky. Tom Crean, I got lucky to be around him, Ryan Pannone. And now I got super lucky to be around the right people that I think gave me the best background possible to be a head coach of the G League team, which I’m now super, super grateful for all that and those guys.
Dan 46:52
All right, Pat, wow, that was fun. It always helps when we’ve had a chance the last few summers to sit down with TJ different various times and talk about this stuff. So I felt like it was just hopping on with an old friend and just pretend that no one else is listening. Quick backstory with our first bucket, the first topic, which was his offensive fingerprints and just kind of his thoughts on building his offense. And like mentioned, they had the highest rated, most efficient G-League offense this year, the fourth most all time, I believe is what we’re looking at analytically, so a high powered offense and just getting into his mind on these things, he had sent us some film beforehand, a bunch of clips and thoughts about what they did. And you know, a lot of the clips had what he called his fingerprints. And so that’s where we wanted to start and just hearing how everything comes together. And I’ll give you my quick first takeaway that I love, which was his rack comment about the RAC and the C being the most important, the connectedness of your offense. And I wrote that down early, underlined it started because I think just thinking about teams we played this year, regardless of what they ran or what their system was, like you could just tell the teams that were connected were just so much harder to stop, especially later in the year. And it didn’t matter what defensive coverage it threw at them. Like they just had solutions and they had a way and style of playing. And I thought he spoke really well to it. And it was his first, I guess, sort of sticky word or his vocab that I took away that the connected team is the one that’s really, really hard to beat. He mentioned.
Pat 48:26
to, I mean, when he went through the whole, his foundational idea, his bars and got to the rack. I mean, so you saw how he built the connectiveness through the culture, through like the identity. And then we also then saw throughout the whole conversation on the port, connectiveness was built through his vocabulary and tying his vocabulary and culture marrying those two together. I thought it was really unique.
Following up on that, my first takeaway, and this is going back to one of the videos he sent us was when they were playing small and what they kind of discovered. And we got into the hot stove screen, which is something I had been saying a lot of lately. I’ve been looking into myself, so enjoyed kind of sticking there. Sticking there, no pun intended, but yeah. Stopping on that, the hot stove screen and getting into how it’s confusing the switch and the technique behind kind of just set up quick, hot stove, hot hand, and then backpedaling into space and attacking that way. So I liked that only because it was also top of my mind. So it scratched an itch I’ve been thinking about recently.
Dan 49:25
Yeah. And adding to that, I think right now NBA playoffs are going on and you just see so much of this action where, and he mentioned it too, on the show about teams just mess up this coverage all the time, whether it’s a ghost screen, like a Mayday, they call it, where they’re ghosting through and they’re just kind of tapping the guy’s hip, or they’re actually setting this hot stove screen and they’re just kind of searching for a mismatch or are you going to switch it or are you going to hedge it and then they can play through that little short roll, a short pop.
And in the NBA, it’s obviously a kind of a matchup driven thing right now at the playoffs as we’re recording this and sending a matchup you kind of want at the ball to set this hot stove screen and playing through it is very interesting, but you also see it internationally as well.
Pat 50:08
Yeah, what I like too is if they are switching, like when you touch and bounce out so quickly, like the guard is just immediately chasing. Like he’s put so much space between you and the guard trying to recover or switch onto the big that they’re chasing the action you play through the short roll.
And then also I think which with this screen or the ghost screen or the slip outs, you know, is it a coverage? Is it not? So teams that are kind of lateral hedging or hedging, again, like you’re not really setting the screen, but it elicits response and then you’re just immediately popping out into space and able to hit an attack through the short roll. If you have obviously guys capable of that, but that’s why I really like the screen, the adaptability of it and confusing switch, confusing hedges, something I’m going to continue to study and hopefully in future put a breakdown together because I want to learn more about it.
Dan 50:56
Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, for those maybe trying to follow what we’re saying visually right now, I think we’re going to probably put some stuff out video-wise on this podcast as well. And that will probably be in there.
Another thing that I took away from that first part, God, there’s a lot. My notes are everywhere here, but he had the green, yellow, and red shot spectrum. And those conversations are always interesting to me about how you talk to your team about certain types of shots. And I think he was talking about three-point attempts, grading the different types of threes. And he also mentioned there is no red three under four. That’s just, you know, get the best shot you can. But that it was player dependent on what was a green, a yellow, or a red and how they talk about that. And I think that was just an interesting part that also led into his thoughts on player development and group work and how he put those things together and kind of his shifting thoughts on the one-on-oh stuff is great. And they certainly do it like he mentioned, but wanting to work mores and twos and threes to create, I think, adding on to what he said at the beginning, the connectiveness of his team and having the player development be more in small groups to connect actions in all that with the guys. I like that a lot.
Pat 52:12
Yeah, it was nice to hear a professional club that only has two baskets and how they try to work around that. Yeah. I think we find ourselves a lot of that. Like it has to be group work because we don’t have enough baskets. So just how they thought about group work, the actual groups that they form, you know, like guards, bigs, guards and bigs are positional. Yeah. Joy to stop. I think that’s also a lot that we face as coaches. Like we don’t have six baskets and eight coaches at all times. So we got two baskets and break up the teams. Yeah.
Dan 52:42
My first year as a JV coach at the high school level, sometimes I would have one basket for like 25 kids and then they were doing volleyball and PE on the other side.
Pat 52:51
that group work in.
Dan 52:52
Yeah.
Pat 52:53
Yeah. So I enjoyed that. The other takeaway I had when we finished out the first half of this conversation before start sub sit, I really enjoyed the language, especially, but how he taught the pick and roll reads. And I won’t regurgitate them, but the language three S’s, the C shape short, the against drops, the hanger, the hostage. My biggest sticky word was against the re-screen or the under, sorry, the aim for error. I just kind of liked that concept, that visualization for players when they know they’re going to get an under, but I enjoyed all the thoughts and just how they try to simplify pick and roll reads. It’s so prevalent in the game, but it can be so complex for your ball handlers. It’s so complex. So finding ways to simplify, I think is the key for a lot of coaches and chunking it down, so to speak, in a way that your players are able to understand. And again, going back to the connectiveness, just getting everyone on the stage through these reads that we teach, the see’s, shake and short.
Dan 53:52
Let’s move to start sub sit. I’ll start with mine that I asked him, which was the better rebounding. And honestly, that was something I wrote in the middle of our conversation. Cause he mentioned it early in the first bucket. I know you were working on one too. And just when he brought up how much he’s thinking about it and he joked that he was giving him PTSD on the pod, talking about it, but I thought it was interesting. Start sub sit. And it did turn into just kind of a discussion about how we’re all thinking about how the heck to make this better. Cause it is tough at times when you don’t have a great rebounding team, I guess sort of instinctually or personnel based.
Pat 54:25
Yea, I think one of the early themes of the off-season for us is rebounding, defensive rebounding, and then defensive transition. These conversion areas of the games and just how you do it better, how you get better on the margins. I told you too, it was fun. We had a little mini conversation where we were all just kind of spitballing ideas. I don’t know if we came up with anything good, but what’s fun to bounce ideas, go through different scenarios and talk about how the pick and roll coverage, how does that affect or rebounding to spots versus hit and go.
Dan 54:59
Yeah. And what I liked, he mentioned this to us a little bit afterwards, is he didn’t want to be a coach that, of course, some of this is personnel driven, right? Some teams just have great rebounding players, but he was saying, he’s thinking about it so much because he just doesn’t want to only rely on, hey, well, we just got to get better rebounders and not have better answers as a coach. And you could tell that obviously it makes him such a great coach, as he’s really actively seeking, how do I make a team? Realistically, if they’re not great, whatever personnel wise, how do I just make them average to above average so that way we can win tough games or, you know, if our offense is going to be really good, we at least aren’t being dragged down by the defensive side.
This conversation I wanted to bring up too, reminded me a lot with Sundance Wicks and Sundance now recently hired Wyoming head coach after Green Bay for a year. And he had one of, if not the most popular episode last year on the podcast. One of the things he brought up on his podcast with us was the slice of the pie rebounding that he talks about. And that’s basically where does the shot go up at? And then where most likely is that ball going to land? Which slice of the pie is that ball going to land in? And getting guys there. And then I think too, the different levels of if you’re in the trenches, you’re trying to move bodies and block out and kind of move them under the rim. If you’re kind of in that middle area, maybe it’s like check and see and then go get it. And if you’re outside on the perimeter, just bring your body to that slice of the pie. Just go there and go get it. Within all that, I was reminded of Sundance’s conversation. I thought that was really good, kind of another point to bring up within all this.
Pat 56:35
Yeah, it’s so nuanced. And I really enjoy these conversations or talking with coaches who are thinking about it on that level, because yes, at some point, you can say yes, personnel, or it’s not just the technique, like, yeah, you need to hit turn seal. There’s just so much more that goes into it, I really believe. And that’s why I always enjoy these conversations, to think about it differently, to think about how you can do it differently.
And it’s not just technique driven, it’s is it tactical, you know, and getting five guys on the same page of what roles and responsibilities are. And, you know, not once was it, yeah, you got to forearm in the chest, reverse pivot, two hands up, you know, and all five guys do that. And we get all the rebounds. I mean, not that that hasn’t lost its place in the game. But I think this is what we’re after with these conversations and getting the chance to talk with Coach Saint today about it. And then Coach Sundance was stimulating.
There we go. He’s always just stimulating.
Dan 57:35
Absolutely. Moving to the second start sub sit, which was the tough to guard in the delay actions. And so we had the flare, the kind of fake handoff into the pitch ahead. So, you know, pulling over the top, faking it to the first guy, whether they come off of the zoom or straight off of it, or what we call it the hook, but the flip screen and I’ll kick it back to you on first thoughts.
Pat 57:56
I enjoyed him going through his red to disrupt. And I thought he brought up a good point with the delay, you don’t know what side it is. So let’s attach to our men and get ready to switch or deal with any sort of split screen and leaving the 5 man on island. But knowing that, hey, you’re going to be one-on-one and we’re going to live with instead of whirling dervish or letting the five men try to break us down consistently on the perimeter. I like that philosophy, that concept, and then him going through how they try to switch. And the last kind of sticky word I wrote down was the cure. So when we talked about the zero cuts, having that low man be the cure. So if when in doubt or in an emergency, he’s going to cure it. And I mean, basically like appeal switch almost off that zero cut, but again, just like the imagery, like the vocab that he used for the low man.
Dan 58:41
Yeah, I like that cure vocab too. I’ve heard other teams call like the fix man. So it’s a guy that can fix everything. And so that was great.
I also liked, we kind of creeped into a discussion about great player defense and, you know, he mentioned, okay, so we walk through their special sets that they might run once or twice a game and that it’s important to do that. But he was talking about trying to figure out how to just guard great players better throughout the course of the game. You maybe stop an ATO, but then you just get burned on a simple, you know, screen away or pin down or blown coverage on a great player and that hurts you much more throughout the course of the game than maybe spending a ton of time on these other things. And I think that’s always a balance as coaches, we’re trying to figure out is how do you just make your base defense cover most of it? And then he talked just like trying to figure out how do we be better at defending great players? Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t know if there’s an answer there either.
Pat 59:39
I think we’ll get paid a lot of money to find out.
Dan 59:44
Yeah. So Pat, there’s a ton of stuff in here. Any things we could have gone deeper on or any misses, question-wise for us? Yes.
Pat 59:52
I mean, I think everything he mentioned, I would have loved to have gone deeper on. Another concept I really liked, he talked about and explained well was the drive of the wake against the switch. I visualize, I understood, but I would have loved to go a little bit deeper on it, follow up more into the nuance again of it. Was one thing I had circled to try to hit back on, but then we kept getting more and more into other coverages and just got out of the conversation, got away from me.
Dan 01:00:18
I wrote that down too, just because another little minute detail and maybe attacking the switch, which could be helpful, I thought. So definitely had that one there for myself, just going deeper on his install versus mastery versus get what you need days in his practice week.
And I think of all of them, I mean, we talked a little bit about the get what you need day a little bit, but the install and the mastery days, maybe like what those look like from his perspective and specifically maybe the mastery days and how much they’re rep in five on five and just letting them play and just trying to master the things that they’ve learned or, you know, just the nuance differences there. Mastering the rebound. Yeah, exactly. Mastering that rebound. So, well, Hey, this was a highly enjoyable conversation with coach saying we really appreciate him coming on and being so thorough and Pat, if there’s nothing else, we’ll start wrapping this up. Thanks again for everybody listening and we’ll see you next time.
Pat 01:01:17
Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Please make sure to visit SlappinGlass.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.