Anyone have any good books they have read over the years that you feel helped give you a new perspective/way of doing things? I’ve read Coach K’s The Gold Standard, Dan Hurley’s Never Stop, and am starting on Coach K’s leading with the heart. Just looking for some more ways to expand my coaching knowledge and I feel that reading is an undervalued way of doing so.

I recently heard Idaho head basketball coach Alex Pribble talk about something he calls “NBT” — No Basketball Talk. During practice, he intentionally builds in moments to talk with his players about anything but basketball. I love that approach. A season is long. Practices can become repetitive. Relationships can quietly slip into being transactional. I tried this with a group of my middle school players one season, and it was refreshing. We talked about what was going on in their lives, what they were into outside of basketball, what they were excited about. You could feel the shift. Walls came down. Trust went up. If you coach, consider building in intentional “no basketball talk” time. The season is long. The relationships are what last.

Most coaches I’ve been around can talk offense all day, but not nearly enough time is spent on defense. The reality is this: a large portion of your offensive success can be built by playing great defense—especially when you teach your team how to run in transition and create clear triggers. The beauty of defense is how much ownership you have over it. Your defensive philosophy can be shaped to match how you want to play on offense. The principles you emphasize on that end should directly feed into what you want to become as a team. Here’s an example of what I like to run. Defensively, our focus is pressure. We want to speed the offense up, force them to make decisions, and play reactionary basketball. With this style, I’m comfortable knowing we’ll get beat at times and give up an easy basket. The tradeoff is worth it. Aggressive defense leads to a higher turnover rate, and those turnovers turn into fast-break opportunities for us. Because of that, we dedicate practice time to playing with an advantage on offense—specifically scoring in 2-on-1 situations and making quick reads. Our structure is built from the ground up: defense → transition offense → secondary break → half-court offense → set plays. I love talking defense, and there’s a lot more we can dive into. If you’re interested in defensive concepts and how they connect to offense, let me know.

The pick and roll has become the most common action in basketball. Every team runs it. Every coach teaches it. Every player practices it. But here’s the truth nobody says out loud: If you’re running pick and roll just to “run a pick and roll,” you’re wasting everyone’s time. The action only matters if it creates an advantage. And advantage only matters if players know how to use it. Let’s break down what that actually means: 1. The real point of pick and roll is force a decision! Offense in basketball comes down to one principle: Make the defense choose something, and then punish that choice. A ball screen is simply a structured way to force that moment of decision. When the screen hits, the defense must decide: - Do we go under? - Do we chase over? - Do we switch? - Do we hedge? - Do we help from the corner? - Do we tag the roller? Each decision creates an opening somewhere else. The job of the offense is simple: Create the decision → identify the reaction → attack the weakness it creates. If your players can’t do that, running a ball screen is nothing more than cardio and hurting offense. ----- 2. Players must be empowered to “Make the Defense Wrong." A pick and roll only works when players understand solutions. If the defense goes under, what’s the answer? If they switch, what’s the answer? If they hedge or trap, what’s the answer? Teams that are good in the PnR aren’t just good because they set great screens. They’re good because the ball-handler, screener, and spacing players all know how to make the defense wrong. Here’s what empowerment looks like: Ball-handler: reads coverage, gets downhill, manipulates the tag defender. Roll man: short roll vs. rim roll vs. pop based on help. Spacing players: lift, drift, shake out, and be ready to punish help. If players don’t know counters, the defense wins. If players do know the counters, the defense has no right choice and an advantage gets created. ----- 3. If you're just running pick and roll to run it… stop. Seriously.