🚨 STICKY WORDS Sunday 🚨 HOOP = HELP ~ 27% of High School possessions, have no paint touch and no reversal. ~67% have 0 ball reversals + 1 paint touch. MOVE THE NEEDLE ON THIS. Quality 3PA = Catch and shoot 3PA. Quality increases in 3 foot increments: 0-3 feet - CONTESTED 3-6 feet - SEMI CONTESTED 6 feet + - UNCONTESTED The quality of 3PA's is LARGELY determined by how well you transition, and paint touch frequency. This means that it is a PAIRED ANALYTIC; heavy correlation with one or more stats. HOOP = HELP SPACE = SHOTS No surprise that the 2 most analytically driven teams in the NBA, Boston and OKC, have done this better than anyone in the last 4 years. Both teams are also on the lower end of organized offense rate. The simple teaching points at younger levels: - less scheme = higher quality 3PA - use one or two triggers that enable paints touches at higher % - master transition/secondary transition

All basketball players fall into two categories - CREATORS and CONNECTORS. A coaches job is to identify and develop players within these categories. Creators are higher usage on offense and timely on defense. Connectors are hyper efficient on offense and consistent on defense. Some of the micro skills of creators are: - shot creation/facilitation - tempo control - an extension of the HC on the floor Some of the micro skills of connectors are: - rim running - guarding multiple positions - efficient and reliable in their kill zones Connectors set the floor and enhance the ceiling. Creators set the ceiling and bottom out of the floor. It’s impossible to be an elite team without both categories. Both are at a premium, and invaluable, in very different ways.

Few worse fits in the NBA obviously. Lavine isn’t a 0.5 decision making guy that Daigneualt covets, isn’t a great defender and is inefficient. It’s actually crazy how many teams have learned this lesson the hard way. OKC will do what they always do, develop the next man up and flip him for some draft capital.

‼️ Sticky Words Sunday ‼️ FLAT GHOST Simple and EXTREMELY effective. This is a staple of Daigneault that I love. We call it ‘flat’. - screen is below the 3PT line with butt to the baseline - typically used in inverted or G2G actions - punishes a switch - great end of clock/end of game when switching is assumed - usually forces the D to put 2 on the ball, creating a 2 on 1 on the weakside Common mistakes: - setting the screen to high, pulling the pop out of range. Must be set ~ around the nail. - killing the dribble early Adding a 45 cut to this action really stretches the D and beats virtually any gap coverage. 🎥 @tucker_thorson

Statistically, basketball games typically find their way to a 3-4 possession difference. Most of this is due to a balancing of implied shot making. A) this is why shot quality is king in the analytics world and B) lopsided total possessions through Oboard%/TO% and shooting outliers = blowouts AND big comebacks.

We are in the phase of Wemby’s career progression where analysts/ casual fans will start to micro analyze/critique/pile on Wemby’s every move. Greatness ALWAYS has a temporary regression to the mean. Every all time great has gone through this from ~ years 3-6 (Magic being the exception). The next phase for Wemby will be injury or steep ascension. No he doesn’t need a ‘bag’, no he isn’t mentally weak, yes he loves the sport, etc. Wemby is on a trajectory to be a top 3-5 player in the history, at minimum, despite having one of the weaker coaching staffs in the league.

‼️ CONCEPTS THAT KILL IN HS ‼️ This is an Iverson curl from a SLOB set. Few teams will scout your actions from the BLOB/SLOB especially if you use false spacing templates - in this case, a box.

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🚨 Four tactical trends to keep an eye in the NBA and in D1 (for those who like to go DEEP) 🚨 1. Chase/Step up screens. There is a ton of emphasis right now amongst coaches who want to speed the screeners’ man up. It’s another way to to attempt to pull the defense out of PnR coverage coverage all together and into soft switching or under/over. 2. 32 minutes. Benches are trendy deeper than in years past because the optimal minutes for a player, at the highest levels, is at ~ 32 minutes. This may dilute individual numbers and play more into the defenses’ hands. 3. Loading to the ball. For the last 5 years, teams played more passively than previous generations to force the offense into unfavourable spots. Hurley’s rifle action, rocket action, 77 Chase, and Iiaslo/Paris/Memphis playing empty below the nail has neutralized drop/switching. Emphasis will switch to pass/kill zone disruption. 4. MORE programs are looking to optimize shot quality, this means more 3 and D, more two feeet in the paint. The casuals will not like this one, but it is the most inevitable that we will see; we’ve never seen this much buyin across the board. Honorable mention (not tactical): Lastly, the ‘Knicks effect’ will lead to less Big 3’s (finally), and the Brad Stevens/Daigneualt blueprint will capture the league in its entirety. This willl bring back fan team loyalty, to extent, versus fan loyalty that has plagued the league post Kobe. I’ve written extensively about how big 3’s fail, with few outliers, and we are finally trending in this direction.

‘You have to be a bit off to survive this profession’ is absolutely spot on. Coaches have more than a few screws loose, that’s for sure.

The Lamelo/Finch combo will be incredible to watch. Few players on the planet more dynamic than Melo in PnR. Here is Melo: 1. Attacking the under on a 77 2. Making the proper read against switching the 77 3. Attacking in iso after Rudy rejects 4. Attacking the shallow/spread ball screen using beautiful rhythm. 👇🏼

Another bang up job by the Warriors front office putting a competitive squad around Steph 🔥

Step up screens are once again killing the Spurs. As we saw during the post season, playing at the level of the ball screen has been Wemby’s kryptonite - completely neutralizing their defensive advantage. Daigneault loves to use Stack out and Ram screens to initiate the step up. 👇🏼

Philly has the 4th highest odds to win the championship this season. Lebron top 5 preseason favorite: 19x Lebron top 3 preseason favorite: 15x Lebron favored to win it all: 7x Preseason favorites are one of the most predictive stats we have in the NBA - much more predictive than regular season record. Since the 84-85 season, only 5 teams have won a championship outside of the top 5 favorites in preseason (Knicks accomplished this last season). Pretty safe to say that no 🐐 candidate, in any sport, has done less with more than Lebron. Pressure is on again.

The X and O’s are the TIP OF THE ICEBERG of a great program. Competence vs defiance. Real strength vs stolen strength. Earned vs unearned. These are power struggles that every team will experience to start the season. TRUST is the connector that elite coaches deploy to win these battles. At the HS/college levels, players usually default to wanting: Freshmen - To make the team Sophomore - To see the floor Junior - To score Senior - To win This is a big reason that experience wins, at any level.

Very articulate by Harbaugh. This is the equivalent of a world renowned surgeon getting pressed by a 10th grade Chemistry student about his decision making on the table. The emotional intelligence and composure of high level coaches is their most overlooked trait.

🚨 Sticky Words Sunday 🚨 Win the DETAILS -PNR 1. SCREEN ANGLES. Angle influences coverage. Flat angle for guard to guard to prevent switch. Low side forcing over 1-5 to create a 2 on 1 (low side angle). Square angle means your wanting a switch. 2. SPRINT TO SCREEN. Puts the screeners defender out of position when they attempt to neutralize advantage with coverage. 3. RACE-READ-RACE. . Changing the pace of the screen allows decision making to occur + keeps the defense guessing. One speed is easy to guard (whether fast or slow). 4. SHIN ANGLES. Ball handler must use a sprinters stance to get vertical. Amateur/low level players move horizontally at the first sign of resistance. Elite players get vertical using a sprinters stance or SHOW vertical if the coverage neutralizes the advantage. 5. POCKET PASS. One handed bounce vs leaving the ground to pass or attempting to go over top of the D. 6. PASSING ANGLES. Great PGs understand where the seal or rim run is and what angle to use (or to pass to another player) for a better angle. 7. AIM TO MISS. If the ball handler has an advantage before the screen then ‘aim to miss’ no need to create an advantage for one that is there. Speed up the 2 on 1. 8. LOW MAN/TAGGER. Ball handlers eventually feel the POA coverage look to the second level. If the tagger is early, the skip or dunkers spot is open, if they are late then it’s the 2 on 1. 9. 0.5 DECISION MAKING. Probably the biggest mistake ball handlers make is holding on to the ball in a neutral spot for too long or turn nothing into something. This should only occur in EOG/EOC spots. Move the ball. 10. SPACING. Understand what an angle PnR vs a Spread ball screen is. Stretch the help, and at higher levels remove the low man with player movement via exit screen, Spain, wide pin, etc. DUKE Stack out | Angle PnR w/ weakside replace 🎥 @EricFawcett_

Well thought out and written piece. The numbers are black and white. As a team, if you shoot > 20% of your total FGA from the middy, you’re likely a losing team. This is simply because no metric matters more to winning than shot quality, on both ends of the floor. Because these numbers are more defined than in any other era, the VALUE of the mid range has never been greater. If you shoot 50-55% from the midrange, you are an elite scorer (with a few outliers) and if you can’t, your style of play on the offensive end will be largely data driven - CREATE, FURTHER, AND CAPITALIZE ON BIG ADVANTAGE SPOTS. This is where > 95% of D1 and NBA players fall - setting screens, knocking down catch and shoot 3’s, getting to two feet in the paint, etc. This isnt the most skilled era, that’s very difficult to define, but it is by far the most specialized.