March Coaching Notebook 2018 - pickandpop.net

JUNE2018COACHINGNOTEBOOK–PICKANDPOP.NET

The art of the cut (The Athletic)

-When the Sixers call Point, B-Deny or another play that involves Redick running off a screen, he

doesn’t view it as his turn to shoot. Instead, he phrases it as “a time to move bodies and potentially

move the ball.” From there, it’s up to the Sixers to figure out what the defense is giving them.

Brad Stevens and the Celtics have a special brand of toughness (ESPN.com)

-Brett Brown, the Philadelphia 76ers head coach, is fond of saying, "The pass is king." As

the Boston Celtics extended to a 3-0 lead against Philadelphia in the Eastern Conference

semifinals, making seemingly every big play, some Celtics staffers began whispering their own

version: "Toughness is king." The last slide of the film edit that Brad Stevens, Boston's coach,

showed his team before Game 3 in Philadelphia contained a definition of toughness Stevens found

recently in a book (he can't recall which one; he reads a lot): "Toughness is being able to physically

and emotionally perform your task through any condition."

-"If things are going really well in a home game, do you get caught up in that, or do you keep

playing the right way?" Stevens asked in a chat with ESPN.com the day after Boston's Game 3 win

in Philadelphia. "If things are going like they were in the second quarter last night [when the Sixers

went on a run], do you say, 'I have a job to do and I'm going to do it, and I don't care that everyone

is going nuts over this [Joel] Embiid dunk?' That is toughness. It sounds cliché, but the hardest

thing to do is stay in the moment and do your job."

-He told the players Hayward would be OK. But Stevens wanted to shift their focus to the

remaining 79 games. He warned them: Don't use your youth as excuse, Stevens and several

players recalled. "Expedite your learning curve," Stevens remembered saying. "If there's film to

watch, or something you need to work on with a coach, go do it."

-This is a fierce team. No one is afraid to shoot, or venture outside his proven skill set -- something

almost everyone has had to do since Irving's knee surgery. They give maximum effort every

second. It is a focused effort; they rarely veer out of scheme. Hit them, and they hit back -- harder.

Nurturing such a strong culture while returning only four players from last season's team is an

enormous challenge.


-Gather enough tough players and it can have an exponential effect on a team's collective

toughness. They inspire each other to more intense fury. They hold everyone accountable; even

brief moments of lethargy and weakness are unacceptable. Wyc Grousbeck, the team's owner,

compares them to a crew team rowing together: They feel when one guy is giving only 90 percent,

and either push him harder or eventually replace him. "This is my favorite Celtics team ever, in

terms of energy, camaraderie and underdog spirit," Grousbeck said.

-In Boston’s seventh game of the season, Shane Larkin failed to pursue a loose ball along the left

sideline. Stevens removed Larkin at the next stoppage. He didn't play again until garbage time. "I

learned right away," Larkin said. "If you don't get a 50-50 ball, you are coming out."

-Stevens didn't upbraid Larkin. He approached him calmly and told Larkin why he had been taken

out. In evaluating players, both during games and in film sessions, Stevens is careful with

language, according to coaches, players and team higher-ups. He focuses on actions: We didn't

get this rebound. You should have made this rotation earlier. The criticism is never about the

player's character. No one is labeled lazy or stupid or selfish. Stevens simply describes what did or

did not happen, and what should happen next time. That has gone a long way in securing buy-in,

players say. They feel Stevens is with them, even as he holds them -- and himself -- to almost

impossible standards. That is a hard balance to strike. It is not a show, either.

-They motivate each other without craving credit for anything. "We embrace each other," Brown

said. "Last year, there were a lot of times where people were trying to figure things out on their

own. That is the biggest difference this season." Elite toughness and mental stamina alone won't

get you far in the world's best league. Add talent and you get a team that punches above its

weight. Boston just makes fewer mistakes than almost any rival.

-Some of that clutch play comes from having mature, confident players. Some of it is Horford

settling them. And some of it emanates from Stevens. His calm demeanor makes for good satire,

but the more you talk to players, coaches and executives across the league, the more you begin to

believe such things matter. Stevens' placidity is intentional. Frantic, screaming, gesticulating

coaches can raise panic in players who might be prone to it. Some players tune out everything.

Some follow the lead of authority figures. They look at Stevens and see assurance. They see, "Next


play." "Some players have a tendency to get frazzled or emotional," Ainge said. "Brad helps with

that."

Foes bonded by "War Room" brotherhood (NBA.com)

-“I got off the phone with Fiz and immediately called our guys in the video room at the arena and

said, ‘Hey, rent a suite, put the boards up, get the screens, grab the iPads and get all the film you

can,’” Spoelstra said. “I said, ‘Get the Memphis roster and every stat we can on them, and let’s go

to work.’ That’s the least we could do. But that’s kind of the culture we built. We do whatever we

can to help the next guy, and enjoy their success. It’s more than just about us. It was for Fiz, but we

all felt part of it.” With about 36 hours to spare before Fizdale was due in Memphis to interview,

Spoelstra and his staff had turned a suite at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Miami into a war room similar

to what teams use on draft nights.

-“Spo helped me really implement the system I wanted to play, he helped me connect that to the

personnel that they had, and to really show them the vision of how I can use that system to fit the

players they had, but also bring in the Heat culture that’s so much a part of our fabric.”

-The concept of meeting with Core Four players Mike Conley, Marc Gasol, Zach Randolph and

Tony Allen in their offseason homes to make immediate connections? Spoelstra and his staff had

done the same thing with LeBron, Wade and Bosh early on.

-“Being Spo’s right-hand man for so long, he allowed me to develop in ways not many assistants

get to develop in this league,” Fizdale said. “They fast-tracked me for this. I can’t describe it to have

that much support. To have people like that, people who really feel like they’re your family in such

a business situation like this, I know it’s rare. I never took it for granted, and I will always cherish

those guys for it.”

How David Fizdale had big impact on Erik Spoelstra in Miami (Newsday.com)

-Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra didn’t always agree with David Fizdale’s suggestions and he

joked that he threw him out of his office many times when the two worked together. But Spoelstra

always appreciated Fizdale’s mind, viewpoint and ability to challenge him. “Fiz definitely made me


better,” Spoelstra said during a conference call Wednesday afternoon. “We had some epic,

legendary fights. We would challenge each other all the time. Fiz was not afraid to share his

opinion. I wanted him to challenge me, question things, make me look at things in a different lens.

And he constantly did that.

-“Fiz made me a better coach. He thought the game differently than I did, from a different lens and

I enjoyed coming to work every single day getting his perspective, which often made me look at

things differently.”

-“He just wants to help guys get better — and players sense that,” Spoelstra said. “Regardless of

how much experience you have, how much you’ve been in the league, whatever your background

is, if players feel that they can trust you and you really are there just to help and you’ve proven you

can help make them better, then players will be all-in with you.”

Love and Korver aren't just watching LeBron (ESPN.com)

-Korver and Love watch film together, hoping to discover new strains of this virus. "He has made

me a better pro, in terms of watching film and really breaking it down," Love says of Korver.

-A partnership with Love has given Korver a way to remain engaged. A lot of spot-up shooters who

play with LeBron stand still, waiting for LeBron to break the defense and kick the ball out. Korver

cannot stand still. He's hyperactive, impatient, curious as to what kind of space he can unlock for

others just by moving around.

-He found two muses in Atlanta in Mike Budenholzer and Quin Snyder, a Hawks assistant in 2013-

14, but even Budenholzer sometimes wanted Korver to chill in the corner. "I still hear Bud in my

head saying, 'Quit moving so much!'" Korver says, laughing. But the Cavs have concluded they are

more unpredictable with Korver in motion.

-Either way, Korver and Love are brainstorming. They have discussed changing speeds more --

strolling toward each other, and then accelerating into top gear at the last second. "I think we can

get a lot better," Korver says. "There's the game, and then there's the game Kevin and I play within

the game."


Saquon Barkley begins rookie camp by setting his own expectations (The Morning Call)

-Saquon Barkley and Grant Haley arrived at the New York Giants’ training facility at 6:30 a.m.

Friday. Coaches and security guards were there, but the former Penn State teammates were the

first rookies to check in for minicamp. “It’s that mentality to be the first one in, the last one out, to

work the hardest, to ask as many questions as you can,” said Haley, a former Penn State

cornerback. “Just be the first in everything.”

-“I know a lot of people try to set expectations for me, but, no offense, I set my own expectations

and have my own standards,” he said.

-Penn State teammate: “It’s the way he attacks practice.”

Jayson Tatum is at the door. ‘He has a passion to be great’ (Boston Globe)

-“Piece by piece, we built his game,” Hanlen said. “I noticed Jayson doesn’t practice things until he

gets them right. He practices until he can’t get them wrong.”

-“I don’t think he’s comfortable,” said Wechsler, his agent. “I think he’s purposely uncomfortable,

because he has a passion to be great.”

Nick Collison, in his own words: I've had an incredible run. But it's time to go. (ESPN.com)

-Frank Furtado, a semi-retired trainer with the Sonics, gave me a ride from the hospital that day. On

the ride home, he convinced a 22-year-old kid with a lump in his throat that he wasn't going to be

a bust. He promised me I would be able to come back from this and have a career. Frank is a

legend; he was there for me when I needed someone.

-When coach Scotty Brooks took over, he knew he had to change the spirit of our group. We had

some young talent and they knew how to work. Eventually practices became competitive. We were

building something. James, Serge and Thabo Sefolosha showed up alongside Kevin and Russ.

-When Bennett hired Presti, he was just 29 years old, and together they built an entire

organization. They supported us as players and hired people that created an incredible

environment for the players to do their jobs. They valued me as a player and a person and looked

out for my family.


-It takes a village to build an NBA career. There are teachers, coaches, different staff members and

friends who have all helped me along the way.

The Warriors' magic number: How 300 has helped fuel a dynasty

-The ball has energy.

-Shaun Livingston: Ball movement will forever be superior.

-While the James Harden and Chris Paul-led Rockets are the experts of isolation, the Warriors have

long since decided that passing is the key to unleashing their offense. Ever since Kerr made the

move from TNT analyst to the Warriors bench, when he saw the glaring lack of ball movement in

that final season under former coach Mark Jackson and told the team’s ownership how he would

fix it, this has been their ethos.

-Magic number: 300. Pass the ball that many times during the course of a game, Kerr told them,

and the offense will hum.

-“If you have shooting — if you have great shooting — then the more ball movement the better,

because you have guys coming off screens and … you want to make the defense have to defend

for long stretches rather than just one pass and a shot,” Kerr explained to USA TODAY Sports

recently. “So we looked at the passing totals, and … (300) was a really key number for us.”

-Warriors ranked last in passes per game (244) and had the 12the best offensive rating in the NBA

in the year before Kerr’s arrival. In Kerr’s 4 seasons, their passes per game have ranged from 307 to

324 and have finished with the league’s top offensive rating 3 of the 4 years.

-The Warriors’ only two losses this postseason have come in the only games in which they passed

the ball fewer than 300 times (256 against San Antonio in Game 4 of the first round; 295 against

New Orleans in Game 3 of the second round). In all, they lead all playoff teams in passing (323.2;

Rockets 15th at 227.5).

-Consider the picture that was painted in the season prior to Durant’s decision: The Thunder, who

fell to Golden State in seven games during those Western Conference finals, were last in passes

per game during the regular season (256.6) and playoffs (220.4). Durant, like the rest of the

Warriors, wanted to play a more free-flowing brand of basketball.


-Just trust your teammates and make the extra pass because it’s going to come out in the wash and

we’ll be successful.

-“I think the number helps reaffirm (the message) in their minds,” Gelfand said. “So 300 was the

target that first year, and I think as we’ve evolved we kind of expect more and more. In (the

players’) minds, they visualize it very well, and same with our coaches.”

-Goal has risen to 320 per game (or 3 per possession).

-Added Green: “Most of the time when we don’t hit that mark, you can feel it and you know going

into the next day in the film session that ‘We didn’t play that well,’ and that number will come up

and it’s like, ‘Yeah, it figures. It was nasty.’ It just kind of becomes more instinctual.

Fran Fraschilla, ESPN

Situations sheet


Quinn McDowell, Virginia Wesleyan

-Freedom is about finding the right restrictions; Freedom is about determining which load you’re

going to pick up and carry; Freedom is found in embracing responsibility.

Michael Lombardi on Decision Making (Farnam Street)

-“Curly in the Boat” theory. (page 3)

-Bill Walsh to a 24-year-old Lombardi: “You have to think differently; a lot of people in the NFL are

not the best and brightest. You’ve got to work outside your comfort zone. You’ve got to read

people like Tom Peters. Read people like Bob Waterman. Learn from Warren Bennis. Learn from

Peter Drucker.” (page 3).

-Einstein’s five levels of intelligence: Smart, Intelligent, Brilliant, Genius and Simple. (page 4)

-Belichick: Takes complicated problems and makes them really simple. (page 4)

-Belichick stays in Quadrant 1 all the time. He works with nothing but Urgent-and-Important. (page

4)

-Belichick’s ego is never involved in the decision. He does what’s best for the team. (page 4)

-Springsteen has played “Born to Run” 1500 times and plays it with exactly the same passion. (5)

-Belichick goes to work every single day with the same appetite and the same desire to improve

and the same curiosity. (5)

-False duality: We all think it’s A or B. The Belichick’s of the world see the C, D, E and F. (5)

-Part of decision making really comes partly from preparation. You don’t know when you’re going

to use it. You have no idea when you’re going to use that knowledge you just gained. (6)

-Munger: Our main business is not to see what lies at a distance but to do what lies clearly at

hand.” (6)

-Vienna theory: too many things going on. Don’t have too many things you’re trying to be. (7)

-French Laundry theory: 5 things on the menu. All are done really well. Compare this to the diner

down the street with 100 things on the menu (7)

-Watch Cuban on Shark Tank. He tells the people what their role in the business should be. Most

people who go on that show have an idea. They don’t have a business. (7)


-They’ve never dedicated a monument to a committee. You can’t answer to everybody. You can’t

have a bunch of people try to determine what you need to make the decision for. (7)

-Lucy theory: The path of least resistance is the path of the loser. We all make decisions. We can

make the easy decisions or we can make the hard ones. (7)

-When Ray Kroc (McDonald’s) realized he was in the real estate business and not the hamburger

business, he made money. That’s part of making the decision, it’s figuring out what we are. (8)

-Parcells’ nickname for Belichick was “Doom” because he never believed things were going to

work out. He was always preparing for the worst. He doesn’t tell that to the team but that’s his

perspective. (8)

-Jeff Oss: “The biggest mistake is that you have a losing strategy when you think you have a

winning one.” That’s what Belichick does – he pokes holes in his strategy to make sure it’s not a

losing one. (8)

-Marcus Aurelius: The secret to all victory lies in the organization of the non-obvious. (8)

-The wise man doesn’t give the right answers; he asks the right questions. (8)

-In New England, after every single game, win or lose, the offensive coordinator and the defensive

coordinator, the special teams coach, have to fill out a sheet: what we did well and what we did

bad. How we handled the situations. Did we prepare properly? Did we not? There’s an autopsy on

every game. The scoreboard doesn’t matter. What matters is learning from the game. (8)

-Whenever you make a decision and it happens to go your way or it goes the other way and you

ignore it and you don’t go back and do an autopsy on it, you’re just going to make other mistakes.

That’s why I think he wins more than anybody. (8)

-The key to being successful is to gure out what you did. Don’t look at just the score. Look at what

happened. That’s the most important thing. That’s where Belichick gains all of his advantage. That’s

where great leaders gain all of their advantage. They look at the result. It’s not result based; it’s

how you went through the process. (9)

-Experience doesn’t help us. Experience teaches us. (9)

-Decision making to me, what I’ve learned from all of those guys, (Belichick, Walsh, Al Davis) was if

you take ego out of it, you’re going to make a lot of good decisions. (9)


-He’s seeing that he’s going to need something down the road eventually that may help him win or

lose a game. He can visualize down the road and see what that is. (10)

-Remember, I’m in the information business. That’s really what I’m in. I’m in the information

business. I collect information on players. I collect information on football teams. I collect

information and how I sort that information is really most critical. (10)

-On why Belichick is so good: He’s Springsteen. The guy is not motivated by the boats, the rings,

the jewelry. He’s authentic. Everybody has seen what he wears. He’s got cutoff everything. The man

is dangerous with a pair of scissors. That is where he was in 1991 when I rst met him. He really

enjoys the competition and the winning. He has this unique ability of starting over every year. (12)

-We won the Super Bowl in 2014, and in May he says to me, “Why don’t yougo through the top ve

or six organizations? Study them as much as you can and then send me things they do well.” This

whole notion of how we analyzed every game was something we did for everything. What they did

well. What they did bad. What we could learn from them and what we could integrate into what we

were doing. That’s the most important thing. (12)

-The people that have the Vienna problem, they try to steal all of these great ideas and they can’t

integrate them because they really don’t understand what they’re stealing. They’re just taking

things. When it breaks down, nobody can x it. What he wants to do is take an idea and integrate it

because it’s this one thing we did really well; let’s try to do that. (12)

If you’re doing your job really well, you’ve got to go back and look. How did we blow this pick?

What mistake did we make here? After the draft, we’re going to study everything we did. Where

did we go wrong? Break it down. (13)

-There has to be one spokesman for the team. There has to be one leader. It has to be his mission.

(16)

-With that, when you get that philosophy from the owner, now you can build your philosophy

around it. The head coach’s job, and this is why I hate the Vienna thing, is to give that philosophy.

We want to be a big, fast, ... Here’s what we’re going to be on offense. Here’s what we’re going to

be on defense. Here’s what we’re going to be on special teams. It runs through his chair. (16)

-Mental toughness means doing what’s right for the team but might not be right for you. (16)


-Walsh: If we’re all thinking alike, no one is thinking. (17)

-I had a sign in my office with a quote from Eric Shineski of the US Army, “If you don’t like change,

then you’ll like irrelevance even less.” (18)

-What I’ve learned in my time in the NFL is that players only listen to intelligence. If I can make the

player better, they’re going to listen to me. If I can’t improve the player, they’re not going to listen

to me. If I can’t demonstrate to the player I know enough to make him a better football player,

they’re not going to pay attention to me. It doesn’t matter if I’m ninety or if I’m eighteen. (18)

-On McVay: The guys buy in because he’s smart and he motivates them through intelligence. (18)

-Belichick and Walsh never raised their voice. It was all through intellectual power. He was able to

motivate them through that. (18)

-One thing about football, in any business you are who you want to be. You set up your grading

system to become what you want to be. It’s the same thing in anything; you are who you want to

be. It’s the same thing in anything; if you want to be a smart team, then you’re going to have to get

smart guys. That’s part of the process that you weed out. We wanted mentally tough guys. We

wanted guys that would put the team first. (18)

-Character assessment is the number-one challenge to the job. Football assessment is easy. I can

watch any West Virginia tape I want. The football evaluation is easy. It’s the character. (19)

-How do you find character? Past performance predicts future achievement. (19)

-Walsh had an ego. He would tell you, “I’ve got a big ego but I’m more about being right than I am

about it being from me.” That’s the most important thing. (20)

-Nobody is going to hide behind the fact that well, you know, we told him five times and he didn’t

do it. It’s our job to get him to do it. Walsh used to say all the time, if we see a player do it once, we

can get him to do it again. That’s a challenging thing for a coach. It’s hard to get him to do it. (21)

-In my profession, we’re in the veterinarian business. We are veterinarians. The patient doesn’t talk

to us. The team never says, “You know, we need a better right tackle; get us one.” You have to

have systems and analysis to program, to find out what you’re doing wrong. You’ve got to figure it

out. (22)

-It’s players, coaches, or scheme. That’s the three areas. Players, coaches, or scheme. You break it


down. The good teams really only focus on improving their players because they know their

scheme and their coaching is really good. Those are the ones that win. The ones that don’t win are

the ones that blame the players, blame the coaches, and blame the scheme, and then it goes like

that. (22)

-You take the analytics to try to drive you to finding something on the tapethat you can combine

the two together and you can make a conclusion. The numbers give me a sense of this is who the

team is and then the tape lets me try to integrate it. (24)

-Walsh trades for Jack Reynolds in 1982 because of pencils. Reynolds used to walk around the

team meeting room with this white taped box of pencils. He would give the pencils to Ronnie Lout

and say, “Now, take notes, goddammit.” And hand them the pencils. He would teach all the young

players how to be players. He was the role model. He helped build this culture from within. (25)

Space City: How Faith Fuels the Rockets’ Explosive Offense (SI.com)

-He was ready to quit in ’78 and haul his broken shot home to West Virginia, when Olimpia

hired a head coach from Chicago’s North Shore named Dan Peterson, who recognized that

D’Antoni’s problem was not his stroke. It was his psyche. “You’re my point guard,” Peterson

assured him. “No matter what, I’m never going to take you out, and if we lose, it’s not your

fault. It’s mine.”

-Peterson challenged D’Antoni to hoist at least 12 shots per game, regardless of how many

he made. “If you go 2 for 19, I won’t say a word,” the coach vowed. “If you go 1 for 11, we’re

going to talk, because you didn’t take 12.” Peterson cured D’Antoni’s yips by changing his

perspective.

-Someday, he’d show America what he learned overseas, that confidence is the most potent

performance-enhancer of all. Someday he’d imbue others with the belief Peterson breathed

into him, only he had no idea when or where.

-The Rockets signed Green in December, when he was unemployed in Houston and only

playing in his driveway with his six dogs. D’Antoni summoned Green late in the fourth


quarter at Dallas and after he clanked two shots, his head sunk. “When you miss your

hundredth, I’m taking you out,” D’Antoni told him. “So you’ve got 97 misses to go.”

-“You know how your girl always says, ‘You don’t ever tell me you love me!’ ” Green said

later. “And you say, ‘Baby, you know I love you!’ And she says, ‘Yeah, well, I need to hear it

sometimes!’ Basketball players are the same way. We need to hear it sometimes.”

-“So many places I’ve been, if you go left, that’s wrong, if you go right, that’s wrong,” Green

says. “Here, there’s no wrong.”

-“All these guys have talent,” D’Antoni says. “All of them kicked ass somewhere. It’s a matter

of unlocking them psychologically. You put pressure on them, they could go wild. You show

faith in them. . . .”

-“I like when there’s no thinking,” says D’Antoni, still playing the bumpkin, unconvincingly as

ever. “So we just do the same thing every frigging time.” His minimalist approach reminds

general manager Daryl Morey of an Albert Einstein quote: “Everything should be made as

simple as possible, but not simpler.”

-Phoenix won with speed, Houston with space, vast expanses of hardwood where Hall of

Fame guards can probe and kick. Extra passes and off-ball cuts may please the eye, but they

can also clog lanes and cloud looks. “You move around a lot, you wind up closer to the rim,

shooting runners and s---,” D’Antoni says.

- Practices are 90 minutes, but don’t worry, you probably won’t have to deal with some

manic rookie picking you up full-court. “I’ll tell that guy to back off,” D’Antoni says. “I want

Chris and James to dominate, so they feel good. I don’t want anybody putting doubt in their

mind.”

-D’Antoni created “teaching tapes” with footage from his time with the Suns and the Knicks

(“I didn’t do much coaching after that,” he says of his two-year stint with the Lakers),

illustrating the importance of quick outlets, choreographed breaks and sledgehammer

screens. Everybody runs a lane, taking the widest path to preserve room for the point guard.

Even the five man, unless he can beat the field downcourt, stays out of the middle. “Who the

f--- am I?” Stoudemire used to ask. “Carl Lewis?”


-D’Antoni lionizes his ballhandlers, and as Stoudemire would attest, abuses his big men.

“This is what you’re going to do for us,” D’Antoni told Capela in their first training camp.

“Protect the rim, run the floor, set a pick, roll to the basket—oh, it didn’t work—go back, set

another pick and do it over again. I’m going to yell at you, but if we win a championship,

you’ll be the reason, and if we lose, it’s not your fault. We’ll still probably give you $80

million.”

-Houston regularly positions three shooters in fixed locations behind the arc and essentially

tells them to stay out of the way. They are vital bystanders. If they weren’t so accurate, or so

committed, defenders could leave them for Harden and shrink the precious space. “There

are times I feel like I’m not having a huge impact on a game,” Anderson says. “But we were

all brought here for a reason.” But the moment Anderson starts to wonder, in D’Antoni’s

words, “Why the f--- am I just standing here?" his man inevitably cheats a step and Harden

hits him with a crosscourt heater. "I know it’s tough not to touch the ball,” D’Antoni tells his

spacers at timeouts. “But keep running to the corner.”

-Before every game the Rockets show a different three-minute highlight video in their locker

room, Harden’s hypnotic dribbling exhibitions spliced with Nenê’s brutal screens.

-The Rockets are more suited to a reduced tempo, but during a meeting with lead offensive

assistant Brett Gunning before the Minnesota series, D’Antoni stresses speed. On the

greaseboard in his office, he writes the four quadrants of the shot clock: 0–6 seconds, 6–12,

12–18, 18–24. “If we live in the first two quadrants, our OER is 130,” D’Antoni starts.

“Defenses are scrambling, trying to figure out what we’re doing. We’ve drifted more toward

these last two quadrants recently, and we don’t want to do that.”

-Gunning brings the coach back to his comfort food, a Harden/Capela pick-and-roll in

Minnesota, with Gordon on the right wing, Ariza on the left and Luc Richard Mbah a Moute

tucked into the left corner. “Stop!” D’Antoni chirps, and Gunning pushes pause. “We might

disguise this a thousand different ways but 90% of what we do is right here,” D’Antoni says.

“I believe, of all the things in basketball, with the guys we have, you cannot guard this in a

traditional way. It’s not possible.”


Chris Beard, Texas Tech

-Has NBA playoff games playing on the jumbotron. Players come in to watch + shoot (on their

own).


Rick Barnes, Tennessee Basketball

-Core values

NBA teams value draft combine interactions (Chicago Tribune)

-Popular question: “How do you lead?”

-Teams even asked drivers who chauffer players from one event to the next how they acted on the

ride.


Doug Collins, NBA (via Fran Fraschilla)

-On staff alignment: Agree-Disagree-Align

For Spurs, defending without fouling a way of life (San Antonio Express News)

-Early in Kawhi Leonard’s first Spurs training camp, held in December 2011 due to that year’s NBA

lockout, coach Gregg Popovich took his young rookie aside and set the course for the first few

seasons of his professional career. “We convinced him we wanted him to be Bruce Bowen first,”

Popovich said. “We wanted him to be a defender.”

-“It’s really one of their core principles,” said Atlanta coach Mike Budenholzer, a Spurs assistant for

20 years before joining the Hawks. “They talk about it regularly. They drill it. They show film on it.

Everybody knows how important it is to them being so good defensively that they defend without

fouling. It’s been that way from the beginning, really.”

-Foremost among all Spurs, he has taken the team’s “defend without fouling” mantra to heart. “I

guess it’s just in our mind when we’re out there (in games), after hearing it in training camp and

practicing all these techniques,” Leonard said. “It’s just what we hear all the time.”

-Popovich paints the Spurs’ emphasis on defending without fouling as a matter of brains over

brawn. “You’ve got to teach it,” Popovich said. “It’s all between the ears. You’ve got to take the

macho out of it, put more of the brain power into it. It’s a major emphasis of ours.”

Inside the midseason decision that transformed the Iowa State defense (The Athletic)

-Iowa State’s defensive coordinator leaned back in his office chair last month and told the story

behind how the Cyclones pulled off their stunning transformation on defense in 2017. The

turnaround, he says, began with a bold act: This staff threw its playbook in the trash during the

team’s idle week, three games into the season. “Everything we knew, we shoved it off the desk and

basically started from scratch,” Heacock told The Athletic. The Cyclones’ new plan arose out of an

effort to solve a tricky question: How do we get our best 11 players on the field? Who gives us the

best chance to win?


-He recalls a simple line Tressel always used to tell his coaches: Your players play fastest when they

know what they’re doing.

-“Honestly, it’s what’s fun about where we’re at,” Campbell said. “You’re probably going to adapt

every year a little bit to what your personnel is. The neat and fun thing about us, and this is how we

were at Toledo and how we have to be here, is you have to be multiple in what you do. You can’t

just say, ‘This is who we are, this is what we’re doing.’ You’ve got to be able to adapt to your

players. What can they do?”

-“If you like the science of the game, of putting a plan together and the chemistry of the team, I

think it’s really exciting,” Heacock said. “That’s what I love the most. I love the science of the game.

That’s why I still like doing it. I have a staff that loves doing that part of it.”

Mike Boynton: My First Year (The Athletic)

-On what surprised him about being a head coach: “Just the amount of decisions you have to

make. I don’t think you can ever be prepared for it, because it’s literally all day, every day. It seems

like every 30 minutes there’s a decision to make.”

-On dismissing two players midseason: “That was the hardest thing I did all year. First, because I

don’t think either one of them is a bad kid. I think they’re both good kids. I just think they were kind

of misguided. I think a few things were going on. I needed to show the rest of the team that I would

do what I said I would do. You establish that there will be a level of accountability and Coach

doesn’t throw out empty threats, so to speak. The other part was, you learn how one thing affects

the other.”

-What I need to find is another way to refocus our guys, maybe going into the next game. That’s

something I’ll evaluate this offseason: How do we prepare for the next game better? How do we

make sure our guys totally eliminate that game by the time the next game starts, after Kansas?

Mike D'Antoni's isolation adaptation: 'With James and Chris, why not?' (ESPN.com)

-The Rockets have taken 3-point shooting to historic extremes since D'Antoni arrived in Houston,

but he has drastically adapted his system to suit his personnel.


-"We are who we are, and we had to be who we are," D'Antoni said after the Rockets' victory in

Game 2, in which Houston ran 46 isos. "We just did it better, longer. Guys believe it, and we're not

going to change anything up. That would be silly on my part to panic. We can beat anybody

anywhere at any time playing the way we play. Some people might not like it, you know? Hey,

sorry. You know, it might not look good to some people. But it's effective. It's efficient."

-"If the best that we have is an iso, or if my personnel on my team dictates that that is really good,

then that's what we're going to do," D'Antoni said. "I've had trouble in the past because really

good players weren't real efficient [on isos]. They weren't real efficient, so I'm looking at the

numbers and going, 'Somehow the efficiency has got to go up.’ Before, we never really wanted to

go one-on-one until we had to. With James and Chris, why not? It'd be stupid not to because it

yields more points than other stuff."

-"We got into too much -- I hate to say iso, because everybody iso's when you switch, but it's too

much," D'Antoni said before Monday's practice at the University of San Francisco. "It went too

deep in the [shot] clock again. So those are things we'll have to correct." D'Antoni admits that iso

ball isn't really his aesthetic preference. But he says he has never been anti-iso -- just anti-

inefficiency. "It really is not like, 'Whoa!'" D'Antoni added, throwing his hands up to mock shock

that he has completely changed his philosophy. "No, the numbers say this, we're doing it, and I'm

not afraid to."

-D'Antoni is convinced that the Suns would have been even more successful if Nash ran all those

pick-and-rolls with a shoot-first mindset. "If they even give a hint of going under [the screen], just

whap it," D'Antoni said. Nash, now a player-development consultant for the Warriors who

sees Stephen Curry shredding defenses with his jump shot, agrees with his old coach.

-"We know better now," Nash said. "The math's been validated, and I think that's why point guards

are so aggressive. It makes sense. We stuck to our traditional values, and that allowed me to stick

to my personality, whereas I should have come further and further out of my personality. Yeah, I

should have probably shot the ball 20 times a game. It probably would have made a lot more

sense, but at the time, we weren't ready for that league-wide. Everyone was telling us that you

can't win shooting all those 3s, and now we realize that we didn't shoot enough, especially when


we were playing small. So, yeah, I think Mike's right. I regret it, too. But it really wasn't my

personality and the culture of the game wasn't ready for that. So it was like a bridge too far, so to

speak, at the time."

-Nash referenced another of D'Antoni's regrets: that the Suns didn't shoot even more 3s. The

criticism that they shot too many, which came externally from the media and internally from the

front office, seems cute in hindsight. The most 3s the Suns attempted during D'Antoni's tenure was

25.6 per game in 2005-06, an unheard of number at the time. That would have ranked 25th in the

NBA this season, when D'Antoni's Rockets shot 42.3 3s per night, breaking the league record they

set last season. "If we'd shoot 30-something 3s back then, it was like, 'Oh my gosh!'" D'Antoni said.

"That was like stepping out of the box back then. But that was like putting our toes in the water. I

should have dove in, and I really regret that."

-"It's like if you go to Vegas, you play the odds," D'Antoni said. "Sometimes you go home with

money, and sometimes you go home without money, but you play the odds every time. It's really

kind of simple at the end of the day. It's not rocket science. It's numbers and giving the guys

confidence, and you've got to have great players. And we've got great players. That's the bottom

line."

-"Coach is always on me about shooting 3s," Paul, who averaged a career-high 6.5 3-point

attempts per game, said. "We talk about it and stuff like that, but the biggest thing that I'm grateful

for is they tell me to be me. Earlier, I was almost scared to shoot midrange. Know what I mean? I

was almost scared. I had to explain to them that that's my version of a layup. Coach and them told

me, 'Be yourself.'"

-"I don't think Mike has changed," Morey said, discussing the Rockets' evolution into a team that

runs more isos than anyone but ranks in the middle of the pack in pick-and-rolls. Mike's principles

have always been take the first good look. The way teams are guarding us with heavy switching,

that's how we end up in iso. Because we have numerically the best iso player ever in James, and

Chris is extremely good, [so] it ends up being good offense still."


A 'different breed': Why you should never question Steph Curry's confidence (USA Today)

“I didn’t see it [a video of Curry, after a made layup, declaring to the Oracle Arena crowd,” this is

my fucking house”) until this morning,” Fraser told USA TODAY on Monday. “I loved it. That’s him

exuding confidence, happiness, success, all those things. And when he gets in that place, he’s

unbeatable.

-Of all the qualities that make Curry unique, confidence has often carried him to these hoops

heights. Call it swagger or cockiness, but there has always been an edge that belies his choir boy

image.

-“My favorite Steph celebration was the shimmy in Portland (during the 2016 playoffs) when he

finally made a three that got him to 1-for-11 (shooting),” said Kerr, who won five titles as a player

and remains the all-time leader in career three-point percentage (45.4). “So you want to talk about

confidence, you shimmy when you’re 1-for-11? That’s confidence. I wasn’t capable of that. I would

go into a shell if I missed four or five threes in a row. Most guys would, to be honest with you. But

Steph’s a different breed.”

-“You’ve got to block that (criticism) out and really be your own worst critic and your own biggest

fan,” Curry said. “It’s hard to do at times, because everybody’s human. But consistently that

(confidence has) gotten me through some tough times.”

-Fraser, who has learned the truth about Curry’s mental makeup during these past few years, is as

much of an expert in this field as any. But he had a slip-up of sorts the day before Game 3, when

Curry dominated in one of the many shooting games they play. “He crushed it with his score, and I

said ‘You’re back,’ and he said, ‘I was never gone,’” Fraser said with a laugh. “He always knows that

it’s not going to last. His disposition, and the way he views not only basketball but the world, is that

the glass is always half full. One of his (favorite) lines to me is that he thrives in chaos. (Chaos) can

just be 20 people at the house for the weekend, or getting into a city super late at night and being

tired. I think he likes to overcome things that are going against him. ... He doesn’t look at those as

‘Oh, things are going against me. This is not good.’ He actually embraces chaos. I think that kind of

stuff strengthens his mind.”


Business lessons from the basketball court (Wall Street Journal)

-Myers on Silicon Valley influence: Lacob’s willingness to bet on unproven managers, ability to

identify leadership talent. One more: collaborative mentality.

• He [Nick U’Ren] wasn’t anybody. But he was a guy that had a good idea. So when you

talk about what Joe Lacob brought, we basically broke down walls that, in my business and

maybe some of yours, you sit there and go, “Why aren’t I talking to that department?” And

the answer can’t be, “Because we never did.” He got rid of that thinking.

-You want to create an environment that you can enjoy and be free to express what you believe.

When we started, Steve went to Seattle and watched the Seahawks’ football practice. Music’s

blaring. So he came back, and he said, “You know what? I think I’m going to play music in

practice.” For a lot of people, it was a little bit of, “What are we doing? This is serious. We shouldn’t

be playing music.” It took me until the NBA finals in June, guys are shooting half-court shots and

the music’s playing. By the time June comes around, you are going to be exhausted and you won’t

even understand why. So, in Cleveland, I’m sitting there and they’re playing music. And I finally

clicked. I said, “I get it. It’s June, it’s the 98th game of the season, and they’re still having fun.”

That’s the challenge. It can’t be too much fun that we don’t listen to the coach. People lose their

jobs. But it’s a simple thing. Just try and have fun.

Kerr/Draymond Relationship Nearly Destroyed GS; Now It Fuels Them (Bleacher Report)

-It was Feb. 27, 2016, halftime of a nationally televised game between the Warriors and Thunder.

The player was Draymond Green. His words, as relayed by Salters, were pointed. His target was

coach Steve Kerr. "I am not a robot! I know I can play! You have me messed up right now! If you

don't want me to shoot, I won't shoot the rest of the game!"

-They had clashed many times before, but never quite like this. Not with Green rising from his seat

to charge at Kerr, and Kerr all but inciting it. "That was by far the worst day of our relationship,"

Green says, before adding, "That day will end up being the best day we've ever had."

-Green, fiery as ever, is still the backbone of the Warriors defense. Kerr is still his coach, and Green

will tell you, one of his closest friends in the world. "A guy who I will stay in contact with, no matter


what," Green says, "who I'll talk to no matter what, who I'll look to for guidance in certain situations

no matter what, who I can always get a solid opinion from, for the rest of my life."

-That profane locker-room tirade was not an end, but a beginning, a breakthrough—the furnace

that forged the friendship. "We get it," Kerr says. "We understand each other. We know there's

going to be an occasional blowup, because we're both extremely competitive. We're more alike

than people would ever think."

-On his technical foul 67 seconds into Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals: "I was a bit

overzealous, a bit amped up," Green would say afterward. "But I'd rather that any day than coming

out flat." Teammates and coaches echo this sentiment often. There's a balance here, a tradeoff of

sorts: Without the borderline-out-of-control passion, there is no Draymond. And the Warriors

happily accept the deal, for all the benefits it brings—the stifling defense, the brilliant playmaking,

the timely rebounds.

-"He's high-strung," says Hall of Famer Jerry West, the former Warriors consultant who's now

working for the Los Angeles Clippers. "That's what drives him. He's just so emotional. The thing

that drives him to be better is also the thing that makes him more volatile."

-But he is as indispensable as any of his flashier teammates—the fulcrum of their offense and the

backbone of their defense, both of which perennially rank among the league's best. He averages

more assists than any Warriors guard, more rebounds than any Warriors big man. He can defend

all five positions.

-This is the essential understanding that now binds player and coach: Kerr had to learn to loosen

his grip—to let Draymond roar when he needs to roar, flex when he needs to flex and shoot when

he needs to shoot—to trust him to do the right thing. Green had to learn to harness his own

emotions and to trust Kerr's guidance when it was time to intervene.

-"There's so many times in life people try to change you," Green says. "And sometimes, although

someone may think they're changing you for the better, it could be for the worse. And where [Kerr]

helped me was, he didn't try to change me. His whole thing to me was: How do you channel it?

How do you channel your aggression, your passion? How do you use it, get it to where it's always

working for you, or never against you? And that was kind of Steve's thing with me that helped me


so much. Because I think if you take my fire away, I may be a decent player because I can really

think the game. I'd still have that, but if you take my fire away, I'm not near the guy that I am and

the player that I am. And so if he was more so bent on trying to strip that away from me, I'm not

where I am today. But he was more focused on, and more dedicated to, trying to help me learn to

use it for the better of myself, or the better of the team."

-Kerr on the 3-page letter he wrote to Draymond after he benched him for the 4th quarter of a

January game versus the Nets and the two didn’t speak for 24 hours after: "I wanted him to

understand that I understood that it's a difficult time of the year," Kerr says. "He knows how much I

love him and how much I respect him. That was probably the first line. And then it was probably

basketball stuff: Here's where you can make an impact. Here's how powerful you are to our team.

As you go, the team goes. Something like that. But it's always gotta come from the heart, it's

always gotta be more on a personal level than a basketball level."

-"Some of the best relationships that I have in my life all started that way," Green says of his

blowout argument with Kerr in February 2016. "Like, literally, some of the people I am closest to all

had that moment. And those are really the people I trust most. Like, No. 1, that person isn't a

pushover," he says. "I'd rather not deal with someone that's a pushover. Because I know in life,

sometimes you need to be told no. Sometimes you need to be told you're wrong. And someone

that's just going to agree with me on everything I say or do, never tell me I'm wrong, they're not

good for my life. They're usually there to get something out of you that they want. And when you

kind of see that (strength) out of somebody, you know it's not about what they want. Because if it

was about what they want, you wouldn't be there. That means a lot to me."

-"Steve can reel him in a little bit, but then he lets him go, too," Izzo says. "He knows that his

passion and emotion is part of what makes him, too. Boy, that takes a lot of courage as a coach."

-"From that point on," Green says, "he was more interested in learning me. Because you can't

coach everybody the same, just like you can't lead everybody the same."

-A reflective Green will casually talk about the importance of not "emotionally hijacking" the team—

an expression he adopted from Kerr. He credits Kerr for helping him find that balance.


-The effect on Kerr is just as profound. He's learned to better tailor his approach to each player,

recognizing what Curry needs from him is fundamentally different from what Durant needs, or

Iguodala needs, or Green needs. "I don't know if I really understood that concept that well my first

year," Kerr says. He's even recalibrated some essential beliefs about the game. Those so-called

"bad" shots that Green sometimes takes that used to make Kerr wince? The profane outbursts after

a big shot? They have a value. "Part of what makes Draymond who he is," Kerr explains, "is when

he makes that three-pointer, he needs to look at the other coach and say, 'F--k you! You better

start f--king guarding me, motherf--ker!' He needs to say that, because that fuels him, and then his

defense is better." And to get Green's best efforts on defense—his calling card—he needs some

freedom on offense. He needs to shoot, and to shoot his mouth off.

-"Draymond's made a big impact on me," Kerr says. "Because I've watched him go from second-

round pick, tweener, 'What position does he play?' to All-Star. And he's done it with intellect,

versatility and bravado. Without that bravado, Draymond isn't Draymond. So who am I to tell

somebody, 'Hey, don't! Tone it back!' When maybe toning it up is what might help you become

great."

Quinn Cook learned the hard way not to take a single minute for granted (Mercury News)

-Quinn Cook has a nagging regret from three years ago. When he played for the Cleveland

Cavaliers in the Las Vegas Summer League in 2015, he’d often enter blowout games with six or

seven minutes left. But instead of playing as hard as he could during that time, he’d be a bit blase.

“I always regretted being too cool out there, never going as hard,” Cook said. “It took me another

year to get another opportunity in the NBA. And that whole year I was just thinking, wow, if I just

could’ve did that, or did that.”

-When Cook isn’t getting playing time, he stays ready by being active on the bench. He jumps and

screams when his teammates make a good move. And he studies the game so he can share his

observations with his teammates during huddles. “When you’re locked into what we’re doing,

when you’re having fun on the bench, when you’re engaged in the game, it’s just easier to stay

ready and make an impact,” Cook said. “I’m just trying to be the best teammate I can be.”


Trevor Ariza is easy to miss. He shouldn't be. (ESPN)

-Ariza? He just logs 40-ish minutes, hits enough 3s that you never fret about spacing, and defends

across every position. He rarely misses games or practices. When the Wizards tried to rest him at

the end of the 2013-14 season, with their playoff seed almost set, Ariza refused, Wittman says. He

wants in on every practice drill. "I had the luxury of coaching Kevin Garnett, and KG would cuss me

out if I wanted him to sit out one play in practice," says Wittman, who spent 13 seasons on

Minnesota's staff. "Trevor wasn't quite like that, but he would let you know he didn't want to sit."

-Ariza is an important, mature, calming presence in every locker room. No one panicked after the

Warriors obliterated Houston in Game 3. Ariza was part of a group that went out to a big dinner in

the Bay, after which some of them -- not Ariza -- retired to Harden's hotel room to play cards and

talk ball for a bit. (D'Antoni has a saying to remind the Rockets not to dwell on whatever happened

-- good or bad -- in the previous game: "So what? What's next?")

-Ariza is usually the first player to arrive at home games. He warms up early, and sits at his locker,

watching film of Houston's opponent playing on a big screen. As players file in, Ariza might stop

them to discuss a play rushing across the screen: How should we defend that? "He holds court,"

Bzdelik says. "When you have a player-directed culture like that, your team has a chance. Trevor

brings that."

-Ariza doesn't speak up much in front of the full group. He prefers to lead by example. In

Washington, he requested that the Wizards have a gym reserved anytime they landed in a new

city, so he could get shots up right away. Bradley Beal eventually started joining him. "He never

said, 'You are doing this with me,'" Wittman remembers. "He just did it. And maybe Brad saw it

and said, 'Oh, s---, this guy's doing this when we land at 8 p.m.? I might start doing that.' To have a

guy like that on your team -- it's invaluable."

Hornets’ priority is ‘player development.’ Here’s how new coch James Borrego defines it

(Charlotte Observer)

-To his credit, Borrego doesn’t presume he has all this mastered. I like how he put that at his

introductory news conference, that he doesn’t arrive with a "pocket of fairy dust" that will instantly


transform an aging, expensive roster that won 36 of 82 games. But Borrego understands item one

of his job description: Make the young guys better now.

-“I think our biggest room for growth is internal,” Borrego said Friday. “There’s a group of young

guys that, after this summer, should take a major leap. If they take a major leap, our roster changes

significantly.”

-That’s where it gets diverse and complicated. What is player development? Obviously, it’s

assistant coaches and strength-and-conditioning specialists and shot doctors cleaning up flaws. It’s

players treating this as a year-round job, getting just as much out of the summer as the season. But

it’s also about accountability and how a player’s skills fit into team concepts. That’s where it got a

bit sideways, regarding Clifford’s vision of the development concept. Clifford didn’t dislike Monk

or have a bias about playing rookies (he played Kaminsky and Cody Zeller plenty their rookie

seasons). He saw flaws in a 19-year-old’s game that should be addressed, rather than “gifting”

minutes based on when a player was drafted. Clifford isn’t an outlier in that view. Phoenix Suns

interim coach Jay Triano had more player-development responsibility than maybe any of his 29

peers last season, because of the Suns’ roster makeup. Triano said the most important element of

player development, even with a team deep in rebuilding mode, is not sending the message to

young players there aren’t playing-time consequences to their mistakes.

-Consider how Borrego described his mentor, Spurs legendary coach Gregg Popovich: “He does a

great job of holding players accountable – of coaching them, but still loving them – and I will take

that with me.”

-I asked Borrego to detail his approach to player development. What I heard in reply was a “less-is-

more” concept: Don’t flood young players with so much correction they are overwhelmed, but still

hold them to expectations. “My philosophy is you maximize what they do well, first,” Borrego said.

“Don’t try to complete the entire puzzle” on the fly. We get lost as coaches in trying to create this

incredible player overnight, and we end up losing our player. ...We’ll identify a few areas, two or

three areas, that we want to focus on right now in the summertime and we’ll work on those.”


Jansen Petagna, Army Football Director of Player Personnel

-The importance of Twitter – team account + individual coaches

-High-quality pictures from practice/road trips, etc.

• Candid – make them look like normal dudes having fun (especially here)

• Having someone with a good camera always around can be such a tool

o Managers/interns?

-Daily staff social media requirement: one tweet + one interaction with another staff member.

-When there is a void in communication, negativity will fill it – Jon Gordon quote

-Every morning, staff meets and selects one recruit to write. Every coach on staff writes the kid a

letter. Coach A always writes about one thing (rivalry with Navy), Coach B writes about another

thing (proximity to NYC), coach B writes about something else (branches).

-Group texting with personnel department. One kid per day, one staff member texts the kid

introducing everyone else and then the others guy chime in.

-Follow the twitter accounts of high-level football programs.

First, let’s get rid of all the bosses (New Republic)

-In his memoir, Delivering Happiness, he wrote that one of the primary reasons he sold his first

company, LinkExchange, to Microsoft in 1998 was that running the business had ceased to be fun.

So it comes as no surprise that the atmosphere Hsieh has created around himself in Las Vegas,

where he moved the company from San Francisco in 2004, is aggressively festive.

-Three years ago, Hsieh shifted Zappos to a management system called Holacracy, essentially

eliminating bosses. In general terms, though, the idea behind Holacracy is simple enough and

follows from a few assumptions, such as the belief that people are inherently creative. Another is

that old-fashioned management hierarchies stifle innovation, because they naturally generate

informal rules and cliques of powerful insiders, which is inefficient and demoralizing, so a new and

better system would be founded on clear, transparent rules. Even better, the rules should be

flexible and adaptable, so governance procedures should be incorporated into the system. So


instead of having jobs, in Holacracy people have roles. Each role belongs to a circlerather than

a department, and circles are guided not by managers but by lead links.

-In the March email, Hsieh asked everyone in his company to read Reinventing Organizations by

Frederic Laloux.

-At the conclusion of their 2-week training, everyone Amazon hires receives a no-questions-asked

offer of $3,000 to walk away.

-Each floor seemed to have multiple kitchens and break rooms, vending machines, and mini-fridges

filled with free snacks.

-Glass Frog, despite the twee name, is a decent mechanism for capturing the work that people

actually do and helps in a meeting to memorialize what happened and who was supposed to do

what as a result of the decisions made by the group. But it’s basically just a well-designed database

and to-do list that teams use to define the work they’re supposed to be doing and to hold

themselves accountable for those tasks.

-Hire slow, fire fast.

Zappos core values


Joy and secret rage: How Steph Curry ignites the Warriors (ESPN.com)

-They would strive to make one of Curry's defining traits their cornerstone. It would be a constant,

felt in the practice facility (where music thumps) and film sessions (where jokes fly) and far beyond.

It would be one of the few qualities that, in the age of analytics, remained difficult to tally:

happiness. You'll never be able to quantify that one," says forward Draymond Green. "I think that

drives the numbers. And I think the lack thereof is the force behind bad numbers."


-Klay Thompson, likewise, knows he operates in an unusual workplace. "I know a lot of people --

I'm not gonna name names -- in the NBA," Thompson says. "They love what they do, but

sometimes they don't enjoy going to work every day. I can say here, everyone enjoys coming into

the gym." Green cosigns this notion, saying that many NBA players feel like their job -- while

coveted -- feels like ... well, a job. For the Warriors? "It doesn't feel like a job," Green says. “I think

that's why it's been so hard to beat this team," Green continues. "You look at so many teams that

may try to match things up with personnel or putting 'All-Stars' together [or] 'Superteams'

together. But you miss certain elements of it that really makes it all go."

-"That shot, I sort of realized as a coach, 'You've got to back off,'" Kerr says. "That shot's part of who

Steph is -- it's part of his power and his force. So I can't be the old-school coach like, 'Come on,

Steph, you've got to search for a better shot.' I can at key times, strategically. But mostly, I've got to

let Steph do Steph."

-"I've always had a joyous disposition," Curry says. "When I've always played basketball, I was

always the goofy kid, running around, having fun, doing what I loved to do. I don't think I've ever

lost that as I've gone through the ranks -- high school, college to now. I just enjoy it. I think from my

personal belief system is that I've been in this situation, this stage, for a reason: to shine light on

things that I believe in. That's the most constant thing for me."

-"You can feel his effect on the game," Green says. "The way we play when he's out there, it's a

more joyful style. When he's not out there, it's a grinding style. It's not as fun. Obviously, basketball

is always fun, but it's not as free-flowing."

-Ask Curry's teammates to describe his impact, and more than pace or space, they'll cite an on-

court energy when he's among them -- one that spreads throughout the crowd.

-Curry's outburst offers a window into a competitive rage that's the stuff of legend among the

Warriors. "If you think about Steph, you think of this mild-mannered [guy]," says Kerr, himself an in-

game shatterer of clipboards, "but he's f---ing competitive. He wants to rip your throat out."

-As Kerr says, plainly: "A coach does not create the culture. Players really create the culture

through their force of personality and leadership within the group. The coach's job is to shape the

culture."


-Practice ended hours ago at the Warriors' Oakland facility, and Klay Thompson is heading toward

the door, the last Warrior to leave. It's May 11, a few days before the Warriors open their much-

anticipated conference finals series against the Rockets, but Thompson pauses before exiting. He

looks across the empty court, at a far basket -- the one Curry shoots on every day. "He works as if

he's still a rookie, [as if] he's still trying to make his way in this league," Thompson says of his Splash

Brother, a teammate for seven seasons. "We all see that, and it makes us go to our hoops and put

[in] work. No one wants to be off the floor before him, because this man is the one."

-"When you know everybody here and everybody's open to be themselves, really he is," Durant

says. "That's what the culture is set, [that] it's all right to be who you are. Steph started off here.

He's the one that's been here the longest. So, it's like, everybody in here is just kind of doing their

best to assist him in whatever he needs to be, as a young player all the way up until now. So if you

come in here and you have an ego, or you think you're bigger than the team, the guy who we built

this around is not. So maybe you need to go. You know what I'm saying?"

Udonis Haslem says only certainty in his future is continuing Heat culture (Sun-Sentinel)

-"For me it's more so important that the culture is carried on and is taken care of by the right guys.

So, for me, the culture was given down to Dwyane [Wade] and myself from the Zos [Alonzo

Mourning] and those guys and Eddies Joneses and they transferred the culture down to us. So it's

my job to transfer it."

Summer Search for Consistency – Donovan Challenges Himself in the Offseason (NBA.com)

-“Every year as a coach, you're always trying to evaluate areas that you can help your team get

better and improve, and I will always evaluate things I can try to do better,” Donovan said. “I've

done that my whole entire career. I feel a strong sense of always wanting to improve and get better

individually but also finding ways to help our group improve and get better.”

-“The consistency part of stuff that we've all got to put our heads together. That will be my focus in

the off-season. How do we get better being a consistent team?” Donovan said. “It doesn't mean

you're going to be perfect or not have a bad night, but we can be consistent on what I consider the


controllables. My job is to constantly put those things in front of those guys to have a level of the

accountability, to be able to show them on film when we're at our best and when we're not at our

best, things that we need to do,” Donovan continued. “We've got to be able to see those things,

look at those things, accept those things, and understand that that's a challenge for us that we've

got to overcome as a team.”

Randy Jackson, North Fortney HS Football (Texas) – role/core value sheet


Thoughts

-Honestly don't deviate from your style of play and recruit to it, then make sure, the things that are

dear to you u emphasize. U r what u emphasize. Also stay away from bad kids (AM)

-"Lower the bar and you lose the winners. Raise the bar and you'll lose the losers." (Phil Beckner –

twitter)

-How do we create MOMENTS for our players? What about recruits?

-“Greatness Is 3% Of What Everyone Sees Under The Bright Lights & 97% Of Your Hustle In The

Dark.” – Josh Medcalf

-Rchie Riley, South Alabama: Your program’s culture is defined by what you accept. It’s not about

words or signs in a locker room. It’s about everyday actions and accountability.

Wagner applauds Michigan's development amidst NBA Draft pursuit (247 Sports)

“For me it was always important regardless of what type of development you make throughout the

season to improve every day, and especially in the offseason,” Wagner said during a televised

interview at the 2018 NBA Combine last week in Chicago. “Don’t come back in October the same

player you left in March and April. That was my biggest thing going into the offseason, I think I

utilized that time pretty well. With Coach Beilein that’s always the topic. Once the season starts,

you never stop developing. If you commit to playing for Coach Beilein, you’re going to develop

and improve every day ... not only as a player but also a man. Sometimes that’s very, very stressful,

but it really helps a lot.”

-“I never saw it (as working toward the NBA), I just tried to get better, to be honest,” Wagner said

after a workout with the Wizards. “That was always the mentality. At a certain point it may click and I

knew I wanted to do this seriously. ... I wanted to prove it, and I couldn’t prove it at first. But I’ve

always been a very confident guy, so confidence has never been an issue.”

March Coaching Notebook 2018 - pickandpop.net

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