Slappin' Glass sits down this week with the Head Coach of Italy's Pallacanestro Trieste, Jamion Christian. The trio dive into the topics of coaching mature, high IQ players, constant communication, building trust, and discuss PG's as QB's and full court pressure defense during the always fun "Start, Sub, or Sit?!"
To join coaches and championship winning staffs from the NBA to High School from over 60 different countries taking advantage of an SG Plus membership, visit HERE!
Slappin' Glass sits down this week with the Head Coach of Italy's Pallacanestro Trieste, Jamion Christian. The trio dive into the topics of coaching mature, high IQ players, constant communication, building trust, and discuss PG's as QB's and full court pressure defense during the always fun "Start, Sub, or Sit?!"
To join coaches and championship winning staffs from the NBA to High School from over 60 different countries taking advantage of an SG Plus membership, visit HERE!
And competing for us is understanding the winning details, things that go into winning. When we recruit guys, we always say, like, does this guy impact winning? And sometimes it might be a guy who's a glue guy who moves the ball and you know, it might be a guy who re-balances really well but made us to score it with a group of four guys who can score it, but it might be a guy who just understands the game and makes everybody better. And so when we talk about these conversations, which are sometimes very tough, we start with trust, because the reality of it is we have nothing if we don't have trust, and trust is one of the easiest things to be broken.
Dan Krikorian:Hi, I'm Dan Krikorian and welcome to Slapping Glass exploring basketball's best ideas, strategies and coaches from around the world. Today, we're excited to welcome the head coach of Italy's Palo Canestro, trieste Jamie on Christian. Coach Christian is here today to discuss coaching and preparing for high IQ players and teams. Constant communication and we talk point guards like quarterbacks and the mayhem defense during the always fun start, sub or sit. Unique and absolute must the most helpful and highest quality coaching content anywhere.
Dan Krikorian:These are some of the comments coaches are using to describe their experience with SG+. From NBA and NCAA championship coaching staffs to all levels of international and high school basketball, sg+ is designed to help curious coaches discover, explore and understand the what, why and hows of what the best in the world are doing through our easily searchable 750-plus video archive on SGTV To our live coaches, social Las Vegas. Sg+ is the assistant you would hire if your athletic director didn't already give the stipend to football. For more information, visit slappingglasscom today. And now please enjoy our conversation with coach Jamie on Christian Coach, thanks so much for making the time mid-season, as we were just talking a little bit beforehand. It's a long season, a lot going on, and we appreciate you sitting down with us today.
Jamion Christian :I appreciate all that you all do, so it's a pleasure to be here. I love the enthusiasm that you share the game. I love the enthusiasm that you enjoy your space and what you're giving to other people within the game. It's a joy to be on with you.
Dan Krikorian:Thank you, thanks, coach. Podcast is great because we never lose on the podcast. Talk to us about our enthusiasm after a loss with our teams.
Dan Krikorian:It's a little different, but thank you, we appreciate that. Excited to dive in with you today on something we were talking a little bit beforehand Coaching high IQ players and coaching against talented teams, older teams and the level you're at now the professional level in Italy. These players have been around for a long time. They're men, they know how to play the game and just ways that you try to coach and coach against, strategy-wise, the higher level player.
Jamion Christian :Yeah, I'll start with me personally. I'm a person who just loves all form of basketball. I love college basketball. I love really great high school basketball. I've always loved NBA basketball and I've always loved basketball in Europe and just how these coaches operate.
Jamion Christian :So, coming into this experience, where I knew I was going to have a lot to learn, I just had such a level of respect for those players, for the games that they played against high-level people, and so when I came in, my thought was I have a foundation of how I believe to play. I always believe in taking a ton of threes, I believe in certain forms of ball movement that are maybe a little bit unique, but I wanted a chance and a space with our players to make sure that we worked on it in a collaborative way. So I always talk about what kind of environment do you want to create and the kind of environment we want to have. We want to have competitive, we want to have supportive and we want to have environments where we constantly are learning. So, coming in the door, I wanted to set the tone for that as a leader. It's different when you're an American coming into a situation where there's not even an American coach in Italy that's a head coach, so these guys have probably never played for an American coach. So I don't want to set a tone that we're only going to do A, b and C and that the way we do it is the right way. That's just not my way. So when you talk about coaching high-level players, high-level IQ, it's about understanding the concepts that I believe in and then giving them the power to go and use those concepts in a lot of ways.
Jamion Christian :Something I thought was interesting a lot of our players were sort of used to having rules If this happens, you do this, if this happens, you do that, and there's little accountability in the rule if you just continue to follow the rules. But I don't believe in rules, I believe in these concepts and I believe concepts give. I tell our players you have creative advantage and creative spirit within each play Because you can do one, two or three things, whatever you see the defense telling you to do whatever you feel like is best in the moment. And I will say that took our players a little bit of time to get used to, because I think some of them really wanted the rules. They just taught me the rules to do it and I'll follow it.
Jamion Christian :And I just said, man, the creative spirit that each guy has one or two or three different reads in a situation can really make it hard for you to be guarded.
Jamion Christian :If you're a team that forces baseline and you're a heavy baseline, you're saying, hey, we're going to give up this 45-cut, we're going to give up this pass behind. And if you can build a team that has the ability to make those reads, well, now we can beat you in so many different ways without having to change anything that we believe in, and so I would say that was an interesting part. But when you have high level IQ players like I do, the other thing they're able to do, guys, is they can take these concepts and they can layer them in so many different ways. It's like a choose your own adventure book offense that I feel like we have and they layer them in so many different ways and they can do it in such a quick time and move the ball in so many quick ways because they've all been coached so well. It really gives you an advantage on the offensive side of the ball that ability to kind of think through and be able to attack it that way.
Dan Krikorian:Before we maybe dive into some of the creative spirit and layering concepts which I'd like to get back to. You mentioned at the very beginning, you had a unique form of ball movement that you believe in, and I would just love to see if you can go a little bit deeper on what that is and why you believe it.
Jamion Christian :So my foundation, when I was coaching at Mount St Mary's in Siena and even my first year at George Washington, we were a heavy ball screen team and I would say we were almost more rules based.
Jamion Christian :If you iced, we ran these set of plays. You know we would run 20, 25 to 30 different plays in every single game those first seven or eight years. And so if you were going under, we were going to run these set of plays and they were going to lead to these kind of concepts. And when you watch us play, everyone felt like our team had a lot of freedom. But in actuality, they didn't have freedom. They were basically following rules. You know they said, hey, I does this, we're going to always do this. And you know, if we call this set of plays with two guys behind, it means you're going to make this read here through the ball there and it's going to go there.
Jamion Christian :When I got into the A-10, you know coaching against guys like Chris Mooney and Mike Rhodes you know you just got some great coaches. You can be that detailed if you want to, but their teams are good enough that they can take away what you're looking for all the time, and so it required us at GW to basically develop what we call this flow where, depending on the set, we have low splits and high splits, the Warriors. There's a lot of low splits. That's become really popular, obviously, so we use a lot of those. We use what we call high splits, for if I have the ball in the wing and I'm a big, I can reverse to the top of the key, I can pick and roll or pick and pop, pick and roll into the pocket, Because a lot of times those wing pockets are open, or I can pick and pop to the top and continue the HO to the other side hitting screen.
Jamion Christian :But it's just sort of this flow that we talk about for each person having a different ability, and so certain guys they might want to roll right away.
Jamion Christian :Other guys, you might want them to get all the way to a naked side before they pop.
Jamion Christian :Some guys you might want them to roll on certain actions with certain people and then pop with others, Right. So it's more about this conversation that you're trying to have, about this flow that allows guys to have that creative differences, I think are super important, that make a scouting report hard to follow, and so we just started going to a lot of that. I mean, I basically went from my first eight years running only ball screen to my last two years at GW running only motion, and then here we basically bridge both of them together and we spent a lot more time like the other day, we got up to about 65% of the game in flow and that would mean coming off running one set and then we're flowing the rest of our offense and getting the ball inside to a lot of different guys and doing some stuff like that, which I think really allows for us to be a strong team in the playoffs, but it also allows for us to be a tough team to play in the immediate With coaching a veteran team or these high IQ guys.
Patrick Carney:When you came in and you wanted to build your concepts and, like you said, they wanted rules with older players. They usually have established habits and, especially at the professional level, like these habits have got them this far in their career, what did you think about or what have you been doing throughout the season in terms of maybe breaking habits that don't fit? Let's say how you want to play or how you think about building new habits into these older players.
Jamion Christian :We actually watched a ton of film of how the guys played and how they play well, and it's amazing that when you allow for creative opportunity, creative differences, a guy can find his old habits within what you want.
Jamion Christian :Very few of these guys had a habit that was so bad that I said we want to break that habit. Most of the time it was let's put that habit into what we do. You're really a goodness spot on the floor. For the last four years you've taken more corner threes than anybody else, so let's just get you to the corner and this is how you can get yourself to the corner. I don't know how coaches are going to love this, but to me it's so much of a conversation about how someone can be their very best and how they can play their best within a system. Being able to see it as being creative and allowing that creativity allows for a guy to find the time to fit into it. We've had some good success with it so far. I think, watching us in practice every week, I'm like man we're growing. We're growing within this understanding how to play with one another, because I guess there's two sides to it. There is understanding my habits and my strengths and my weaknesses. But then another part of good offices is understanding the other players, their strengths and their weaknesses and also how can I put them in the right position to make the right plays and what kind of reads are they going to constantly want to make? And so it's just more of this conversation when we do it.
Jamion Christian :If you have a big who's a great pick and pop guy and we have a big right now who's great pick and pop and great role and, as you guys know, you're watching like Boatman City Thunder If you got a guy that can roll, like you got a guy that can pop, that's one of the hardest things to guard. And at some point in his career people just posted him up Some points here. They just rolled him, then some other parts just popped up all the time. You know, and I was like listen, we want you to take 10 shots at night, we want you to pop in five times, we want you rolling the other five and we want to make sure that we're giving you the ability to have that kind of freedom within what we're doing.
Jamion Christian :And then the conversation for the point guard. You know, have we had some turnovers? We have occasionally, but for the most part the point guard and the big kind of read it. It's like, hey, this guy's popping because I got two guys below me and this guy's above me so he's going to roll. I think just giving those guys the trust that they can go and figure it out and we always talk about like having the ability and having the trust to figure out amongst ourselves to find the right answer, you know, and I've been amazed at how often these guys have been able to do that- you mentioned conversations, playing a role and, with your background coming from college, how maybe conversations changed or what did you have to consider within these conversations when talking to an older player, a high IQ player, versus maybe a college student?
Jamion Christian :You know it's an ongoing process. One of the things I was going to go into if I wasn't back in coaching is I had some offers on the table to go into like business consulting and helping people build teams, and so one of the first things I wanted to do, coming in the door beside the establishing office of defense is I wanted to kind of establish like a values of how we operate and I thought that was like super important. You've been in locker rooms. You probably see like all these signs up where we have one sign in our entire facility. First layer is trust. Trust is all about reliability and if we're going to have great trust, they've got to know that what I'm capable of and what I'm going to do consistently and something that's important for me is consistently communicating what I'm seeing, what I'm not seeing. You know, sometimes players are uncomfortable with me because they feel like I don't communicate enough. If I see something that I like, I tell you. If I see something that I don't like, I tell you in real time, and if I see something that's improving, I just might hold on before I say anything. You know I want to cloud their minds. I want to do this, don't do that. I see the growth in these. So we talk about trust. The second layer we talk about is being all in. Now I'm coming in a situation where, I'm fortunate, my team does speak a good bit of English, but I speak no Italian, and so I was like let's just be all in, let's just be 10 toes into the water and let's just go and attack whatever, and if we make a mistake we'll fix it on the back end, but let's really be all in and whatever we're going to try to do, whether it's offense or defense or working together. Then we talk about being super connected as a group. You know, you've probably heard me speak before. Connections are gifts to the world, and now I'm getting a chance to coach on the world stage. So I want our group to understand how important that connection is. Connection is beautiful because, again, it's a recognition about who I am, who I want to be, but it's also a recognition of the people in the building, who they want to be and why we're all working together. Sometimes in basketball we can become sort of siloed, but no, what we're working on is much bigger than you or I. The gift that we get to share this game is much bigger than you or I. So we want to be super, super, super connected.
Jamion Christian :The fourth layer we talk about being present in the moment and how all things in life are best when they're felt in the present. You know we're going to be prepared and we'll be planned, but we want to be able to be present the moment and trust that we have the ability to figure out whatever we need to do on the pathway to become our very best. Then the last thing we talk about is competing at the highest level, and competing for us is understanding the winning details, things that go into winning. When we recruit guys, we always say, like, does this guy impact winning? That was like huge for us, the ability to impact winning. And sometimes it might be a guy who's a glue guy who moves the ball, you know. It might be a guy who Rebalance it really well but made us to score it with a group of four guys who can score it. But it might be a guy who just understands the game and makes everybody better. You know it gives us a lot of latitude there. So we talked about impact winning.
Jamion Christian :So, walking in the door, I wanted to lay that framework for them of this is how we're gonna operate this, who we're gonna be, and so when we talk About these conversations, which are sometimes very tough, we always use that framework. I need you to trust me. I'm gonna trust you to this. I'm gonna trust this of you. We start with trust, because the reality of it is we have nothing if we don't have trust, and trust is one of the easiest things to Be broken. We have a guy on our team in a Rio Folloy, who's one of the most clutch players in Italian history and he's one of the older guys in our team, and one of the things I always try to do is I try to listen to him. You know, like I'll just say like what do you think about this? We're gonna run this down screen for you here. You want it here? Do you want it there? Do you want us in the back screen first? You know, just talk me through what you want. You want more space, you know, because I just want to score the ball at the end of the play, yeah, so that's all I want. So I just try to have that kind of dialogue and then, you know, then I'll say you know, I don't like that. You know, we'll have that conversation right there after practice or before practice, and I don't like that, you know. This is why I don't like that. This is what I like, and we kind of just talk it through and I think that just builds, like trust, said it, hear me sell the time. Let's have trust that we can figure out the problem together. And so I think using that framework helps.
Jamion Christian :And then the other thing that I Established, while that George Washington, actually was this framework for meeting with players. You know, like, on our team we have 10 players, we have three younger guys, and what I want to make sure that I do at least once a month is have a face-to-face, one-on-one with everyone on the team, and I never want someone not knowing where they stand, what they want to do. And so I actually have it written out in a certain way, but I don't let the guys know I haven't written on a certain way. Sometimes I'll meet them at coffee shop, or sometimes I'll meet them after practice, or sometimes I'll call them into the office, but each week that when I do my schedule, I have a certain number of guys I want to meet with and then oftentimes I'll say, hey, I want you to talk to me about these three or four questions. You know, just, I want you to think about this beforehand.
Jamion Christian :So it's a conversation that's productive, like it could be. Like coach, why'd you take me out the other night? Yeah, I had 16 in the first half. He took me out. You can ask me that this is the time to have that conversation. You know at the time to have that conversation, not during the game, but this is the time to have that conversation, so let's have it.
Jamion Christian :You know, and it might be ah, I missed the rotation it might be. We're really trying to bring this other player along. We're sticking him to certain minutes that he's gonna play every single game because we think he can help us down the road. We know where you stand with us. It could be hey, we thought we had the game in hand, so we just wanted to hold it right there and won the rest. You for the next game we play in three more days. But that kind of conversation is really good for a player because the players know where they stand. I'll be honest, players are not used to that level of transparency, so you don't trust it and it's like no, it's just that simple. Let's have the conversations that we got to have, and I do think it's important for me to provide them with some of the Questioning when they can't always verbalize what they want to ask.
Dan Krikorian:Pivoting back for a second on the court, as we were talking about high level players and teams and coaching against them, and maybe now on the side of Trying to game plan for those teams, how to stop great players, how to put defensive coverages together that bother them, and you know at every level whether it's you a professional level, college, high school, way down in your league somewhere there's teams and players that are high at you that are just a problem and what you think about on a nightly basis to try to slow those players and teams down.
Jamion Christian :Well, first of all, it's a challenge, no matter where you are, I mean, it's a complete challenge. You know, by coming here I've watched a lot of your league basketball and you know I watched a lot of basketball. I love watching basketball. I wasn't taught to play basketball here, and so these players were taught to play basketball here and taught to play in a certain way and pretty quickly I could realize how the usa team could lose because those rules we talked about, they're following those rules so intently and by me not knowing the rules, it made defense early on pretty hard here, like guys might go under the horn screen because they're gonna say the point guards are not going to shoot in the first 15 seconds. You're in the states that guys are a good player, not going under. You got to tag it, you got to figure it out. There's a certain ways that they like to play here that I didn't know and so early on we were probably taking more risk than we needed. You know now they were at the number one effective field goal defense in our league. We've got the number one the offensive rebounding team. There's certain things that we're doing here at an incredible level that we're top three into fending the three Top three and rebounding the ball. But early on, you know we had these kind of friendly games. You know we were like pushing out on the horns and over tagging early on in the possession and putting ourselves at a disadvantage, and so I had to learn we've got to make this guy beat us in this way. Here you almost have to have the ability to triple switch and the switch between guards in different ways, because every coach is running so many different sets.
Jamion Christian :It's not like the NBA. You watch an NBA game. I did this for, you know, every summer I sort of do this. I go and I study like an old school team or I study a team and I did. All I do for three months is just study the golden state warriors and study the Utah Jazz in 1994, whatever right stuff that us nerdy basketball guys like to do and which you realize pretty quick.
Jamion Christian :In the NBA, I mean, these guys are running maybe six to eight plays, at most the entire game. They're playing in transition, they're playing a ton in flow and they're really just putting their best players in the right position On the spots on the floor and then making the defense have to react. But in european basketball it's not like that. They're running iversons and floppy's and you know they're trying to put the defense at a disadvantage On the first catch and so recognizing like how can we really really good defensively In the principles that I believe? And again, like defending the three and and running guys off the three-point line, also like not be giving up too much, and so that was a little large learning curve for me.
Jamion Christian :These guys will skip the ball quick here, even at states, if I throw the ball ahead, that guy's always looking shot and we teach him you look shot first. Always here you might throw it ahead and he's looking at the roller and then he's looking at the skip pass. That's there. Or he's looking at the ball ballside corner. He might be wide open and I even look at the rim. He's following his rules, and so it took me a little bit of time and I got a great staff of guys that Were patient with me.
Jamion Christian :We had great conversation in the office and just about how we can be a better defensive team. You know, and here teams will switch a ton on the back side, no matter big or small, or so you know, playing high IQ players means you got to be a high IQ coach and you got to keep learning how they're trying to attack you and you've got to help your team become a high IQ on that side of the ball as well, and understanding what we want to give up and what we don't want to give up. I would actually say the rules that our guys learned. We had to really learn more rules on defense than on offense Because it was a hey, the ball goes in the post. As a smaller guy, you know we're going to trap a certain way.
Jamion Christian :But you know I'm always a big believer, and like I believe in playing one-on-one. I mean, I'm from the deion sanders. You take away one side of the field, you make everybody else kind of figure it out, and I didn't want to lose that in our mentality. You know I wanted to put our best defensive players on their best offensive players and if you beat us, you beat us, you know we're here. They'll say, hey, well, let's just trap it and get out of his hands or let's try zone and we'll be a little bit more adventurous. And so it took a little bit of time to recognize that I didn't want to be adventurous, I wanted to be really good and I wanted to know where I was going to get beat at and just do it in a different way.
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Patrick Carney:You mentioned the cola times, the success you guys had in defending the three-point line, and that's obviously been one of your Kind of core principles. What have you found from a tactic strategy standpoint is helping you guys defend the three-point line?
Jamion Christian :This is well documented. With any team I've had, you know, I believe in running guys off the line. You know, leaving my feet on a flyby, I mean I think there's like a 14 percent difference if I can test a right hand shooter with my left hand and if I can test a left hand shooter with my right hand and flying by on the side of your body and making you take those you know. So I just believe in that early in the year I didn't. One of the things they do here in europe is they don't leave their feet. They let you take the jumper and it might jump at your legs or something with their hand or whatever. And we did that and teams are shooting about 42 percent from three and I was like all right, we're not doing this. I got a way that I think it's gonna work and so we just really reward those extra efforts.
Jamion Christian :Kind of goes into that second layer of being all in. Let's say I'm at the block and they guys shooting from the corner. I'm running and leaving my feet and we're gonna try to make him shoot over a contest, and I just think that's a way you defend the three. The second thing I think when talking about defending. The first thing is is leaving your feet on contest. The second thing is running guys off the line, which means you don't have to leave your feet, but now I can funnel you to the corner or to the baseline and to help. And then now we've got to figure that situation out.
Jamion Christian :But I'd much rather try to funnel you into more people than give up a catch and shoot three. So we've done a really good job of that. And then the third thing I think is underrated is really pressure the ball, pushing the ball out when we on the pick and roll coverages. You know, I've never been a guy who's like let's go under or let's drop. That's always so risky to me. So we've had to do some different things garden the pick and roll on the wing and on the top, but I just want to keep the ball pressure there and to make that ball here. We'll have to make a pass out and then we just rotate and tag out of it however we need to. I think if you're going to defend the three, it always starts with those three things.
Patrick Carney:With running guys off the line. Are you indiscriminately running anyone off the line? I guess is there like the Mendoza line, if he's sub 30, like we'll live, or it's like we want to take away attempts regardless.
Jamion Christian :No, it's different. So you know we run you off if you can shoot it. If you can't shoot it, we let you shoot it. If your guy was trying to prove that you can shoot it, like we hunt those guys and it's gotta go board. You know we lost the other night in a really close game against our rival. You know they had two guys that shoot sub 30 percent from three hit five in between them. You know, hey, you know you're gonna lose that game if those guys make five, but we did a great job on the other guys who make a tongue. You know you can lose that way, but it's like, hey, man, like you got to run certain guys off. If you run everybody off and you're just gonna be chasing, and you know we don't want to be chasing.
Patrick Carney:As you game planner, we're looking at a team. What scares you more? These guys that they shoot 35 percent but maybe take one or two, or the guys that maybe they're low 30s but are taken, gonna consistently take four to six.
Jamion Christian :You know that's a really good question. It's more about what does our defense give up and are you going to be able to beat us in those ways? Some threes that a guy may get, they just may not get against our team because of our ball pressure. We do a thing in transition where we tag up. So when you miss a shot we basically crash. All five guys pick you up right away and we're guarding. So we went about a month without giving about transition basket. If you're a guy who makes transition threes but you're probably not getting against us. So we kind of go through the three-point shot and say, all right, how do you get these? Are you getting them in this way? All right, so we take the transition off. You're not going to get them there now. We're tagging in a certain way on the pick and roll, but your matchup is this person and this person's the best at running you off the line or whatever you know.
Jamion Christian :So I always worry about good players in space having a great night. We always sort of worry about that and we'll look at the shot chart and say like I think he'll be. Brown said a great shooter makes shots five out of seven spots. All right. Well, he's going to take these shots from the wings. He shouldn't 22% from the wing. If we don't get there on time, we want to funnel him into his bad spots and keep him out of his good spots and so we kind of handle that part of the conversation more with the shot chart and honestly that really lies. You know, if a guy's got two, that's five out of seven for great shooters. You know, when you look at a lot of these guys you think of good shooters they may have free spots that they make shots at. So we'll tell our team like hey, in the corner at the end of the shot clock you got to run him off the line in the corner. That guys that gets that freedom just to run at them. And then you know now, that's one less three that we've got a guard.
Jamion Christian :So I don't know if I answer the question, because I think if a guy's taking one or two, my question is always like how's he getting those one or two? Is he get usually in one or two is getting them because there's maybe a dominant ball, him or dominant post player and Maybe that post player loves to kick out to him. So we'll say, hey, let's make sure when that ball is in the post, you can't leave this action here. You got to look for him on the skip. You know if it's a dominant player.
Jamion Christian :You know one of the things you can always do is look at the best score, who's he passed to, how's he get his assists. You know that gives you a bit of clue of like you know how that ball is gonna come out. And you know, and then you're being ready to do it and look, even without defending the three, we still teams, only take, I think, three or four less threes. You know I mean teams gonna take a lot of threes, but it's more about can we pressure on the three-point shot? That it's tougher.
Patrick Carney:You mentioned tagging up. What have you learned about teaching and implementing Tagging up and how to do it effectively? Where you're getting all five guys going?
Jamion Christian :Well, if you're gonna be good, you've got to be really good at some different aspects. You know, like Kansas back in the day, it's like they're great at posting up most teams aren't? They're great at that. That gives you a separator, and so I just thought, like what could give us a separator? And I felt like this was something that was really easy to do. It's easy to implement.
Jamion Christian :It is hard to get the guys to do it consistently. I mean, you've got to stay on them about it and we chart it, we tag it, we do all that stuff, we grade it, we encourage it. You know all that stuff and for the most part We've been about 85%. Each person gets a grade. You know whether we agree post games. Each person gets a grade on how many times they go and how many times they don't, you know. So I think the biggest thing is your number one. You got to find a way to hold them accountable without having to scream and yell all the time. I've got grown men, I probably yelled these guys twice all year.
Jamion Christian :But it's more about like, what's the win-win benefit of this if we stop the ball early? Well, now we're not having to spend as much energy springing back. The old thought is, hey, we spin everybody back, we stop the ball. Well, yes, because you have five guys back now. So now the ball slows down when it gets to the three point line, but you still got to guard action. If we tag up right, then it's gonna be hard for you to run action right away, because now the drag screen is gonna be about five feet outside the three point line. I can just go under it. Meet you on the other side. That's a big benefit to the defense right. That keeps us out of rotation for one, and so I think, having that conversation Understanding, that you're gonna have some cross matches If you do it, because everybody's just basically running through the backs of whoever's in front of them. So I ended with a guard on a guard and a big on a big, and what we've become good at is our guys in the back end Kind of switching it to get bigger guys on bigger guys, and they've sort of naturally done that, which I think is a good thing. But I love a good cross match, like I'd love to start to possess you with my big guard in the point guard, because I know there's gonna be a ball screen at some point and we can switch that and get back to strength and that's just gonna take them out of something that they want to do. You know, we're still working on as a group to keep having that confidence in it.
Jamion Christian :I mean, you would think if you go a month, six weeks without transition basket, your team would be like, oh now what? We got a tag up, we're gonna do this. But it doesn't necessarily work that way with such a new concept. When we've been able to do it, I mean we've really been super effective and I would say that I think we've done a good job in that area. You know, if you're going month and six weeks on a transition basket surrendered, you know let's clap your hands on that.
Jamion Christian :That's hard to do against good teams with high IQs, but that ability to stop the ball early in transition, I think it's really huge, you know. Now the other thing is when someone shoots it and runs out, you've got to run out with them. And I think that's harder for players to grasp, because once you say, oh, we got to all go. Well, now there's an exception, this guy's running out, you got to leave with them and yeah, it's funny. I think it's one of the concepts that I'm watching the league. I think a lot of teams are starting to adapt.
Dan Krikorian:We want to transition now to a segment on the show we call start, sub or sit, kind of a quick hitting lightning round where we'll give you three options Over a topic and ask you to start one, sub one, sit one, and then we'll hop into your answers from there. So if you're all set, we'll go to this first one. Let's do it this first one. We're gonna travel back to your college days and Mayhem defense, pressure trap, get up on the ball, those kinds of things. We're gonna ask you to start, sub or sit.
Dan Krikorian:Three different ancillary benefits of Playing that style of the mayhem defense that, of course, trapping and getting turnovers and speeding teams up are great, but these are three other things that go along with it and your start would be the. In your opinion, what was most important. So Option one is that the offense is just getting more random shot selections and their normal offense gonna give them. So the players are shooting it from different spots, are not normally shooting it from. All those things is an advantage for the defense option to is that you're likely playing a bigger rotation. Your bench guys are getting in more and more minutes, so kind of the team culture element of it, if more guys play more minutes. And then option three is just the confidence and identity that you play with at the beginning of games, knowing you're gonna come out and be the aggressor and kind of force a style of play. So start subset those three mayhem defense options.
Jamion Christian :I start the confidence that's like. So much of the game is such a mental approach in the way we approach your goal. The way we approach a task oftentimes is the way that we finish it. So I start with the confidence. I would sub the randomness of offense now. Look, I'm working so much more with shot charts. How can we move teams into that? And I do think our mayhem teams got to the point where we were able to force you into certain spots On the floor and certain people bring the ball to the floor, because there's certainly a lot of different ways that you can press that. I think we tend to think of one way. You know, when you really dive in our pressing system, it's how can I make the weakest ball here to bring the ball to the floor the weakest decision-maker, and that dictates an offense. And then I would sit the bigger rotation because I like to play eight or nine guys. It's no matter how fast you're playing. Playing ten guys is really, really tough.
Dan Krikorian:So I would definitely sit that one before we maybe getting to any specifics you just mentioned. There's different ways to press, different ways to get the best ballhander the ball out of their hands. Going back to this mayhem system, how did you think about doing that? Night in, night out?
Jamion Christian :Truthfully, when I first started I was like we're just pressing every single possession, we're staying aggressive, it doesn't matter, you know. Then we go play like someone like West Virginia. You know that game gets ugly quick. You can give 100 points quick if you're not having a level strategy behind it. Or even in conference play you play a team like at the time, robert Morris, really one of the better teams in our league. And one of things that's tough is that when you play good teams and this happens in the NCAA tournament as well and when you play good teams, they have good guards and good guards don't put themselves in bad positions. They don't put themselves in the corner, on the short corner, to get trapped. You know where there's a 85% better chant trap ratio, they always go weakside. Where there's only 15% trap ratio, where you're gonna have a good trap, they just sort of instinctually know how to do this part of his learning man. How can you win this way? So let's say you have a team with a dominant ball handling point guard. What are some ways that we can do at the beginning of the press to keep the ball out of his hands and make the two guard who might be a really good scorer, just bring the ball before it initiate the offense. We'll take our inbounder, will shade them towards in the entire time and we'll just kind of keep us soft level so that ball cannot go back into that guy. And then, once that ball goes in, we'll just continue to shade that way.
Jamion Christian :So now that a two guard has to bring the ball before, no matter what teams bring their fours and fives up, you can always you fun stuff with that they bring their four men or five up to catch. What we would do is we say that's an automatic. We called mayhem, so they brought the five up to catch. We let the five catch it, try to make him bring the ball before. But if you got it to a guard we would then run back and trap with the five. They really don't want to throw the ball to the five a second time to bring the ball before. And we would talk about this trap not being like going and Tempoing, not going and trying to steal the ball, but just trying to keep them in front, which I think a lot of times I've called like a linger, lingering. You know that can be a lot more disturbing because if I come and get you as a five, the guard can bend your hip and get around, but if I just linger, well, now he's got to make a pass between two guys and over two guys and it's not gonna be as easy a pass Now if they throw it to the five, now he's got to come back and work and get the ball again. That's shot, clocks just taken away and so before you know it it might not be a 10 second violation, but it might get over eight and a half or nine. Now they got to still get the ball to the point guard and they got to reset and now that's gonna take them three more. It's like all math three more seconds before they run a play. Now You're at 15 seconds to run a play that you usually have 21 seconds.
Jamion Christian :So if we can keep putting that kind of pressure on you through the course of the press and most people just focus on I got to get it in bounds, but we would just take that all the way into the half court and how we would want to attack it. You know most teams that have obviously I love pressing, so you know they'd only have one or two press breaks so you could really scout their press break and you could take them out of what they want to do and really attack them. So you know, I think that's like the thing about pressing is it's not just trapping on the ball right away. You know, I think one year we actually did a diamond press on the front side of it and a man press on the back side of it. We did like we called a hybrid press and so if it went on the right side, we were ready to run and jump man to man. If we're on the side close to the ball, we went into diamond and I thought that really allowed us to be creative enough. That Create a lot of terms we had on my first two years I think we were third and then fifth, internal percentage or something we have.
Jamion Christian :Once you turn people over 20% of the time, which is here, you know it's crazy. Here it's really like dead last, and turning people over here it's like completely different. But we're still using some of those principles that have good, effective field goal defense. You know we're making you take the shots we want you to take. You know a little bit different, but I love pressing. I think there's so many different ways to do it and I think a lot of times people just sort of lock into one idea. I truly believe anybody can do it, if you understand what you're trying to get out of it. Am I trying to get the shot clock down? I'm trying to force turnovers? You know, whichever strategy you believe in, I think you can do both.
Dan Krikorian:Your sub was the kind of randomized shot selection that offenses tend to get when you're pressing them. And how do you marry that in your mind with not wanting to give up threes because Good guards can penetrate? Extra pass against pressure, more space, and are they aligned in your mind? You still don't want to give up threes. Or how did you think about the shot selection on the back end of pressure?
Jamion Christian :The hardest thing to go against is a team that will take threes against the press. We would always try to press. We tried to. Let's say we trapped the ball. When the ball came out, we'd always we call a diagonal sprint out. We're sprinting two guys out of a diagonal. If we always put on diagonally and you're always ahead of the ball, then you're never gonna get an advantage.
Jamion Christian :We'd always try to do that because I felt like that controlled where the ball was gonna go a little bit more than if we just sort of Trapped, stayed with it and then, you know, let the ball come out and that point guard had to get back to his guy and the big had to get back to his. It's like let's bring two guys out. We ever gets to middle line. First is gonna take the ball and the other guys gonna take the other guy, and so I feel like that helped us kind of stay matched up more. Think that in decision. You know, a lot of times I'm thinking about you trap the guard, usually sprint back to get to his, but he could be at a disadvantage On the other side. So it's like let's play two guys playing against one and both guys print out and then one whichever gets their first now goes and takes the ball on the other guy helps. So I always like that helped with the shot, with the shooting part of it, because we were not letting the ball get to Far ahead of us. The scariest thing that we have a team that was shooting threes against the press because those threes are more open than the layups. Everyone talks about giving up layups, but those threes are more open than the layup and so there's a good shooter on the back end of it.
Jamion Christian :I would say this like if we had a good shooter on the back end, part of our press would be trying to make him to come back and catch the ball, just to take him out of that spot. Yeah, that sounds so. So they got to get none of them. We're gonna noddy two guards. We're gonna make the shooter come back, get the ball right Now. Maybe he can bring it up one-on-one. We like that matchup always. If he gives it up now, at least we know if we trap it and he's not gonna be back there to play.
Jamion Christian :And then the other challenging thing is you know, when you play against like these high major teams, they throw live dunks. They're the 6'11, 6'10 athlete you know on the backside of that. So you just have to be really smart with how you're pressuring and where you're pressuring from some of the offensive rhythm disruption for the opposing team. It's harder for the opposing coach than it is for me, because he wants certain taking certain shots at certain times in the clock. He wants to control their little bit of a level and I want to make him play in chaos and so you know you're gonna give up some of those. Another thing is I'll say this last thing I'll say about it is once you play a team, once or twice, you'll know, I'll know what shots we're gonna give up and what shots we're not gonna give up, because again it got only has two or three press breaks.
Patrick Carney:So you know you'll have a pretty good idea with balls in the bill you mentioned when we were talking about Defending the three-point line, but then at the top of this question about just looking more at shot charts, how much information do you Give to your players then in regards to shot charts, and is it more what the team shot chart, individual shot charts, I guess what are you filtering down to your players?
Jamion Christian :Yeah, we might start with a team shot chart when we start. You know, depending on which team we're playing, if we feel like that shot chart tells a story, you know we might start with a shot chart there. I believe in giving the guys information in the right way. I don't think that we give them too much. We give you what I think is super important. You're like, good players can't let good players operate where they want to operate and so far, best defenders. Again, I believe in one-on-ones for our best offenders. They're gonna get that shot chart early in the week, but we're really trying to get this person out the middle of four. We're really trying to get this person out. You know it off this now in this set. If we do this, he's gonna decline this and that means at the end of this place, gonna be here instead of here. So let's make sure that we're the con in this part. Make sure he's at the end, where his zone is blue and not red.
Jamion Christian :We don't do it for every player. I mean, at the end of the day it's 80, 20, 80, 20 principle. You know you're gonna get 80 percent your points for 20 percent your roster. So at the end of the day. We got to guard their top four guys well, they got to guard our top four guys well, and so usually whoever does that best job in the top four guys Put you in a good position to have a chance to win the game doesn't mean you're gonna win the game. And so if you can do a good job of trying to push those top four guys in the spots where they don't like, you're still getting to your spots. You know, typically not a good, you can have a good night.
Jamion Christian :And so I think the shot chart component of it is pretty important. You know, especially like anything, when you get a good shooter, this guy's 41% the right wing, but he's 32% in the lane and he has no pull-ups all year taken. So like I know, like shoot, if I can run him off this line, he's not comfortable in the lane. If we can just win that last step and push him into the lane, it's gonna be a tough shot and then we're gonna be in a good place. So I think the story of the shot chart, you know, I think it's like super important. I don't think we do too much of it, but make sure the guys know the areas that are super important during a game and maybe let's say haptum.
Patrick Carney:Are you looking at in-game shot charts to basically judge the health of your offense, to know where your shots have come from and whether it's a good or bad sign?
Jamion Christian :We're charting a few things. Like we chart how many times we get three stops in a row. That's something we've always charted. I think you know if we can get, you know, three stops in a row, eight times in a game is going to have our possessions. It's hard to lose, so we chart that.
Jamion Christian :On offense, we're charting how many times are getting the ball in the paint. We want inside outside shots. We're charting how many times we get into flow. We just don't want to get into a game where we're calling all these sets which it's easy to do, like you kind of get a game where things get tight and it's like everything stops. You know, I want to keep playing and flow and playing in transition and keep you on your heels. We want to make sure we're playing it flow and that we're not doing that. So that's super important for us. And then we're always checking the shot chart.
Jamion Christian :This group has been great because we take basic threes and twos, we take very little pull-ups and then I do think getting to the free-tho line but also not allowing your opponent to the free-tho line is obviously super important. And then you know, but if we tag up and we chart that, that means we're stopping transition, we're stopping the ball. That's an aggressiveness that I think it's important to do. And then obviously you kind of know your turnovers, you know you get that on the shot sheets. So we kind of look at that as more of the areas of what kind of ways we're creating. We just feel like if we get the ball into the paint, if we can get the ball over half-core line in 20 seconds, then that means we're putting good pressure on the defense and we're going to be in a pretty good place.
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Patrick Carney:Moving on to our last start subsit for you, in our prep and talking with you beforehand, we found out that you've learned a lot from football, studying football coaches. So we're going to give you three start subsit options and which one would be your biggest learnings or takeaways from studying football coaches. All right, starts over sit. Option one is how they break down video. Option two is how they build culture. And option three is how they manage a team or a club or their organization.
Jamion Christian :Um, oh, good one, that's a really good one. There's a great book by steve bellachek called football scouting. If you love bringing out video, it's like the most comprehensive book. You understand why build bellachek is one of the best of all time, because this book is just an excellent read. I would start Managing the team. I think that's super important. I would sub video breakdown Because you know we basically try to treat our playing cards like quarterbacks and that's how we break it down to them.
Jamion Christian :I think I've learned a ton from that. I would sit how they establish culture, because I think in professional sports, in the right situations, the coach is setting the culture, setting the way of life. But I think most situations it's so organizationally based on your ability to set the culture in the way you want it. And I like love interfa.
Jamion Christian :Like this is a great time of year to read the athletic and all these NFL stories, because they fire the coach and they tell you everything they did wrong the last years, even though they made the playoffs the last eight years.
Jamion Christian :So you just find out all the things that happen in the building, you know. Or when they hire a guy to tell you all the great things that he's done. You know all the great players he'd worked with. Even though there's 150 people in the building you don't know if the guy worked with or not, right? So I think the culture part is just so interesting because I just think it's such an organization the coach sets the tone for because he's out in front. But and this is now I'm on the pro side of it you know you're only as powerful as your organization allows for you to be. If they're trusting what you're saying, if they're allowing guys to go Up to management above you and you know they're allowing stuff like that, it's going to be hard to hold a culture in the way that's needed unless you have just great organizational alignment, and I think that's really hard to have in anything but especially in pro sports.
Patrick Carney:I'd like to start with your sub what you've learned About video breakdown and you mentioned. You treat your point guards like a quarterback.
Jamion Christian :Well, I think the ability to teach them. You know the reason. Like I've gone, I spent some time with some often the coordinators, and when I was at Bucknell I lived with an offensive coordinator at Bucknell at the time who's like a spread option guy, and so we'd go in the backyard. You sort of teach me spread option football and it's a great thing to learn, and so I think the video breakdown part of it is you want your guys to be able to play fast and that's why I don't want to give them rules. I want to give them these concepts. You can make any one of these three decisions. Let's go out here Now. If there's a double tag on the back side and their foreman always over helps, then most likely this foreman is always going to be there. But in the situation where he is not there, you're still reading it because you might have the roller on that play, you might have the skip on that play, they might have a rookie who's never played before, so now you can't anticipate that he's going to be in the same position. The ability to say let's just talk about the foreman over helping. The ability to have a different play calls right With the foreman's feeling behind. We're looking for this one where their guys are placing in front, we're looking for this. So just for that guard to know, like, oh, this is my key on this play. If I see him cutting up, then I'm making the pass here.
Jamion Christian :You know, I think that's really helped me, like, teach the game and we have officer coordinators and defense coordinators here. That's how we do it and we've done that for my entire time coaching and, I think, having someone on one side of the ball that they can really learn. Number one learn the learning styles Of the people on your team, because everyone learns differently and when you have one voice, we do a ton of individual film and then we do like rotational film. So it might be four guys in a group going to defensive room, four guys were going to office room, four guys going to special. We break that up, you know, depending on how we want to.
Jamion Christian :We rarely, ever, ever, maybe on game day, just as a summary, we do team film is just the more more we can do it individually, the more these guys can learn, the more questions they can ask. You know you talk about high IQ players. You want those guys to ask you questions and so creating an environment where you can ask questions without criticism, where you can ask questions without being said no. This is the only way we're going to do it. You'll be amazed how many times guys come out of the defensive room and they'll say you know, he was thinking about this on this Action. It's like you know that's not bad. Yes, that's a bad thing, you know it's. Maybe. You know, maybe that's something that we can look at, you know. And then a lot of times it's like you know we get to the playoff series. We're gonna have to play this team five times. Maybe we don't want to show that yet, but maybe that's something we need to put in our book for the future.
Patrick Carney:Jamie, with the rotational film work. The benefit that you're seeing from that is it again. Just smaller groups are going to be more likely to ask questions. How does that work, and what have you found behind it?
Jamion Christian :We've been doing this my entire head coaching career. My mom and dad are both teachers, my mom's special education teacher, my dad's a PE teacher. You know you talk about classroom size and the importance of learning and so, like you know, we're doing the same thing, like we'd have like 12 people on a team and everybody's kind of learning something differently and hearing something differently. I got guys and like, speaking Italian, I got guys speaking Spanish, and so it just kind of made it a perfect situation where we could come in and say, hey, we're gonna spend. You know, it's crazy, we spend seven minutes on the office film, seven minutes on the defensive film, and we do that three times a week. Right, so we get 21 minutes on both sides, but we're not spending it all at one time and it just allows like that little bit of a breather. So we go into the defensive meeting. They sort of hear their keys, they watch it, they ask questions. Then they have a little short walk to, to where the office meeting is. Just a little bit of time to Digest it, and you can see when the guys are coming into the next meeting. They're thinking about the last meeting, but they're digesting what they were seeing. They're digesting what they were hearing, instead of going to everybody there and we're giving everything. How much is really gonna stick? You know, I feel like our guys. They have a lot sticking and then we get on the floor and they start to execute it really quickly and they'll say, well, what thought we're looking for this, I thought this, and that's when you can really tell that they're getting it. You know, I've done this in college a couple different places and when you watch our teams practice, you see guys raise their hand. I love when guys are raising their hands. It's great. You know, you don't see that much. You go to practice. Guys raise their hands, they ask questions. We're gonna have a good game because guys are engaged in the game plan and and a guy can say, like coach, maybe we want to try to push up on an action, and a guy can say, coach, I don't really love this. You know, I feel like I'm late in this push-up. You know I'm like how you think? So it's like, yeah, like a lot of times it's the conversation that the coaches that I had in our coaches meeting Like I don't really love this either. All right, well, what do you think? So let me just do this and then we have that kind of conversation and we go on the floor. The guys do a great I mean again great effective field goal defense. A lot of credit goes to them because you know we're having a conversation.
Jamion Christian :Some of the tougher actions, you know you want to force them high. Do you want to force them low? We force them high. He's gonna go into the pick and roll before some low you're gonna have to go on a ball one. You know I want to get this guy on the one. I want to get this guy on the block. He don't like being on the block. All right, let's force him low and then we'll do it this way. I think that's just important for them to be able to learn it and that have that ability to have that kind of conversation.
Dan Krikorian:Jamie, on your op-see start subberset hot seat. Tremendous effort from you there. That was great. I love mayhem. Got some football always fun. So thanks for playing that game with us. Thanks so much, jamie. We got a final question for you as we wrap up the show. Before we do, thank you again for all your time and your thoughts. We learned a ton, so thank you very much.
Jamion Christian :I love it, man. I just appreciate what you all do and it's a pleasure to be on man with you guys.
Dan Krikorian:Thank you, we appreciate that, jamie. On our last question we ask all the guests is what's the best investment that you've made in your career as a coach?
Jamion Christian :That's a great question, because I think the investments that you have to make can constantly be changing. You know, like I was a young player, I was with three different coaches. Every summer it's been a full day with them. You know, it might be guy coaches, princeton, might be guy who presses, and I'll just go and sit with them and write down all the notes I could write down At the time. That was a great investment, you know, not because I was trying to network them, because I was just trying to learn how to play a 2-3 zone effectively or how to run Princeton offense, whatever.
Jamion Christian :And then now I've kind of gotten into this routine. I would say the best investment I've made is probably like investing in my personal space and what that does for me as a coach and as a person, and there's simple ways you can do this. Now you can go 2020 20 wake up in the morning, 20 minutes of exercise, 20 minutes of meditation, 20 minutes of writing, writing or reading, learning you and investing in what makes you tick. You know these are high-pressure opportunities that we love and because we love them, we'll spend 24 hours a day on them. Now I've had times where I've gone 27 hours straight watching film, you know, like trying to figure out how to beat a team and and that sounds cool in some stages right, it's good to be able to lock in on one thing for a long period of time. I do think that's the strength of many coaches. But in the same respect, your brain functionality needs sleep. Your brain functionality needs time to be creative. It needs to work through. When you're a head coach, your job is decision-making, and if my brain is tired, I'm not gonna be in a position to make the best decisions as often as I need to be. Now. I learned a lot of this through COVID, where the world was flipped on its axis and I was really off, like I couldn't get back on a rhythm. You know, I've been like working out and doing different things and because the world was different, I was off my axis a bit, and so it forced me to learn to invest in myself.
Jamion Christian :I listened to one podcast a week and I listened to it all week long. Sometimes it's you guys, sometimes someone else, sometimes else, oh shoot, they had this guy, I'll go back and listen, right, but I wanted to be able to digest one quality thing, one quality thing and like, just listen to it all the way through and take notes on it. And then I wanted to read and just work through that. So on my day planner sheet that I have that I created, did I read? Did I share the good that I really talk about and share with the world the good things I was seeing? You know that's important when you have the platforms that we have to share. I'll call it shout the good to have the ability to do that. Did I work out that? I spent some quiet time with myself? That's been taught by family and I checked those boxes off and I think I don't believe it's balance. You know, I don't think that's really balance, but I think it's really important to learn.
Jamion Christian :If you're gonna be at your best, what do you need to be? Any of your investments need to be a personal investment on what allows you to be your very best. And it's usually working to a certain point being able to put it down, letting your brain recharge. So now you can go in like that information we took in. Our brain needs time now to process it. It needs time to now apply it and now I have to be able to figure out how I can use it. And if I'm not sleeping, it's just coming in and it's not going anywhere. I think that's the best investment that I've had. Is like learning how to invest in myself and what I need most.
Dan Krikorian:All right, pat, let's not delay, let's just hop right into this. Wrap up here was awesome having Jamie on and, like many guests, we get a chance to connect off the podcast as well, whether it's you know Las Vegas at the coaches social like we do Jamie on or we were lucky to be guests on his show Back in the day, and just a great person. Obviously, terrific coaches will get to here in a second, but was a lot of fun connected with him on a lot of basketball stuff on our show today.
Patrick Carney:Definitely. I mean, again, it was a pleasure to be on his podcast so we're grateful that he returned the favor and came on and joined us. Really enjoyed the conversation. I mean, we're gonna get into it. But the first thing that both you and me said right after the podcast was just how thoughtful he is on the game and his craft and what stood out like time and effort and the why is he researches into what he wants to do really came across.
Dan Krikorian:He's in a unique part of his career where he's gone from a successful college coach, a young coach that has success, and moved up over here in the States and then now getting his chance to coach in Europe at the pro level in Italy, and you could just hear this whole conversation. Why he's successful everywhere he's been because of how much time and effort he spends to understand his players, to understand the league. They constantly be learning and growing, and I know which will touch on here, and so it's great to have him on especially this Interesting part of his own career where he's transitioned to the pro game. I'll kick it back to you on this first bucket which we just wanted to talk about coaching a higher level player, potentially higher IQ, have more reps, harder to probably beat from a Scouting standpoint because you know the other team knows how to adjust to your coverages and whatever you're doing, and we wanted to just really dive in on that.
Patrick Carney:Yeah, I think the first thing that kind of stood out to me is when he got into, he mentioned he wanted to establish his values early. So I mean for us that was like all the carrot we needed to go into what his values were. You know I mentioned he wanted trust all in connected, being present and competing, and I really enjoyed the conversation that you know from there. I mean was just cannon fodder for us to take it everywhere and explore where he got those things, how he settled on them and why. You know they're each important to him.
Dan Krikorian:Yeah, and reminding me of Last year on the podcast we had Sundance wicks on about constantly communicating. I think that was something that Jameon had said to you about you want his players and know he's constantly Communicating to them. You talked about the sit-down meetings that you wanted to have with a certain number of players each week and Questions that they would answer and it's open forum for them to be able to come in and, you know, discuss whatever it is that's on their mind good, bad, ugly and I think you got the sense there of what kind of coach he is and how much those kinds of things help on the court too With being able to coach them certain ways and having input from them. And how do we get to kind of a shared situation, and I think that also bled into how they did some stuff tactically as well. We'll get into and I'll throw it to you in a second made some adjustments after his earlier days there and a lot of that was talking To players and I'm sure some of that was like through these meetings.
Patrick Carney:Yeah, 100%. You know. He said he built the trust and when then they got on the court, one of the things he learned now being in Europe is that he was taking more risks than needed. He gave a great example of the horns screens and that he came in saying we're gonna go over, we're gonna be aggressive, we're gonna, you know, send the tag early. And the players just said you know, it's not a threatening screen going under.
Patrick Carney:That all comes down to trust through the meetings he's had and I did, like you know, when he bled in to our overall conversation of just coaching veterans and then just understanding the league and knowing that, like you know, why are we expending so much energy here?
Patrick Carney:I thought just in general, that's also a good takeaway for me as well Just kind of knowing what is the threatening thing and when you should be the hard line and have your principles, have your identity, versus kind of Just taking a step back and understanding certain situations. I think it was with coach Morrison when he was in Perth and realizing the same thing with all this false action that in Australia they were doing, or especially in Europe. You know, expending all this energy may be trying to blow up handoffs or this false movement trying to take it away, but it all results then in a pick and roll and let's stop trying to be taking too many risks here, when, at the end of the day, it's gonna get to this ball screen and we can just concentrate on this rather than Expanding all this energy. And maybe they, we mess it up and we give them a layup, a backdoor, three, unnecessarily, when it's just all they're trying to do is just move the offense to this ball screen.
Dan Krikorian:Yeah, I agree, and I think maybe the overarching theme from Jamie on and like what you're just talking about is it's kind of the fun part of coaching is Going into a season with a way you think you want to play defensively, offensively, transition, tag up and then, as the season progresses Whether it's a personnel thing or whether it's scout thing, like how your team changes a little bit and how certain things that you thought You're gonna be good at maybe you're not, and certain things that maybe you didn't even think about all of a sudden become a weapon for you, whether it's a tweak on defense and that stuff is.
Dan Krikorian:I think for me it's always the fun part. You know, even just personally looking at stuff, maybe we're running now that beginning year wasn't even on our radar, but it's over the course of the season, because of certain things taking place, you start to rely on some things more than others, or injuries. I think that's what we all kind of love as coaches is finding those ways to help our teams win, and I think Throughout this conversation you could hear Jamie on this constantly searching through that with conversations with the players, with adjustments to defense and he mentioned you know how those adjustments have led to them becoming better defensively, and his understanding how the Italian game is played and you know where to really take advantage. And I think, whatever it is you decide to do, I think that that effort to adjust, change, tweak, fix something he does really well.
Patrick Carney:One last point on this and you talk just reminding me of our conversation with Bernie holiday and we had a good conversation and start subset about Conviction and he mentioned this analogy of the golf club swinging the wrong club with conviction is Always going to yield probably better results than swinging the right club without Conviction. And I think through these conversations, through building trust in this open dialogue, you can understand what your players believe in. I kind of been thinking about that a lot. So if we go back to again this foreign screen where the players are going to go over, however, they're gonna tag because the coach says it. That's another part of the puzzle to always think about. Maybe this strategy makes you feel better as a coach or you're convinced that's right, but if your players don't, they're the ones executing it. It's a back-and-forth dialogue, but it goes part of the buy and getting the conviction.
Dan Krikorian:Yeah, it reminded me. Coach will void who's now in the San Antonio G League organization mention. It doesn't matter, teach him to peel, switch or whatever offense you run. I think his quote was if you get five players playing really hard and together, at the end of the day that's hard to beat. Yeah, flip into, start, sub or sit. Let's quickly go to your football analogy, and in our Research and in talking to Jamie on beforehand, we know that football was a sport or is a sport. That is American football we're talking about. American football is a sport that he likes to study for a variety of reasons, and so we thought it'd be interesting to Discuss what it is about that sport that he most takes from it. So I'll kick it back to you on takeaways about film and building a culture and running the building.
Patrick Carney:Yeah, this one was a fun one. I mean I know in the past we've had conversations on which sport with coach Dennis Gates. We kind of gave him a couple different sports we had known to that he liked to study from different sports. But it's fun with Jamie on to get into what, specifically about football, were his takeaways. I mean you mentioned it with film.
Patrick Carney:I really really enjoyed the rotational film that he does with two small groups, seven minute film session and then you know we switch and they walk over and do another film session and I like how he said it gives them time to digest and Think about what they just watch, maybe talk amongst themselves.
Patrick Carney:I like that approach, you know approaching from like, yeah, okay, you have your offense or defense and a coordinator, you know, and then get some good thoughts to an individual film and making sure he's kind of asking more questions and with him I think he referenced his point guards will like QB's, so just kind of sitting them down and going through reads. For me that was the big takeaway there, just how he approached film. I find that most interesting because I think we've had a ton of conversation on film work. We had a really fun conversation with coach Hardy. But yeah, like, how can we do it better? How can we get it so they're retaining information, they're taking stuff away and it's like all digesting and getting through. And again I go back to not just film session to make us as coaches feel better.
Dan Krikorian:So I know you and I are name-dropping the heck out of this podcast right now we're doing a fantastic job and moving to our last start subsit.
Patrick Carney:I know you were eager to have this conversation and, knowing his past teams in college, that he was big on his mayhem defense, so I'll get you with your takeaways there.
Dan Krikorian:I'll just start with our background on this. We were really excited about this question I was because he was so good at it. He came up from somewhat of a pressing background in his earlier days as an assistant, and so I think what's interesting is Coming from that background and then like to what we're talking about earlier, with now triple switching in different Coverages and being less risky, and also having this in his background, where they were pressing that we're trapping, they were, you know, creating the flow and the energy. I mean, you see, just like his flexibility as a coach, I think. And so I'll just start with up which was his Start, which is the confidence and the identity piece of this stuff. And you know you've played against teams that pressed and trapping create havoc and I know I have certainly as well. And you know that the other team comes in with a certain type of Energy that if you don't match it it can be a runaway train. And I think that that is something that the really good teams that play these kinds of defenses they do lean on or on the road sometimes like tough games they know they can at least come in with that identity and that pressure.
Dan Krikorian:I'll give you a quick miss of mine and not from coach Christian standpoint, but you mentioned Different presses based on you know which side the ball went to. You talked about linger traps. You kind of threw a couple of tantalizing, hactical things and if we had more time I would love to just really dove into how, why, when you know the different coverages and the different things that he would do because I think that's really interesting is not just having, hey, we just two to one press and we trap in these areas, but really tailoring it personnel wise, like you mentioned, areas of the floor time of the game, because that, layered on top of your aggressiveness and all that stuff we just talked about, can of course add like a Strategic advantage as well.
Patrick Carney:Yeah, I wrote down to you know he mentioned that they'd scalp their opponents press break and he's gonna have the same logic as you hear a lot with like zone, with the zone offense. It's their second best offense and you know how deep of a playbook to have against zone you know. So the same thing with a press break. I mean I know our team only has one press break. I don't imagine teams really go deep and press breaks but kind of piggybacking off of your miss, you know, on its face.
Patrick Carney:I understand of course they scout their press break, but is it just to know, like, okay, what it looks like, how they get it in and then how we can go from there, or is it? Are they trying to blow up the press break and take away catches? He did. I thought that's some great points on if they have a dominant point guard, how they want to take that away and how they either shade it, double it and then encourage like five man to catch it. And then that's where he talked about the linger traps. Again I referenced back to what we mentioned at the top just how nuanced he is, how thoughtful, how thorough he is with these tactics, these strategies, and how much thought and reason he has behind all of it.
Dan Krikorian:Absolutely. And just to name drop one more name for us the conversation with Justin Potts last year, moncler State head coach D3 Moncler State. They're a fantastic pressing trapping team and they talked about some of those gray areas and some of the different ways to apply pressure. So if we need another name drop, I can do you one more.
Patrick Carney:I also wrote down our conversation with Eric Olin, because Jamie and also mentioned how hard it is to press teams willing to shoot threes, and I think that's what we're always interested. You know what gives a pressing team the most trouble, and then of course, you know good guards who don't really put themselves in bad positions, but then teams that are willing to be aggressive against the trap and shoot threes, and I think really it was a oh, another name drop man we're crushing. Today coach Tobin Anderson mentioned like yeah, you give up a dunk, like okay, great, but it's only two points, I think, where the threes are really damaging, and a lot more so than, yeah, any layup. You're gonna give up against the press, and that's the risk of a press. Sometimes you give up layups, but if you got a team that's willing to constantly hunt those corner threes and take those, you can get dangerous if they sink a couple.
Dan Krikorian:Yeah, and it's like that fine line because his sub there was the kind of randomized shot Selection that teams will take and a team that's disciplined against the press, that the right guys take the right shots, like the right threes can be detrimental, like you mentioned, but if you've got teams that are out of sync Still shooting tough threes and you know can be the advantage of the press. So it's that give and take and always interesting to see how that plays out. Well, pat, I give you one of my misses right there. Anything else as we wrap this up on your end or any other just names you want to just throw out no names, but I'm sure as I start to talk here I'll come up with one.
Patrick Carney:But no one miss for me was going back to the first bucket when he talked about his meetings he likes to schedule and that he likes to send his guys some questions. I wish I did follow up on you know what kind of questions is he asking? I'm pretty certain it was more having to do with, maybe that the nature of the season, the time of the season, but I don't. Maybe there are just some general check-in questions that he likes to always kind of cycle through with his guys. But I would have been curious to hear, like, what are these questions that he's sending or what's kind of the framework of these questions that he likes to send out?
Dan Krikorian:Well, pat, this was awesome conversation with coach Christian. Anything else from your end as we start to wrap this up?
Patrick Carney:No, but I can't think of another coach to reference, like we Kind of got most of the podcasts of 2023 preference yeah, it was 2022. So I think we're good.
Dan Krikorian:So that's good. Well, thanks to coach Christian for coming on and being a guest today. Wish him the best luck the rest of the way. Thank you everybody for listening. We'll see you next time.
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Dan Krikorian:Would we have a name yet for this thing? I have like slapping back for slapping glass. Slapping glass, that's kind of funny. I like that. Let's roll slapping glass.