Alan Keane, Valencia Basket Playbook, and the Great "Hot Hand" Debate
He's on fire...
Welcome to our “Sunday Mornin’ Newsletter”, where we consolidate the best ideas, strategies, and X’s and O’s we’ve seen throughout the week.
We had a busy and thought-provoking week as we spoke with the fantastic Alan Keane, explored the innovative playbook of Coach Jaume Ponsarnau in Spain, highlighted the increasingly popular “Pop and Burn” action, and tried to put to rest the 40 year debate about whether the “Hot Hand” in basketball is real.
Slappin’ Glass Podcast
Alan Keane joined us on the Slappin’ Glass Podcast this week and it was immediately clear why he has been featured on some of the best basketball podcasts in the world. Not only is Great Britain’s U20 National Team head coach a tremendous teacher of the game, his added level of personal introspection and thoughts on growing as a coach left us truly impressed. If you haven’t already, it’s worth your hour of time. We explored the areas of effective switching, innovative post defense concepts, the roles of empathy and vulnerability in coaching, creating high performance environments,"The Coach’s House”, and much more.
Thank you to all of you who continue to reach out offering your support of the podcast and who have shared it within your coaching circles. We truly appreciate it.
Valencia Basket Playbook
The next installment in our “Best European Playbooks” series comes from Valencia Basket and Coach Jaume Ponsarnau in Spain. His team is a pleasure to watch and study, full of great movement and pick and roll concepts.
As promised, here are the Fast Draw PDF’s of the sets as well.
“The Hot Hand” Phenomenon
In our effort to try and provide interesting and valuable coaching/leadership content, we offered our first “Special Edition” podcast this week, featuring Wall Street Journal’s NBA reporter and author of the new book about the “Hot Hand”, Ben Cohen.
The phenomenon of the “Hot Hand” has been a hotly debated topic since a study came out in 1985 by Amos Tversky stating that the hot hand in basketball was merely a “cognitive illusion” and a fallacy. That assertion was largely at odds with those in the world of basketball who felt for certain that the “hot hand” was as real as the emotions following a tough NCAA tournament upset.
The fallacy of the “Hot Hand” became a widespread belief among academic circles for decades until recent studies began showing different results, and pointed to the idea that the hot hand may in fact be real.
Enter Ben Cohen, who recently released a fantastic book exploring the stories, science, and mystery of the “Hot Hand”. We sat down with Ben to talk through the newest science and what it means for coaches, our understanding of chance and streaks, how it relates to decision making, and what it says about human behavior.
It was a blast, and we got to share the story of the night Pat got on a real heater at the Golden Nugget… We hope you enjoy it.
* Our plan with these “Special Episodes” is to explore topics or areas that we find intriguing that also relate to the world of coaching and basketball. We have upcoming/planned episodes with basketball writers, nutritionists, leadership experts, and more. If you have any suggestions of people you think would be interesting. Please email or DM us on Twitter. slappinglass1024@gmail.com
Offensive Concept: “Pop and Burn”
In a past podcast with Coach Ryan Pannone of the Erie Bayhawks, we talked about the PnR off-ball movement of using a simultaneous “burn” cut with a “pop” from the big. This action is great at creating space for the big to pop into and can also lead to baskets from the cutting guard. Here’s a couple of breakdowns we put together showing this action…
Sets of the Week
{Late Game Hammer Set} A great action for a corner three in a late game/shot clock situation.
{LeBron James - Transition Decision Making} Was fun to collaborate with past podcast guest and Memphis Tiger assistant coach, Cody Toppert on this breakdown of why LeBron is so good in the open floor. We specifically looked at the decisions and finishing moves he uses when attacking.
{Pablo Laso - BLOB “Floppy”} Next week we’ll be releasing a larger breakdown of Real Madrid’s great BLOB actions; this was a look at one of their BLOB sets.
Food For Thought
Some great things we saw/read this week included:
Thank you all for reading, please pass this along to folks you think would find value in it, and have a great week coaching,
Dan and Pat