Slappin' Glass Newsletter: Building Advantages, Moncho Fernandez, and Chinese Basketball Philosophy
Best X's and O's with your cup of joe.
Welcome to our Sunday Mornin’ Newsletter, where we consolidate much of the best that we’ve seen from the world of basketball to be enjoyed over your cup of coffee.
This week we explored the beautiful offensive world of Moncho Fernandez, talked Chinese Basketball philosophy with Mark Amaral, broke down “advantage building” within various offensive systems, and much more.
Let’s dive in.
Slappin’ Glass Podcast
We’re 10 episodes into the Slappin’ Glass Podcast and we’re truly thankful for the openness and quality of thought these fantastic coaches have given in our conversations. Thank you to all who have listened, subscribed, and shared the various episodes. Our goal with the podcast is for it to remain a place of deep learning on a variety of strategical, tactical, and leadership topics relevant to our beautiful game. We can’t wait for the next 10.
You can get the first 10 episodes here.
Advantage Building
Of all the various/interesting basketball topics we try and cover, one we keep coming back to is the concept of “Advantage Building”. Specifically, how teams CREATE and KEEP these advantages throughout a possession. We enjoy studying this topic, as knowing how to teach and create these advantages is no doubt part of the secret sauce of coaching. This YouTube breakdown on “European Offense and Advantage Building” looks at the concepts that teams in Europe use to punish a defense once an advantage is created.
Moncho Fernandez Playbook 2020
Coach Moncho Fernandez of Monbus Obradoiro is an absolute pleasure to watch. The pace, spacing, movement, reads, and high-level that his teams so effortlessly play with are a testament to his ability to teach the game. Here’s a full breakdown of his offensive playbook and many of the concepts they employ within their sets. It’s the latest in our “Best European Playbooks” series. You can watch all of them here.
Also, we put together all of the FastDraw PDF’s of these actions as well. You can get them here.
*More to come on Coach Fernandez in a “Special Edition” of our newsletter this week. One of our wives is not happy about the amount of time we’re spending on this “Special Edition”, but they know who they married.
Chinese Basketball Philosophy
We had a blast this week on the Slappin’ Glass Podcast when we sat down with Mark Amaral, Head Assistant Coach for the Xinjiang Flying Tigers of the Chinese Basketball Association. Before Coach Amaral headed to China, he was a well-known NCAA D1 coach in California with a great reputation as a recruiter and teacher of the game. We dove into some interesting topics surrounding the differences of “Western” vs. “Eastern” style of play, developing players and relationships, recruiting for fit, work-life balance, and a crazy/inspiring story of his 44 days in quarantine when he returned to China for the CBA’s “Bubble”.
Sets of the Week
1) {BC Zalgiris - “Press Kill”} We have to admit, we were a bit surprised with the amount of attention this tweet received this week. Usually, the most heavily watched/shared basketball videos on Twitter are reserved for backdoor plays, lob dunks, or adding “Brad Stevens” in the description…so it was fun to see this great “Press-Break” design from Coach Schiller and Zalgiris get some love (maybe it WAS the lob dunk in the video that tipped off the Twitter algorithm). Big thanks to the folks in Lithuania, as our most watched YouTube video is also on Coach Schiller and BC Zalgiris. We’re looking into real estate in Kaunas.
2) {Bob McKillop - The Power of the 2nd Cut} Coach McKillop has been one of the best offensive coaches in college basketball for a long time. We loved looking at the concept of the”2nd cut” built into their fantastic motion offense.
3) {Giannis Antetokounmpo - “Re-Route and Get Out”} Besides having Coach Cody Toppert of the Memphis Tigers as a guest on the Slappin’ Glass Podcast, we’ve also had fun collaborating with him on a few breakdowns. This week we looked at the PnR decision-making of Giannis and when to “Get Out” of a screen and begin the roll progression.
Food for Thought
Some great material this week from around the world of basketball and beyond:
1) How “humility” in leadership helped turn Ford Motor Company around.
2) “The Only Way to Grow Huge”… think this applies to building a program as well.
3) Coach Brent Tipton had a thoughtful thread on “Creating Passing Windows”.
4) Wagner assistant Coach Bobby Jordan had a great interview on the HoopHeads Podcast.
5) Coach Kostas Kalogeropoulos consistently curates quality content. Say that 5 times fast and then visit his Twitter account. It’s one of the best for X’s and O’s.
Thanks for reading and the support. If you found this valuable we’d appreciate if you passed it along, or… if you hate it, perhaps pass it to your rival.
Have a great week coaching,
Dan and Pat
P.S. You can reach out to us for anything at slappinglass1024@gmail.com