Slappin’ Glass sits down this week with the Head Coach of Blair Academy and the most recent USA Jr. National Team playing in the Nike Hoop Summit, Joe Mantegna. The trio dive headfirst into the areas of radical truthfulness and transparency, circles of accountability, pistol action, the two-sided fastbreak, and discuss summer camps, keeping it simple, and PNR trapping during the always fun “Start, Sub, or Sit?!”
Inside the Episode
We were excited to be joined on the podcast this week by Blair Academy Head Coach, Joe Mantegna! Coach Mantegna was also the Head Coach of the USA Jr. National Team at the most recent Nike Hoop Summit, and gave an absolutely fantastic interview. The social media support of this interview from great coaches like Fran Fraschilla, Tom Crean, Alan Keane, Bruce Hamburger, and others has been unbelievable as well! We dive into a ton of interesting topics both on and off the court with Coach Mantegna including:
- Radical Truthfulness and Transparency: Coach Mantegna discusses a concept made famous by investor Ray Dailo about the culture he created at Bridgewater Associates. We dive into why this concept was so important to Coach Mantegna, how he implements it, and the benefits that being so truthful and transparent produces.
- Circle of Accountability: Within our discussion about truthfulness and transparency, Coach Mantegna also walks us through how they conduct a “Circle of Accountability”, a practice of linking arms as coaches and players and openly holding each other accountable for actions both good and bad. A very interesting and impactful idea and practice.
- The Two-Sided FastBreak: For coaches looking for great insight into implementing the “two-sided fastbreak”, this is your segment. Coach Mantegna details the spacing, timing, cuts, and actions he likes to flow into out of the break.
- Connecting Transition and Half Court Offense: A common headscrather for coaches everywhere is how to tie transition offense into half court offense. We talk about some of those ideas as well as Coach Mantegna’s ideas on pace of play and wearing team down.
- “Start, Sub, or Sit?!”: In the always interesting segment we dive into the topics of Summer Camps, PNR Trapping, and Recruiting, and much more
Transcript
Joe Mantegna: 00:00 I’m trying to find guys that will lead in the moment. And then what I’ll do after they lead is I’ll call them out about their leadership in public and say that was leadership right there. What did he say in the huddle? And we’ll talk about body language. We’ll clip, body language edits, you know, good and bad, right? How can you lead when your shoulders are slumped over and you’re not hudling and you’ve got your head down, like, we’re not gonna follow you here. We are showing them what’s good. And calling out what’s bad. And just trying to incrementally move ’em forward in terms of leadership.
Dan: 00:32 Coach, thanks so much for making the time for us. I know you got a lot on your schedule and we’re really looking forward to talking to you today.
Joe Mantegna: 01:55 Absolutely pleasure to be here. I’m humbled to be here. In fact, I’m a slapping glass fanboy, so I’m ready to go.
Dan: 02:00 Thank you, coach. It’s very nice of you. So a lot to get into today, wanna start off the court with radical transparency, radical truthfulness coming from Ray Dalio with Bridgewater. He wrote a great book a couple years ago, and it’s something I know that you’ve implemented into your program. And so wanted to actually start with a quote from the book and then maybe have you jump in with the quote, so we kind of get a semblance of what we’re talking about. In the book he says, “I learned that the more caring you gave each other, the tougher we could be on each other and the tougher we were on each other, the better we performed and the more rewards there were for us as a group.”
Joe Mantegna: 02:41 When I heard that it resonated with me, it gave me a vocabulary for what I believe in. And I think it’s the very heart and soul of building teams through love and accountability. What we always tell these guys is that they are gonna get our truth every day and you know, it’s our truth, right? It doesn’t mean they have to agree with it. It doesn’t even mean we will end up being correct a hundred percent of the time, of course, but we’re not playing mind games. We’re coming at it from a place of love. We’re coming at it from a relationship of trust. And if we’ve built that love, we’ve built that trust, then hopefully we can tell each other the truth. And I think the growth pattern can get sped up when we’re being truthful with one another; radically truthful, you know, not hurtful but truthful. And so that’s what we really built our program on for decades. And when I read the book, I was like, wow, he’s smarter than me, and that’s great vocabulary for what we do, and I just fell in love with that phrase. And it’s something that I talk to families about when they come visit before they even decide to come be a part of our Blair basketball family.
Pat: 03:42 What did the implementation look like? Where did you begin with this idea that this is what I want my program to be about.
Joe Mantegna: 03:50 Well, I started with building rapport year 1, 2, 3 years ago, but the way it looks nuts and bolts and mechanics wise within our program is that we have to get reps of this. You know, we end every time we’re together with a circle of accountability where we hold each other accountable. And so I give these guys reps and holding each other accountable. They can hold the coaches accountable. And basically what our idea is before they leave the weight room before they leave the track, before they leave the him. Sometimes we do it even after we have a team dinner before we leave a space together. I don’t want them going back to the dorms and talking out of turn or out of pocket about one another or about the exercise we just went through or about practice. So I said, if you have anything to say to one another, if you have anything to say to me, we as coaches usually usually try to speak last. We will also say what need to say to you, but then when we leave this space, we’ve moved on to the next thing. And that’s how we sort of bring it to light. Now, does that always look and feel great? No. Are 16 year old kids great at holding each other accountable in September of the first year they’re at Blair. Absolutely not, but just like Euro step finishing and just like shooting off the dribble behind ball screen, they need repetitions of this kind of behavior. And so we give ’em the daily reps.
Dan: 05:06 I’m really interested in the circle of accountability. Could you give an example of like things that might come out in that circle that you as a group discuss and, talk about, say at the end of a weight session or practice?
Joe Mantegna: 05:17 Yeah. I mean, you know, listen, 80, 90% of our circle of accountability, especially the last year, you know, four or five years, we’ve had great success. We’ve had great culture, you know, 80, 90% of it is lifting up the guy on the second team. Hey, I saw you took two charges today. Great job. Or, Hey Devin, you did an unbelievable job leading the scout team today, getting into the other team’s actions without having to waste any time doing it, or a kid who got dunked on three times. You know, we see you working though, you know, we see how hard you’re working, even though it didn’t come to fruition, it’s way more often uplifting the small things that guys do. And, and they begin to value the winning plays and the winning behaviors and the winning things that are done daily. And when they start to understand and have a vocabulary for why you win and they can call each other out in a positive way about why they’re making winning plays, then that reinforces winning.
Joe Mantegna: 06:10 Of course, it can also be holding the best players accountable for their efforts. So it could be, Hey Johnny, you weren’t running back on defense today and we need you to run back on defense or, you know, you’re not communicating our switches. You know, they struggle with it early, but again, you know, the older guys have done it before. So the older guys can model it and the younger guys can figure it out. And again, we try really hard as the adults in the circle to speak last and sometimes not to speak at all. And so this is, you know, very much a team led player led situation.
Dan: 06:42 Is it completely open for anybody to talk or do you have certain people that you would like to speak? Or how does
Joe Mantegna: 06:47 It start? Nah, man, totally open. We link arms. We are in a circle so that there’s no one in front of the class and there’s no power dynamic there. You know, we’re in different place, says every day I have to link arms of those sweaty guys after workouts and then get me all, you know, feeling and smelling terrible. But you know, sometimes it’s a young guy that speaks up first. Sometimes it’s the older guys. We don’t even have captains until the end of the year. We don’t name captains until after the year is over. Cuz we basically say, I’m not naming a captain. I’m gonna name a captain at the end of the year. And that’s gonna be whoever acted like a captain, if you led, here’s one of the places you can lead our team in this circle, it is very random. Sometimes I have to jump in and correct. You know, sometimes things aren’t said perfectly, but life is sloppy just like when we’re putting in our offense, right? It’s not gonna be perfect every time. And as we get reps, it gets better and better. But at the end of the day, they’re using a vocabulary for winning and they’re reinforcing. Hopefully if we have a good culture, what we’re teaching daily and coming from peer to peer, a player led program, it’s far more powerful than the old guy drowning on in the middle of the circle
Pat: 07:53 As a coach, if you’re gonna implement this, what is a coach? Would you say? You have to be prepared to maybe hear from your guys, you know, as a coach, the feedback you have prepared to receive,
Joe Mantegna: 08:02 If I’m not ready to receive that feedback. And if I don’t have the maturity to receive that feedback, or if I’m not working hard enough to grow my own coaching and my own skillset, then I better be ready to hear it. You know, if someone says to me, Hey, we’ve been doing the same shooting drills for four weeks coach and we’re bored the death of them. Well, that’s on me and I need to hear that now of course, I’m sure there’s some young coaches and some up and coming coaches that may not want to hear that. But again, how healthy is your culture? If you can’t be in the circle of accountability and hear it about yourself. And I would say, secondly, you know, we need to model a growth mindset as coaches. If I’m running the same drills year after year, the same offense the am under OB plays. If I’m coming with the same feedback and I’m not growing, then I’m not modeling what I’m asking them to do daily anyway. And so then I deserve to be talked to as well. So no we’re ready for it. We’re here for it. Occasionally it would be coach to coach, but most of that is done behind the scenes, but no we’re ready for that. We want that to be part of it.
Dan: 08:59 Another, I know part of your program and I might mispronounce it, but is <inaudible>, is that correct?
Joe Mantegna: 09:04 I might mispronounce it too, but yes, I think that’s how we pronounce
Dan: 09:07 It. I’d rather you mispronounce it. No, but could you maybe give us a sense of what that word means and how that also plays a part in your culture?
Joe Mantegna: 09:16 Sure. I mean, that’s a Buddhist phrase. That means the vicarious joy for the success of others. And so I’m fortunate enough to be in a situation where we may have anywhere from six to 10 future scholarship players in our gym as a prep school, a boarding school, you know, we have kids from all over the country and the world that play for us. Obviously one of the things you, you have to worry about is selfishness. You know, everybody’s trying to get recruited, chasing stats, et cetera. If you’re gonna be a successful team, you have to have guys who sacrifice well along with that, you have to have guys who have literal joy to make the extra pass and see somebody else knock down the three, you know, to check out their man while the guard flies in and gets the rebound and you don’t get a number for you just did all the hard stuff, you know, to dive on the floor and tip the ball ahead.
Joe Mantegna: 09:58 And the other guy gets a dunk that ends up on Instagram. So you know what we try to do again, name it, emphasize it. And then it leads to getting that behavior back in spades and you know, listen, my guys make fun of it, you know? Oh, Medida, you know, like, you know, we’ll get it in the dining hall, you know, like, oh Medi you’re having a salad coach, but the bottom line is they’re hearing it. They’re learning that I’m fine with the sarcasm and the fun. Right. But the bottom line is the messages being sent. And again, if you can be unselfish and joyful, as well as hold each other accountable, then I think from a culture standpoint, you’re moving in the right direction. I’m fortunate enough to usually have pretty good players as well. So you throw talent on time of that. And then I think you’re moving in the right direction
Dan: 10:39 With the Modi, you as a staff. Are there any ways that you guys try to also, I guess kids that are showing those types of actions to bring that forth, whether it’s a stat you highlight or whether it’s something in practice, there’s something that you guys do from a coaching standpoint,
Joe Mantegna: 10:55 We do a lot of film edits of our bet. Okay. So that’s one thing we do. We often splice in edits of our bench jumping up and down and we especially love to splice and edits of our starters on the bench at the end of a 15 point, win jumping up and down. When our sophomore, our freshman knocks down to three at the end of the game to take it from 18 to 21, a meaningless basket. And yet my high major division one guys are jumping up and down. Like we just went to the final floor. So we try to emphasize it with film. And then the other place we emphasize it, you gotta meet these kids where they are social media, right? Like if you would go back and look at my Instagram, there’s these great shots of our guys, you know, jumping on top of one another after a game bench, DEC quorum. And we try to emphasize it through social media. I mean, I think, you know, I’m 52 years old, so I need to meet these kids where they are. You know, I have children that are older than the guys I’m coaching now. So, you know, again, if I can’t be relevant with them and do some of my teaching via Instagram and via Twitter, then I’m probably not gonna get to ’em. So, you know, that’s another way we do it.
Pat: 11:52 Coach. I’d like, like to circle back to the leadership aspect, you mentioned you don’t name a captain until the end of the season, but how does it look when the team’s grasping the concepts of this radical transparency? The game application of the early season games, when a clear leader has an emerged and there needs to be a clear leader in important minutes of the game and what the, that looks like and what then your role maybe is and how it changes as the season goes on in game.
Joe Mantegna: 12:17 Listen, sometimes in game, I am not above saying, Hey, fells, figure it out. You know, find a solution. Don’t call a timeout. When they’re looking at me at a free throw, you know, I’ll kind of say, Hey, huddle, you know, figure it out. We’re not calling a timeout right now. Now, you know, listen, I’m not getting fired. Right. My job’s not on the line. So it’s easy for me to say, if I’m a high major division, one coach making 1.5 a year, I may not feel that way. I get it. Totally get it. But in my situation, I can only deal with my situation. I’m trying to find guys that will lead in the moment. And then what I’ll do after they lead is I’ll call them out about their leadership in public and, and say that was leadership right there. What did he say in the huddle?
Joe Mantegna: 12:57 And we’ll talk about body language, we’ll clip, body language edits, you know, good and bad, right? How can you lead when your shoulders are slumped over and you’re not Huling and you’ve got your head down, like we’re not gonna follow you here. So, you know, I think we’re trying to emphasize the good, and we’re trying to call out the bad and knowing that these are high school kids and they’re figuring it out. And my guys are under a lot of pressure. They’re trying to get recruited. Some of ’em have more social media followers than all of us combined. <laugh>, they’re probably not you guys now, but certainly, uh, you know, a hundred times more than I have. And so their high school lives are playing out in front of a lot more people than even, you know, when I had Lu all dang and Charlie Villa away, but 20 years ago, you know, it was done in private and now these guys lives are played out. So we are showing them what’s good and calling out what’s bad. And just trying to incrementally move ’em forward in terms of leadership,
Dan: 13:42 You’ve mentioned that you’ve, you know, arrived at this, you know, radical transparency. I’m wondering about the process for you as a coach getting to this point, if it’s something you’ve always been interested in and how you’ve always run your program, or if there was something that changed in you as you got older as a coach to kind of arrive at this place.
Joe Mantegna: 14:01 Well, I think my wife and three children would probably tell you, this is kind of who I am for better, for worse. I’m an extremely straight shooter and I’m a generation older than you guys. But as you get older, you know, you just don’t have time. Right? I just don’t wanna waste time with nonsense. I wanna get right down to, to it. I want to get to what’s important. I think as a young coach, what was hardest was trying to figure out what is important. I hear Brett brown talk about what’s the most important thing, right? Well, to me, when I, as a young coach, it’s just really hard to figure out what is the most important thing? What should I be radically transparent about? What do I need to emphasize? I mean, I think now after, you know, coaching for 23 years, the head coach, at least I believe what I know to my program is most important. And so, I mean, I think to me, that’s the hardest part, you know, because you have to decide what you’re gonna emphasize and what you’re gonna drill down on and what you’re really gonna be most truthful about. And that’s, to me was harder than the personality trait of being straightforward,
Dan: 14:55 The things that are important to you now, how did you arrive at those things?
Joe Mantegna: 15:00 I don’t think I’m smart enough to kind of figure it out. I think it’s been organic Uhhuh <affirmative>, you know, I think we’ve had a lot of winning teams at Blair and I was a part of some losing teams at the college level and was fired once act, which was a wonderful growth experience. Not exactly in the moment <laugh> but I think, you know, Jeff, VanGundy always says be an expert on your own team. I mean, I think really I’ve had to have a lot of tough reflection about what went well and what didn’t go well. And even if we won 22 games, why didn’t we win the state championship? And, you know, we have a couple teams in New Jersey we’ve had trouble with over the years and what do we need you to do to get over those hums? So what I try to model for my guys and my assistant coaches is I wanna look at myself first, everything that goes wrong, I wanna start with myself and everything that goes, right. I wanna start with how do the players make that happen? And I think if that’s your mindset as a head coach, then you’re gonna figure out quickly what the most important things are at your program.
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Dan: 16:42 Coach, we’d love to transition now some more on the court stuff. Wanna talk about fast break, two sided, fast break. I know that, you know, we’ve talked a little bit beforehand about how that’s, something has really changed, you know, for you the offensive side of the ball and how you guys run and get into your offense. So I wanna start there with just your thoughts on the two sided break and how that’s transformed the program.
Joe Mantegna: 17:05 You know, we stole it from Brett Tipton, so I wanna make sure I give him credits very rare that I go on YouTube and watch a video. And one video kind of changes the sort of trajectory of my program, but it just resonated with me. I think it’s a wonderful positionless way to play. And then I watch a lot of teams and I see them kind of running down the slots and transition and not playing with pro spacing. And I think they get in each other’s way and I think the gaps get narrower. And, and when we went to a wide spacing transition game, the gaps got, and then we just started talking about advantages, you know, and throw it ahead over half court and then just try to create an advantage and let the dominoes fall. And I have, as I said, talented players, I’d love to play multiple ball handlers at once. Then I don’t have to say who’s the point guard and who’s the two and who’s the three we can be positionless we can have great spacing, we can create gaps. And then it just gets down to decisions and advantages. And to me, that’s a fun way to coach when you have talented players. And so it’s been a real change to what we’ve done. And I think we’ve been a lot harder to guard since we’ve gone to that. Yeah.
Pat: 18:05 Coach, what was your fast break style before?
Joe Mantegna: 18:08 Yeah, I’d say it was more of like, what you’d say would be a Carolina break. So we were running the trail to the top of the key and we were usually had a rim runner and, you know, we would kind of play in what I used to call traffic. We allowed the point guard to play in both slots and kind of go across the grain. So to speak. If you watched Bob MCs Davidson’s team, we kind of played like that. And I think it’s great with way to play. It’s obviously the way Roy Williams played for years and the version of it, the way coach MacKillop coaches. So, I mean, obviously it’s a great way to play basketball, but I think when you play with wider spacing and transition, it allows us to have four different pushers. And it allows us to play with our five man, so to speak either if he gets out in front, we let him rim run and seal. But then if he’s in, in the trail, we play five outright in transitions. So, and that’s how we play half court offense a lot of times as well. It was also in keeping with our flow. Gosh, I mean, you know, as a former mediocre penetrating guard, 30 years ago, I would’ve loved to get those big guys, the heck out of the way, have some room to get downhill and drive and kick, you know, absolutely
Dan: 19:07 Coach, I guess. So everyone has reference as we move through this, on a missed shot, let’s say, where is everybody running to in this two sided break?
Joe Mantegna: 19:16 Yeah. So on a missed shot, the first two guys down the court are competing for the two corners and then the third guard down the court is playing off with the ball. So if the ball’s coming down the right slot, then the third guard is going to the 45 degree heels to the sideline, creating two guys on the opposite side of the ball. I hope that’s clear enough. Yeah. You know, the other piece to this is the way we’ve played it in the past, whoever gets the rebound can go, unless it’s sort of, uh, a less skilled five man. And then that guy will outlet the ball and we’ll stamped that catch and go. But what we love about it is once we have have the rebound that guys can, you know, make those first three steps and really fill and compete for the corners. And we’re trying to throw the ball over half court with a pass. And so again, it doesn’t at my level, get into who the point guard is because get the rebound, stampeded up the court, throw it ahead either to the two side or up the sideline, but either way, and then we can attack and space. So we, it’s a wonderful way to play
Pat: 20:13 Out of that. I know you wanna get the ball if you wanna drive and kick, but then what are some of the options or exits that you’re getting into? If the clear throw ahead advantage is not there,
Joe Mantegna: 20:24 Right? So if we can’t throw it ahead, we’ll still look to get an advantage downhill with the pusher. But if we can’t do that, then we have done four different things. You can get right into pistol action. You can get right into what the NBA guys would call delay action, where you throw it to the trailer. We get into drags and double drags. What I want to get into down the road, which we’ve dabbled with, but I, we, haven’t done a great job of it is in a little wide pin and transition to those are kind of the four triggers that we work on. And honestly, like, I like to let the guys organically go to what they liked like this year, my team loved pistol action and they loved to play out of middle drag. So that was mostly what we did other years. We’ve played outta wide pins and you know, other years we’ve played in more delay action, but this year that’s kind of what they like. And you know, I want to coach what they like. I have a lot of moments in practice where I let them call the plays with them, call the triggers. And I see what they’re calling more often. And then I’ll kind of gravitate to what they like
Pat: 21:17 The triggers. Are they calling the plays or are they reading the point guard or where the ball goes that determines what action they’re gonna get into. We’re
Joe Mantegna: 21:24 Usually hand signaling again, we’re trying to throw it over half court and not run any triggers. If we dribble it across half court, then there’s usually a quick hand signal, either a verbal and some of the gyms we plan you can’t hear. So we have to have hand signals with all this too, whether we’re waving the wide pin or whether we’re making a pistol or, you know, whether we’re calling over the drag. I mean, again, we’re talking about simple stuff here, but that’s the only time we get into trick is when we dribble over half
Pat: 21:49 Coach, I’m really interested in the pistol action. And what are the reads you’re basically teaching because obviously what makes it so dangerous is the amount of, you know, you can play the handoff, not play the hand up, play the pick and roll, play the flare. What are the reads? What are the progressions that you are working with your guys to really master the pistol?
Joe Mantegna: 22:06 Well, I don’t know if we mastered it or not. That’s the first thing we do spend a lot of time, you know, three on, oh and three on three breaking down the pistol action. When we ran it a few years ago, we used to run it off the throw ahead and the handoff back. But on a high school court, it gets narrow and we had trouble getting our guys to create enough width where we could then kind of get past the handoff. And we got kind of jammed up on sideline and that’s where it started to fall apart. So this last iteration, we played more off the ball screen, the step up ball screen into the flare and for us on a high school court with high school spacing that seemed to work. And then we got into ghosting that step up mm-hmm <affirmative>. And then we got into ghosting the step up into a flare where then we ran into a single side ball screen. And you know, and then there’s always, you can hammer on the weak side or 45 cut on the weak side. So this team just really liked that action. They grasped the 45 cut from the other side. They grasped the timing of the hammer, which is not easy. And I think the adjustment we made of not throwing it ahead and dribbling it ahead just made it easier on a high school court for us to run
Pat: 23:09 With the timing of that ghost, or step up, when’s this play being called? Is this guy running from the corner? Is it something like, if you’re calling it and then he’s gonna stop kind at the 45 and wait, you know, what is the timing spacing you’re looking for outta that three man action.
Joe Mantegna: 23:23 He’s supposed to run to the corner. So we hope he makes it to the corner. And as you guys know as coaches, you fight that right guys. Yeah. You say, get to the corner and you look out and you say, you guys obviously didn’t get through geometry cuz that’s not the corner <laugh> um, but if they got to the corner, then hopefully they’re sprinting back up to set that, you know, file line extended even a little higher step up. And if they get pace on that sprint, that’s when that ghost, as you guys well know, I learned some of this from you guys and your videos. I mean that ghost becomes real effective. It’s it’s a sprint. So I think if they can get to the corner and then sprint back into the pistol action and ghost it, that gets really hard. And that creates a conflict of responsibility on those switches. And that’s exactly what you want, you know, and that’s when we turn the corner and, and get into some of that other action on the weak side. And that’s when that 45 cut is devastating. As you guys know, yeah.
Dan: 24:12 Coach actually leads into my question about the second side or the opposite side and your thoughts on when you’re running into these spots and the two side of break and whether you’re in pistol or whatever it is, what’s the balance of you being as a coach, wanting them to maybe play through that, you know, first side where they’re pushing it, play pistol, or do you want that thing reversed and play pistol on the other side or, you know, whatever you do on a reversal,
Joe Mantegna: 24:36 We get into a lot of reversals in our flow. Again, we’re talking about transition here in transition. I’m giving these guys the first 10 seconds to the shot clock to try to create an early advantage. And we use our transition, you know, kind of the way Rick Patino in the nineties uses press like we’re trying to wear you out with our pace. And so if I say, Hey, we’re trying to wear these guys out with pace. And then I say, we need to get it to the second side and our transition. Well, that becomes to me like secondary action. And that’s not really what we’re doing. I’m trying to get to an early vantage and transition. I’m trying to put people on an island. I’m trying to create a conflict of responsibility early. If it gets to the second side, great to a hammer or a 45, or, you know, whether we even play through the trailer, all that’s great, but like, I’m not trying to slow these guys down. And so while I understand the data, if you get to the second side, the advantages get bigger, I wanna be an attack mode. And I think the mentality of attacking early in a possession is valuable to us. We believe in that we think other teams aren’t gonna make threes in the fourth quarter against us, cuz our pace on offense is wearing them out. Trying to keep up with us.
Dan: 25:39 Absolutely. You mentioned you gave ’em the first 10 seconds to create an advantage and to work through it at the 11th second <laugh> there, isn’t an advantage created. How do you then tie whatever they’re running in the break into your main flow of offense?
Joe Mantegna: 25:54 Well, I couldn’t have answered this question about three years ago. Cause I spent about 20 years trying to figure this out. And honestly it was a real blind spot in my coaching. I couldn’t figure it out. And I think when I talked to young coaches, there’s a lot of us that can’t figure out how to tie this stuff together. And sometimes in trying to tie, you know, sort of primary break or early secondary break to flow, I think as you guys said, you can hold up your primary break. If you look at kind of Carolina action, right? They run the spots, you know, and it’s obviously incredible to all the Dean Smith stuff that we all grew. I grew up watching and admiring, but like, you know, the, that was almost like transitional plays. That’s basically what I would call secondary, you know? So we’ve gone to a real simple four out, sometimes five out flow with, you know, we call it middle school rules.
Joe Mantegna: 26:39 I mean, it’s literally like flow rules. You could put into a basketball camp, but again, I have talented players who are unselfish and then we can just talk about decision making, attacking long closeouts, cutting and playing off at two feet. And I would just add this one other thing about our flow. Like during the pandemic, I decide I was gonna make like one phone call every week to somebody I respected and see if they jump on the phone with me and because I have good players, I will jump on the phone with me. It’s has nothing to do with me. <laugh> um, but I got my man Mike NIE on the phone at Villanova for one of those calls during the pandemic. And you know, he was nice enough after beating my behind as a player back in the early two thousands to gimme a little time.
Joe Mantegna: 27:17 And at Villanova they talk about, you see chest, you pass and you see arms, you finish, you know, and the like that’s Villanova. And, and I thought to myself like, yeah, that’s it like, that’s what I’m doing right there. Chest get to two feet and pass and arms, get off of one foot and finish. And you know, again, when you talk about stampeding long closeouts and reading chest and arms, I mean, that’s how simple I’ve gotten. So as I’ve gotten more experienced, I’ve gotten more simple in our teaching. And I don’t know if I answered the question. I, we got a little off. No,
Dan: 27:47 That’s great. <laugh> I love it. Coach. Talk about pace for a second and how it ties from your transition offense to your half court offense. What is it that you emphasize or the advantages that you see in playing that way in beating maybe some teams on your schedule. And then the second part is how it prepares them to play in a variety of styles of college, whether it’s more slow it down or playing at that faster pace,
Joe Mantegna: 28:15 We often have more depth than some of our opponents. So I think that plays into superior depth. I like to play eight, nine, even 10 guys sometimes. So pace allows me to play more guys. We ironically play quarter court defense, 90% of the time we don’t press trap, run all around, create a bunch of turnovers. So we create our fatigue in the other team. As I said earlier through our offense and the best defensive teams on our schedule, when we walk the ball up and again, maybe this is, you know, my eye coaching, maybe our offensive execution isn’t good enough. But when we walk the ball up and try to run our stuff against the best teams on our schedule, we don’t score as high a rate as we do with big advantages early in transition. And so, you know, we are totally committed to pace.
Joe Mantegna: 29:00 We’re committed to shooting early in the shot clock and then we’re committed to tagging up on those early threes and getting in there and keep from balls alive and trying to gather up those long rebounds and those 50 50 balls. So to me, I think because we don’t create pace with our defense, we like to create pace with our offense and that’s what we believe in. And I think that’s sort of our brand now. And I would say the last piece from a prep school standpoint, you know, part of my job is to prepare these guys for the college game. And I think if they can play fast, both make decisions and have skill playing fast, then they obviously can do it playing slow in college for these college coaches and want ’em to walk it up. But I think when we’re talking about our skill development, if you can do it fast, then it’s easier to do it slow. And so that’s kind of the last piece in their preparation for college
Pat: 29:45 Coach. I wanna take a quick tangent. You said something really interesting on tagging up on early threes. So on late threes, are you not tagging up? You know, are you tagging up all the time? How do you get your guys to differentiate? I mean, I know Dan tried to, you know, it’s very hard to get guys to always tag up and to constantly be reminding them. So if you’re differentiating within a play, I’m just, I’m super curious to hear how that experiment has
Joe Mantegna: 30:08 Been. No, I hope coach Fern from UNC. Charlotte is not listening to this pod. I’ll tell you that. Cause I hybrided the tagging up to the point where I, I, you know, it wouldn’t be anything he would even recognize as someone who’s introduced it to the us game. But this year we tagged up with what would be effectively two, three, and four on any shot. I said that I love the idea that we do tag up on early threes, cuz even with early threes, a lot of times, you know, our offensive rebounding percentage was almost 30% on those early threes. We are tracking a lot of them down. And so my point is you, you know, we look at those as a way to just get to more offense. So we hybrid tag up, we tag up sort of 2, 3, 4, we send our point guard back and we let our five man just go like he’s not worried about playing on the top side or scrumming or any of that stuff.
Joe Mantegna: 30:55 He just goes cuz a lot of times he’s in the dunker or he is already rolled. It’s been a hybrid, but what it’s done for us as, as I looked at my team in the past, we would shoot a three and I’d have these great athletes standing on the three point line watching. They wouldn’t be getting back and they wouldn’t be offensive rebounding, even though we told ’em to offensive rebound, but when we named it and we held ’em accountable with film daily and we said, you need to get on the top side, especially if you’re coming in from the weakside corner, the weakside 45, we got to it. And this year it changed our whole program. And frankly we didn’t shoot the ball very well this year from three, but we offensive rebounded like crazy. And that’s just cuz we gave it a name. We sent three guys to the top side every time and we were able to get a lot out of that, but it’s not the classic tag up. I wanna be clear about that. You know? I mean <laugh>, I couldn’t get it right with the five guys tag that I couldn’t get to that. So I decided to sort of make it our own.
Dan: 31:47 We won’t tell coach Fern, if he’s listening, we did the same thing where we had to do a hybrid for some of those same reasons.
Pat: 31:53 Yeah. I wanna get back to the pace that we were talking about and in any game, no matter it’s always like a battle of styles and who can maybe impose their will. So when maybe a team is doing a good job, slowing your pace in the huddles or in the timeouts, what are you telling your guys to put your pace or put your imprint on the game and play the way you guys wanna play and not be dictated by the other team? Well,
Joe Mantegna: 32:14 There’s two things that are gonna slow us down. Right? One thing is if we’re taking it outta the basket every time. Yeah, yeah. If we’re not competing defensively, the other team’s having a great shooting night or you know, there guy who’s crushing us. I mean, when we’re taking it out of the net, it’s easy to slow us down. I mean, you know, we’d like to score two or three baskets, a game on makes in transition, but that’s gonna slow us down. And then the other thing that slows us down is us. The first three steps, you know, there will be games when we’re flatter and, and our guys just aren’t running. And so, you know, cuz we have really willing passers. We’ll throw it ahead. But if there’s nobody to throw it ahead too. And so that’s the other thing we’re highlighting in huddles. Like yo get out like the first three steps.
Joe Mantegna: 32:50 We’re trying to throw it ahead and there’s nobody there like you guys are buddy running you’re side by side. You’re not getting to the corners. You’re pulling up early. That’s gonna slow our transition down as well or that we’re not rebounding, you know? Yeah. Either when we’re taking outta the net or we’re getting beat on the offensive glass ourselves. So, you know, those are the three things that slow us down and you know, we need to gang rebound and we need to get stops and then we need to sprint and not jog. If we can do those, we’ll be able to get out more often than not
Dan: 33:18 Coach on the buddy running. If two guys happen to cuz it happens right. Two guys are on the same side. What do you want those two guys to do with your break? One run through, stay at the cor. Like how do they figure out not be next to each other?
Joe Mantegna: 33:31 The delay guy will slow up. So we’re gonna let the guy get to the corner. We’re not gonna run by and we’re gonna slow up. What also happens in the two side break a lot is say you have three guys on one side, right? Cuz it’s not ballet. And my buddy Scott Morrison, who is a Celtics assistant who is now at Perth, he would tell me to send the middle guy through. Okay. That’s what we did. When we would end up with three guys, the middle guy would have to recognize he’s in the middle and he would cut through to the other side. Because again, that happens occasionally we’d hold him over on the three side and that would up a great openside drag. Right? And pop. So I would tell the point guard if we had a three side and they didn’t recognize it, then get yourself into an early drag. And you got the whole side of the court to operate somewhere in my mind. I’m thinking that we’re gonna have a three side call at some point and just get everybody outta the way. But we haven’t gotten there yet. I’ll leave that up to people smarter than me to do that.
Dan: 34:21 Coach. I love the send in the middle guy through why send the middle instead of say the corner and float everyone down.
Joe Mantegna: 34:28 I’m not sure. Okay. I think that probably the spacing is wider. If you send the middle guy through is what I would imagine. Although you certainly, there’s less buddy running. If the middle guy goes through cuz then the space acing left is wider. I think that’s probably why you should send the middle guy through. Okay.
Dan: 34:46 So coach, my kinda last one here with the transition is just from a teaching standpoint for maybe coaches listening to this, if they’re gonna implement a two sided break next year, what are the things as you’ve taught this, that would be something like you need to blow thes. So you need to get on ’em about like that. They need to know about when you’re trying to teach it. That can kind of hang up a good two sided break.
Joe Mantegna: 35:08 Yeah, no that’s a great question. The buddy running is huge. That happens all the time. The stopping before the corner is huge. We’ve mentioned that already. The other thing that is big is the five man being in the way. So the five man, the way we do it, either needs to rim run. If he’s out early or if he’s behind the play he needs to trail. And what sometimes happens with hard playing bigs is that they’re behind, but they try to kind of catch up. And what they do is they get in between the ball and the diagonal pass to the two side. And you know, I had a seven foot south Sudanese kid this year. And when he’s in the way, he’s really in the way, right. You know, he’s seven feet tall. So it’s a good problem to have. It means your bigs are trying to run and get involved.
Joe Mantegna: 35:47 But it’s the one time you’re telling your guy like, Hey, you need to be behind the ball here. We need to have that passing angle to throw it dally across the court. So, okay. That’s one, we were a little surprised by. And the other thing is the point guards sometimes getting out on the sideline, like you want the ball to be in the slot because then the pass is a little shorter. If you’re trying to throw the ball from the right sideline to the left 45 on a diagonal, it may take too long to get there. So they need to be in the slot with the ball. Okay. You know, even a dribbler two sometimes in the middle of, or just to shorten that two side pass is fine.
Dan: 36:21 Well, coach, this has been awesome so far. We wanna move now to a segment that we call start sub or sit. And for those listening, maybe for the first time, we’re gonna give you three different basketball topics, ask you to start one, ask you to sub one and then ask you to sit one. And then we’ll discuss from there. So coach, if you’re ready, we will jump in here with this
Joe Mantegna: 36:43 Ready to go.
Dan: 36:44 <laugh> okay. Sounds good. And those listening to you do not know these questions at all. These are completely first time you were hearing them. And so we’ll have some fun. All right, coach, this first theme for start sub sit has to do with running summer basketball ball camps. You’re someone that for years has run successful basketball camps all over the world. And these three different topics we’ll talk about can be potentially the most important and also maybe more difficult things in running and starting a successful summer basketball camp. So your start would be the thing you think you is most important in setting this up. So start sub sit, hiring a great staff, the marketing of the camp or the camp logistics. So understanding how long to do drills. When to go to lunch. When to come back from lunch, uh, all the things that go in the day to day operations of a camp. So start sub sit successful, summer basketball camps
Joe Mantegna: 37:41 Start logistics. Okay. I only do half day camps with young kids. They have the attention span of fleas. <laugh> my father ran Dave Collins’s basketball camp, the Celtics hall of Famer. For years, you can’t get into lunch and pools and dances and kids hanging out out in the quad. You can’t get into any of that. It needs to be all basketball. So that’s logistics eight 30 to 12, no meals, no pool, no hanging out. That’s when the trouble begins. Okay. So logistics first I would sub staff for sure. Obviously you have to have a great staff and if you run a great camp with great logistics, it helps that my children can do my in grand marketing. But I think that’s the sit.
Dan: 38:22 Okay. Good stuff there. Coach coach,
Pat: 38:24 My first follow up is your experience with drill work? How much drill work do you do? Should it be stationed? Should it be, we all work on one skill together. How much, how long before you should then, you know, let them play. They just let, ’em get up and down.
Joe Mantegna: 38:38 I mix the drills in with decision based drilling. So, you know, I don’t like to do all on air drilling. Of course, when you’re dealing with third graders dribbling a ball, no you’re not gonna be able to get it right into decisions. But you know, I think what you want to do at camps is give kids a buffet, right? Like you’re not gonna change, change their game in four mornings. But I look at it like a salad bar. They need to understand that, you know, it’s okay to throw one handed pass and here’s how you do an inside out dribble. And this is what a flare screen is. Even if you can’t quite execute it yet. So to me, it’s like a buffet. Hopefully they’ll come back to camp. Hopefully they’ll jump on YouTube. Maybe, you know, they’ll get some more of that at another camp that summer.
Joe Mantegna: 39:14 So I do think you need to drill. And I don’t want kids coming to any of my camps where they walk away that they didn’t learn anything. But the flip side is you certainly need to entertain the attention spans have never been shorter. And you understand you have different clienteles. Like we run in a elite camp where it’s real serious high level teaching. And then we run our day camps where it’s, you know, you’re entertaining. I’m gonna give them an hour every morning of teaching. I want them to leave and tell their parents that they learned something while they were there, as well as, you know, got to compete and run around. I’m even more conscious of it on the backside of a pandemic, right when we got back to our camps last summer. But these kids have been cooped up and you wanna make sure that you’re not sucking the life out at your basketball camp for
Dan: 39:56 Absolutely. Yeah. Your sub hiring a staff, you know, things you look for in getting a great staff together to teach, to grow as coaches too. Obviously it’s a great place to kind of get reps as a coach in the summer. So can you talk about the staff?
Joe Mantegna: 40:09 Yeah. I mean, I wanna have a couple of my main men that I know I can count on and if I’m walking in the other gym for an hour, everything’s gonna be fine. And then I’m hiring energy and opportunity for the rest of the staff. You know, I want young guys that are energetic and I want people that are excited about getting the reps. You know, we all remember when we were 19, 20, 20, 1 years old getting our first reps, you know, out in front of 10 kids trying to teach ’em how to throw a chess pass. We remember that and I just want energetic high spirited guys that love the game and they want reps. That’s what I want the rest of my staff to be. And when we have that guys and gals, when we have that, it it’ll go great. If I have to do the bulk of the teaching with my main assistant coach, then that’s fine. We can do that. But if they’re bringing energy in love, we’re in good shape.
Dan: 40:51 Hey coaches, this segment of start sub sit is brought to you by our friends at practice planner lives, practice planner live has combined all the components of effective, efficient, and time saving practice planning into one, easy to use platform, saving your most valuable resource as a coach time ditch the word docs and the scribbled legal pads for simple point and click experience to build your drill directory, collaborate with your staff and create clean, customized and shareable practice plans. In minutes with over 75,000 practice plans created at the professional collegiate high school, AAU and youth levels, practice planner live is proven to raise a level of organization and effectiveness of any program listeners of the podcast can visit practice planner, live.com and register for a free 21 day trial and enter the promo code SG pod to get 10% off your subscription. Thanks for listening. And now back to our conversation,
Pat: 41:54 All right, coach, our next one has to do with recruiting. And I mean, we know you’ve been on both ends of it as a college coach recruiting. And now with you’re fortunate enough to have some top talent. So you’re seeing them being recruited. So our question has to do with when one of your players comes back from a recruiting trip and what is it that they’re talking about? What is it that they’re saying? Yeah, this was a great trip. Is it the school of facilities, the players on the team or the staff, the relationship they built with the coach or the assistant coach?
Joe Mantegna: 42:24 Yeah, I think I would start the staff and I always tell them the relationship with the head coach is the most important thing. As much as you might like the assistant, he’s trying to get another job as he finishes up your recruiting weekend. You know, so let’s not get too tied into these assistant coaches. So I think I would start that the facilities and the arms race of some of these places is certainly can be overwhelming to a kid. I mean, some of these high major spots are like the Taj Mahal, you know? So that is a close second for sure. And then, you know, now more than ever, I would sit the players because you don’t know who’s gonna be there the next year with the portal. So, you know, it used to be, I used to say like, you know, is there a guy you could see mentoring, you, you know, you’re gonna be the point guard of the future.
Joe Mantegna: 43:04 Like what’s the point guard who’s there now. Like, you know, we do talk about the decisions the guys on the team are making, are they out doing drugs and chasing girls all night? And you know, what’s gonna be the ethos of the team, but it’s less about who the players are now because you know, I, as the coach and them trying to figure out the best school, we used to talk about roster construction all the time. And now it’s irrelevant. I mean, I’ve had multiple high major coaches tell me, head coaches, tell me, listen, man, this is the G league. Now like every year we’re trying to put together our best team, like all thought to family and culture and loyalty. Like this is the G league now. And we’re not gonna try to pretend that we’re anything we’re not. And I respect that, but that’s why you can’t worry about who’s there because you don’t know if they’re gonna be there the next year.
Joe Mantegna: 43:46 And you simply don’t know who’s gonna, they’re gonna take off the portal a week after you’re there. So you just gotta find the right fit. And I’ve been telling guys, they maybe need to think about going, you know, a level lower than they would have three or four years ago. You know, where yeah. Go where you can play, go where you can be in the top eight early on. And then if you’re good enough, you can transfer up. But to go to the highest level and think that they’re gonna wait around to develop you again, they’re very capable of developing you, but they have no reason to wait for you. And I’m not mad at ’em about it. It’s not a value judgment. You know, they’re getting paid a lot of money to win. So the landscape has changed tremendously
Pat: 44:19 Coach. That’s actually my follow up with you helping your players and maybe trying to point ’em in directions or, you know, some red flags that you think they should be concerned about or follow up on when they come back to you and they tell you maybe what, how this, he was telling me this. Or like, when they’re telling your player, like their vision, their plan for them, what are some things maybe you’ll push back on or you’ll tell the kid, like I would follow up on this or, you know, don’t bank on that. Maybe that they’re just telling you things you want to hear.
Joe Mantegna: 44:46 Well, that goes all the way to the back to the beginning of the pod now, doesn’t it? Yeah. Yeah. Radical transparency. We’re talking about, I’m not here to crush anybody’s dreams. I’m not here to keep them from going to a school that they might wanna go to. But I do think with full empathy, it’s my responsibility as their coach and mentor to talk truthfully about what I think the opportunities are. You know, we’ve had kids that are being recruited. You know, a coach will say, we’re recruiting you to be a wing. I know the kid can’t be a wing at Blair academy, let alone be a wing in a high major school. Like we all know he’s gonna be not a wing. I feel okay about saying you’re a long ways from a wing, you understand being a wing means you can guard a wing in the SCC, right?
Joe Mantegna: 45:25 You think you can guard that guy. You just watched on TV Saturday, coming off with two staggers. And by the way, you think you can rise up in hit to three in transition because that’s what a wing in the SCC needs to do. You’re a long ways from being a wing. So those kind of conversations happen all the time, but they need to be had after a long relationship and with full empathy, cuz I’m not trying to take anybody’s dreams and they’re high school kids. They’re not fully formed. They can make incredible growth over the course of the next five or eight years. So we’re not trying to put ceilings on people, either.
Dan: 45:54 Coach our last start sober sit for you. We’ve seened this, uh, keep it simple, stupid question. Or the, the kiss, you know, philosophy of, you know, what’s something that it’s just better to keep it simple in your mind and we’re gonna stay on the defensive side of the ball here. So start sober, sit these three different areas on the defensive side that you’re obviously gonna work on them, but you prefer to have a simpler approach than not. So start sub sit, rebounding, defensive, rebounding closeouts, teaching closeouts, or your pick and roll coverage.
Joe Mantegna: 46:26 Ooh, I think I would start rebounding. I think that is just a will thing. We do talk about technique. You can technique on different spots on the floor, but I think that is largely will and I don’t wanna overco it. And frankly, I think we coach it to make ourselves feel better. But at the end of the day, it’s an effort and a will thing. The other two, I guess I would sub closeouts though. We have three different kinds of closeouts. I listened to the coach from France last week or the week, or talk about closing out right and left. I’m not there yet. Okay. <laugh> but you know, we have the Steph Curry close out and we have the KD close out. We have the Rondo close out. And so one of our big scouting things is deciding what kind of closeout each guy is.
Joe Mantegna: 47:05 And I think at the high school level, that’s probably appropriate. And I think that helps them when they get to college. And then I would sit ball, screen coverage. I think for me to prepare guys for college, they need to be able to understand multiple ball screen coverages. We went to icing side ball screens a few years back. It’s changed everything for us defensively. I’m trying to decide what ball screen coverages we’re gonna use with this Nike hoop summit team right now. And you know that I’m gonna be coaching later on. So I think that needs to be taught at a more technical aspect. And I think that needs to be dug into a bit
Pat: 47:35 Coach. I wanna follow up on your ball screen coverage. And you mentioned you went to ice and now you’re trying to figure out what to use for the hoop summit. I know it’s always a mixture of things, but what factors do you weigh the most? Is it what your team is capable of or maybe predominantly you’re big? Or is it what scares you the most as far as what can punish you corner threes, the rim roll or the ball handler that factors into what coverage you wanna play? That’s
Joe Mantegna: 48:02 A really good question. I think first it’s our personnel. I mean, I think everything we do at Blair offensively and defensive, they needs to start with our personnel. So do we have a guy who can drop and rim protect? Do we have physical guards that can get up in people’s hips and take them away from the screen? What’s the mentality. Um, how many guys can switch? We like to recruit switchable teams. So we like to switch, you know, one through four and even sometimes one through five, if we can. So I definitely would start with our personnel.
Pat: 48:31 Okay. If we go to your opponent at the high school level, would you say then it’s more what the ball handler is capable of. That’s gonna scare you the most or the role, or like I said, maybe kick out threes, you know, than being able to dish it and read the shake action.
Joe Mantegna: 48:45 Yeah, it’s definitely the ball handler. I mean, we’re in New Jersey, this is guard heaven here. I, I mean there’s high, major New Jersey guards on every team we play. And you know, we used to do a lot of hard hedging and that kind of thing. And it was just putting two guys on one against high, major New Jersey guards and the best teams on our schedule. It never worked out real well. And that was, you know, again, we talked about self assessment and where was I losing games for my team? Well, I thought, you know, looking back on, I, I thought I lost a handful of games for us, tactically, by being in the wrong ball screen coverage a few years back, I just, we couldn’t contain these jitter bug Jersey guards. They were turning the corner against our hard heads, beating two guys, getting downhill. We’re giving up corner threes.
Joe Mantegna: 49:24 We’re giving up lo dons were giving up everything. And then the guys were looking at me and I had to look at myself in the mirror and say, we need to do something different you. And so we’ve gone to sort of weaken the middle ball screens and icing on the sides and it’s given us some answers and it’s given us some solutions and it’s been better. And this year we went to a little ice to switch at times or ice to blitz at time. And then that gets into some funky stuff. And you can start to D dictate to these guards a little more than them just dictating to us. So that’s kind of my rational. I don’t know if that’s right, but that’s my rationale.
Dan: 49:54 <laugh> love you, coach. I’d love to follow up on the ice to switch. Can you talk a little bit about, see that a little bit where, you know, there’s a certain maybe area on the floor, whether it’s a free throw line or they get below that, then they’re gonna switch. And can you talk, I guess a little bit about, you said you’ve done that and how that’s worked out and maybe some of the areas that they know to switch or what the call is.
Joe Mantegna: 50:14 Yeah, well, so it’s crazy. We iced to blitz a fair amount this year. And I had a postgraduate division, two stretch, four, who I played at the five and he was like having a 25 year old European pro on my team. <laugh> he would change our coverages in the middle of possessions. Okay. And if he knew it was the team’s backup point guard and we had him stuck on the side and we were icing him, he’d black, the ice on his own. And it was literally like, I felt like I was coaching a European pro it’s like the guys I coached for South Sudan the summer, like this kid was at that level. I understanding the game. So we would ice to switch off of Scouts occasionally. And that would usually be below the foul line. But the ice to black, the ice to blitz was what we got a lot out of. And again, it would usually be against the team’s backup point guard. And it would usually be when we had, ’em kind of stuck on the sideline in a precarious position. And I’m not sure I’ll ever have another xFi that can change ball, screen coverages at the high school level, in the middle possessions. But we had a dude that could do it this year and the guards listened to him. So he made me look like a good defensive coach at times when I didn’t even call it. So
Pat: 51:17 <laugh> love that with the IA switch coach, if you’re gonna implement it, the coaches doing it, what was like the next step that you had to solve on that switch or that kind of sit situations, you found your guys in that then was like, okay, how do we address this?
Joe Mantegna: 51:31 Well, if they roll you outta that switch, you got a guard kind of fronting a five, say if the screener was a five. So you’re probably still bringing a tag over mm-hmm <affirmative>. And like, to me, if you’re switching, you’re switching. So as you don’t have to engage a third defender. Right? Yeah. And so the reason I didn’t love that against like a, a physical five and we wouldn’t really do it in that position is because still you’re engaging a third defender at that point. I don’t wanna engage a third defender. If we’re switching, I wanna try to switch like sizes. We weren’t as positionally big this year. So switchings a little more difficult, but at the high school level, they often don’t punish you on the role, even when a big is rolling a guard out. And when you’re ice to switch, you can be in a front if they roll you out. And so that’s what I thought was good about it. However, if we are trying to front a six, 10 guy, then we often had to bring a guy over anyway. And at that point, why switch if you have to engage a third defender?
Pat: 52:25 Yeah. Yeah. Okay. The
Joe Mantegna: 52:26 Ice to black is what I love the ice to blitz is like something that is just, uh, Steve Clifford. My mentor talks about, you know, with drop coverage, you need to vary the drop depth. And so, you know, when you have a kid that begins to understand that, Hey, we wanna vary the depth of the drop and now we’re icing and he comes up and he can make a quick black call and just jump it. That random defensive action is really hard to prepare for. Yeah.
Pat: 52:50 On varying the drop, the depth. How were you working on that? You know, where does it have to start? What was the most important then to get your big, to be able to bury the depth be successful or also then get out to that blitz and that black?
Joe Mantegna: 53:02 Well, obviously he would never call the, the blitz if he wasn’t up high and most up to touch, you know, we would talk about varying the depth based on who the ball all handler was. And then obviously who you are as a defender. We had a seven foot kid from South Sudan, Lu young, who would drop deep and really could cover the Rammy head kind of NBA length. And then, like I said, we had a couple undersized bigs, and they didn’t actually have great feet, but they were smart and understood angles. And they were the guys that would really vary their depth. And so come up to touch halfway back all the way back. I just think you need to give these good guards different looks. If you change the patterns mm-hmm, <affirmative>, you know, it makes it a little harder for them to make the REIT.
Joe Mantegna: 53:38 And I think when I coach at the Feba level in the summer, we talk about that as well, a lot because those Feba guards would, the African guards are so good. And, you know, we have so much length with our South Sudan team and it’s just, you know, let’s give ’em different, looks up the touch all the way back. You know, they’re gonna shoot the floater one time, you know, where’s the lab gonna come from. And I think that just without changing your coverage, it, it changes up the patterns and it changes up what the guard sees
Dan: 54:02 As we’re recording this. You’re about to coach the hoop summit head coach there. And you likely, you know, don’t have as much time to implement and teach as you do at Blair academy, the pick and roll coverages and all the nuances with a shorter window of teaching pick and roll coverages. Where do you start? Is there five on five? Is it two on two? Is it three on three? How do you, you know, try to get them up to speed as quickly as possible with whatever coverage that you plan to use?
Joe Mantegna: 54:27 Well, one of my other mentors, Alan keen, and I were on the phone today talking about that, in fact, and he gave me a great piece of advice. Why don’t you engage these guys who you don’t have a deep relationship with? You don’t have a rapport with engage them, ask them how they want to guard ball screens. How do you guard ball screens with your high school team? What are you most comfortable with? And then I think have the flexibility to change. I coaching staff and I have already talked about, we’ll probably start this way and that way, but you know, we’re gonna need to be ready to pivot on day two. If it doesn’t go well, day one of practice, day two, we may need to pivot. So listen for someone like me, it’s unnerving in these small windows. You know, I’m a culture, family relationship guy, and all of a sudden you’re coaching guys.
Joe Mantegna: 55:05 You don’t know that well, all know their strengths and weaknesses that well, you don’t know their personalities that well, it taxes you and you gotta be really malleable. And I think Alan’s advice is really good. Like go to them and get their buy in and have them, you know, talk to us about what they’re most comfortable with. And then, you know, they’ll have more ownership of it if they had part of the choice of how we’re gonna guard some of this. So I plan to take these future MBA draft choices and engage them in a conference room and talk through some of this stuff. I have my ideas about how I wanna play, but I want to get their buy-in.
Dan: 55:36 And with Blair academy, when you’re implementing pick and roll coverages, how do you kinda start teaching there? Is it whole part whole? Or how do you get to speed there? Yeah,
Joe Mantegna: 55:45 It’s whole part whole. And, and obviously, you know, we’re gonna have multiple guys on the court that know what we’re doing, but yeah. We’re gonna teach it whole and then we spend time breaking it down two on two and three on three, you know, and we’re trying to also teach offense while we’re doing that. So when we’re working on the tag, you know, we’re teaching the guard to read the tag, right? Yeah. And we’re talking about the shape up. So, you know, we’re doing a lot of that three on three work, three on two ball screen work that way. But you know, I will say sort of big picture too. Like I’m trying to disrupt myself every spring and I’m trying to disrupt them. So we’ve had a real good five year window here. We’ve won a bunch of games and a bunch of championships, but like, I’m trying to do things differently every spring and summer.
Joe Mantegna: 56:25 And I’m coming back to them like, Hey, this is what we’re doing. I saw Phoenix do this. Like, let’s think about this. You know, let’s change this. Like I don’t wanna get stagnant. I wanna be intellectually curious about the game. I use your guys platform as one of the ways that I do it. Thank you. And I also wanna show our guys is that we’re not satisfied. We may have just gone 22 and five, but you know what? I wanna go 27 and oh next year. And I’m trying to get this thing better. I’m trying to be better as a coach and I need you guys to be better. And so the constant disruption, I think, is the way we all grow. And I’m just a huge believer in that we disrupt more after good seasons and we just had a good season. So we plan for more disruption, good disruption this spring and summer
Dan: 57:06 Great stuff, coach. Well, you are off the start sub sit hot seat. Thanks for playing. That was a lot of fun.
Joe Mantegna: 57:11 Thank God. <laugh> that was unnerving. I tried to bribe you guys to gimme the questions before it.
Dan: 57:17 <laugh> yeah. You just needed to add a couple more zeros. Well, coach, thank you for that. So we got one more question for you before we do. Thanks for coming on and spending time. This has been really fun for us.
Joe Mantegna: 57:30 It’s been absolutely my pleasure real honor to be on you guys are doing a great service to the basketball community and all of us basketball nerds. Can’t thank you guys enough for all that you’re doing, cuz we appreciate it. It’s what we talk about. We compare the pod, we share it back and forth. So you guys doing great work it’s much appreciated.
Dan: 57:45 Thank you coach. Thanks, coach. Appreciate that coach. Our last question for you, what’s one of the best investments that you’ve made in your career as a coach?
Joe Mantegna: 57:54 Yeah, I would say two things. I mean, I would say one that I, I didn’t invest in it, but you know, my wife allowed me to chase my dream for 20 some odd years and she made a lot of personals sacrifices in her life to allow me to chase it. And she’s been incredibly supportive of me every step of the way. I mean, you know, you just can’t do it without that kind of support. I would say the other investment was I spent my twenties as a college basketball coach. I thought about it earlier today. I think I made $56,000 in eight years. I was a restricted earnings assistant. I was a volunteer assistant. I ran baseball card shows to raise money. I swept the floors, intermurals, you know, did film breakdowns slept in the office, the whole thing. And you know, there was the 27th of many months where I was eating salt teens and you know, Lipton soup.
Joe Mantegna: 58:40 And I don’t say that flippantly, but all the decisions I made in my twenties were from my passion for basketball, my desire to grow as a coach, I wanted to get reps and I was around like these incredible coaches that mentored me and took care of me and allowed me to grow and make a lot of mistakes. And frankly, I wish I had added more value than I did looking back on it. But you know, making decisions about growth and about reps and out relationships over money in my twenties was I think the foundation for what’s allowed me to have the success that I’ve been fortunate enough to have at Blair. And I wouldn’t give up those saltines and lived in SOS for anything.