Slappin’ Glass sits down this week with French professional coach Cedric Eitz, who lifts the curtain on his unique approach to team building and offensive strategy. With a focus on the often-underestimated roles of ‘stretch fours’ and the art of spacing, Coach Heitz discusses why these are pivotal to an efficient offense. We further dive deep into the most important analytics and post defensive principles during the always fun “Start, Sub, or Sit?!”
Inside the Episode
“You know, it’s like in offense, the player they are supposed to score. In defense, the player are supposed to contain the dribbles. This is basketball. If the players are not scoring, I can be the best coach in the world. I mean, I can work, I can do shooting, but if they don’t hit the shots, which is the base of our game, what can I do at one moment? If the guy is not containing the dribbles, what can I do at one moment?” – Cedric Heitz
We travelled to France this week on the podcast where we sat down for a truly thoughtful conversation with French Pro Coach, Cedric Heitz! Coach Heitz has experience coaching at the professional levels in France and Poland, and gave us a ton of interesting ideas to think about when it comes to stretch 4’s, analytics, spacing and
- The true value of Stretch Fours
- The art of spacing and why it’s so important for shooters and non-shooters alike
- And we talk analytics that matter and Post Defense during the always fun “Start, Sub, or Sit?!”
Chapters
0:00 Teaching Spacing and Value of Stretch Fours
10:38 Pick and Roll in Basketball Offense
16:49 Reading in the Pick and Roll
23:57 Strategies for Adjusting to Different Defenses
33:29 Post Defense and Game Planning Strategies
44:22 The Importance of Numbers in Basketball
51:30 Travel and Networking in Coaching
55:04 Stretch Four and Shooting Percentage Value
59:05 Analyzing Offensive and Defensive Strategies
Transcript
Cedric Heitz: 0:00
You know, it’s like in offense, the player they are supposed to score. In defense, the player are supposed to contain the dribbles. This is basketball. If the players are not scoring, i can be the best coach in the world. I mean, I can work, I can do shooting, but if they don’t hit the shots, which is the base of our game, what can I do at one moment? If the guy is not containing the dribbles, what can I do at one moment?
Dan: 0:35
Hi, I’m Dan Krikorian and I’m Patrick Carney, and welcome to Slappin’ Glass, exploring basketball’s best ideas, strategies and coaches from around the world. Today we’re excited to welcome French professional coach Cedric Heitz. Coach Heitz is here today to discuss the value of stretch fours in teaching spacing. Pick and roll, hierarchy reads and we talk the only analytics that matter in post-defense during the always fun start, sub or sit. Costa Rica, Spain, Italy, Australia, South Africa. We’re excited to announce our newest partnership with the world leader in international sport tours. Beyond Sports Founder and former college and pro basketball coach, Josh Erickson and his team of former athletes have built the go-to company for coaches looking to take their programs abroad. From the travel and accommodations to excursions and service learning opportunities, beyond Sports does it all. For more information and to learn why more than 650 universities have trusted Beyond Sports, visit beyondsportstorescom and tell them. Slapping Glass sent you. And now please enjoy our conversation with coach Cedric Heitz. Coach, we’d love to dive in with you in this first part on teaching spacing, and it’s always an interesting conversation as to how a coach thinks about spacing on offense and then teaches it, implements it, fixes it all the things that go into having good spacing to run an efficient offense. However, you’re going to do it And so, just to start here at the top, love to hear your thoughts on when you take over a team, when you’re coaching a team, your sort of first steps and first thoughts in building the proper spacing that you want for your team.
Cedric Heitz: 2:39
My first important thing for building a good spacing is definitely to hire a stretch four. By hiring a stretch for I know that I will open the paint for my position five for posting, even if we don’t post that much, but more for peak and all situation, because today I’m coaching in Poland it’s not the same one France, but when you coach in France is it pro A, first division of pro B, second division. It’s really athletic. We have history of our culture in France. we have athletic players, french guys. These guys need space For playing in pro A. The space, like in any country is for sure, but mostly in pro A France. You have to have this good spacing for having good peak and all situation. So everything starts with a stretch. For then I got four guys around the three point line. All become a threat. Is it through the drive, is it through the shooting, and basically the four is a shooter. Then I got my position five able to have this movement going up for screening, faking the screen, sleeping or posting sometimes even if, like in NBA, we have less and less position five posting and more and more in and out situation. So when you’ve got four players around the triple nine right now we see that in NBA as well. For a while, with everybody able to shoot, even sometimes position five, it makes everything difficult because we have to get out on the shooter, we cannot bump that much or not too long, and if we are bumping too long we are punished immediately. So everything starts with this.
Patrick: 4:24
Coach, talking to you before you’re big on statistical approach and analysis, if we look at when you’re building your team, what is a stretch for, in your opinion, in terms of what are the benchmarks you’re looking for, if you’re going to bring in a stretch for that you think will have the necessary gravity to create the space you’re looking for, A stretch for is definitely a shooter.
Cedric Heitz: 4:43
It means he has to have more three-point shots attempt than two-point shots attempt. And I’m working only on statistics about and recruiting, on analyzing players about 40 minutes. I don’t know what means a guy scoring 11 points, taking six rebounds. I don’t know what it means. I don’t know what it means. I don’t know how we can describe a player like this. And now agents know how it works and they don’t talk to me like this anymore. They are not saying guys, 11 points player and six rebounds a game. We have many minutes. I need to have 40 minutes comparison because then I can compare every player in the world And year after year I work with this number and now I know exactly what. Does it mean that a player is shooting six times a game for 40 minutes, or nine times a game for 40 minutes? And then I can visualize the profile of the player exactly. I remember sometimes I can analyze a profile of players with only the start line and sometimes agents are calling me and say, yeah, this guy is like this, like that he’s a shooter. And then I watch his start line and I said, yeah, but he’s cheating in defense. The guy said what you know the player And I know. No, i know how he plays, i know what he does. I can already have a good pictures of him And then I need to see the videos for having the full pictures. But a stretch ball for me is somebody definitely with a great rate in shooting. I mean great rate. I would like he has a great rate. When I said great rate of shooting, it means how many points is score on how many shots. It’s an important number for me. If you have a player attempting four shots, two-point shots attempts, and six shots three-point shots attempts, i count the number of points is scored And I divide by the number of shots it takes. So, of course, when you are a good three-point shooter, this rate becomes really good. Same thing, if you are a center and you hit eight shots for 10, you got a very good rate. I have to know the number of points to score. This rate becomes like one point, something like one point 10, like one point 30. And when it becomes more than one point zero seven it becomes a very good shooter. I take in consideration this number And this number is really important. And at the same time I remember when I was here, the go in Charleville-Mézières I had a position four, only 28% shooter on three-point shot. So it was not great shooter, but he was taking every game at least six attempts for 40 minutes. So whatever happened, this guy will shoot. So then the defense does the choice. Are they betting And are they going to bump a lot with the defense of four? And this guy will take attempts and attempts, knowing that when you’re 28% shooter, sometimes you’ve got 10%, sometimes you’ve got 40% And you cannot bet that much. And still this guy is around the three-point nine giving space to the rower for the pick and roll, and still he can have drives or little jumpers, which is not a high rate shot. But this stretch four is it just shooting or is it scoring? which is better? is annoying for the defense and creates spacing for the offense.
Patrick: 8:17
You mentioned that you value the attempts, the number of attempts that player versus his raw percentage, that he’s just 28%. So I guess, just to elaborate, maybe looking at, let’s say, in this example, 28%, why you don’t value it as much as the overall like he shoots six, seven to eight times per 40 minutes.
Cedric Heitz: 8:35
Of course I prefer when the players are hitting shot. Then I have a theory, and maybe I’m not the only one, but I figure out that the more a guy is shooting basically scoring if possible the less on the other side other end is defending. And this guy 28% shooter was good defense or was good for relaying the ball. You know it was good passer, sometimes like a point forward, able to read the game, having the high low situation. So it was important in that dimension as well. So of course it’s not really ideal situation to have a position for only shooting and taking shots and not scoring, because it is important to score in our sports for sure. But it was able to do more. This whole package was enough for us to reach goals that we set to the beginning of season. But of course we need people scoring in basketball. This is the base And sometimes I can figure out and this is why some people can play basketball without hitting shots Sometimes you have guys really more in the drive, not so much shooter, but you have a huge density in defense And this is something I could notice year after year. You have to find this balance between the guys really able to shoot the ball good shooter, sometimes teeny or not really athletic, but really shooter, but not really strong defender. and some guys more in the drive, less shooter, less percentage, but good defender. It’s all a question of balance at that point.
Dan: 10:11
Coach, if we can kind of circle back to the spacing a little bit, and specifically with that foreman, you mentioned being able to give space for rollers and for drives. As a foreman, How about how you teach or think about where you want that fore to either cut or to screen or to stay in space? Let’s say this example, this 20% shooter, how the reeds go with that player. Let’s say you know, during a pick and roll or whatever, during offense.
Cedric Heitz: 10:40
There are not like 100 pick and roll possible. There is mainly the pick and roll in the middle, the pick and roll from the side and the pick and roll a little bit between elbow. Then the pick and roll is between basically five. Basically we can imagine for us well, but basically five with the ball handler And then, because all pick and roll looks the same more or less, i mean it’s difficult to imagine that we put pick and roll elbow, for example, and everybody at the opposite. It’s possible but it doesn’t bring so much this kind of angle with these kind of people at the opposite. We don’t have so much. Again, it’s difficult to talk only with world and not showing you on the board. But I will try to explain the best possible. In fact, any pick and rolls. If we take only one pick and roll, for simplifying let’s take the pick and roll in the middle. At the moment you play the pick and roll in the middle, we can imagine few situations and simple situation because there are kind of four spots around the triple line And then you have four possibilities for the four to fill any of these spots. So if you have a pick and roll in the middle, we can imagine the four in the corner on the right. We can imagine the four on the corner to the left. We can imagine the four at the top, mainly, or more or less to the top. Basically, is it more weak side, I would say pick and roll in the middle. Then we have just to find the plays. Many plays, and sometimes the plays are just for a type of positioning of four. Depends of what we want to obtain in offense I mean, or which kind of help we want to force. You know what I mean. If, for example, the defense is helping from the top, from the closest guy to the pick and roll, we will put the four at the top. If they are helping strong side, we will put the guy on the corner, same corner, strong side, corner. You know, if they dig, then we open the shot for the four in the strong side, on the strong side, and if they help from the lowest guy, we will go for the option where the plays finish with the four in the opposite corner. So this is how I create the shot of four, stretch four, and this is how I use the spacing for having the pick and roll and creating the rotation for having the open shot from the stretch four.
Dan: 13:11
Yeah, that made a lot of sense and really like what you said there. getting down into the details a little bit of how you practice this, let’s just say, okay, you’d like to attack a team in certain ways and you like to make sure the four knows where to go. based off of all the things you just said, how are you preferring to teach your team how to recognize those things on the court?
Cedric Heitz: 13:29
Now I’m coaching for 10 years And I have to confess that every coach knows that about me when they scout me. I have always the same play, the same system. Sometimes there is evolutions in my system, sometimes in my plays, but more or less it’s the same for 10 years. It’s always the same motions. I would say So I build this system And then when I build a team, i try to really find the right guy who fit the system. So I can understand. We always hear coaches saying I take the best player possible. Then I analyze each profile of players And then I’m looking for which player can use for putting this guy in the best situation for scoring. But I’m not like that. I know my system, i know where you can find shots and I know what kind of player I need on Each spot, each profile, for performing in my system. And now, year after year, we obtain maybe not always the best result as a team, because I was always coaching very low budget, but we always could reach the goal, except once, to survive in the league with the smallest budget. And My goal is really to make all players really efficient. I want each player able to bring the best of their tools, of their talent and We could see year after year, season after season, first because we played many possession, but second because the player fit the system. We could see that many guys in their career They did their best numbers in my teams Many, many time. Many times we had the best quarrel. He had David E banks position for we had the Jalen Adams for Position two. We could bring some player to your league because they could really show all their talent In this open game with a lot of spacing, a lot of gaps, a lot of possession. Is it Martin Hermansen? Is it Ben Ben Till? All that guys could perform in my teams. The system will define which kind of player I need for making them producing and having statistics and making us winning games.
Dan: 15:50
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Patrick: 16:26
For our listeners. You mentioned you coach Martin Hermansen, who’s now in the Euro League with Valencia, i believe. Could you walk us through your system, like what you valued about Martin Hermansen when you brought him into your system And how your system helped make him more efficient in his game to advance?
Cedric Heitz: 16:42
now I have really clear view of what my system can bring Martin Hermansen very fast the whole story. I was on the point guard when I was in Charlville Mezier. I wanted an experimented guy, very good three-point shooter and good passer. Let’s say like this, experienced people shots passer. Somebody sent me this video of Martin Hermansen and in what maybe 25 seconds, i took my phone, i called the GM and I said let’s stop everything. We take this guy, not a three-point shooter, not really passer, like crazy passer, but we take this guy. He does everything I need in my system. You see everything like I want we see he read everything like I want we read, because I got a hierarchy of Reading in the pick and roll, like certainly many coaches, but it’s really really clear in my mind I want we read first this first, second that, third this, and When I’m coaching I’m behind the player using the ball and I see his eyes, i see what is watching and I see what is not watching and then I know if it’s really good reading the game or not. And Martin Hermansen was good reader. He was seeing everything. He was a great guy as well and a decent defense, or even if it’s not his strong point. But in my system, because everything is open, it’s not easy. It looks easy. It’s like you know, when you are in the Commercial Center and you need a shampoo and you have 100 Choice and it’s the freedom, it’s perfect. You know, you just have to take one anyone. But then you start to read this, read that and this, and you don’t know anymore and you are not sure and you lost. So freedom is not always easy to handle and You know, in my system, if you’re not smart enough, not aggressive enough first, you are not performing. You need to be aggressive, you need to be smart. And when you got space like this, when you got freedom like that, you need us to be a good player. And The good players in my system always perform because they are not afraid about this freedom And they are not going in this selfish stuff which is easy when everything is open, you just go. But no, you have to start where the place, as a team, execute correctly and because the spacing, because the rotation, because the aggressiveness and Because you’re smart enough, then the ball comes back and you will be in good position for scoring. In general, i have pretty good team in offense, with a lot of points with good rates in offense about shooting. But this is the problem sometimes I have many turnovers and I didn’t solve this problem yet and I still work on this aspect because this freedom, this spacing, this Lot of repetition of pick and rolls allow good situation of shooting. But in the same time we take risk about turnovers Because on pick and rolls you are under pressure, you got a big guy on you. You have to make good choice, good reading, good passing, control, the fundamentals, the good spacing need a good setup and under pressure. And the pressure of boy is huge Because in my system now in Poland I got much less turnovers, which is the same system but the intensity is not the same. But in boy I had many times teams with love turnovers and that hurts the offense a lot.
Patrick: 20:31
You mentioned something really interesting just your hierarchy of reading in the pick and roll, if you could, just what you teach your point guards, that hierarchy or what you want, like you said with Hermannson, where to look and where not to look, it’s nothing new, i guess.
Cedric Heitz: 20:44
When you play pick and all, you have to stay Aggressive. You have to be aggressive, like if you play pick and all in the middle, like horns for example, you pay horns. So the five on your right side, the four on the left side, the two guards in the corners The four is a stretch for is a shooter. If you go with the idea of putting four in position of shooting And you use the peak of five but you don’t use it really because you are so much excited to pass the ball to four, nothing will happen, because you know for something happening you have to use this peak, you have to attack, you have to do an extra dribble behind the peak, you have to create The rotation and the help of five. When the five is helping, then start the reading because the five, your player, your teammate five, is rolling, rolling deep and fast. So if nobody bummed that guy, it’s finished. You just ask the ball to this five rolling and it’s an alley-oop dunk. Now if somebody is bumpy because you did the attraction by dribbling, by having this extra dribble behind the peak, now if the four is bumpy, your four is open and Then you have this open shot. So if you want to play with four, if you want to make for shooting, you have to have the needed aggressiveness in the pick and all ball in your hands. So the hierarchy is definitely refers you, ball in your hands, watch for the rim And go for scoring. Make the defensive feeling that you will go for scoring, except if he comes and stop you, which is the role of five. So if five is helping, the first reading, your actual reading, is to pass to five. If five is bumped, read Who’s bumping, and if this if is the four, it’s easy. You pass to four. If the bump comes from deeper, if it’s busy in the paint, deeper, it’s at the opposite, in the window. So this is the hierarchy of readings, simply like this. I always want that people are reading that because sometimes you have good point guard or aggressive point guard finishing shooting, whatever, and Good point guard plus is the guy looking for five rolling. But then and this is my analyze right now Then if you find a point guard watching further, then you become to see a very, very good point guard. Five years ago It was, like usual, that the guys played a peak and roll reading inside. Not possible Passing outside or in the window, was it? it seems that it’s more and more difficult to find right now.
Dan: 23:29
Love the pick and roll reads and I know as you went through them. You mentioned the last level of being able to read a Busy paint or half. You know defenders coming in from different sides when you have a point guard that you’re trying to teach to get better At those things. Is there anything specific that you do, practice wise, drill wise, to help with those reads?
Cedric Heitz: 23:49
It’s really interesting And I’m really happy to talk about this subject because we talk about the spacing and we talk about point guard. But spacing or changing depends of defense. You know. I mean, if the defense is in protection, i don’t know if we use the same word It’s. We have so many words, technical words for different defense, but Protection, safety, back, back, back. You know, i mean when you play against this type of defense, the spacing is different than when you play against stepping out defense. So You have, in offense, to adjust the setup and the way you will attack these different defense. Another good example is when the team is weakening or icing. It’s not new But it’s more and more used. Is it in Spain, is it in France, i don’t know so much other championship, but more and more the teams try to ice, to avoiding the execution of pick and roll and by icing, for example, the spacing become completely different. The solution are, in my opinion, still on the same way but different. I explained, when you play against safety, for attacking safety, protection, the spacing will be really difficult in the pain, but still you have to be aggressive because the five is going back, back, back. You. Defensor, the defense of ball handler will be late and the pick and roll. I love that. The pick and roll is a situation where you want to play five against four. You pick somebody and you put this guy out of the game. You know what I mean? He will be in the back of the ball handler. Now we need the five-rolling so it’s a real five against four. If the five is sticking on this defensor, you still play four against four. So we need a quick-holding forward and this quick-holding allow you to find solution Against safety. We need a good spacing. We need the dribbler has to have a wide gap for dribbling and trying to reach the paint. Because against safety, the key is the in-and-out situation most of the time And first the in. You have to reach the paint. By reaching the paint by crossing free-slide ball in your hands. Then everything becomes more complicated for the guards for bumping, because they will bump low. And then you have the kick-out pass, a weak side. Or if they dig and the gaps are wide, you need more efforts for digging and open more the strong side player for this open shot or drive, whatever. Now, if you play against step-out, it’s different. You have to sacrifice yourself, ball in your hands, against the step-out of the big guy you have to go backward, not reducing the gaps on the direction of a teammate, because you’re going to beat the stepping-out through the passing and a quick passing. So it’s all a game between the ball handler and the position five. When you play pick-and-roll with five You have to make the point guard or the ball handler understanding that it’s between you and the help. So if the help is stepping out, bring the help backward, anticipate the rolling, because then the screen is not needed anymore Go in the middle of the paint and from that point the other guys on the set-up they have to open angles, give help for the guy under pressure of two guys in the step-out and then through a quick passing, very quick passing in the dribble you have without bounce pass, because bounce pass it’s one, two pass. You know You pass once on the floor and the rebound is a second pass. It takes too long. So if you can ball in your hands, just pass the ball in the dribble directly to the roulette to create this triangle and you will have the passing inside, except if the guards are really feeling the paint. But if the guard feel the paint out of this kick-out, pass out of the step-out, you can hit the guards in the wings. So still, whatever you do, watch for being aggressive. Is it through the dribbling in safety or short step-out, which is the same ID, or is it through the passing, with the big guy stepping out and trying to find a triangle through the guy to the right or through the guy to the left when you’re on the side? When you play against step-out with a short roll, then the target, the main target, becomes the short roller, because still, the five is stepping out and you are more in the middle. You know what I mean. You have to try to hit the big guy short rolling, then from the middle, and then you kill this stepping out by passing early to the five with short rolling. Now the last subject is the subject of icing, wicking. When you ice or you wick, the goal is to avoid the pick and roll. The goal is to make the other team doing something different. You force these guys to go somewhere. So the main mistake in offense would be to go where the defense want to send you. They want to send you at the opposite of the pick and roll, but in my opinion it’s a big mistake to avoid to play the pick and roll. So there are two options. When a team is icing, first they ice aggressive. It means that the guard, he will jump, he will force you not to use the pick and the five will be very high. This is the first option. The second option in defense is that they force you not to use the pick. The guard force you not to use the pick and the big guy is far. There is only two options. I don’t see other options. Either it’s close either it’s far. If the defense is far, then you have to change the angle of the screen more flat and snake, snake. You got room, the big guy is far. Snaking will give you the opportunity to get back in the regular execution. You were supposed to use the pick to the right, for example, but they force you to go to the left. You go to the left, but you snake. You come back to the right because you got space. Five is far And snaking is definitely the main option. So if people are weak or icing, come higher, set the pick flat. They ice you and snake The highest. You are the lowest in general, the five stays and the more you are able to snake And by snaking you just come back in the regular execution of the pick and hold and the place. So nothing new. Then the second option is when the big guy is high on the icing it looks like a step out. So when it’s a step out, what you have to do you have to. Five has to open up. If five opened up, he give air better spacing. The guy bowing his hands is aggressive so he attract two guys. It’s just a matter now to pass to five. So it’s a low pass and out of this low pass we can go for a handoff. You go deeper, you have a little push off and you come back and up and you are back in the execution Regular pick and roll, regular rolling in the play. Sometimes it’s more difficult. We can imagine you pass to five, you go back door and the guy from the same corner, same side, he will come forward, he’s pick and roll with a bounce pass of five and we are back in the pick and roll. So again, it’s difficult to go further because I got six options attacking icing, but without board it’s difficult to explain. Still, we can imagine as well pass to five if they are really stepping out, or I mean really close icing with high pressure of five we can pass to five and five can swing opposite. And by swinging opposite and running for the pick and roll they will never ice anymore and the pick and roll can be done after swinging the ball opposite. So again for doing the link between my players, my spacing and the pick and roll, you see how much it’s important to have a different spacing depends of the different defense the opponents can propose you.
Dan: 32:46
A quick thank you to our newest partner here at Slapping Glass, one of the best tech companies in the world of sports, huddle. As many of you know, huddle extends an array of useful products to coaches, from their auto tracking camera, huddle Focus, live streaming tool, huddle TV, wearable athlete performance tracker, wimoo and their newest offering, huddle Instat, an all in one data powerhouse platform that combines advanced tagging with the global film library. For more information on all that’s offered with Huddle Instat, visit Huddlecom slash Slapping Glass today. Thanks to Huddle for the support, and now back to our conversation. Coach, thanks for all your thoughts on that. That was really great. We do wanna transition now to a segment we call Start, sub or Sit, and so we’re gonna give you three different options on a question, and then we’ll ask you to start one, your favorite, sub one, and then sit your least favorite. If you’re ready, coach, we’ll dive into this first question for you. I’m ready, okay. This first start subset is called Tough to Teach and it has to do with post defense. So defending in the post. Your start here would be which of these is the hardest to teach when it comes to post defense? So the first option is pre-catch keeping that offensive player off the spot. So teaching guys to be physical swim maneuver keep them off of their sweet spot. The second option is on the catch, holding your ground, maybe an arm bar or something, so that the offense can’t easily back you in. And the third option is when to wall up after the catch, when to maybe go vertical, to jump, to try to attempt a block, but to go vertical on that post catch. So Start, sub or Sit.
Cedric Heitz: 34:32
Those three options I like when we play tough defense, when the player anger the ball because the ref is not really focused on you and you can make this guy really tired about fighting for positioning. You can as well keep him away from the paint and the closer you are from the rim, the more the ref is watching for you and giving free throws or the more the percentage become higher. It’s matematic. So, definitively, to fight against a player without ball will help a lot And it has to be a willing, it has to be in the motivation of any defender to keep the big guy really far away from the down low spot. Then, when he got the ball, we have to have the physical contact, the broken arm, the working and staying close enough, making him having a hard time for coming close to the rim. And at the end man, we have to have the hands up and everything. For I’m not so much about blocking because of fate, because I’m more about consistency staying strong, hands up, body contact, shooting over you, not being beaten. We don’t want this guy goes around you. Then if he shoots over you, hands up, you are ready for boxing out, and this is what I said. This is what I call consistency.
Dan: 35:58
I’ll follow up with your start, which was keeping them off the spot and being physical beforehand. Are there any teaching points? I mean you mentioned how you’ve told your guys that the refs are not necessarily watching that battle as much, but as far as ways to try to keep someone from getting off that spot whether it’s side-fronting, full-fronting, however it is that you try to avoid a player catching in that spot.
Cedric Heitz: 36:24
Sometimes I do the demonstration. Now, i’m kind of heavy but I do the demonstration And I played rugby and in rugby they teach you to be low. You have to hit the guy low because the tallest you are and if you lose your steps you jump in the air. In rugby you’re dead. So the goal is to be low, to be strong on your legs, low in your legs and broken arm. And sometimes I do demonstration against seven footer, sometimes 95 kilograms. I’m 98 now. So I’m up here And I do demonstration and I show the broken arm and I’m really low on my legs. I’m kind of strong on my legs too And I show that. You know when the guy is cutting in the paint, you just go with him and you push, you stay at the contact handshake. You never lose the handshake contact and you go with. And when he goes under the rim, then you’re broken arm in and you start to push him away And because he’s walking or running, he’s tall and you have to be low, broken arm, you put your ear around the chest and you deny with your arm and you got a good stance for voiding and the positioning close to the paint and passing to that guy at the chest.
Patrick: 37:49
Our next start subsit coach has to do with preparing a game plan. Start being your most important when preparing a game plan. Would it be potential problems The opponent can give you in terms of the coverages they run or the defenses that they’re going to play the offense? So looking at basically their strengths against, maybe, your weaknesses. The second one would be opportunities that you can exploit, so how your system can exploit maybe their weaknesses. So looking now at your strengths against their weaknesses. Or option three is just looking at matchups.
Cedric Heitz: 38:21
So to give an order it’s pretty difficult. One thing is sure, if I take in Consideration all these elements, when we scout, we know of everybody We know and all weaknesses of the team and all strength. We know as well some weakness on Matchups, like last game we won. We knew that position 4 shooter was not a good defensive Well, nothing new and we wanted to take advantage. But we didn’t play only By having a direct posting situation, you know. I mean because the team can organize themselves, whatever. So we imagine that we want to produce a mismatch early And to explore it a little bit later. So that was an approach and we just During the practice before we worked about four plays that can produce this situation And we wanted to take advantage through this situation. It was working a little bit like I would say, 20% Because this guy did a force in defense. It was a do or die game and we won by 10. So we won this game, but they did a force. Now You know, when the strength of the team is like, or the profile of they propose stepping out, then of course we take this strength against us. We want to bring them as a witness because we know that, okay, they are aggressive, they are stealing balls on this defense, it’s their strong point. But we have solution for beating that. We have to have cold blood in the pressure. We have to play together, help and have the good spacing and have the good setup and play with. But we can definitely beat them. You know, like this martial art With stick, where they go on you strong and you just take their strength and you beat the guy with their strength. And we try to play like this. What was the third one?
Patrick: 40:29
the matchups, their strengths and then covering up your weaknesses or where you think they can attack your weaknesses.
Cedric Heitz: 40:35
In this game they were posting a lot and in position four We had the same witness and we went for blacking. Blacking means trapping down low. When the ball was down low We call it black. So it was a little bit tricky because we faked a little bit. We were at the contact and we were yelling black, black, black, but in fact we were like shy in the, in the trapping We were just faking the trap and it was working pretty well. So we did not exposure Ourself about the kickout pass opposite, about the flash to the middle of the paint, and We just fake like this and it was working against the guard and we did it once or twice against the four. So when we got the witness like this, we go for that. Then I wait for the players To do the job. I mean, you know, we know that sometimes we are weak on the pick and roll situation. We are supposed to be in protection and sometimes we are quick beaten. Sometimes we should do a little bit different. But because of the profile of my player I cannot go too much for another option, you know, in defense, and so I’m waiting for everybody. I understand that now he has to do his part and of course it’s not easy when you are a player weaker in defense, but it’s difficult as well to find something different because I don’t want to change so much the defense. I’m not this kind of coach with okay, now we go for two, three zones. Suddenly, we never worked about two, three zone and two three zone is appearing like this. I’m not playing PlayStation, i mean, i’m working on practices and I execute what we are supposed to execute and then everybody has to do his role And this is important. It’s like I had this conversation just few days ago with my scout And he said I said like you have to improve in defense. Okay, yeah, i know, i know, but you know It’s like in offense, the player they are supposed to score. In defense, the player are supposed to contain the duels. This is basketball. If the players are not scoring, i can be the best coach in the world. I mean I can work, i can do three shooting and but if they don’t hit the shots, which is the base of our game, what can I do at one moment? If the guy is not containing the duels, what can I do at one moment? There is a minimum. You know, and we know as well that sometimes players cheating So we have to pay the price is not paying the duels. So maybe we can imagine to change the matchup. Many times I put the position three on the point guard and the point guard on the position three. So because our position three is a good defense, so it’s long and you can annoy the point guard, so sometimes it can be tricky for avoiding that. But at the end Duels is basketball, it’s the base of basketball duels and hitting shots.
Patrick: 43:38
Gosh, that’s a great answer, and yeah, i mean, i know kind of the three ones we gave you are all kind of interrelated in One aspect or another, so hard to rank. I would like to follow up though, looking at it from a statistical approach, and when you’re gonna prepare for a team, what kind of stats do you go to do you rely on I mean, on top of looking at the film, of course, but stats that you rely on when looking at that, your opponent well, that’s a very interesting subject, but we need three hours.
Cedric Heitz: 44:05
I’m gonna try to do short and not to say everything, because it’s my the way I do it.
Patrick: 44:10
Yeah, you don’t got to give away all the secret sauce.
Cedric Heitz: 44:13
But it’s really obvious what I’m gonna say. For me It’s so much obvious and it’s certainly abuse for everybody listening that. But of course numbers are Really important. Numbers are facts. What is important is the number of possessions. What is important is the number of attempts in the paint, the percentage, number of attempts on three-point shots, percentage number of attempts on freeze-rose, the percentage. What is important, offensive rebound, the turnovers, because you can measure the quality of offense and the quality of defense through Points, by possessions. This is the only. Maybe. One guy already said I’m wrong, but this is the only way to measure the quality of offense and defense. It means for having a good offense. There are only two ways to have a good offense in basketball the quality of your shooting, the quality of the control of your ball. I mean he points on what is the percentage of your shots and how many turnovers you have. The last turnovers, you have the best offense. You have the best Presentage you have on shooting, the best rate you have on shooting, the best offense you have. Same thing in defense. If you can lower the percentage and the attempts of the opponent, if you can lower the shooting rate, you good defense. If you can increase the number of turnover of the offensive team on the front of you, you increase the quality of defense. So the points by possession, it’s the base of evaluation of an offense. Then I was talking about offensive rebound, because it shows as well How much fighting you can bring in the game. Freeze-rose attempt, show how much fighting you will put in the game and then you can describe I can describe any team in two minutes. I can describe almost 80 percent. I will have everything right. The condition is that the player didn’t change so much, but can describe the profile of the team, the style of game they propose. I can destroy everything. Maybe a 20%, i don’t know. There is maybe something I can miss. But this is the main point and the main numbers. So just a little, if you give me this, when I hear the ratio Turnover on assist is not good, is what the fuck is that number? What means that number? then you can say, whoa, all these teams, they are playing so well together. You see how many assists they got. Yeah. How many assists? Yeah. But if I got shooter to my right and shooter to my left, i dribble up, i cross the middle line. A pass to right is shoot the score a pass to left is shoot the score. Well, we got a great team. We got 30 assists the game. We don’t do one pass. This is not collective game. So you know there are numbers They don’t really say what you want them to say and this ratio turnover on Assist. I don’t understand what it means. This is 15 years I do this job as professional. I still don’t have a clue about this number and sometimes we go too deep on this analyze. You go with percentage of wow and then you know you go, your best shooter will be one for ten and hold. This shit means nothing anymore. I’m a lot about numbers, but going too deep, too much in details. You know, like these statistics about yeah, my team with Vojtek, dd, mitch and I score so much about that. You see, on two minutes We score eight points. Okay, and then next day what will happen? and next day, okay, maybe after 12 game, 10 games, we can find something. But I’m not sure that these five guys, because they play against five others, because it wasn’t the garbage time, because it’s so much, i don’t know if we can go so deep in the statistics.
Dan: 48:28
Coach, if I could just ask a follow-up and just so clarify from my understanding too, the two things that you mentioned are the most important are the PPP, the points per possession, and then you just talked about the turnovers. What stat of the turnover is it turnover percentage? Is it the total number of?
Cedric Heitz: 48:45
turnovers. I repeat, the two numbers really important are it’s point by possession in offense, point by possession in defense. Okay, points by possession. Possession is the number of points you score. Either you shoot the ball And there you don’t shoot the ball, it’s like this in basketball. Either you shoot the ball And there you have a turnover This is offense in defense. And there are the open and shoot the ball and there they have a turnover. And this is how you evaluate the offense and the defense. So the two numbers important are The shooting rate and the turnovers for events. The shooting rate and the turnovers in defense.
Patrick: 49:25
Coach, how much are you looking at lineups of your opponent in terms of five-man lineups and the success of a five-man lineup, or does that factor in at all? is it all kind of just all calculated at the end of the day into the PPP?
Cedric Heitz: 49:37
So an example. Maybe it doesn’t happen many time. There are so many things to analyze. Everything can be important for sure, but we play on bill. We lost by seven. Thank you the refs, these guys and they finish your pen champion. They just won against sure day and this team. It’s a funny stuff because when I analyze the statistics, i couldn’t understand the line of statistics because it was not usual at all. So I talked with my assistant, who knows everything about the Polish team. I came in during the season, i came in January only, and he explained me. Yet They play different, depends of the lineup, because the point guard is for seven years playing with the center, so been, and they know each other so well that when these two guys are together, they play inside, they play inside, they play inside pick and roll and they just try to hit each other. You know, when the point guard get out, the other foreign point guard appear and then they are shooting threes. They are shooting threes, they are shooting threes. It’s super funny And this is the explanation why I couldn’t understand the statistics, because it’s totally two ways of playing, two different ways of playing, deepened of the lineup, and so I took in consideration this aspect and I explained that to the player that when Sobin and the point guard, the Polish point guard, will be together, we have to take care about this specific relation. You know, and we have to defend that even more. Then after, if you get out, we have to be less in the bump and run out. You know We were more in faking bumping and going on the three-point shooter. That was maybe an explanation.
Dan: 51:24
Great stuff, coach. Well, coach, you’re off the start sub or sit hot seat. Thanks for playing that game with us. We’ve got one last question for you before we close today, Before we do really appreciate all your thoughts. This was really fun for Pat and I, so thank you for coming on the show.
Cedric Heitz: 51:39
Thank you very much for the invitation.
Dan: 51:42
Our last question that we ask all the guests is what’s the best investment that you’ve made in your career as a coach?
Cedric Heitz: 51:49
Well, it’s an interesting question one more time. I think my best investment was to travel. You know I travel all around the world. You know there are different ways to reach the goal to be a coach in pro-ing It was not my goal, by the way. I wanted to reach the highest level of the Federation, you know, not the professional league. I had a plan in my mind. I said I will be here, i will do that, i will go in national three, two, one, and when I will be national one, i will be the happiest guy in the world. And then, for different reasons, i could reach pro-B and pro-A. So that was fine. My investment was definitely to travel and to meet all that coaches. Is it in Spain? Aito Renes? Is it in Girona, in Barcelona, in all that great clubs? Is it in Zagreb? Coach Repeza? Is it in USA? Is it in Italy? I was in many, many cities Milano and Torino. I could really talk with this coach. I was in Stanford for one year talking to Mike Montgomery, tar van der Veer and learning from them. I was assistant coach of Jean-Luc Monchon. This is something that I would like to be an assistant coach still for learning more about somebody who could bring something to me on different aspects of the game still because I need. But this investment about going through the world made me having friends, made me having crazy stories and made me having a knowledge that helped me today to be strong, to be peaceful, not panicking and just staying focused for bringing everything I got to reach in the world.
Dan: 53:44
Alright, pat, diving right into this. So much in here with Coach. I think that that was one of the more technical, really get into the weeds one we’ve done here in a few weeks and really enjoyed that. I know you and I enjoy the rabbit holes and really exploring and thanks to him for coming on. We were just talking a little bit after the show about the crazy season that he has had and he took over the team midway through January and has been trying to kind of right the ship and get him in the right direction. So we were talking about his season and where he’s at and we appreciate his time as he’s coming to the close here. But just getting into this right away, i’ll just bounce it to you, but I know the spacing and using the four and how he looks at a stretch four was super interesting. just on a thought process on how to design a team and then build the spacing around that.
Patrick: 54:36
In our research and kind of preparing for him. I was excited to get in that conversation because we kind of knew that he had his system And so I guess working backwards in terms of he had his system, so how he thought about the spacing which is a conversation we wanted to get into but then how he built his team around the spacing and what he needed, so I enjoyed all the thoughts and basically kind of thrown it to him and when he started with the stretch four and getting into I guess what is he? I mean, everyone knows the value of the stretch four in terms of spacing, but getting into like the details of what he looks for and that stretch four because I think, as we’ll continue to hit on through this post conversation is just I think he has a real statistical, analytical approach to players, systems and scouting. So I really enjoyed the conversation that we got into when he just valued I mean of course, looking at the player over the course of like a 40 minutes and the amount of minutes he’s playing, or to compare across other players when you know building your roster and the value he put on just attempts kind of over actual just the counting numbers, the shooting percentage and just I think he hit on it, just even if I mean you, the goal is always that you make shots, as he alluded to it. That’s what the game comes down to. So you want, of course, someone to hit a higher percentage, but a player willing to be aggressive and shoot those shots I think we’ve probably talked about just in our own conversation, does have a lot of value and gravity and still will make force, a reaction from the team, if they even know you’re going to shoot it. And maybe you are just 30%, 28%, but you know, i don’t think a player in that moment is really counting the odds and is going to probably still take a step or close out or hug the four men in times if he’s willing to continue to take it. And last point, and then I’ll throw it back to you, i think too, as what I think can be the danger of this percentage is like, okay, i, he’s 28%, but that doesn’t mean every day he’s 28%. It means maybe one day he’s 40, one day he’s 20. So if he’s going to take all that much, like he said it’s, are you willing to risk that? maybe today’s the day he hits 20, but maybe it’s also the day it’s 40.
Dan: 56:38
You’re exactly right, and those kinds of players are sometimes just the most difficult in a scout, where it’s like, okay, not a great percentage shooter, but shoot some. Just like he mentioned too, you’re devising your defensive game plan and whether you think this is a shooter really or not, if he’s open it’s going up And to your point it’s an average. So there’s going to be above average nights and you’re hoping there are below average nights. But that does put you in a bind and it is an interesting situation that he mentioned that just he’s going to look at. Does he shoot it? Okay, this percentage is not. He’s not a complete non-shooter, it’s not, you know, under 20 where you’re just really okay with the events, like, okay, you’re right, around 30 or below average for sure, but you can definitely make it. And it’s always nice when you know as an assistant you tell your head coach we’re not a non-shooter, we don’t need to really close out, and then makes the first two or three threes. That death stare is fun. I think we’ve all dealt with these kinds of players and I just thought that was an interesting part of how he looked at, the willingness to shoot it And I think too, getting to kind of know him now over the last couple of hours sometimes to the value of the spacing and being so big on the PPP and the value of a shot. You know, a wide open three and maybe even a corner three on an extra pass, a wide open corner three from, let’s say, a 30% three-point shooter is still a pretty good shot if your offense can generate an open look. For you know, even if it’s a blowout, especially with shot clock considerations, if it’s under a seven or eight like, it’s still something that most offenses would say, hey, we’ll live with getting some wide open threes here a few times a game, to your point. I found that super interesting too. I wrote down as well. Just to add on top, the last time we had a real like interesting conversation about the four man was with Tom Bieliszewski in December, and that conversation was a ton about, basically, you know the other side of the ball and how you’re going to tag, how you’re viewing the game of basketball by seeing where they put their four man. And we actually went through a couple of things with coach Eitz here today as far as just where that four man is, where they can be spacey on the floor. You heard his thoughts too on just who’s tagging, who’s not tagging, where they’re coming from. And so I kind of throw it back to Tom’s podcast, which was great of just a way to watch the game and view the game based off where that four man is, and then who’s going to come at it from the defensive side.
Patrick: 59:05
Yeah, and the other point I liked and I know we’ve been thinking about it a lot is he has a system but it’s a system that provides a lot of freedom because the system is, i think, predominantly a lot of based on just their spacings and how they want to attack. Yeah, and I think he has some advantages which he was great in going through several of them. But I like that he alluded to that it does lead to a lot of turnovers. He has some turnovers issues because you’re kind of forfeiting some control for this freedom. Yeah, he did say obviously in France, where it is a very athletic league, and Poland he’s had more success just because the length and the athleticism has gone down. But I enjoyed that conversation, just the turnovers, the amount of freedom and then which ended up leading to kind of the hierarchy reading in the pick and roll and kind of going through all that stuff.
Dan: 59:46
Sure, just to your point on the freedom stuff, i wrote down his quote. Freedom is not always easy to handle. It made me think of our conversation with Northwest Missouri State head coach Ben McCallum and he talked about freedom on offense and how kind of they ran their offense. But coach McCallum had made a point back on that podcast about if a player can’t handle or doesn’t have the skill set to have that freedom, then the best thing you can do is constrain them or to give them a limited role, and that there’s freedom in that limited role. And I think the balance of that is really interesting, because coach Ise today that freedom carries a lot of weight You’re picking a role, you’re making reads, but it can lead to more turnovers and so I really liked that point as well is just that all players want more freedom, all coaches want more control. Yeah, that’s the quote you always hear. So for start subset first, i just enjoyed your audible. Yeah, that was not something we had planned before You and I were, you know, as we come out of the start subset, but I think as the podcast went on and he kind of had mentioned to us to, like you know, pre-recording his love of scouting and analytics and all that sort of stuff, and you’d pull a nice audible there and you know, put a good one when it came to the scout. And so kudos to you on the fly doing that one.
Patrick: 1:00:55
And I will admit I wasn’t as locked into your post defense start subset because I was scrambling, not scrambling, but I wanted to make sure I asked three start subsets that made some sort of sense.
Dan: 1:01:06
Yeah, I could see in your face I was going solo on that one.
Patrick: 1:01:10
Yeah, it was your time to shine. I thought you did great Yeah.
Dan: 1:01:15
We’ll stick on yours for a second and we’ll get to the post stuff here in a minute. But I think, just tying in all this stuff, what really came out to me within your question was his two things about offense and defense and what you’re really ultimately looking at and how he can, you know, look at a few different core things and, with you know, 80 percent accuracy probably describe your team, and analytics are a ton of fun. We have conversations all the time. We have friends of ours that would talk about it forever and it’s great. And then there’s also, like the other side of the coin of how much is too much, how much is explaining stuff. That maybe doesn’t mean that much, or is it important? He himself told us he loves it too, but like how to drill down into what’s ultimately important to him. And so the PPP and the turnover stuff. I mean it makes sense, but to hear the way he explained it, i took a lot from that.
Patrick: 1:02:04
I’m right there with you. I think it definitely is confusing. I get confused. I think his ability to simplify it obviously then I think helps his team a whole lot when he brings it to them. And I mean I obviously enjoyed the part when he kind of trashed the turnover to assist ratio. But his point was that I mean he knows what it means, but what’s the purpose of it? What is it actually? the actionable thing you can test Like, okay, great, cool, But right, when we look at it I’m like this is what this team does or this is what we need to get better, like further breaking it down, And I thought he really did a good job kind of just why, explaining it and what the real value of just looking at it comes down to. Yeah, like he said, you’re either basically getting a shot up and you know how much, what percentage can you score on that shot, or you’re not, And that usually means you’ve turned it over. So those are the two things we got to improve upon or those are the two things we got to take away.
Dan: 1:02:51
If we look at the defensive end, Yeah, He was good, the whole podcast on like what’s the context of this? Going back to our conversation with the four man and 20% is like okay, does he shoot it once a game, so he’s not going to shoot it, or is he shooting it six or seven times at 20%? because that’s a different conversation, a different player you’re looking at Exactly, and I think that was the through line for me of this whole thing. You know, going back into the start subset of just okay, what’s the context of all these stats? Great, they’re cool, they look nice. I guess our staff feels good about certain things. But then how can we do some actionable things with these things? Or really like does it change how we’re going to play it all? No, and if the answer is no, then it’s like okay, it’s noted, but unless it’s going to force a different scout or unless it’s going to make us play differently or whatever the case may be, let’s, you know, keep the main thing, the main thing. The other quote I liked from that section too I wrote down, was bringing fight to the game, like the stats that you could tell a team offensive rebounding stats and free throw attempt stats. That was a nice little nugget too of just looking at really quickly. Whatever they shoot, whatever it is, this team brings some fight to the game. You could tell, maybe, a level of toughness. We’ve been having some toughness conversations recently and these are some, maybe toughness stats.
Patrick: 1:04:06
I really enjoyed that point too. I had written that down as well. I thought that really clever way to look at it and bring meaning to what these stats mean.
Dan: 1:04:14
Just as we start to round this out, since you kind of left me during the post defense stuff, is there anything you enjoy, since we didn’t hear?
Patrick: 1:04:22
from you on the actual pod about the post defense. I enjoyed it all. That’s why I didn’t want to get involved. You know, yeah, i watched two masters at work, yeah, thanks. Well, i mean I’m glad we asked the question. I know, obviously I was part of the preparation. I didn’t mail this weekend, right, right, i think the conversation, the follow up US is, and I enjoyed his answer because you always hear, yeah, push him off the spot, don’t let him get to a spot, and again just like, what does that look like? Or, okay, what does that mean? How do we do it?
Dan: 1:04:53
Sure, I think this conversation, the start of SIT, was born a little bit out of the fact that yesterday you and I did a crunch time, which is like our film room session last two or three minutes of a game, with a coach from that game for SG Plus. We just did one with Tobin Anderson and Farley Dickinson’s upset over Purdue, and coach Anderson is now at Iona. But that was a ton of fun. And within that conversation though, a lot of discussion on how they decided to guard the seven, fourth center for Purdue, zach ED, and how they decided to front, how they’re going to double, how they’re going to push him off spots, we got into the nuances of it. So for me, waking up this morning, i was still thinking about post defense, i guess, because this was kind of born into. How do you neutralize it? I mean, what’s the most important? teaching points And I agreed with his sort of order of the pre-catch stuff is everything. You can win the battle of that two or three foot area and push your player out a little bit and win that. More times than not you’re going to be more successful. And it sort of answers a lot of questions for your defense whether you need to come double, whether you don’t, or all those things. So yeah, it’s just a nice kind of, i guess, piece for him to get into, and so thanks to you for listening as well to do it, i’m glad you’re here. Yeah, i’m glad I could be here, today, But you were. I did see you scrambling over there with the paper. I thought you’re taking notes, but you’re trying to write the next start subset.
Patrick: 1:06:12
I had, as always, two of the start subsets. I was working on that third one against the clock, so the elusive third.
Dan: 1:06:18
Yeah, well, it turned out well. We’ll wrap it up here. We thank coach Heitz for coming on. Like I said during the season, that was a ton of good stuff to think about. If there’s anything else, we’ll start wrapping it up. Yep, let’s do that, all right. Thanks everybody, we’ll see you next time.