Slappin’ Glass kicks of 2024 with a gem of a conversation with Atlanta Hawks Assistant, Brittni Donaldson! The trio dive deep into the areas of knowledge retention, learning environments, questions asking, and discuss useful analytics and tough actions to “tag” during the always interesting “Start, Sub, or Sit?!”
Transcript
Brittni Donaldson: 0:00
I love this topic. Maybe giving some background on why I care so much about this would be helpful.
Dan Krikorian: 0:06
Welcome to Slapping Glass, where today we’re joined by Atlanta Hawks assistant coach, Brittni Donaldson. We’ll discuss helpful analytics and tough situations to tag a bit later during Start Sub, or Sit, but we’ll hop in with the conversation on the subject of knowledge retention, interleaving, question asking, learning environments and much more.
Brittni Donaldson: 0:26
I just got into coaching five or six years ago, so I haven’t been in coaching for very long and I have a long ways to go and I’m still learning every day. But I think one thing when I first got into coaching, I had a playing background. I played in college and I spent some time sort of on the analytics side of the game. So I did a lot of analyzing of the game, I played the game, but I’d never had to teach the game before I got into coaching and I noticed I know a lot about the game. I’ve analyzed the game, I’ve played the game. But when I started coaching the game and talking to players about different things, I would see I noticed how different of a skill teaching was than just having knowledge about the game. So that started getting me thinking about how can I become a better teacher. And my second year of coaching COVID-19 happened and we had all this downtime. The NBA season was put on pause and I was trying to just learn during that time and I was attending all these virtual coaching clinics. I was reading books and I was a little disappointed with how little I could find on teaching in the coaching space. So a lot of these coaching clinics, I could learn a lot about how to break a zone press. I could learn a lot about different Xs and O’s, like sideline, how to bounce plays. That was all great, but what I felt was lacking was, as coaches, how do we become better teachers? How do we ensure that our players are receiving the information we’re giving them? Because, ultimately, it’s not about what we know, it’s about what they know. I kind of went into this deep dive of learning more about cognitive science, learning more about how human beings understand and receive and retain information, and then how to teach it in a way that’s optimal and efficient. So I went all over the place. I did a lot of research on like modern teaching, pedagogy and education. Again, I mentioned cognitive science, and it’s something I’m really passionate about and really care about and like to share with other coaches because I think it’s really important. So I guess, to now answer your question, coaches tend to spend a lot of their time which they should, it’s important discussing tactics, schemes. What are we going to do with the rotations? What about when this line ups on the floor? What coverage should we be in? And these are all things that really matter and that need time and attention and, at the same token, we need to talk about and discuss how are we going to teach these things in practice today. What’s the drill going to look like? How are we going to review this in film in a way where it’s landing and we’re not just regurgitating the information we know to them, but that we’re engaging with them, we’re checking for understanding, that we know that they’re understanding what we’re saying and that now they can go execute it. So I think it’s really important and I share this with a lot of the coaches I work with and talk to to set aside time in your meetings with your other coaches, your practice planning, all of that, not just talking about what are we putting in today or what are we going to go over today. I think going over something and teaching something are two very different things. So we need to talk about the specifics of how are we going to teach this. When are we going to revisit this, how are we going to check for understanding to ensure that our players are retaining this information, all of those other things.
Dan Krikorian: 3:36
Coach, so much to dive into there. You mentioned specifically the word environments like teaching, environments going deeper into that word, an environment that teaching and learning takes place, and I guess what goes into creating those kinds of environments in your mind.
Brittni Donaldson: 3:51
Yeah, I think the design of your practice and, even more specifically, a specific drill, is really important. So eliminating distractions is really important and eliminating fluff, even with your communication. So giving very intentional, direct feedback and the way you give that feedback and when you give that feedback. There’s a lot of details in there that I think are really important. And then, if you have a staff with a lot of coaches ensuring that everybody’s on the same page, and that I think something that’s really important and really underrated is creating a shared vocabulary, a shared lexicon that all of your coaches can use. That contributes to the environment, right? Because if you’re in practice and a player comes up to you and asks you a question, you want to ensure that you’re using the same language vocabulary that all of the other coaches are using so that that player can conceptualize the information faster. There’s a lot of little things. The other part, if we go into more of, how do we get skills to translate to a game we want to talk about within a drill, within a practice? How do we create certain constraints within what we’re doing that are a game like and that mirror the environment that they’re going to be in a game? So creating an environment that’s mirroring exactly what’s happening. Whether it’s adding defense, whether it’s adding time and score pressure to what you’re doing, whether it’s adding more players on the floor, adding a teammate, adding another defender, multiple actions there’s all these things that you can think about to make the drills more engaging and more game-like.
Patrick Carney: 5:25
Coach within these environments. You mentioned that there’s a difference between going over a tactic, a concept of strategy, versus teaching one. If we look at taking the teaching environment and with the idea of helping your players in retention, what do you talk to coaches with? Again, the drills, the practice planning, when you want to teach something, and with the idea of hoping them that they retain as much as possible?
Brittni Donaldson: 5:48
I think it’s a John Wooden quote. I’m embarrassed that I’m not certain about this, but I’m pretty sure it’s this quote. He said we haven’t taught it unless they’ve learned it. I think we have a tendency as coaches to think that just because we tell them something means that they’ve learned it or means that they understand it. That applies in film sessions, that applies in practice. If we’re walking through something, we covered it. But how do we check for understanding to know that they actually learned it? I’ve said that a lot now. I think different ways to check for understanding is to practice what we call retrieval practice. Release out what you’re teaching into different periodizations so that when you come back to it you can see how much did they forget, how much did they remember. That will help you, as a coach, know where they’re at and that will help them actually learn deeper if they have to retrieve the information after forgetting it for some time. That’s one way. Then there’s a lot of other ways too. Checking for understanding could mean simply asking questions and pop-quizzing your players Not in a way that adds pressure, because a lot of people hear the word quiz and they’re like oh, I don’t want to be pop-quizzed In a way that’s safe and supported. If you make a habit of quizzing your players, whether it’s in a film session or walking through something, we’ll say, hey, this is this action, how do we guard this? You make them verbally respond to you. It’s making them think about it. Also, it’s helping everybody else learn too. There’s just a lot of different ways, creatively, that you can add these little engagements and checking for understanding within what you’re doing every day. That is much better, in my opinion, than just telling them what to do and expecting them to digest it, retain it and then execute it.
Patrick Carney: 7:33
Coach following up on the retrieval practice. What does that look like? Is this something the next day, or is it? We go to water, we come back, we hit it again, or we hit it in another half hour within the practice.
Brittni Donaldson: 7:44
Great question. I think it looks a lot of different ways. You just hit on it. I think within one specific drill it can look a certain way. You can retrieve something in a short amount of time. Let’s say you’re going over how to attack different pick and roll coverages. This is called interleaving. Instead of maybe doing five reps against a switch and then five reps against a hedge, you can mix it up. You go against a switch, you go against a hedge, you go against a blitz that little separation between what you did last time and what you’re going to do this time and having no idea what’s coming. You’re actually practicing retrieval practice. Now you’re having to go to your memory, your long-term memory, decide what tool to use and then use it. Instead of just being given a hammer and saying here are five nails, hammer them in. You’re being given a toolbox and you’re being given a set of problems. Now you have to differentiate and decipher. What tool do I use to attack this specific problem? In doing that, the learning is deeper. It might not look very clean and clear, and this is where coaches get really caught up. They’re not achieving what I want them to achieve at a very successful rate. This makes it look messy and doesn’t make me feel like they’re learning, but in reality they are learning because they’re having to forget information, retrieve it. Forget information, retrieve it. And the encoding of that learning is deeper when you’re having to do that, versus just playing the drill and knowing what’s coming. So, within a certain drill, that’s how it can look and then, while you’re setting up your practices over the span of a whole practice, I think a lot of coaches tend to similar, you know, to the last situation I described, where you want it to look clean and feel clean. A lot of coaches tend to maybe have an offensive part of practice and then a defensive part of practice and you’re kind of building on. You know, maybe you walk through play and then you add defense with the play and then you do something else with the same offensive principle, then you move to defense and I think that process of graduating from one thing to the next again feels like, oh, they took what they did last drill and they’re doing it here. Therefore they learned it, but really it’s in their short term memory. What they just learned is in their short term memory and they’re just kind of like regurgitating it back. What you really need to do to make sure that it sticks is go away from it and then come back to it, because if you think about a basketball game, that’s what happens you play offense and then you play defense and then you play offense again. So what I recommend to coaches is you know where it makes sense to again interleave those different concepts within practice, and then you can tie it with a bow at the end and tie them all together. So even if you’re introducing something brand new, you can introduce it at the beginning of practice, go away from it for an hour and then come back to it, and it’s amazing to see, actually, how many people will remember it. And even those who don’t, they’re going to remember it better next time because they had to retrieve it that second time.
Patrick Carney: 10:39
Just specifically with drills and drill length. So even if you’re doing the drill right, you’re checking for recognition. You have these constraints. Is there a rule of diminishing returns in terms of like? After this point again, even in the perfect drills, no one’s really retaining anything more and we need to move on.
Brittni Donaldson: 10:55
That’s where your artistry as a coach can come in. You have to kind of read the room and understand when it’s time to move on. You also have to understand maybe this is too challenging, Maybe we need to actually skinny this up and spend more time here and remove the constraints and just walk through it. I mean you have to leave room for both of those things. Repetition is important. I’m not saying completely eradicate all the repetition you do in practice. There’s a time and place for it. So I think that’s where your feel as a coach comes in and your creativity as a coach comes in. But I like to go by rules of thumb and obviously those aren’t law, but it’s just kind of a rubric for you to use.
Dan Krikorian: 11:33
Back to the checking for understanding piece and you hear a lot about in coaching asking questions I think you mentioned it earlier as well and a way that a coach can use posing questions within practice to help check for understanding at that moment and help teach at that moment. So, middle of a drill, trying to figure out the types of questions you ask, how you might ask it, any more insight on the actual art of trying to ask a good question to your players in practice.
Brittni Donaldson: 12:00
Absolutely, and I love that we’re getting into the nitty gritty of this. It’s important. It’s not just, you know, ask more questions, but how you frame the question is really important too. I’ve learned a lot from, again, people with education backgrounds. I think of two people. Doug Lamov His book is like my Bible on this topic Coach’s Guide to Teaching. He has many other books too, but, and then Mark Manila is another one. You know they have extensive education backgrounds and something I took from both of them was the idea of cold calling. So again, it’s the idea of just asking questions to the room, maybe when they’re not expecting it, but how you ask the question. So let’s say, we’re going over a certain action in our offense and the concept depends on how it’s guarded. So you know, if they go under the screen, this is what we want to do. If we go over the screen, this is what we want to do. So, as you’re walking through it, you have a specific player that’s walking through it and you say, okay, they go under X player. What should you do? So that’s a way to ask a question and make that player think about the answer and tell you the answer, but a better way to ask that, since you’re in practice with a team full of players, is ask the question first. They went under. What should we do? Give them a few seconds to think about it, then single somebody out and ask them. What that is doing is making everybody in the room think about the answer first and then somebody answers, instead of just saying a name first and then asking the question. Only that player is going to think about it, because once you say hey, dejante, then everybody else is kind of checked out and is like, oh, I don’t have to answer this question, so I’m not really going to think about the answer. So that’s just a little tiny detail of how to ask a question, but you’re engaging the whole room. Film sessions are a perfect time to do this. There’s maybe a specific player that you’re watching, but don’t just say, hey, trey, what should you have done here? Pause the film, ask the room hey, based on this positioning, what’s the right read? And then ask a player, because then everybody in the room is thinking about the answer.
Dan Krikorian: 14:00
I love Doug Lamov’s book as well. I got to get into marks, I wrote a note down afterwards, so I have some homework to do. But there’s also, I think, talk about asking the player what they see. I guess the difference between when you ask them what do you see versus what’s the right read, like kind of differentiating your question asking there.
Brittni Donaldson: 14:16
Yeah, I said what should you have done, and what I really should have asked is what did you see? Because that’s really, really important. We need to understand as coaches, what are our players looking at. Because we don’t want them to answer in a way where what should you have done? That makes them feel like what do you want me to do. So I’m going to answer this question in a way that my coach wants me to answer, but if you ask the question, what do you see? Now you’re really understanding what are they looking at and what are they maybe not looking at. And that again helps you check for understanding, to know where your players are. There’s a difference between them knowing what you want them to do in knowing what they actually are seeing, and I think those two things are very, very important and it’s such a subtle difference. But knowing what they’re looking at really, really helps you, because now, if you know they’re not looking in the right place to make the read, now you can start incorporating that read and directing their eyes to the right place in your drills, in your practice sessions, in your film sessions. So perception is everything. What they perceive on the court, what they’re looking at, is everything when it comes to decision-making. So that’s a really, really important question, and I think we get in these habits of asking what should you do, or what do we do here as a team, what do we do here? And that’s an important question. But the more important question is what did you see?
Dan Krikorian: 15:33
And Coach within all this stuff too. I know that there’s differences in how people actually learn auditory, visual, anesthetic learners and as you’re trying to help players retain and you’ve got a team full of 15, 18 players that all learn a little bit differently and how, as a coach, you take learning styles into account when you’re doing all this stuff.
Brittni Donaldson: 15:55
The different types of learning theory is interesting, but there’s actually like no empirical research out there that suggests that that’s actually true about learning. So it’s a really interesting thought and it’s definitely useful, even when thinking about how I tend to gravitate towards learning is. Maybe do I like to read a book or do I like to listen to a podcast, and I think what we kind of get caught up on there is yes, people have preferences and how they prefer to receive information, but that doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily how they learn best. So maybe some people just like to read because they have, you know, there’s just different things that maybe have happened in their childhood, or maybe they don’t process words as quickly as they do listening, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that listening to a podcast that you’re retaining more information than you would reading the book. So there’s a little bit of a difference there. Understanding preferences is important, but I think overall, making the learning engaging, making them think critically no matter how that looks that could be auditory, visual kinesthetic is more important than figuring out oh, does this person like to walk through it or does this person like to see it? I would just think more about you know, in whatever manner you’re showing it and whatever manner you’re teaching it. How can I make this engaging in a way where they’re cognitively thinking through it, they’re critically thinking through it, they’re reflecting on it, they’re generating their own answers, all of those things? It’s more important than the specific learning style, in my opinion, and it’s really interesting like the modern research says. It’s kind of debunked that theory that everybody has a specific learning style. I think the other danger of that is pigeonholing somebody into just one learning style. Yeah, again, you can have preferences, but I think the more general of a learner you can make somebody, the more durable of a learner you can make somebody, the more it’s gonna help them in the long run.
Dan Krikorian: 17:48
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Patrick Carney: 18:58
I’d like to go back and ask about when you’re gonna go over something and creating an environment when you’re just reviewing something. And I’m sure there’s a ton of overlap and we’ve hit on a number of themes, so I won’t make you regurgitate everything, but what should a coach be aware of when you’re gonna be going over reviewing something?
Brittni Donaldson: 19:14
I would try not to give your players all the answers upfront as you’re reviewing. I think as coaches we tend to want to be like remember what we did the other day. It’s this, this, this, this, this and again. That, as a coach, makes you feel like you’re teaching, that it’s cleaner, that they’re gonna do it better in the second time. I would actually just kind of throw them in the fire, see what they remember first and then, as you maybe notice, maybe similar errors happening, maybe the same players are making the same error as are going on. Then you can pause and then you can correct and then you can give feedback. But oftentimes, if you just make them retrieve it right away, they might mess up the first time or do it incorrectly, but then they’ll self-correct, and that’s really what you want is for them to self-correct or, even better, a teammate to help them. It’s an opportunity for collaboration, for communication, it’s an opportunity to allow them to fail and give them comfort in failing and know that you didn’t mess up because you’re stupid. You messed up because you’re learning and this is a process and we expect you to do that. But the more important thing is can you self-correct, can you help your teammates out if maybe they don’t do it correctly? And then obviously there’s a time to intervene as a coach, but you have to kind of feel that out. I think we want to over-correct sometimes and sometimes you just need to let it breathe and let them correct themselves.
Patrick Carney: 20:37
Then a broader subject when looking at environments, like you said, in practice to allow them to fail. And then the feedback portion of a coach. What would be your rule of thumb? And obviously, like you said, giving them feedback, but not so in a way that it prevents them from basically attempting or being in fear of failure.
Brittni Donaldson: 20:57
I mean that psychological safety is so important, especially in such a high pressure environment. In the NBA specifically, these players are being monitored on everything they do, every shot they take, every shot they miss. There’s just so much added pressure that’s being put onto them as coaches. It’s really important in how we frame failure and what that looks like and how to handle it and how we feel about it. We have to mirror the same emotional response we want them to have when they mess up. So we have to remain calm, we have to remain supportive, we have to tell them that it’s more about the process and not necessarily the outcome. You might have missed this shot, you might have missed this read, but I understood what you meant to do and that’s what I’m gonna celebrate. And then I think the other thing is we tend to I think holistically as coaches. We tend to because we’re so in tune to how something’s supposed to look and if it doesn’t look that way, we wanna correct it. We’re so in tune when somebody makes a mistake or when we don’t do something perfectly, and so we tend to point out more often when things go wrong, and that’s helpful in some instances. Obviously, you wanna be able to correct some things, but I think the more powerful motivator and maybe the more powerful learning tool for your players is to stop and point out when something goes right, so when they do something correctly, when they make the right read, when they execute the right coverage in a complicated situation. Pausing practice, literally, and pointing that out, celebrating the behavior that you wanna see. Because it does two things it makes them feel good about what they did, it gives them confidence, but then also it attaches that feeling to an actual thing that they’ve done so that they can now replicate it easier and it shows everybody else in the gym that you really care about it. On the spectrum of what do I celebrate and what do I critique, I tend to lean more towards celebrating what I wanna see versus critiquing what maybe I don’t wanna see, and both are important, but I think the former is perhaps more powerful.
Patrick Carney: 22:56
Coach, in terms of again looking through retention, what do you recommend when you’re gonna give players an actual physical sheet of paper with a scouting report?
Brittni Donaldson: 23:05
This is such a great question and I think we’re still trying to figure out the best way to sort of distill all the information that we have and give it to the players and for the record, yes, we still use paper sometimes because some people prefer it still. So we have kind of a mixed bag of preferences, I think, for the players again, like if you think about all the information they might need to know that they have available to them before a game. It’s a lot. It’s what are our principles, our concepts, what are our set plays, what are our defensive coverages that we need to do? What does the other team tend to do? And then every individual player on the other team. What is that individual’s tendencies? What is this individual’s tendencies? There’s a lot going on and even as coaches it’s hard to pin down what’s the most important piece of information before this game especially. You know you might be on a back-to-back. You had a game last night. Now you have to like, synthesize this next opponent in the next 12 hours, make a game plan and then present it to your team. It can become difficult. So with players, I think less is more and the more you can connect the different concepts, whether it’s like how we’re gonna guard this specific action that this specific opponent plays. The more you can connect it back to what you do holistically as a team, or what your principles or your pillars are, whether it’s defensively or offensively, the more that it’s gonna stick. If you’re just throwing a bunch of stuff at them that they’ve never seen or that they can’t connect to something they’ve done before, it’s just gonna be overload. It’s gonna be information overload. We talk a lot about load management physically in the NBA, but we don’t think about it cognitively. And how much you know we can cognitively paralyze our players by bombarding them with information, and I think the trap we might fall into as coaches we have to give them all this so that they have it, but in reality they’re not able to hold on to that many pieces of information at once and then also go couple it to a very complex motor movement out on the court and go do it, you know. So I think less is more. The particular pieces of information you might give them probably varies on the opponent and on your players, but I would keep it as simple as possible.
Dan Krikorian: 25:14
Coach, this has been awesome so far. Thank you for all your thoughts on that and for going into such detail. We wanna transition now to a segment on the show that we call Start, sub or Sit, and so, for those maybe listening for the first time, we will give you three different options around a topic. Ask you to start one of them, sub one of them and sit one of them, and then we will discuss your answer from there. So, coach, if you’re ready, we’ll dive into this first one.
Brittni Donaldson: 25:38
Let’s do it.
Dan Krikorian: 25:39
Okay, coach, you mentioned earlier in the podcast, coming up as a coach started with analytics, and this first question Start, sub? It has to do with analytics that, in your opinion, are most helpful to distill to your head coach. So, basically, there’s a ton of stats, ton of numbers, as you very well know, but when it comes down to it, these are three different things that you can give to a coach or staff that will help them make better decisions. So Start, sub or Sit most helpful analytics. Option one are lineup analytics who should play with who and how much. The second option is player efficiency analytics Just how efficient players are in, whatever role they’re in. The third option is offensive scheme or play design analytics and what you’re doing on that offensive end. We love defense too, but we’ll just stick to offense on this question.
Brittni Donaldson: 26:33
That is a really tough one. I think it depends on the situation for all of these, but I think if I had to just choose when, I would start the design, the scheme and really more specifically, behavior, whether it’s evaluating ourselves or an opponent. Just how often do we do something? When do we tend to lean on something more than others? I think that one we get the most bias hinders it. We tend to maybe not think we run something as much as we do or the opponent. We might spend so much time on the specific thing they might do, but then you look at the frequency of how much they do it. Wait, we shouldn’t be spending this much time on this. I think that one is really important. Especially the behavior is to me more important than the actual efficiency. A lot of the time I’m going to sub the lineups, I think you have to be really careful with lineup data, especially in small samples. If a particular combination or group of players have only played three minutes together over the course of 40 games, I don’t know how much you can really get from that. But I do think it’s useful to know with more context specifically when this lineup is against this type of matchup or when this lineup is running these play. There’s just more context that needs to be there than just looking at straight lineup data, but it is useful. The last one is probably efficiency. I think I mentioned it, but we’re actually more concerned with, especially in short term and in small samples, if we’re looking at just one game. If we’re looking at 10 games, efficiency is important, but I think the more important thing is expected efficiency, or what did we intend to do here, not really what happened. We like to look more at the process than necessarily the outcome. Of course, efficiency plays a part. The longer you go throughout the season If you’re on game 82, you want to know what sets have been better for us, absolutely, but usually in these day-to-day conversations we don’t talk much about efficiency.
Dan Krikorian: 28:36
Coach, tons of great answers here, a lot of places to go. I think I’d like to actually start with just more of a broad overall question for you on going from analytics and looking at numbers all the time and then being able to then parse it out into the things that are most useful. I guess the process that you go through yourself to just not get completely caught up in the numbers and try to see the bigger picture for what the team’s trying to do- Definitely.
Brittni Donaldson: 29:02
I think I mentioned I started my MBA journey in analytics. I actually worked in the front office for a couple years with the strong raptors as a data analyst, so I wasn’t on a coaching staff for my first couple years, but I think I’ve always approached it in a way that data is meant to be used as a tool and not a weapon. And I think oftentimes whether it’s from the media or even people working on teams that deal with data a lot sometimes it’s weaponized in a way that this is what the data says. So we should do this and it’s very definitive. I’ve never used data in that way. I’ve never approached my use of data in that way, because ultimately, it’s just part of the equation that goes into the final decision. I think data is really useful for a few things. I think one it kind of guides your focus area. So I mentioned the example. If we’re spending 30 minutes talking about this, how are we going to guard the pick and roll when they hit the pocket pass? Well, they only hit the pocket pass 5% of the time, so one time we saw it looked really threatening. It can help guide our conversations so we have more efficient conversations, but it’s not necessarily going to tell us how to guard it or who we should have in the action, or I think those are things we have to decide with other pieces of information that we have. And then also it keeps our biases in check. So I think oftentimes, maybe in a game when emotions are high, maybe we try different coverage for a couple of possessions and maybe we get scored on and then maybe we get out of it right away and well, that’s kind of like recency bias, that didn’t feel good, but maybe over 100 possessions it was a great coverage. So we just have to kind of use it also to hinder our biases. And then also, frankly, it just saves time. Like the technology we have in the NBA, we’re able to pinpoint a specific action we maybe want to look deeper into and instead of having a video guy go through 10 games and try to find the specific action, we have technology that can just do that for us in a couple of minutes. So there’s a lot of different use cases, but it’s never meant to be used as the final decision maker in a decision. It’s just meant to be something that helps us make marginal gains.
Patrick Carney: 31:10
I like to follow up on the frequency of actions and what the numbers are telling you and what should be investing your time in, and in terms of maybe twofold the frequency of, is this action that we run successful because we run it so little, or should we use it more? And then, when looking at an opponent you mentioned, they only do it 5% of the time. What again, I know it’s a rule of thumb tends to be like a frequency that an opponent does something that you should dedicate really some time to and think about presenting to your players.
Brittni Donaldson: 31:39
So there’s not a specific percentage of time. It’s really relative to what the rest of the league does. So if a team runs a specific, maybe it’s a flare screen, maybe it’s a team that runs a lot of flare screens. But when I say a lot I don’t mean they run at every possession. I just mean that compared to the rest of the league, this is an action they run at a high fric. It might be 10 times in the whole game, but the rest of the league runs it two times. So that’s really kind of our barometer of how often we decide somebody runs something or maybe we should pay more attention to something, and then also we take into consideration have we seen this action before? Maybe it’s something they don’t run very often, but we’ve seen it a lot, so we don’t really need to go over it Same thing. They might run it a lot, we’ve seen it a lot already. So maybe we’ve covered that one. We don’t really need to hone in on that one. So there’s again just a lot of different pieces of information going into this, but definitely frequency and behavior analytics to me are way more valuable and useful than oh, they’re really good in this action and then they can be coupled together. If they run something a lot and they’re really good, that’s a whole separate story. But if the data suggests that somebody’s better driving right and then you look a little closer and oh well, they drive left 60% of the time and they drive right 30% of the time, do we really care about that 30% or do we care more about this 60%?
Dan Krikorian: 32:59
Coach. My last question on all this has to do with more. I guess crunch time, late game analytics versus over 100 possession type of analytics, like mentioned, and how much of that discussion dominates analytics discussions and how different it might be as opposed to some of the things we talk about, maybe in a more general sense.
Brittni Donaldson: 33:18
Yeah, I definitely think crunch time is different and you have to treat it differently because the end goal is different. I mean, a lot of times we’re either trying to just get a score or get a stop. You’re not necessarily trying to optimize on efficiency, you’re just trying to get the best opportunity you can. So you definitely treat it differently. I mean we talk about it a lot, it could be two-for-one situations at the end of the game is much different approach than it would be in the first three quarters. The types of shots you’re maybe trying to look for, the types of players you’re going to, defensive schemes it’s all different. It definitely is a separate conversation and I do think that’s a good debate for the analytics community. I don’t know if that’s like a synonymous opinion, but I definitely think in my research and my studies that things happen differently in crunch time and the conditions are different. So you kind of have to adjust your strategy to match those.
Dan Krikorian: 34:09
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Patrick Carney: 34:57
Okay, coach, moving along, our last Start, sub, sit for you. We call this our Tough to Teach, and this will be on the defensive side of the ball and specifically looking at help side positioning and execution within what’s going to be, out of these three, the toughest to teach. So, start, sub or Sit. The first option is a single side tag. The second option is an X out rotation off of a two-side tag and then the third option is nail help when maybe a pick and roll or in transition is coming to that nail defender.
Brittni Donaldson: 35:29
That’s a good one. I would say the X out is probably toughest at first, especially if your players aren’t familiar with Xing out, but I think most are. But I think the toughest positioning-wise we see more players struggle getting all the way to the midline to help side, to take the roller, to take the driver. It’s not necessarily the X out that’s hard to teach. It’s the initial positioning of what triggers the X out. So I think that habit is the hardest to break and the hardest to instill. And then the X out and the X surpassed the third rotation. That can take some time to feel as well. I think the sub would be the single side tag, but I think it’s all schematic. It’s interesting. I think the single side tag it’s not maybe intuitive for a lot of players. So just helping them understand the patterns of when are you on the single side, first of all, I think a lot of players need help understanding what’s the single side versus the double side, when the ball is going away from you versus coming towards you. These are all things that I think we sometimes assume that they might know because we pay so much attention to it as coaches and I’m not sure they’re really thinking that way. So just recognition of what is the single side, what is the double side, and then when the ball is going away from me or towards me, am I tagging, am I not tagging? They’re kind of in the same vein the X out and the single side tag. I would probably put those two the nail help though I’m not saying that’s easy to teach, but that’s probably my sit, that one’s just probably the easiest to identify and there’s never really a situation where somebody shouldn’t be there. It’s very rare. So I think that one’s easiest to point out and teach as you’re instilling it. But the other two I think are a little more situation based.
Patrick Carney: 37:14
I love how you brought up the idea of recognition and helping your players recognize actions. So again I guess, kind of going back to our first conversation, with creating an environment or a drill or a constraint to help players maybe recognize actions, unfolding and identifying one if it’s single, if it’s double, and what their role is within this action defensively, Something we do that I love is we give the positions on the court defensively a name.
Brittni Donaldson: 37:42
So if you’re in the strong side corner and you’re probably going to be on the single side if the pick and roll comes to the middle, you’re called the strong safety. So we have like kind of football analogies the person that’s supposed to be at the nail is the cornerback. The person that’s the lowman is the free safety. So now we give these things names and instead of just looking at a bunch of different situations and saying, okay, you need to be here and you need to be pulled over, like now, we can say where’s our free safety supposed to be? And everybody can conceptualize that and everybody can think about it. And everybody can visualize themselves in the free safety position and think about where should I be if that was me. So that’s kind of a way to chunk the information. So instead of them having to think about every specific scenario in an individual way, now we can create patterns and create shapes that look like each other and then give a name to the position we want you to be in and they can chunk. You know, these three pick and rolls kind of look the same and these four at the middle of the floor kind of look the same and if I’m the strong safety I’m supposed to be here, it’s a lot easier to synthesize if we’re able to chunk the information that way.
Dan Krikorian: 38:51
Coach talking about the X out and what you’ve seen across the league or teams on when they close out, how much of his closing out to the ball versus trying to bracket that close out and not let it get to the corner three, you know all the things that you can do on that X out and, I guess, general themes of how people are trying to teach that to me an effective defensive action on the backside.
Brittni Donaldson: 39:11
We talk about this every day. This is a really great question. I think there’s a lot of different strategies that different coaches might use. You know, I’ve worked for three teams in the NBA now, so I’ve seen it done a few different ways and I don’t know that there’s a right or wrong. I think it’s very personnel based, based on the guys that you might have. You know, if you have a bigger lineup, maybe you don’t have to. You know, fly by a guy, but sometimes that’s also what we want to teach. We just want to take this shot away. So we’re going to do everything we can to get out there as quickly as we can. We’re not going to do like choppy close out type thing. We just want them to get off the ball. You mentioned the bracket close out. That’s something that’s, I think, fairly not new, but more people are doing it and trying to just make them think. Sometimes it’s not about breaking down the close out in specific technique in which way to send it and what to take away. Sometimes it’s literally just giving the instruction to them to just make them think on the catch, make them hesitate, make them pump, fake, make them second guess what they’re going to do and whatever that looks like, that works for us. It’s a bit of a mixed bag. I think again, maybe the more traditional old school coaches they like the choppy close out have a high hand force based on type thing. But I think as players are getting faster, smarter, more skilled, you’re going to have to be more creative with how you take those things away as well.
Patrick Carney: 40:28
When you’re on that single side tag, in terms of how you’re helping that player with, maybe, the initial position and when the tag and what role does when his defender shake and that pick and roll play within the single side tag.
Brittni Donaldson: 40:41
For that exact reason I think more teams are tagging from the double side than the single side, because a lot of point guards, a lot of guards now, are really good at kind of throwing that pass back to the shake guy and person guarding him is caught underneath the roll. So that one’s tough because, especially if you have a dynamic roller in your single side tagging, you have to give them a bump, you have to slow them down. But then if you have a shooter, you know, shaking up it’s just what are you taking away. I think you know something that’s really overlooked is the guy on the ball in the pick and roll having high hands, making that pass really tough, both the pass to the roller and the pass to the shake. So that’s something we really focus on on the ball. And even the guy guarding the screener if he’s maybe in a hedge and coming down to the ball, having really active high hands kind of saves that guy time If you’re single side tagging, making that sort of a lob pass over the top, now he can recover in a manner that’s timely. There’s a lot of things that play, but you know, I think ultimately that guy’s job is to stop the roller, so kind of making a decision that you’re going to give up above the break three with maybe a high hand, but you’re taking away the roller to the rim.
Dan Krikorian: 41:47
Coach, you’re off the start sub or sit hot seat. Thanks for playing that game and being so thorough with us. That was fun.
Brittni Donaldson: 41:53
Absolutely. That was fun.
Dan Krikorian: 41:55
We’ve got one final question for you as we wrap up the show Before we do. Once again, thanks for your time and for being so thorough. This was a really enjoyable conversation for us, so thank you very much.
Brittni Donaldson: 42:04
Yeah, thanks so much for having me Big fan of the podcast, so it’s an honor to be here.
Dan Krikorian: 42:09
Coach. Our last question that we asked all the guests is what’s the best investment that you’ve made in your career as a coach?
Brittni Donaldson: 42:16
I would say, especially coaching in the NBA. The schedule’s really hectic. You’re on the road a lot. It can be hard to get yourself in a routine when it comes to both your physical and mental health. So you can probably see my Peloton right here. I purchased a Peloton and I try to do a lot of yoga. I have a yoga subscription in Atlanta and then it’s pretty much every town we’re in, every city we’re in. I try and see if there’s a yoga class that I can go to Just to stay in a routine of my physical health and, frankly, my mental health exercise helps me there too. So spending the money to ensure that I can just work out at home, that’s something that I think has really helped me. Otherwise I probably wouldn’t do it, because a lot of times the last thing you want to do after you’ve come home from a long road trip, you land at 3am. You don’t really want to go to the gym the next day, you kind of just want to stay at home or relax, and it’s just nice to have that availability in my own home. But, man, there’s a lot of things I could probably say to answer this question, but that’s the one that comes to mind, since I’m staring at my pellets on right now.
Dan Krikorian: 43:27
All right, pat, heading into this wrap up, you and I just had a fun little 10 minute discussion about how much we just personally took out of that podcast with Coach Donaldson and so looking forward to getting into a bunch of stuff. Quick background getting to coach Donaldson, we wanted to have, obviously, the retention discussion because you saw Somewhere she did a talk on it back in the day. Yeah, I found it on Twitter. Yes, and coach Ryan Schmidt, who was with the London Lions, now is with Landauk’s G league head coach highly recommended coach Donaldson and Obviously you could hear and see why after we just have that discussion.
Patrick Carney: 44:05
Now to kick it off, my first takeaway from that when we started the conversation is I mean, of course we wanted to get into the retention conversation and these environments that help players retain information. I mentioned it on number of things, checking for understanding. But the distinction between coaches understand is it a going over reviewing Practice or segment versus the teaching. And I liked when we got into the teaching segment, when she talked about Retrieval practice and what that looks like and then also this interleaving Practice which she gave the great example if you’re working on pick and roll coverages to two times switch, one times hedge, one time flat and go back to switch. And I mean she gave great examples and how these look in practice and I think we hit on it too right after the conversation. But I really appreciate it about what she shared with us today is the practicality of it and what it really looks like and how it Can help you know how coaches can take this, not theory, but can take it into their practice or like understand what it is and it’s not such an abstract concept. It’s very good. She explained it in such great terms.
Dan Krikorian: 45:06
Yeah, I think my first take-aways to to add to yours she was a player, went into the and then was with analytics and all that and then, as she got into coaching, I guess I just really appreciated her approach to say, hey, I really want to be better at teaching and I’m just gonna dive headfirst into a ton of the theory and the Studies and how to actually do that to get herself to a place where she is now. And I think you and I have heard over and over a lot of Coaches like the coaching education I think is getting better and better overall as far as how we teach, understanding how players learn and then how to apply it. I think that’s where maybe the coaching profession is really getting better Is how to apply some of these things that are out there and some of the studies and whatnot, and she dove into a lot of it. I appreciated, I guess, hearing her approach and how much she dove into that stuff, and so I’ll double down, though on just the Cognitive science background that she talked about and creating these environments. I like to that she mentioned messy learning, it reminding you know me of some other conversations that we’ve had, like Damian Cotter talked about you know messy learning and Chicago Bulls assistant a little while ago and as coaches, the nice thing about 5 on 0 or whatever, when things look perfect, is you just feel, yeah, good. As a coach you know you’re like man. If we didn’t play against defense we would kill, yeah. And then when you have these drill designs and a lot of times these Constraints that we put on drills are meant to make it the decision-making tougher or they’ll have to do different things that maybe they’re a little bit not used to, and you feel a little uneasy as a coach because it’s messy and you’re not sure if they’re learning and like To coach Donald’s at the point is that is when the learning is taking place and that’s okay. Obviously you don’t want them to be making mistakes the whole season, but that’s where the learning is most taking place.
Patrick Carney: 46:59
I think you asked a good follow up about failure and that whole aspect too, which I really like, yeah it’s funny and I know I’ve done it and I mean I’m sure you have, like how much we do as coaches is just to make us feel good about ourselves in times. And yeah, did he yesterday probably, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think more so, especially with, like, when we do scouting or prepping our teams and I mean she got into a film review and the paper scouting reports. We just tend to like we’ll just give them all so we can say we did, like this feeling, we did our jobs. And I go back to our conversation with Will Hardy when it’s like, yeah, you gave him like a 40 clip scout on a player and of course he doesn’t remember it, or Try to go over nine plays when our guys can’t remember nine plays and it’s so true. And that was another underlying theme I think she kind of kept referencing throughout and what you said we have to be willing to embrace that it’s gonna be messy and and we have to simplify at times and we got to get rid of this notion of doing things just to make us feel good about ourselves. Like you said, that was super clean drill. This graduation practice. She mentioned up Okay, we go five on. Oh, now we’ll go five on five defense do this and then slowly working up and thinking that what you’re doing is actually Accomplishing something, when maybe in times it’s actually hindering.
Dan Krikorian: 48:10
Yeah, and like she mentioned too, I mean obviously that stuff can still be good to work on specific things, but, like she mentioned, so much of what she was talking about is you want to try to make your drill design and your practice design Mirror and reflect what actually happens in a game which is offensive rebound, put back k u press and then you trap and there’s a turnover. The game is constantly evolving and moving, and to try to have, create a practice that reflects that a little bit is, you know, beneficial and I think this study show what she talks about for learning, for recall, for players be able to adapt from situation to situation with that said, this Friday we will still be going over way too many plays of our opponents just to make us feel good.
Patrick Carney: 48:53
Well, yeah, because we need to sleep.
Dan Krikorian: 48:55
Yeah.
Patrick Carney: 48:56
Because if they beat us on that one, play that one time. It’s gonna drive us nuts.
Dan Krikorian: 49:02
Exactly. I just want to hit on one more point here in our first bucket and I just really enjoyed the small part of that discussion about checking for understanding and question asking. Within all of this and it’s something that I know just personally I’m always trying to get better at is when can I make a statement into more of a question, and that’s something she mentioned. Doug Lamov and his book is fantastic on it, and I just think it’s a really interesting kind of I guess point. And then something I’d love to continue to explore more about this wasn’t a miss by her, but I’ll give you an early miss by me is just I would have loved to continue talking about the heart of a good question in practice In film, just to help with player understanding and retention. I thought she was really good on that today.
Patrick Carney: 49:48
Yeah, I agree and I think you’re right, it would have been interesting because I think so much. Is it a team setting? Is it an individual? Is it a one-on-one in your office? I think each situation has like a you can apply different questions or how you pose questions, kind of changes with again, let’s say, the environment or the situation. So, definitely interesting and worth going into at a future time. Yeah, I do like. One quick takeaway I took for myself was when you pose first the question to the group and allowing the whole group to think on, so everyone’s thinking of an answer, then calling on a player for an answer, rather than right away singling someone out and then having 11 guys be relieved it’s not them and not thinking anything. Yeah, I do want to say before we get into start subsit. I just because I think it’s important point worth repeating when we were talking about creating environments that allow for failure and, as a coach too, with your feedback and allowing failure to happen. She mentioned it’s important for a coach to mirror the emotional response we want from our players when failure happens, and I thought that was a really, really good point, something that I’ll try my best to keep in mind. Moving forward, Absolutely agreed.
Dan Krikorian: 50:54
Moving into start, sub or sit, I’ll start with the analytics question. If you wanted to get an analytics question to her, because, as we talked about, she came up through analytics and you know there’s a couple really good articles About her when she first got hired, with how good she was with analytics and I think you just heard in that conversation Not just because she knew the numbers and dove into the numbers, but then it could really see the big picture, distill what was important versus not really important. And I’ll just dive in quickly on. My first takeaway here was the conversation around what was her start, which was like schemes, but her saying like what’s most important is the frequency of behaviors within the analytics is Most telling as opposed to you know something that’s tricky or funky but happens rarely or not very much at all. I thought that was just a really good conversation around frequency analytics in all this.
Patrick Carney: 51:49
Yeah, I’m right there with you and to piggyback off of that, I like the point she made. Within looking at frequency is, and what we as coaches should put our time on, is like the frequency Is dependent upon. You know, kind of when you compare it to the leak, and if it’s an action you’re saying a lot routinely on a consistent basis, you know Then you can spend maybe less time on it because you’re more prepared versus you know, if it’s a specific team let’s go back to the Utah Jazz and they’re used to flares you know, maybe they only run it 10 times because you’re not seeing it on a recurring basis what compared to your other opponents, you know, taking the time out, then you should. Hey, it may happen 10 times that we got to be ready for it because we don’t necessarily See it every day and are prepared to handle it. So kind of. Again, going deeper on your point I did enjoy. My takeaway was as well the behavior, frequency of what should be important, worth your time and being as efficient and possible.
Dan Krikorian: 52:42
Based off of that, yeah, and just to wrap up this to to double down your point a little bit, I think that she said something analytics should be used as a she’s always looked at as a tool and not a weapon. And yet there’s so many numbers having to do with Every single game and you see it sometimes, you know, post game or social media, someone will just take one number in isolation and, you know, create a narrative around it and as coaches you can’t do that. Everything is contextual and I think you could hear. That’s why she’s so good at what she does and why obviously now she’s with the hawks is because Then get caught up in a silo of a number and Just, you know, not see forests through the trees or whatever that quote is.
Patrick Carney: 53:30
I always mess that one up too. Is it the trees in the forest or the forest through the trees, something like that? There’s a forest in the tree, I’m pretty sure involved here.
Dan Krikorian: 53:39
Yeah, there’s trees in a forest and you’re having trouble seeing. That’s the quote somewhere there. But to her point, just being able to look at things contextually. And I really like that conversation because I think the way she talks about Analytics is, I guess, something I aspire to as a coach. As far as you love them, they’re useful, but you always got to go back to the context, the film, the heart of the team. Way way back we had coach Jenny Busek on, who is now with Indiana Pacers, and she spoke really really well about analytics and you have to be careful, especially with player efficiency analytics too, and how that could kind of mess with the player if it’s not presented a certain way. So just to wrap that up, thought that was really interesting. Let’s go to your question the tough to teach defensively and the Tagging and the X outs and the nail help. And we got a little bit of closeout conversation, which I know was fun for you. So I’ll kick it back to you on your takeaways there.
Patrick Carney: 54:31
I yeah, I like the recognition piece. She brought up with this question. You know she mentioned I mean she shared their terminology, but then it went into kind of another thing I always enjoy hearing from coaches is like the language they use, how they build out a vocabulary and the importance of it. And you know, through her vocabulary they’re through the Atlanta Hawks vocabulary is how they help teach the recognitions and she mentioned their strong safety Cornerback, free safety and this allows each player to visualize then their role within the situation, based on what position they are. And I like her thoughts and hearing her speak upon just teaching recognition.
Dan Krikorian: 55:08
Yeah, and I think two of the areas of recognition within this question were the tagging, obviously, and when to tag, how long to tag. And she threw out a nice little nugget Maybe we’ll look at when you’re looking at film is because of how difficult the decision to tag from the single side is. So many teams are always tagging from the double side and you know just recognizing if you’re on that double side versus single side. And then I did really enjoy the X out part of the conversation and I think I followed up about the type of closeout. Sorry so I stole a closeout question from you, but I got tired of me ask them the same. Yeah, but I do think it’s interesting that X out closeout and she had a good point, because you know, I kind of asked about the bracket and the bracket closeout meaning trying to not close out to the body but close out to the lane and not let him make that corner pass, that extra pass, and she just said sometimes, you know, the discussion is just make them think on the closeout, just don’t get blown by, make them make an extra decision, make them hitch their shot for a second. I thought that was a nice little nugget in there too, as far as whatever it is that you decide to do, trying to make those players make the offense, have to think a little bit.
Patrick Carney: 56:26
No, even when she’s talking about a single-side tag. You can’t take away everything. So it’s just, how can you maybe make them take a half second to think? And you know she said in the single side Maybe they’ve tagged. Or with two side, or if it’s a dynamic role or knowing well, we want to take away the role. So we’re gonna prioritize that and you just got to do. You know, maximum effort, high hand and we’re gonna live with the goals of giving up the shot. But we’re prepared. We know what we’re giving up, what we’re not willing to give up.
Dan Krikorian: 56:51
Yeah, just have your guys close out and just yell, we’ll live. Hey, as we kind of closed anything you wish, could? It went a little deeper on.
Patrick Carney: 57:06
I had circled in the analytics Conversation digging maybe more. I would have been interested hit on the player efficiency Because when we originally were putting this question together, I had half, maybe a third, of a start sub sit question looking at when scouting you know, player opponents, what maybe analytics you use, whether it was shot spectrum or she mentioned like, yeah, drives, they go 60% right, 30% left or something. So I would have loved to maybe a miss for me Pick at that a little bit more. And what again stats are telling the truth that she likes to use when it comes to maybe scouting.
Dan Krikorian: 57:43
Yeah, especially with great players, Because it fits into the frequency of the great players gonna be involved in most actions or late-game stuff, crunch time stuff we talked about. So what within all that I guess is important to her would be interesting. Yeah, and I’ll just round it out to with. We kind of talked about it already. I could have talked for a while about the internet leaving and Retrieval, space out stuff, and we already mentioned it, so I won’t go on too long, but I just think that’s really interesting from a coaching perspective, had a try to master that within practice design and I’m thinking too, like just over the course of the season, how you sprinkle in that retrieval process I think is something that continue to explore going forward. Yeah well, that was highly enjoyable Conversation. Learned a ton, so we appreciate coach Donaldson making some time and coming on. Pat, there’s nothing else. We’ll start wrapping this thing up. Thank you everybody for listening and we’ll see you next time.