Noah LaRoche on Chasing Space, the “Zero Step”, and Principles of Play {Pro Player Development}

Chapters

0:00 Managing Space in Basketball

11:41 Creating and Maintaining Offensive Advantage

18:37 Efficient Shot Selection & Reverse Engineering Skill

30:09 Discussing Offense and Defense Strategies

41:46 Curiosity & Learning in Coaching

52:57 Wrap Up

Transcript

Noah LaRoche: 0:00

There’s four levels of competence. There’s unconscious incompetence, meaning you’re incompetent and you don’t even have a clue you are. Then there’s conscious incompetence, where I know there’s some areas I’m weak at. And then there’s unconscious competence I’m competent. I wouldn’t be able to teach it to someone else, though. I just know how to play ball. I just know how to manipulate space. And then there’s conscious competence, where you’re competent and you know how to reverse, engineer and design frameworks to teach other people. And that’s what we want to get to as coaches. Why is this working? What’s happening? What is the underlying framework? What are the underlying mechanisms causing these successful outcomes?

Dan Krikorian: 0:38

Hi, I’m Dan Krikorian and welcome to Slapping Glass exploring basketball’s best ideas, strategies and coaches from around the world. Today we’re excited to welcome professional player development coach who works with some of the games best on both the men and women side Noah LaRouche. Coach LaRouche is here today to discuss finding, attacking and creating space on offense the TB12 principle that we talk good to, great separators and attacking zones during the always fun start, sub or sit. Unique and absolute must the most helpful and highest quality coaching content anywhere. These are some of the comments coaches are using to describe their experience with SG Plus. From MBA and NCAA championship coaching staffs to all levels of international and high school basketball. Sg Plus is designed to help curious coaches discover, explore and understand the what, why and hows of what the best in the world are doing through our easily searchable 750 plus video archive on SGTV for our live coaches, social Las Vegas. Sg Plus is the assistant you would hire if your athletic director didn’t already get the stipend to football. For more information, visit SlappingGlasscom today. And now please enjoy our conversation with coach Noah LaRouche. Noah, we want to start with this. You and I had a chance to meet at a coaching clinic earlier this summer and you gave a great presentation on offense and teaching model offense, spacing, cutting, all these kinds of things that we want to dive into. Joe gave a great presentation.

Noah LaRoche: 2:28

I was a sidekick for that he was like Taylor Swift on the Ares tour. There he took the mic and it was over. I was just clicking the slides at that point.

Dan Krikorian: 2:45

Yes, you and Joe Boylan, but it was really thought provoking and we were able to share some thoughts afterwards as well, and so we’re excited to continue the conversation here and I want to give you a quote to start and kind of ask you about this quote, because I thought it was really great from your presentation and it was from Thomas Mueller Byron, munich soccer player, and the quote is I’m an interpreter of space. Every good, successful player, especially an attacking player, has a well developed sense of space and time.

Noah LaRoche: 3:15

It was funny. I was having a conversation this morning with a coach and we were talking about basketball and I said, if there’s one thing, if people said you know you simplify everything there’s one rule, kind of like the golden rule love others as you would love yourself, like doing one to others. It would be and I wish someone told me this when I was younger because it would have changed everything as a player, because growing up you watch the games and you emulate moves. Right, you have Alan Iverson’s Christ over Michael Jordan in the post. You have all these different things and you’re you’re working on your moves, you’re emulating that and it sounds so simple looking back on it, but it would have been. Everything is about managing space. Chasing space when you have the ball, chase space when you’re off the ball, chase space. That encompasses all these other things that create great offense and create great defense and we were talking collectively is an invasion sport. So if I had known that as an earlier coach, I have a book over here, the first thank you book from the first group of players that I coached. They were fifth and sixth graders. In 2006 or seven I fell into coaching, coaching a younger brother’s fifth and sixth grade team. They didn’t have a coach and the book is made up of a page of each player, their picture and like a little letter to me and thank you. And then what they learned the most. And almost every player said thank you, coach, you taught me defense wins championships. And when I read that I want to strangle myself. I go think about that. As fifth and sixth grader, that’s the one thing they got out of me coaching them in defense wins championships. And it’s actually pretty good because it shows I feel kind of good about it in a way because like wow, I’ve grown a lot and I see the game differently. But going back to it, the one thing and as a player, it’s chasing space with him without the ball, and as a coach, it’s managing space. How do you get your players to collectively coordinate to manage space? That’s everything. It’s collective coordination or what you would call shared cognition. They did a study about creating an expert team. It’s not collecting expert players, but it’s creating an expert team. And the hallmark of an expert team is what they call the shared cognition. And these teams are the best communicators and their communication is nonverbal. It’s all based on the positioning and decision making. They know what’s going to happen before it happens on offense because of the positioning of the defense and then vice versa, right? So these guys, we talk about defense. What’s the most important thing? People talk about a defense at any level. These coaches say the first rule of defense is to what Communicate? Right, and then, when you think about it, the best teams, actually the communication is nonverbal, especially on the offensive side. So how do you create that collective coordination? And it’s all around this one thing managing space, taking space, take space to create space, chasing space with him without the ball. And really, where that first dawned on me is it’s kind of embarrassing to say it wasn’t. Later into my career I read the book Playmakers Advantage. They talk in that book that you know an invasion sport soccer, hockey, lacrosse, basketball, rugby these are all invasion sports. They operate on time and space and talks about that. Elite players. They don’t think about the move they’re going to make. They find space and they get there and then from that the move actually emerges. So one guy might have a crossover in front he loves, or he might have a. He allows you to sleep between the legs and then goes. You know, everyone kind of their unique ability comes out, but it’s all for one thing to find space. And then the players who aren’t as skilled. They’re always playing in crowds. That’s why the percentages are lower, right, everything gets more difficult when you’re playing crowds.

Dan Krikorian: 6:43

I love to follow up with now as you talk about the shared cognition of a group and how they create the space for each other and recognize where to move into space, your thoughts on cutting versus screening versus spacing in general just backing up into certain spaces and what you feel best works to work on with a group of you know, say even all away from fifth, sixth graders, but up to the professional level like you do now.

Noah LaRoche: 7:10

So this was back like 2000, started coaching 2007, I think 2008, nine years. So what happened was I had this group of fifth and sixth graders I coached, I had a full-time job, I was an underwriter for an insurance company, fell in the coach and basketball. The oldest is seven, five boys, two girls, one of my younger brothers. They needed a coach, like I said, and our data just passed away. So I was trying to be home a lot, to be around the family, and so I just say, yeah, I’ll coach. And what happened was and where I grew up, we didn’t have a YMCA and we have Phillips Exeter Academy, prestigious prep school, but you weren’t allowed to use it so we didn’t have a gym. So as I started coaching, gym time was like gold, and when I first started coaching, you could only get four-hour chunks. So I only have one team, but I had a chunk of four hours, so I had to figure out how to fill it. So I just started. We had a big family, so we knew people. We just started having all types of kids come in. And then, next thing, you know I’m coaching. You know, when you have fifth and sixth grade teams, you have usually it’s the dad whose son’s pretty good right, and then like the home queens that are pretty good, and then the rest of the kids are on the B team or C team and no one really wants to coach that team because you’re going to get thunk. We ended up taking those kids. So what year? We had a group of like it was about maybe 20 kids and eight of them were girls and 12 of them were boys and we just combined them and we were going to play these other town teams. So I remember thinking we almost have no chance to win, we almost have no chance to score. How are we going to do this? You know, we can barely dribble, do these things. And I went in a mentor of mine and close friend, hank Smith. He coached Emerson College. He coached Sam Presti, rob Heineken, will Dawkins when I think of one of only two people to have three general managers in the NBA, I think, besides Coach K. He was coaching at Emerson at the time and I had met him. Long story short, he was kind of spawned my professional basketball career in 2009, getting me at an internship at attack with Tim Grover and that’s where I met Joe Boylan. So anyway, I go to attack in the summers, come home in the fall and winter and just coach, get reps. So he coached these teams. We almost had no chance to win. I met with Hank and he said you know, victory favors a team who gets great shots, and more of them. Right Century Bobby Nyquo he says the two best shots are layups and catching shoot, no matter the level. And this was before analytics was out and I thought about it and I said, yeah, those are the only shots we have a chance to make. We probably still won’t even make them, but if we try to get off the dribble, if we try to do any of this stuff, we have no chance. So then from there, that constraint, right, constraint reads creativity. And you know we started tinkering with this stuff. Okay, opening the floor. Okay, we want to get layups. So what do we have to do? We have to put the defense out of position. We have to open the floor to get layups, to drive and cut, and if they do help, you know we want to kick out because the only other shot we really have is a catch and shoot. Still probably not going to make it, but at least we’re giving ourselves a chance. So that was really where things started for me, at that level and then I’ve gone through now I guess 15 years of coaching. Almost every player you know there might be some outlier stuff might shoot better after dribble, I don’t know at this point, but almost every player. There are two most efficient shots are layup and catching shoot. Every team we show that points per shot. Last year in the NBA most efficient shot was a cutting layup, driving layup, corner three above the break, three. That’s, at the NBA level, the best players in the world. If you did that with the youth team, their most efficient shots would be a cutting layup, driving layup, a catching shoot job. That’s it. So from there, you know, you put that into your player development model, team model, everything. We should be reverse engineering. The skill is the ability to get to your outcome as effective and as efficiently as possible and it’s also the relationship between the performer and their environment. So we think about skill in the context of basketball. For basketball players, our environment is nine other players and in order to be skilled we need to have a great relationship between that environment and we need to be able to achieve our outcome as efficiently as possible. So one of the most efficient shots. Pareto’s principle says 20% of what you focus on gives you 80% of your results. I think it was Bill Gates said at Microsoft. They had 300,000 employees. He said if you took away the top 20%, our company would be nothing. 20% pushes everything. So you have to find that 20% and everything you do. So we just started hammering that where there was from an individual side to collective side, and then through coaching those level players and groups and individuals, and my experiences having a coach in all types of situations you start to become aware of things, right. It’s really about awareness. You’re not creating anything, you’re just becoming aware. Principles aren’t invented. You become aware of them, right. So you just start to become aware of these handful of things that create the shots we want, the layups and threes, and so back to your question. Long-winded answer there.

Dan Krikorian: 11:42

What’s more?

Noah LaRoche: 11:42

important. I don’t look at it like what’s more important, what’s the best way. I look at it like this now there’s two parts of offense and you can say there’s two parts of defense too. So, offense, you’re trying to create an advantage or destabilize the defense. And then once you do that, however you want to do that, it doesn’t matter. You can post up a guy, get a double team, you can pick a roll and two on the ball. That means the cutter’s open, he plays the roller. La, the Clippers did that great through Zoo Box here the night. The Golden State did that through Dreymon all those years. Right, two on the ball with Steph Dreymon. They’re playing four on three. They’ve gotten advantage. How do they maintain that? I look at it like this how do you create advantage? You can do it However you want. One guy might just beat this guy and drive in space, and now you know they’re in rotation. We’ve created advantage. And then how do you maintain it? There’s only a couple things. So you create an advantage to your driving, your cutting, your screening screenings on ball or off ball, that’s it. And then you maintain your advantage through your relocations off ball, your TB. We call TB 12s for Tom Brady, because once you create an advantage, you’re the quarterback, the other four guys, you’ve receivers. Now you’re reading who’s open and it’s important at those receivers, what should they be doing off the ball? It’s the foundational thing we talked about to open this call. They’re chasing space. Put one this space. I’m creating a passing window and if you ask me, one thing that could enhance a team instantly Just one little want to leave is if they just pounded relocations. When we get an advantage, no matter how we get it off a screen, a cutter or drive, don’t stand. Chase space, relocate, because what does that force the defense to do? To make a decision on what position to be in? They did a study elite male basketball players. It’s a one of the two most important skills and these are skills you never think about. You think we’ll shooting ball handling. It’s positioning, decision-making, it’s so important. So you’ve got creating advantage, maintaining advantage, and however you want to create it, that would be different for each team, depending on Unicability. Your players, people can create advantages.

Patrick Carney: 13:33

The thing you almost rarely see is maintaining it focusing on the Creating advantages, and you mentioned at the top one of the jobs of coaches, like managing space, and this talk of positioning. What have you learned about how you think about initial positioning? And I know through your presentation I’ll talk about, like creating the shape that then you can start to build or, you know, get to whatever kind of advantage you want and Then maintaining an advantage.

Noah LaRoche: 13:58

Yeah, so creating shape they talk about it in all sports.

Dan Krikorian: 14:02

This is a fantastic book You’re holding up footballs principles of play, because it’s all the same.

Noah LaRoche: 14:07

They’ve got five principles Penetration with support, which is movement and mobility. You want to invade the goal, you want to create support and that’s connected to movement. Guys need to move to create support. You want to have with, you want to stretch the defense. Because, on defense, what do you teach everyone? What they say get in their shell, be compact. You don’t want to do. Invade the goal. That’s the whole point, that’s the point of the sport. Invade the goal. It’s the most efficient shot getting a layer, that’s it. So if you just invert it, you say, well, what do we want to do on offense? We want to stretch them and we want to keep them stretched. Most teams start with great shape. They do. If you watch a possession, however, they set it up, the paints open. What happens is, again, once they create the advantage, that shape just disintegrates. You see, in most possessions, teams end up being on one side of the floor, one side of the lane line or Below the foul line, so they either lose their width or their depth. The key is keeping with and depth. I think about this a lot. What are most coaches comfortable teaching what they know? Yeah, when I first started coaching, I felt comfortable teaching defense. One pass away, rotate, see my ball, this thing I mean I was teaching fifth and sixth graders defense wins championships. I mean that’s insane, right, you know, makes you think what are you teaching now? That hopefully in ten or fifteen years, like that was insanity. So I would say, for the most part, coaches are more comfortable teaching defense. Right, I don’t disagree with that. Defense is a very important part of the game. But my thought was so do we ask our teams to play defense or run defense? I think most coaches say we got to play defense. I think, right, yeah. Yeah you know, when you’re just thinking about the phrase let’s play, we got to play deep. Let’s play D, let’s play D. And then what do they say in offense, let’s play offense, or let’s run offense, run off offense. Why is there a difference? Because coaches teach defense using what principles are underlying rules. Concepts and rules aren’t the same thing. Concepts come from principles, so principles are underlying truths. This is the principle. Values come from principle. So you think about it. So we’re gonna play defense. You got to play really good defense night, guys. We got to play really good defense night girls. We got to play really good defense tonight. We got a runner offense. I don’t know, I just thought about that. Why, why do we run offense? Why do we even have positions? We’re in the rulebook doesn’t say we need a position where to say we need a one, two, three, four, five. We need a point guarder center. No, warm Buffett says the chains, a habit too light to be felt to, the too heavy to be broken. You’ve got these chains, a habit that have just run for so long. We just fall into these habits. So I think about offense and defense. We got to play both. It’s a continuous movement game. It’s not football, it’s not baseball. We don’t stop. It’s a continuous movement game and the team that’s continuous, it’s gonna have the advantage because it’s based on time and space. Anytime we stop on offense, what do we give the defense? Time to readjust. When we give them time, what do we lose? Base, so we create the advantage. Boom, I drive, I kick, I kick to you, pat, and on that kick out, you hold it Even for a second or two. What did you give the defense? time to close space and now they’re back in? What position? And Position decision-making the two most important skills. So once we get them out of position, don’t let them get back in a position. So there’s just a handful of things simple, things done fast, look complex.

Dan Krikorian: 17:15

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Patrick Carney: 18:25

think about, then, developing your principles, teaching your principles, and what role do maybe set plays play in Helping with these principles.

Noah LaRoche: 18:34

I don’t claim to have principles. These aren’t my principles. When you see an efficient shot, you go watching it. You watch a game. We could watch film right now. You see a layup driving lamp, a cutting layup or catching shoot three, you’ll see an underlying principle. You’ll just see it. So think about it like this I have been a group chat with a couple hockey guys so it’s actually me, joe Boylan and two guys that coach the NHL Montreal in Chicago and we talked because we’re talking about pretty much the same thing and what’s the most efficient shot in hockey? One timer pass and the guy shoots it right away. Right, Okay. Yeah, think about the direction of that pass. Is it lateral usually, or vertical, is across the ice, or up and down the ice, across Absolutely. So think about in soccer what they talk about doing. Do you guys play soccer growing up? Yeah, yeah, soccer is also this name on across it you want to cross it right, you want that lateral pass. Now in basketball, another study showed the two things that predict a successful outcome the layup are made, three being unpredictable and moving the defense ladder. My point is so, going back, when you see these shots, you’ll see okay, swing pass, that guy drove, boom, got a layup. Swing pass that guy drove. Everyone relocated. We had a opposing pattern. We get a 45 cup for a land. You see, all these things connect. Now they connected in an unpredictable way because we don’t know how the defense is going to behave. And that’s where plays are kind of funny, because we’re running these plays Assuming the defense is going to behave a certain way, and they’re probably not. I mean, how many times your coaches, I’ll watch film with the player and I’ll say, hey, what happened here? Well, she was supposed to do this and that was supposed to. That didn’t happen, so I did this. They almost say that every play. So what we plan to happen almost doesn’t happen. And that’s why, when you fall back, you have these Principles, just like defense. You fall back, you have these principles that sort through the chaos.

Dan Krikorian: 20:15

So I guess the balance for you of you know, say, your average middle third pick and roll, where you’ve got spacing around it and Teaching the reeds reactions out of it, what are they hedge, whether they drop, whether they switch, and how you would help set up an advantage, potentially knowing the strengths of your players.

Noah LaRoche: 20:33

So if you want to sit it on ball screen, then we keep it this simple. We just call it the screening principle. And the principle is opposing patterns. You don’t want two people starting the same spot and going to the same spot. That makes it easier for the defense to defend. That’s why when you see a drive baseline, you see that diagonal cut, the 45 cut. That’s an opposing pattern. You see a drive in the left slot go into the nail. You see that opposite corner cut. That’s an opposing pattern. So essentially, offense comes down to a driver, a cutter from an opposing pattern and three guys relocating, corners filled and top filled. That’s what’s going to happen in an effective possession. Now you screening whether on the ball or off the ball. We just keep it simple. One guy goes to the goal, one guy stays in a three and a pick and roll. A simple way to understand that is if they’re in a drop, we’re gonna drive it and that screener becomes the fill behind. You call it a pick and pop. Now we just called he’s the fill behind and then on a kick out. We just keep it very simple to start and you can start to nuance it. But you can’t scale complexity, you can only scale simplicity. So if you’re really trying to scale the knowledge, your players, you have to start simple. On a kick out, there’s two simple things, and you guys can watch this. You watch the game. You go on a kick out. You got two options. For the most part, you’re gonna shoot it or swing it. That’s really it, because if you drive it on a kick out, what are you driving back into? More often than not now this isn’t always the case probably a crowd driving into a crowd and everything is about managing space. And now, on a kick out, if we swing it right away, what can that guy do?

Dan Krikorian: 21:58

shoot it or what depends. I guess we’re on the floor but on an extra, or kick out, shoot it, attack space, make the extra.

Noah LaRoche: 22:06

Yeah, you’re attacking space more often, not away, or you swing it away if you’re not white over, and I think that’s funny too, right? We call it one more, the old drip, we all do it. Drive to the baseline. Guy fills the corner, we swing one more, right? That’s just a principle. You’re getting a defense to shrink, expand and then on the swing, pass you want to attack them. Usually, when you say one more, things have happened a lot. It’s like let’s listen to that song one more time. We’ve listened to it 10 times. They say one more in the first pass kick one more, the balls been put in around. I think it’s funny. Everyone gets excited about it, right? So, however, yeah, you can take advantage of your players, but get in the foundation of just understanding. Take space, create space, take space, create space. If I cut, I take space, what do I do? I create space for teammate to fill. If I drive, I take space. What do I do? I create space for teammate to fill, teammates to move. I think it’s just getting that. The Geons of the game. Douglas Move talks about that in his book, the Geons of the game. If you understand the Geons, these two, three, four main connections, really the three main connections. They happen all over the court. If you understand those, everything else fits together. Go back to your original question.

Patrick Carney: 23:13

You have these principles or these concepts, and how do you think about Developing them and what role does maybe set plays in terms of like, just putting your players in these positions, putting them in play and developing your concepts? You’re playing principles versus like, let’s just come down and play free every time.

Noah LaRoche: 23:30

I wouldn’t do that. See. Irony is too, is that the whole reason we started even Practicing like this was for player development, right. So we want to work on the technical side, the finishing the footwork, the ball handling, shooting, right. But it needs to be done in context. And so you read the talent code. It was the first book I ever read. I was 30 years old, ashamed to say it, I wasn’t a very good student. I studied because I had to. They talked about, you know, the Brazilian soccer players. Well, they talked about the three keys right, ignition, deliberate practice and master coaching. And they talked about these master coaches as guys who are very Modest, conspicuous, unassuming. They designed these environments, the environment to the talking. It wasn’t about them on stage, right, it was the design of the environment. I mean, essentially, that’s what we are as coaches, who are environment designers. And they talked about how they play in these small rooms and they play any tight spaces and they play all these small-sided games futsal essentially and and doing that was actually better for the individual development of the players. Not only were you working on these geons of the game, the tactical stuff, the principles of play of your sport, you’re understanding those. Within that your individual skills were emerging and there’s research that’s shown that the best way to work on Individual coordination is actually working on your collective coordination, your team synergies. Not individually Because, again, skills the relationship between you and your environment. And your environment has nine other players. Ultimately, it has other people on the floor, so you have to be aware of that. That’s what makes I mean you look at a guy like you, look at he’s aware of his environment, he’s attuned to all this information. He manages space by himself, by himself. He creates collective coordination, shared cognition. Right now, aaron Gordon goes there, shoots 40% Orlando’s. You’re also the guy shoots 60% from the floor. Guys are becoming more efficient. Why is that they’re getting more shots? Because you have one guy who’s manipulating time and space and there’s four levels of competence. There’s unconscious incompetence, meaning you’re incompetent. You don’t even have a clue you are. Then there’s conscious incompetence, where I know there’s some areas on we get right, knows like I’m consciously aware of these areas on we get. And then there’s unconscious competence I’m competent. I wouldn’t be able to teach it to someone else though. I just know how to play ball. I just know how to manipulate space. And then there’s conscious competence, when you’re competent and you know how to reverse, engineer and design frameworks to teach other people right, and that’s what we want to get to as coaches. Why is this working? What’s happening? What is the underlying Framework? What are the underlying mechanisms causing these successful outcomes?

Patrick Carney: 25:55

just in terms of building the shared cognition. What do you think about in terms of creating these environments and practice?

Noah LaRoche: 26:01

Well, first, you just have to teach awareness. To me, everything comes to awareness. If you want to work on offense, you can strain the defense. If you want to work on defense, you can strain the offense. And so we just the foundational stuff is like Silly stuff we might do two on. O might be me and you, pat. I would coach you guys, pat and Dan. I say, okay, guys, here we go first day, we’re just gonna have a little fun with it. Pat, you got the ball. Dan, you stand in the permit wherever you want. Now, dan, when Pat drives. So if he drives right, what I want you to do, if he drives right, I’m probably gonna move away from it. Just move right. Foundational, not all the time, I’ll have them, but just foundational. Perfect, yeah, okay, great. And so, pat, when you drive and you kick it, the Dan is got two options. Damn, what are your two?

Dan Krikorian: 26:45

options on this kick out. Well, I mean, they’re gonna shoot it or pass. Yeah, you’re either gonna shoot or swing it right.

Noah LaRoche: 26:50

There’s two passes. I keep it simple a kick out or a swing. The best time to usually attack is off a swing pass, and so that means Pat. What do you have to do after you kick it out? What do you have to chase?

Patrick Carney: 26:59

I have a chase space and relocate.

Noah LaRoche: 27:01

And when you get that swing pass, pat, what could you do off that swing pass?

Patrick Carney: 27:04

I can shoot it or drive it.

Noah LaRoche: 27:06

Yeah, and which way would you probably drive?

Patrick Carney: 27:08

away from the pass.

Noah LaRoche: 27:09

Perfect guys, let’s go get it. I want to do that and I want to get a layup. You guys who do that and get a layup, I’m like this is great, this is fantastic. Then I might add a third guy, it might be me and now we’re all moving on the drive on a kick out, I’m swinging it and we’re moving again on that drive. It’s just very simple stuff. And then this is where I layer the technical. We’d probably start with some technical stuff. I’d say, pat, now when we drive off that swing, pass for layup. I want you to hold your zero step on your finish. So your zero step is the first step after you gather right. So you dribble to think about it as a righty and this we started teaching like this with our little kids. This is actually how we broke down the footwork for our little physics someday. We kept it super simple if you’re a righty and you’re standing at the elbow and you’re just gonna take one dribble and score, what foot would you put back to start like, you’re there, you’re ready, you’re gonna take? I need you to take one dribble, make a layup. How would you stand? You stand two feet square. Would you put left foot back right foot back. How would you stand? I’ll go left foot back right. Yeah, left foot back, perfect. Yep, that’s what back and as you dribble and you step with that left foot and you pick up the ball, that left foot, your zero step. So after that you have one step, which would be your right foot. You every two step, which would be your left foot, they jump off of. Yeah, that’s really what does your see it? And you could make it where your right foot ends up becoming your zero step. You can start to nuance it, but, like, the foundational principle is, it’s the first step after you pick it up. It’s essentially a basic layer. But the thing is you can do whatever you want with those steps. There’s nothing in the rules that say in terms of direction and length of time, so you can sit on your one step. It has to be a continuous movement, but there’s no like time limit on it. You could dribble, hold your zero step and then go fast on your one, two, you two. You can do whatever you want. You go that was the euro step, right, you change direction with it, you go forward, back. You can do whatever you want with it. You can turn your zero step into your pivot real quick and turn your one step in your pivot. So that’s how we teach our finishing in our footwork. So now it’s all simplified, so you just have simple terminology and off the live dribble. We use the same terminology because learning is connecting and it’s way easier to connect when things are simple. You can’t connect complexity, you talk about it. I’m in an entrepreneurship program. You see, you can’t skill complexity, you can’t skill complexity, and I think about that with coaches. We can’t skill complexity, things are too complex, our guys aren’t going to be able to learn, we’re not gonna be able to build off. It got to be simple to start.

Dan Krikorian: 29:28

No great stuff. We actually want to transition now to a segment on the show that we call start, sub or sit, so kind of a lightning round, quick hitting segment where we’re going to give you or those maybe listen for the first time three options around a central topic. Ask you which one of those options you would start, which one you would sub and which one you would sit, and then we’ll have a little fun discussing your answer from there. So this first one has to do. We’re going to go to the defensive side of the ball because we all know defense wins championships. So we’re going to go to the defensive side and all of the stuff that we’ve just been talking about space attacking, space relocating. We’re going to give you three defensive strategies. Let’s say that you feel would most hinder the offense that you’re teaching, give it the most problems, say from a reading standpoint or from attacking standpoint, which one you feel like would cause the most angst amongst your offense. So start, sub or sit. Option one is a defense that’s just switching everything. Option two is you see it more and more, but teams playing zone taking away space by just zoning up. Or option three is packline defenses, where ball pressure and sitting in gaps and trying to take away any driving space I want to answer it differently.

Noah LaRoche: 30:46

I’m just going to say it for other coaches, but I’ll say this from just watching basketball zone for whatever people think, all of a sudden, when they play zone, you have to do something different. You don’t. And what do most people do against zone defense? What’s the first thing they do? They take away their own shape by doing it. What Well, they put a guy in the middle. In the middle. So now you have no driving, you have no cut, you have nothing. Do you have a stationary guy in the middle? Yeah, so I would say zone, and then I would say switching, because most people use pick and roll. So now that’s where you’re cutting and your screening would come into play against the switching stuff. And then I’d say the packline. So I’d start zone, I would stop switching and then three would be packline.

Dan Krikorian: 31:24

That’s great. I actually want to follow up with your start and attacking a zone and I think Pat and I have heard it more and more too of this more teams not worrying about having a completely different zone offense than just running their man offense or running their principles against a zone and just teaching players how to. I guess attack things touch differently where you know they’re maybe not in a set man, but attacking space is differently, and so I guess I just wanted to ask more about that concept for you and attacking a zone the same way you would attack, say, any other defense. Like you mentioned, create shape keep your within depth.

Noah LaRoche: 31:59

You want to drive, relocate. I use your attacking, your swing passes to skip passes, deadly man or zone. Skip the ball over two zones and on skip passes the best time to drive usually is on a skip pass. You got the longest close out, lateral close out. And the other thing is funny is when you watch where the most coaches they don’t want the ball to go. When they’re on defense, in the pain in the key in the middle right, you watch games, especially early offense. The thing that really dismantles defense the most is driving below the break, driving the baseline, because now, when you think about a guy’s ripping away, it’s usually a swing pass, the defense is usually elevated. And then what happens? When you drive the baseline, what does everyone do on defense? Turns their head after talking. That’s like the second commandment on defense. See both, see your drive. So now you get an opportunity for a driving layup, an opportunity for cutting layup from the 45, an opportunity for a corner three in front of you and then behind you, because the guy should be relocating, feeling behind, going back to the zone. You don’t have to overthink it. You want players and your group of players to have multiple solutions. That’s what skill is. The ability to adapt is the hallmark of expertise.

Dan Krikorian: 33:00

As we’re talking about playing on both sides of the ball. When you would teach or think about defense the same way you think about offense, and how you would think about defense to be adaptable, to be able to cover certain weak points, is it a similar thought presses for you on how you would build a defense out, just like you talked about the principles and underlying stuff for an offense too? You could do it, and the thing is still it comes down to.

Noah LaRoche: 33:24

So experts, no matter the domain, what they anticipate and make decisions fast and other people in business and sports. So if you know where the space is, so let’s say we’re on defense and they’re playing a four out, five out, right, the ball is in the right slot and there’s one guy in the right corner and the other three guys in the left side of the floor. Can you imagine that? Yep, you see this often. So that guy with the ball so we flip it offensively he’s trying to drive space. Which direction is he going to go? Is he going to go left, so where there’s three teammates and three defenders, or is he going to go right to the single side? Probably right, yeah, 100% yeah, he’s not going to go through the foul line because they’re going to stay home, typically on the strong side. So if we’re on defense and we’re helping with the low man, what would just traditional help sink, fill, right. So what should we be looking for on defense? Pat, let’s say you’re the low man on that, yeah, and Dan, you’re the high man, you’re off the ball, you’re the low man that left side of the floor and you see the spaces to your left. You know the guy could drive right. You should be anticipating what, and let’s say you’re the hell.

Patrick Carney: 34:21

Yeah, he’s going to attack that space.

Noah LaRoche: 34:23

Yeah, and you watch games. It almost never happens. When you flip it to defense, you just think the same things. Guys, everyone see where the space is and now we can anticipate and decide. Now we’re in better position When’s the best time for these guys to drive off swing passes. So, on a kick out and you know whose teams are starting to do it, especially to the corners on that kick out, that guy, he’s choking the swing pass, he’s not letting it go out and actually starting to double the corner. We’re not letting you swing the ball. That’s what kills us. So now, defensively, on a kick out, I would invite back to back drives. My guy boxing kicks, I’m going to sit there for that. I’m inviting back to back drives. And then the other thing, when you look at defense too is the big thing on offense is to do what Get to on the ball right Now you create numerical advantage somewhere else. That’s creating an advantage. What happens? You see this all the time and guy gets beat. What does he do once he gets beat?

Dan Krikorian: 35:12

Chase is the ball still.

Noah LaRoche: 35:13

This is the ball. He keeps on the ball. People start helping. They keep to on the ball. Kick, swing goes back up top. That’s why I do think there’s something to be said. Who’s the coach from Kentucky? The women’s coach in some ways zone makes sense because coaches get flustered by it and ultimately even the coach from Charlotte, positionless defense picking up. If you get beat there’s a help sink, you’re just rotating to the next guy. Just help the help work continuum. They just keep to on the ball. So now you’re keeping yourself in disadvantage. You just flip this stuff right. You go well, anticipate where the TB 12 would be when, anticipate where he’d pass. Okay, the teammate takes that away. Then take your teammates. You start anticipating this stuff. So if you know the offense you can flip it to defense.

Dan Krikorian: 35:56

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Patrick Carney: 36:36

This bleeds in then, nicely to our next start subset and we’re calling this good to great separators. So we know you’ve worked with a lot of high-end talent and, from what you’ve seen, what even separates the elite from the elite. So start subset these three, let’s say, skills, and which would be anticipation, recognition or decision-making what about like humility and persistence, and when those?

Noah LaRoche: 37:04

those are the follow-up questions that’s everything, for no matter culture, player, anticipation, don’t anticipate, that’s the thing is. Read or react, I wouldn’t even think. If you’re reacting to me, it’s anticipating. I think it’s anticipate, recognize, decide. If you anticipate, then you recognize any can make a decision. Either word. Reacting is like you’re behind, you’re behind the play, you’re behind reacting, reacting behind shit. I’m reacting to everything you know. I just think about it like that.

Patrick Carney: 37:28

My follow-up has to do with your sit, how you measure cognition, how you measure Decisions you know and what you’re trying to work with your players to make them better decision makers the cognition word.

Noah LaRoche: 37:40

Where, again, playmakers advantage. They talked about cognition, the ability to search, decide and execute, and I think that goes with your start sub sit where search, decide, execute. You can’t make a decision until you search and you need to know what you’re searching for. So that’s the whole anticipation and recognition. I can anticipate, recognize, then I can make a decision right. And anticipation, recognition Even before that would be awareness. If you ask me what I need to start its awareness. You can’t dissipate what you’re not aware of and we’re all operate our levels of awareness in all aspects in life, right. So how do we measure it? What’s important? You got a couple of things. We have three categories with the bubble right and foundational, the geotact, fine-spaced. When you draw a second defender, did you make the appropriate decision? And then on the catch that you make the appropriate decision, I mean that’s really on the ball. Those are the main things off the ball. Is your relocations right? That’s really the main thing. Is your relocations? Which cutting can go into that? Because on a drive, I think of as a cutter, as a relocator as well, I think of that as maintaining the advantage. That type of cut I think of just as an cut as an opportunity to create an advantage. And then you’ve got your technical aspect, your decision-making, with your finishing and your lab dribble footwork stuff, and then you’re passing. I mean, everything’s a decision. Do I pass below his arm, under his arm? Where is arms? The decision to pass to where my teammates going, not where he was right, because he should be moving into space. I’m gonna throw into space those little subtle decisions from a technical aspect. So there’s three categories. Also, it’s how we everything’s connected right, how you design practice, are you execute practice, how you give feedback. So we have on ball, off ball, technical. There’s a three aspects of the development that would be within practice. It depending on the player, the team, the time of year, though you’re working on that stuff again, trying to connect everything. That’s the whole point is connecting things. So how do we connect our school, our feedback, our film feedback, our practice, our practice design. It all should be connected reverse engineering to help this player or this team become more efficient and effective, which is skill you bring up a good point with feedback.

Patrick Carney: 39:44

How do you think about, let’s say, on-court feedback in a training environment?

Noah LaRoche: 39:48

I’ve gotten more. I try to let the environment, the design, couple things. So the environment gives feedback Meaning. We have guys who will defend, but they’re not out there just playing defense to contest and just sweat like they’re creating Affordances, which is an affordances, an opportunity for action. So they’ll be creating something where we want this guy, just a simple one. He’s not a tune to the opportunity to drive off a swing pass, so we’ll have defenders when you close out, really close out, so that opportunity to drive away from the ball. The past is there, right. And then also a on the finish Jump on his one step. So he now has to hold his one step in order to get you off the floor first and then finish off his two. So our environment becomes feedback. So now the player goes shit, like he just blocked my shot. I should have held my one step, or does that make sense? Yes, yeah. And then we live code practice and we have a TV, so we’ll watch stuff in real time as well, and a lot of times we try to behaviors, and most of my verbal feedback in the moment Will be when the skill, the habit that we want is done. Great job, that’s exactly it. Driving that swing pass. Great relocation. That’s exactly great patient pickup. We got him out of stance. She kept your dribble. My feedback is more geared towards the behaviors when they do the things we want them to do. So we have that, I guess. For me we have our real time and then I’ll voice over and our guys will code and put together a Little organizer for me and I’ll give them practice feedback as well, just saying, hey, great, where on the ball, off the ball. Technical repetition repetition, repetition.

Dan Krikorian: 41:20

Kind of zooming out of all this for a second. You, I know, are very curious person and you just kind of threw that in there as a potential One that you would say separates good to great. And I just would love to ask more about Curiosity amongst the great coaches, the great players. You’ve mentioned business leaders and why you feel that’s so important to elite performers.

Noah LaRoche: 41:42

So one I think if you’re curious by nature, then you open-minded, I think, and that’s important. Alvin Toffler he says the illiterate of the 21st century won’t be those who can’t read and write. There’ll be those who can’t learn, unlearn and then relearn. Things are happening so fast for constantly new technology, new ways of doing things, new insights. If you’re not curious, to me it seems that there’s a shelf life for your success and what got you there won’t get you there, and the best keep evolving. I think you look at Tom Brady. Obviously the guy had to be curious in order to keep doing. These things will evolve. His body is, whatever his regiment, the players I’ve worked with, the best ones, the best coaches. I think you know one of the things I really like that I mean. Think about how we met. How do we meet? Because why, which is?

Patrick Carney: 42:25

we’re curious to get better. Which is what’s?

Noah LaRoche: 42:28

being. These people together were curious to learn. Be right, that’s one word that comes down. We’re curious to learn, we’re open-minded, we want to idea exchange. I never thought about being a coach. I was an average division three player from New Hampshire, grop, seven kids first to go to college in my family. It wasn’t like it was just I didn’t think about being a coach and just fell into it. And I remember, though, like as I started coaching, I said you know, one thing that always rubbed me the wrong way was, you know, some of the coaches I had just coach, I seen is that they in practice what they preached. So they’re always asking you hey, this offseason, hey, you know, if you want to play next year, you got to get bigger, faster, stronger. You got, you know, working in shock, do this, and then you come back and the coach hasn’t got better. And so for me as a coach was always like I want to be able to walk the walk. If people are spending time and money for me to help them improve, I need to do the same, and so I think, naturally then you become curious how do I improve? And so you start trying to figure things out, and it’s fun. Naturally, it’s a fun thing for me. The best players I shouldn’t say the best the players that have maximized their potential and the coaches that I know are the most curious.

Dan Krikorian: 43:34

You work with some of the best players in the world. What is it that they’re looking for from you? That little tiny advantages that they want in your sessions? What do they want? What is it that’s gonna get them the next place? In a general sense, that’s a good question.

Noah LaRoche: 43:49

I think about that a lot. So this entrepreneurship program is interesting and they talk about. You know, you’re not an entrepreneur, you’re a value creator and there’s three ways you create value for people you give them confidence, you give them clarity and you give them new capabilities. And ultimately, I think those three things create this one thing, which is peace of mind, like, at the end of the day, that’s what we’re all going for, your peace of mind and usually it comes from having clarity, developing confidence and developing new capabilities. So I think I can’t answer for them. I think, as a coach, that’s how I try to create value clarity. This is the plan. This is what we need to get better at. Developing confidence to that and then new capabilities right, whatever that may be and I was talking to a coach the other day. A couple coaches about this topic. It’s just like the foundation of a great coach and coaches in all domains. You could be a life coach, you could be a finance coach, a relationship coach. I mean coaching actually was single out this the other day. The word coach comes from the Hungarian word coachy, named after the village of Cox K OCS, where a particular type of carriage was made. This carriage used for transporting people was called the coachy Cicer. So in the 15th century coach began to be used in English to refer to a carriage. So then it was meant as a word carried right, you carried people. So then in Oxford they used it. They started calling people who helped students get ready for exams. So they were carrying a student through this process to prepare for an exam. That’s where the word coach came from in sport. So anyways, as a coach you’re trying to carry these people to places that they couldn’t get by themselves and then you actually give them the belief that they can get there. This person believes in me. That’s when they say I’ve run through a wall for that coach hit him or her. They’re helping carry people into a place they couldn’t have got to by themselves. So ultimately that’s what you’re trying to do. Sometimes you do it and there’s times you don’t do it. To be honest, there’s times I’ve even done a good job. Human nature, they’ll probably stick with you more than the times you’ve done a good job.

Dan Krikorian: 45:43

Noah, you’re off the start sub or sit hot seat. Thanks for playing that game, that segment, with us. That was a lot of fun. We’ve got one more question to close the show, but before we do, this has been amazing. This has been really fun and lightning for us. So thank you for coming on the show today. We appreciate it. It’s been fun.

Noah LaRoche: 46:00

Good conversation. I mean, yeah, every good conversation. You get a good workout, good sleep. You know coach basketball, you know it’s a good day.

Dan Krikorian: 46:08

No, 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?

Noah LaRoche: 46:15

Oh man. So the book of Proverbs talks about wisdom, a lot wisdom and insight, and it says it’s more important than insight over income. Every time, wisdom over a big bank account like do everything, search for wisdom, search for insight and everything else takes care of itself. So I don’t know, if there’s one. It’s probably been the last. You know, especially the first 10 years of my life, like I did nothing. It was not money involved, it was the ability to learn. I think, from a coaching standpoint, my two years of attack were really good. I tell people I came out of college with over $100,000 in school loans and I said, you know, we go to attack and we were, you know, unpaid interns and we got to work with Grover and Mike Procopio and I met Joe and all these guys. A lot of guys were, you know, in the NBA now, so we’d go there for the spring and summer and you figure out you just figure it out where you live. You know you’re not doing all these things. And I I tell people I said, you know I got a finance degree for 100K. I did it because that’s what everyone said, right, or more than 100K. But if Tim Grover said, you know, you got to pay $25,000 or something like that, I would have figured out how to pay it. I would have taken out more loans because just being in that environment I learned so much as the foundation of my basketball career. I met so many important people, some very good friends of mine, and it was a lot of money. I mean just to figure that you’re not getting paid six months, you know. So you’re investing a lot of money. I think that, and then just my individual coaching, entrepreneurship and the other skill that coaches but like that was really the foundation for me Set me on this path. Being able to go there and invest time and money to be in that environment was huge for me.

Dan Krikorian: 47:52

This wins championships. That’s the big takeaway. Yeah, started circled in Before we dive in. It’s always so fun when someone like Coach LaRose comes on. I know he doesn’t do a lot of podcasts, so really appreciate him coming on today and honestly just laying it all out and being so open. And these are such fun conversations when there’s backstories, there’s stuff to back it up and there’s new ways of thinking. And he hit a home run today. Yeah.

Patrick Carney: 48:19

So I had his conversation and you hit it there on new ways of thinking. I think that’s what stood out to me and, honestly, what I was thinking about with one of your last questions you asked him about and, ultimately, why people are seeking him out to improve. One, because, as it came across, I think he thinks uniquely about the game. Two, I think he challenges people in a good way, which is part of, you know, thinking uniquely. But I mean I think he might have asked more questions to us than we asked in the podcast. So I think just how he goes about teaching or engaging with people is again in a positive way, like challenging and forcing you to think and adapt and grow. I think it’s also to me what stood out as one of his, let’s say, separators. You know he was challenging my knowledge on hockey, soccer.

Dan Krikorian: 49:08

Yeah, which you killed it?

Patrick Carney: 49:09

Yeah, I thought we were just going to take turns, maybe answering his questions wrongly and then getting I answered wrong last time this one’s Dan and then I’ll go back and a couple of times.

Dan Krikorian: 49:19

I just pretended my internet was slow, so you had to answer yeah.

Patrick Carney: 49:24

Avoid that hot seat.

Dan Krikorian: 49:26

Yeah.

Patrick Carney: 49:26

Oh, sorry, couldn’t hear you for a second. I’ll bet you got that one yeah.

Dan Krikorian: 49:31

No, but I’m with you and I think backstory too, as we were getting Noah to come on, I did have a chance this summer to attend the clinic where he was at and then afterwards, like mentioned, him and I, with a group of other coaches, had a really in depth conversation at dinner and it just was stimulating like it was today and it was lucky to him to agree to come on and I agree that he challenges different ways of thinking and, I think, pulling back on everything. For me, what I think he does a great job of is he mentioned it multiple times but is simplifying things and then that once things are simplified, that you can begin to read and react and, you know, anticipate like we’ll get into much easier and not overcomplicating things with actions or terms or ways of playing. I think he just spoke really well about that over the course of the whole episode and it kind of was a theme I think that has kept coming back to is it doesn’t need to be so complicated all the time.

Patrick Carney: 50:31

Yeah, he talked about it. You can’t scale complexity, you can scale simplicity. Then you can start connecting things and you know, we’ll kind of start to bleed into, I guess, now our recap and the podcast on. But when you can connect things, building awareness, where you can connect what’s happening, then you get to the anticipation, the recognition and the decision making. We actually talked about a little bit in our year and review pod in terms of, like, the spacing. I thought things got simpler with spacing and I think, like you said, that was a huge takeaway from his. He actually just tries to simplify, keep things more simple. I mean, we were on him afterwards and he also mentioned he doesn’t like to overly name things because it thinks it gets too complex for players. You know we’re talking about stampede and it’s just like a swing drive rather than swing stampede up. So again, going back to just how he thinks about the game and his approach to simplicity and teaching simplicity, yeah, I think the dive in a little bit more.

Dan Krikorian: 51:24

On our first bucket. We really wanted to discuss space and offense with them, which we’ve kind of touched on here, and just his views on what it is to teach offense and what attacking space, taking space, creating space, all of that looks like to him and why it’s so important. And I think you hit on a number of things about width and depth in offense, and making the correct read often has to do with understanding where that space is. So we wanted to start there and it went in a lot of great little tangents and a lot of great directions which I think we were both happy about, and we talked about a couple of different ways of how would you start or how would you think about sets versus this plane, and he kind of kept coming back to there’s various ways you could start, but it ultimately ends up becoming one of a few simple things and he talked about within, like those simple things or these principles, that all is based on shared cognition.

Patrick Carney: 52:19

I thought he brought up a good point within the shared cognition and putting them environments, let’s say environments like five on five or they’re playing in groups. Of course you’re building the shared cognition, but you’re also building skill.

Dan Krikorian: 52:32

Yeah, so five or, like he mentioned, if it’s three on three but in a certain space, or just creating environments that are game like, are super important, and he mentioned that most teams start with great spacing. It’s after that. That’s the issue where he said it gets lower on the floor or gets to one side of the floor, and so I think that’s where I also took elite coaching is understanding that. You said that shared cognition of once we start in a certain shape and he had the creative shape, creating advantage, maintaining advantage.

Patrick Carney: 53:05

I mean so much is on after that shape is created and that advantage is created is moving, maintaining and reading after the fact and we had also an interesting similar conversation with coach Beckner when he talked about to the importance of teaching players to start appropriately in the right positions, and I think this ring true to what coach LaRouche was also talking about here with your shape and positioning and managing space. I think it applies to defense and that’s a big kick. I’m on, just if you know the simplest, you’re going to do an XL on the backside, just getting them to start in that right position. Then we can react and deal with whatever comes. But put yourself in the most advantageous start position and get to that position, Then we’ll get into the gray of defense. Or you know, whatever may come, but if you start poorly, you’re always going to be chasing the play from there on.

Dan Krikorian: 53:56

I think we could probably keep talking about that first bucket of conversations, the TB12s, the two on ones, the reading advantages. There’s just so much there and coach LaRouche was generous enough to spend hot time with us afterwards to talk about those things. So I think it was just a conversation I’ll personally probably go back to and listen multiple times just to continue to think about. Oh, I personally think about spacing and offense for sure, moving. To start subset, let’s start with yours actually, which kind of bled into a little bit of our main bucket, which was the good to great separators anticipation, recognition and decision making. Those are three things I know you and I thought about from his presentation and from talking to the coaches that are highly valued for him.

Patrick Carney: 54:37

So I’ll kick it back to you on any takeaways on that first one, I think when putting this question together, I was interested in the anticipation aspect and how you get to teaching that what the conversation ended up being for me in the start subset was the importance of awareness and that how do you think about building awareness, getting your players to be aware, and then from there you get the anticipation and they get the recognition and then they can start making the decisions. And then also, too, I think, another part of why I want to ask this question because I am interested in the decision making aspect, of course, as we all are. But from our conversation with coach Cody Topper we really kind of dove into cognition and I like the three aspects that he deemed important in terms of decision making.

Dan Krikorian: 55:21

There’s a great Rick Majeris quote I wrote down while we were talking that body here, mind there, that Majeris would always talk about with wherever you’re positioned, your war’s, your mind. It should be on the next obvious player reading the next thing and not just reacting to what the offense does. He’s talking defensively a lot on this stuff and I think got into the anticipation. I think that was my big takeaway from that start subset is just the importance of it, how great players have it, and I guess this isn’t a miss. But I could just talk for a while trying to figure out how to get average players I don’t know if that’s the right term, but players that aren’t as elite in their anticipatory instincts. Can you get it from a five to a seven on a scale? Can you get it from five to six? I mean, I’m sure you can, but how? What’s the process for anticipating, for that skill he mentioned? It’s kind of everything. Everything flows from there. You anticipate things well and you’re obviously recognizing and then your decision making is going to be better because you’re going to be able to do that, like we talked about a little bit before and after, like we’re not going to be playing crowds as a player. So, like I said, not a miss from Noah’s perspective or even ours. Just that’s super interesting how to get that better. It boiled down to.

Patrick Carney: 56:35

In some sense it’s yeah, anticipating where space is going to open up as the offensive player, and then, obviously, anticipating where you need to close space as the defensive player. So two sides of the same coin. But so where space going to open up, can you anticipate it to attack it, or can you anticipate it to close it and force the offense to chase another space?

Dan Krikorian: 56:54

Yeah, and there’s no exact science on this, but there are just some players that are better in certain aspects of the game. I think about great cutters. Sometimes great cutters, they just feel it, they just can feel that space. And great cutters help your offense just as much as sometimes great shooters like knowing how to cut. And the longer I coach, the more you try to teach non great cutters how to be great cutters. And I don’t know, it’s hard and it’s not like they don’t ever have it. You don’t work on it, but how do you get them a little bit better? Or how do you be able to anticipate that next drive into space? And I think it comes with you know, getting older and understanding the game and the shapes that you’re going to play in. I think that’s obviously part of your art of coaching. But it’s a really interesting conversation because there’s so much there. The great teams do it, the great players do it, no matter what you run, if you get players to get better in their anticipation skills, you’re just going to be a good team, both sides of the ball.

Patrick Carney: 57:47

You’re always going to have, hopefully, an answer then to whatever the defense is doing Exactly. I’ll throw it to you for our first starts up sit question, but, knowing we’re going to have a conversation about space, I really like this question you came up with in terms of what defenses can do, and you know how coaches can think about these defenses within the framework of chasing space.

Dan Krikorian: 58:07

Well, I think it was. We thought maybe interesting to go the other side of the ball, because we’re going to talk a lot about offense with him in the first part and maybe see in what he sees defensively. I think he hit it on the head like what we’ve seen is just zones, mess teams up all over the place, and so I guess I really agreed with him there that we’ve seen it at all the levels teams coming up with interesting zones, kind of your not bread and butter 2-3 zones but also just a straight 2-3 zone how much it can mess up an offense because it stands them up, takes away their natural read. So I agreed with him there and then I thought he added a nice interesting caveat where we got back to offense where it’s just why do we have to have a set zone offense for zone defenses rather than just playing through concepts and principles and teaching? That I also thought was an interesting part of that start subset for me.

Patrick Carney: 58:59

I enjoyed that part as well and I like the point he brought up with skip passes and I think skip passes in general and just especially against itself, but there’s going to create long closeouts and then we just attack off of. That always sounds much simpler in theory than the team plays a zone and everyone kind of looks around like what? Now? I do appreciate. I think with the conversation with Noah and you know past conversation we had about zone offense, my takeaway is always just keeping it simpler and continuing to play with what you want your automatics, your skip, like. There’s a reason these actions, these concepts, these principles are effective in the first place because they work over and over.

Dan Krikorian: 59:38

Yeah, and I think that running, say your same offensive concepts against a zone, hopefully, like mentality wise for your team, doesn’t mess with them. Where mentality to your team is, it doesn’t matter what they’re doing. We’re going to play how we play and sure they’re in a zone, but we don’t want to stop attacking, we don’t want to pull it out.

Patrick Carney: 59:59

Yeah, a great observation I heard from a coach is in terms of looking at how you approach a zone. Is that when teams are in man-to-man offensively yeah, maybe you got to do a trigger, but you want to put them in help, you want to put them in rotations, where now, if a team’s in zone, basically they’re already putting themselves in help? Yeah, and it’s looking at terms like, well, okay, they’re in the help, let’s play to how we create space, maintain space. Keeping advantages really helped me. I think it was an interesting way to just look at, yeah, what maybe the defense is or isn’t in terms of man, her zone.

Dan Krikorian: 1:00:33

Absolutely so. I think both of those start subsets were fun. To kind of hear a different side of coach LaRouche and I also liked just to put a bow on it getting into his thoughts on creativity a little bit at the end of the good to great conversation as well, you kind of hear how he thinks about things. I think that was a nice nugget as well. Pat, as we close here, any misses or things you wish it could have went deeper on.

Patrick Carney: 1:00:56

You know what? I think we had a good conversation on awareness and went, but I would have continued to go deeper and I think I would have liked to ask some more follow-ups on just like what building awareness maybe looks like in a training environment. I know we talked a little bit. I gave some 2 on 0 stuff. He asked us some questions on 2 and 0, but it seemed to me like awareness was such a big aspect to kind of building going from good, great skill development. Just like how he thinks about building that environments that help create awareness.

Dan Krikorian: 1:01:24

Absolutely, and I guess for me I would second that. And then we touched on it a little bit. I think it’s very interesting, the 0 step, and we did touch on a little bit what it is and why it’s important, though I think I could have went deeper on really why it’s so important and he touched on it, like I said, but how you teach it, why teaching players to use it so much? And I think because it also the secondary effects of the 0 step is. It helps with their decision making and reading the crowd and the space and it kind of slows you down. We, you know, watch some video with him of different players at different levels using it and it allows him to read the help and all that. So I could have went a little deeper on the 0 step, just because it’s newer to me and I think it’s really interesting as a kind of a newer skill that players maybe it’s not new, but newer to me on how players are using it in the game. I’m also just always so impressed with coaches and people in general that can remember quotes and books. I’m a reader, you know that, but I can’t remember stuff off the top of my head like that.

Patrick Carney: 1:02:29

I’m always just so impressed when they’re able to give us stuff like that, I think the first thing I said before you hopped on with it was that, yeah, I need to read more books.

Dan Krikorian: 1:02:39

Yeah, absolutely so. We once again thank Coach LaRoche for coming on Really insightful conversation. Pat, there’s nothing else. We’ll start wrapping this thing up. Thanks everybody for listening. We’ll see you next time.