Slappin’ Glass sits down for an insightful and interesting conversation with Olimpia Milano Head Coach, Ettore Messina! In this replay from 2022 the trio discuss playbook design, leveraging player strengths, “brutal honesty”, and much more.
Transcript
Ettore Messina: 0:00
I had many great assistants in my life and one of them, when I was coaching the national team of Italy in the 90s, he told me a great lesson. He said you know what? That basketball is an easy sport where everybody touches the ball and then the best shooter shoots. And it’s a great, great lesson because you cannot have the people happy to compete and play defense and be part of the program if they don’t touch the ball.
Dan Krikorian: 0:32
Hi, I’m Dan Krikorian and welcome to Slappin’ Glass, exploring basketball’s best ideas, strategies and coaches from around the world. Today is a replay of one of our most popular episodes of all time with Olympia Milano head coach Edireh Messina. In this terrific conversation, coach Messina discusses the art of playbook design, establishing a team identity, and we talk the importance of adaptability and coaching and productive practice segments 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 NBA 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 to our live coaches, social Las Vegas. Sg Plus is the assistant you would hire if your athletic director didn’t already give this type into football. And now please enjoy our conversation with coach Edireh Messina. Coach, a lot we want to dive in with you today, on and off the court, and so we’ll just get right to it. The first thing we want to discuss is just how you think about playing to strengths and helping both players and the team as a whole play to their strengths and making all the pieces fit together.
Ettore Messina: 2:25
Let me say a couple of things. First of all, I think that one of the major goals you have as a coach and as a group is to develop an identity, to find a way that you can feel efficient and you can, let’s say, enjoy yourself in your own look. So I asked my team how do we get to feel comfortable in our own way of playing and the way we look? You know, sometimes you think your team should run and your players feel more comfortable if they slow down the game. They think they have more of a chance if they’re slower, and vice versa. I’m just making extreme examples, but I think it’s important that you share an idea of how we can feel good in our own skin Once that goes through, of course, using our strength. But I also learned along the way that if playing off your strength means that you exhaust the search for mismatches, you probably have a high chance to break the flow of your game and lose somebody on the road, somebody that might feel out of the flow, somebody might feel out of the offensive game, somebody might feel you’re not part of the team. So I think it’s more important to have an identity which, of course, takes care of your own strength and hide your weaknesses, but more importantly, it’s probably to not lose your focus and your flow once you start playing the game. Overall, I have many great assistants in my life and one of them, when I was coaching the national team of Italy in the 90s, he told me a great lesson. He said you know what that? Basketball is an easy sport where everybody touches the ball and then the best shooter shoot. And it’s a great, great lesson because you cannot have the people happy to compete and play defense and be part of the program if they don’t touch the ball enough, if they’re just setting screens or spreading the floor or they have defensive assignment. This is not soccer or American football, where you can play only defense because your role requires that and you’re still very valuable. People want to be part of the offense, wants to feel used for their abilities, but then if you want to win, it’s not equal opportunity that everybody shoots every time he’s got the ball. There’s going to be some discipline where we find a way to have our best shooters have more options for shooting the ball. It’s simple, but it requires time, requires self-discipline, requires accountability, requires respect for the roles, requires buying in a plan and that’s probably the beauty of our profession.
Patrick Carney: 5:03
Coach, just the follow-up on that. When you established the identity, like you said then, getting people to accept their roles, what are the conversations like? How do you explain to them that, to get the buy-in that maybe you’re not our best shooter, so you’re not going to get to shoot as much as you’d like, but for the benefit of the team we need you to do. X, y, z, coach.
Ettore Messina: 5:22
Paul, that we all know and have been lucky to be on with them for five years, use a very, very interesting couple of words. He says brutal honesty. He bases his relationship with the players on brutal honesty, meaning that he never sugarcoats anything. He tells them the truth and he tries to get to pick their brain, because it’s not that he goes there and he always says you’re going to do this, this and this. He tries also to figure out how that player will probably feel more engaged and tries to develop. He has a lot of respect for the person before the player and because of that, he knows that telling the players the truth and trying to make him feel a part of the game it’s very important. Now the thing comes with an absolute respect of everybody that say game meaning. If I say here we’re all important because we need to win games and if it’s important we’re all bad, and then I do an interview and I always talk about the players who scored 25 points, my players will immediately understand hey, hey, here the Godless, the old nice words if you score, you’re more valuable. You know, if, let’s say, in Milan we have standards in terms of how we reward financially players, if I go to a player and say, listen, we need a guy like you that can rebound, lock down our defense, have presses inside one of those let’s call it supporting cast top level players, and those players have a value in the market. And then we want to bring him one here and then we offer much less than the market value. I’m telling him you’re not as important to us like I was trying to explain you with my words. So there is a lot of behaviors that go down to earn the respect of the players and the fact that they might buy him. There’s another thing we always talk about the read the defense. Okay, we all coaches, we are obviously happy if a player read the defense and breaks a play, reacting accordingly to what the defense did. But now the player, who’s not a great shooter, breaks the play, catch the ball because he slipped to the rim, he missed the shot and I just go nuts. He’s probably thinking the hell with reading the defense. Next time I’ll do what you told me to do and don’t ask me for more. So again, to evaluate performances on how decisions are according to our, let’s say, basketball philosophy, game plan rules that we have on offense and defense. It’s something If you evaluate game decisions or only on the outcome. That’s not fair, if that makes sense. I think all these things to me are extremely important, much more than make a bucket or not, of course. The final step is that let’s say we value performances okay, and we value decisions. But practice also. Let us understand that there are players that because of their talent, they can take more risks than other players. You know in few words when we say you got to shoot when you’re hoping. But to me, at my age and my skills, to be open means that I need my defender to be probably five feet away from correct, otherwise I cannot even shoot the ball. If you bring an athlete with great skills, you can probably make shots, even with somebody on him correct, because he has the ability to create separation, to stay up in the air, for maybe that split second that gives him the opportunity to follow through whatever. So we want to shoot with open man like me or, more accepted, contested shot by the player who can make 50% of the shot even if he’s contested because of his skills. So it cannot be all neutral. The valuation of decisions, performances. He’s got to be taking care of the individual talent and the individual way of doing things. And that’s why practice is so important, because I can show my teammate that I can take more responsibility and even more risk because I’m good enough to do that, and in that case my teammates will respect that and will accept that. So it’s not you as a coach to come down and say you can do this. You can’t do that, you know, even if, for example, at the beginning of the year I had great shooters in my team, one of them, trajan Langdon, general manager of the Pelicans. Trajan knew that he had the green light, meaning that he was coming down the floor, he was open, he could shoot anytime, but not all players had that green light. So we got to get to a point that we share also a mutual understanding and respect for each individual skills. And how can any of us impact the game for the benefit of the team? And that’s a continuous learning process, you know, because you imagine things in preseason and then you go through practices, preseason games, wins, losses, and then sometimes you understand the player that you thought he was more fit for a supporting role. He blossoms and boom. That changed completely the hierarchy inside the team. You know. Another big thing is about player development we all talk about. We want to develop players. So in my organization, part of the deal is we assume that you come here in Milan and even if you’re 35, there’s something you can improve. So everybody here goes through some, let’s say, stint of the practice for player development. So before practice, what the spurs called the dated vitamin you know you have 20 minutes, 15 minutes, you know it’s a lot. Where you work with a coach, you work with your skills, boom, boom, boom. So we recruit a player, especially a young player. We tell him this big part of here is you come here to improve, not only to play. We want you to be better at the end of the year than you were at the beginning of. But now here’s the counter. I’m a young player, I come in, I work my butt off, I get better, I do extra sessions, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then I prove you that I can do it. Am I going to play more? Or, because I’m not a veteran, I’m gonna sit on the bench and wait for my turn? That’s, let’s say, a situation where conflict can arise and you as a coach have to handle that, because if you don’t take a position and you basically let them fight, like at the OK Coral in the Western movies, one against the other. First of all, players will go from competing into fighting for a minute. That’s not healthy. But, more important, you will split the team in two because there will be players supporting the newcomer or the guy who’s on a rise and players supporting the other one. And that’s not necessarily related on status and age, because maybe I’m a player that, regardless because of what I see in that young guy, I think he can help my game. I feel like we can get better with him. Well, I want him to play. Others might feel more comfortable with a player who’s been playing there for three, four years, because they trust him, they give him confidence and whatever. So it’s a mess. So you as a coach have to know that when you talk about player development, there is the technical part, skill part, teach, demand, whatever and then there is how we handle the improvement in terms of how we handle the minute, the opportunities that we give to all different players. That’s a big part of the player development plan. And going back to this first part, the staff, the club they were always very clear in letting these young kids draft it and come in that, hey, you’re probably gonna play very little at the beginning. You’re gonna play the first year a lot of minutes in the agility. You will keep going back and forth, and all of them the John deMurray that now is an All-Star they’re very quiet. They were all going boom, austin, san Antonio, austin, san Antonio, and there was nothing that was felt like, let’s say, diminishing. You know, because we’re assigning you for two weeks with the Austin’s, we’re not. We’re assigning you there because that’s part of your player development plan and that’s something I think it’s very, very important. It’s not only what you do in those 15, 20 minutes on the court, it’s the big picture. You know how you can develop a player and then you know, smoothly, you fit him in your team and then after two, three years, boom all of a sudden. But there are players who are so quick that maybe midway the first season they’re showing that they’re very, very good. So what do we do? We need to bench somebody, probably to make room Right, and will that pattern accept that? A lot of things are in the plan.
Dan Krikorian: 13:55
Coach, you brought up establishing an identity. I’d love to go back to that for a second and just your thoughts on especially early in the season, when you’re figuring out the individual strengths of your players and also, like, the overall strengths of your team how do you think about building that identity and establishing it, especially early on?
Ettore Messina: 14:13
There is probably an earlier question that I have in my mind To me personally. To feel that I am contributing to the team and I can be for them the best possible coach, I need two things to happen. I gotta have a feel that everybody’s bustings ass defensively and secondary, that on offense we have a no, let’s say second thought in sharing the ball. We all know and we all feel like former players, coaches, whatever that you see a pass and you feel if that pass was done, boom, you know, with no, let’s say second thought, or if there was that as a test to make that pass, and that as a test can mean a lot, can mean I don’t trust you or I wanna think a little bit more about my own shot, a lot of stuff. I don’t wanna be in that. So I wanna have that. What in soccer they like to see? The boom, boom. Okay, because Papovic calls it good to grade, I call it first intention, but let’s put it back. So those two things are the priority, okay, basically, that is in every drill, it’s in every practice, it’s in every meeting. And as for what we do, honestly I’m very, very open. I don’t have, let’s say what you call, if you ask me, my system is all in those two things that I told you, because then, depending on the players I have, I can go, let’s say, with a faster team. I had listened to this my first EuroLeague team that won the EuroLeague in 98 in Bologna, with all the Serbian players Sasha Danilovic, rassan Esterovic, tauran Savic, antoine Rigoud all the French play blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We played with the 30 seconds clock back then and, just to give you an idea, the final game was 58-49. Okay, so that I mean it was, I would say, slow pace. Then in 2001, the team with Manu Ginobili and Marco Jardic or whatever, we were scoring 90 again and we were running, that was 24 seconds three point shot. We were early offense after made basket team blah, blah, blah. Then I had the great pick and roll team in Cesca with Delpa Palucas, david Van Thruppel, jr Olden, all capable to play pick and roll shooters, blah, blah, blah. I had a final four team with Tios Edny that I mean we were so fast. The team with Reginald Langdon as a shooter and Tios Edny from UCLA was going. So I can adjust honestly. I had pick and roll teams, I had post-up teams. I had not a lot of eyes of team, because you need international basketball Eyes of ball is not so efficient. But going back to the first part of the question, I don’t think it’s the right thing to do to unless you can pick only the players that you need for your system, like in college, for example. I think it works vice versa. You need to adjust to the players. You have their own style and sometimes, because of the way teams are built, you might have players who can be more efficient through pick and rolls and somebody else is more of a post-up, so you need to find combination. So, honestly, we find the identity through the process, once we have established the fact that everybody buys in and accept those two basic principles.
Patrick Carney: 17:24
Piggyback and off of that and your adjustability or adaptability. I’m curious about just how you view, let’s say, a playbook, especially when playing to the strengths of your players. Are you more? Let’s have a larger playbook so we can get to specific strengths for our players versus. Okay, let’s maybe condense our playbook but be more flow-offense, be more read, react and just let the individual quality take over.
Ettore Messina: 17:46
First of all, I do not believe that winning basketball is played as a section of plays, but winning basketball is related to how you will play the basic actions of the game. So side pick and roll, top pick and roll, slot pick and roll, how you play against drop against, push against switch, how you space in all those different situations, how you space with the ball in the post, how you attack the switches, is very big. So, to go back to your initial question, my playbook. Usually here’s what happens. I work on the concept, on the spacing concept, right from day one. So here is how we space when we run a pick and roll at the slot versus a drop. Here’s how we space and, of course, how we execute when they push us to the sideline, when they ice us. Okay, this is what we do when they switch. So, as you will know, some actions, slash play works well against one kind of defense. It’s not good against another kind of defense. So the playbook early in the season for the first, probably four, five, six months, I try different things. I have concepts and then I try different things, slash plays who can help me to attack against those defenses, and then in the second part of the season I cut down to I don’t know, a couple of plays versus drop, a couple of plays versus push, three, four post up plays, top pick and roll, elbow pick and roll, a couple of exit plays for the shooters and we put everything together. But it’s more one of the biggest difficulties now with modern defenses. Let’s say what everybody, what top teams, do in Europe. They start the defensive action with one pick and roll coverage, for example, ice. You know they ice the ball to the baseline and then, after the first pick and roll or after the first ball reversal, or when the clock is down to 14, they switch everything. Now, if you go by place, you should have a play that helps you to attack the ice and then attack the switch. It’s a mess. Now people are all thinking. I think we need to have a concept of how we space to attack a push, for example, pick a roll with a slow. They ice you or they push you towards the baseline. First of all, do you want to keep the guy in the corner or do you want to empty the corner? Because that dictates a completely different reaction. Second, the position of the B is at the point of the screen or is lower. That we allow us, for example, a crossback? Do we have players who are capable to cross back against the push, because that would require one space? If we have players who need more space to attack the baseline, we need to clear that corner. I don’t want to make it too difficult. Those are thoughts that players. We cannot bore them with this, but we as a coaches going back to the concept of trying to use our strength we need to know that. Or we need to say to ourselves do I want to teach the crossback to my two point guards? I don’t care if at the beginning they would not be efficient and they would rather have more space and just attack down here. But I think that to be better at the EuroLeague level, you have to have control of your crossback. So I’ll keep the guy in the corner and it will work the first weeks to create crossback opportunities. Maybe the players might struggle at the beginning, so keep going. I rather work on the actions and on our ability to create a new efficient space through the action. Reading what the difference does Other coaches they prefer to have a sequence of plays and they, from the bench, see what the opponent does and call the different plays. I’m not fine with that. I respect it. I don’t think it’s the right thing to do, but that’s the way it is. My point is if you keep calling plays and in the middle of the play they change defense like now all the top teams are doing what we do you’ve got to have some very good play that allows you to face two different kinds of defense in the same play. So at the beginning it will be less efficient to teach to read and react and you will be more efficient just executing plays. That’s what I believe in the long run, if you can read and react to all these situations, your team is going to go up.
Dan Krikorian: 22:06
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Patrick Carney: 23:16
Coach, I guess how many, if we just take your pick and roll, is, on average, how many spacings and are you working with? You know, if we look at all the locations, let me say this top pick and roll, meaning right in the middle slot.
Ettore Messina: 23:28
Let’s say you’re rubbed, some ball is in the middle, somebody comes and now you need to do that action against the drop and against the switch or against the weak. Now in Europe, all the top teams. They will weak the guy in the middle so they will send less everybody in the middle, so you got to be prepared for that. Now, once that happened and the ball is going towards one side, you need to understand if you want to have two guys behind the pick and roll or just one guy, so you create what they call the short action, so that I’m going left, a roller is going away from me. Now we are two on one on that side and the defender of the shooter needs to decide whether he wants to stay with the shooter or help on the roll. Or you might like to have, just to give more space to your pointer, to your guard, just one player in the corner, the roller, and two behind you. You know two shooters behind you, so you work on all different combinations, I think. Then there are teams that you like to attack better with a side pick and roll. Then you have options to use a pick and roll both on the side and the middle, with a format, and if the other team doesn’t like to switch, now you can slip the four. If it’s a shooter, you can short roll. You can do a lot of things. Then finally, small, small pick and roll. To get going back to the beginning of our chat. To get the mismatch that you want, you force a switch. Now you force a bad guard defensively to defend your best guard. There are a lot of combinations. I would say no-transcript, but I cannot have a number free and think about this. We have, I think, better shooters in Europe overall and, I would say, very good passives, but we don’t have the same athleticism. So while in the NBA, sometime it’s enough to slip the pick and roll and these guards, as soon as you shift your feet, they’re gone. One of my first time with the Spurs, I had the preparation of a game against OKC and so I started tons of films because I wanted to do a good job for Coach Paul and the coaching staff. So I prepared blah, blah, blah and they were running a double-high pick and roll for Russell Westbrook Coming from Europe. I thought it would have been a good idea to weak Westbrook and send him to his left. And I remember vividly that in the meeting coaches told me I thought he can’t work here because as soon as you shift your feet against Westbrook he’s gone. He goes by everybody. So I learned in the NBA the athleticism is a different animal with respect to Europe, you know. So that was interesting. That’s going. If you let me just go forward a little bit. When they asked me the biggest difference between international basketball and NBA basketball, we can talk about skills, talent, personality, whatever. There are two things that usually when you leap open, an NBA player is going to make a good number of shots, and the second thing is the athleticism. There are a lot in the NBA. There are a lot of players that if they make a mistake, in their defensive positioning, for example, then they adjust, they realize it and they make such an athletic play and they get back in position. They even come up with a steal. In Europe, I would say 90% of the time you make a defensive mistake in terms of how you position yourself. It’s either a layup or a playup, because especially the bigs don’t have that kind of a flattage. But I would say overall, I would say the whole player, but then we have other skills, of course, because I think we can pass the ball very, very well and the majority of our players, of our top guards, they all dominate the two most important passes in modern basketball, which is the pocket pass and the skip. Pass to the corner and they see boom, boom, boom and the ball goes to the other side.
Patrick Carney: 27:08
So there are plus and minuses of course, and coach, with the ability of the guards to make the pass and the shooting in Europe, I guess in the pick and roll do you then fall more in the line of let’s space because of the shooting and the ability of the guard to make the pocket pass and make all those passes, versus more cutting around the pick and roll?
Ettore Messina: 27:26
Yeah, no doubt about that because you need space, absolutely. There is just a constant discussion between me and my staff, which is this let’s say you’re playing a piece of pick and roll from the side, from the slot, a four corner. Okay, pick a roll with five, the ball is going toward the middle, so you have two players ahead of you, correct, and then the roll, and one guy behind the pick and roll. What do you want those two players in front of you to do versus the shift? You want the backdoor of the guy who is higher, or you want the baseline guy cut and the high guy to just slide to the corner to attack the highest shift, or you want the guy in the corner maybe to set a flare screen for the guy on top, so when I come off the pick and roll I can turn the corner, shoot or throw a flare pad? I don’t know. Can we get to a point that we read all this, and I would love to, but I think it’s very difficult. I think you need to have priorities and pitch at least one. We have an ongoing conversation every year on this. The one I like best is unless you have very, very good shooters and people cannot cheat too much is to baseline, cut and slide to the corner of the high guy. Other coaches prefer to have the guy who is high just go backdoor. But going back to the big, big picture, I do not know what is the best, but you have to work on that because that’s a situation that in the games will happen. They can roll two guys on the other side, how they shift Somebody, for example, in Europe they even bump. They come aggressively with a shift and almost they do a run and jump. Pretty interesting, I think. But it’s fine because we’re still here after 30 years and still talking about the same thing.
Dan Krikorian: 29:12
Yeah, Absolutely Coach. We’d like to shift to a segment that we play with every guest, called Start, sub or SIT. So we’ll give you three different topics, ask you to start one, sub one and sit one, and then we’ll have a quick little discussion from there. So this first Start, sub or SIT has to do with important coaching traits. So I’m going to give you three different coaching traits and what you think are the most important for, let’s say, a head coach to have. So Start, sub, sit, decisiveness is the first, creativity is the second trait, or the third is adaptability.
Ettore Messina: 29:52
I adopted really the spring forum. I would put it as a start. Okay, really be the end.
Dan Krikorian: 29:57
The other one Decisiveness or ability to like, make quick decisions.
Ettore Messina: 30:01
Creativity is a backup.
Dan Krikorian: 30:02
Okay, and I said I mean this, I said the size, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, let’s really fish yeah so, coach, I like to ask about your start, which is adaptability, and I think, just from your years of coaching and the different levels, what you’ve learned about being able to, like we were just talking about, you know, shifting your playbook or shifting pick and roll, cuts and coverages just the ability for coaches to Understand how to adapt on the fly with their teams.
Ettore Messina: 30:26
Well, you need to adapt in terms of X and O’s, but it’s more important, I think you need to adapt in terms of the evolution of people. I give an example communication 20 years ago was done by phone and With a lot of meetings. Now you’ve got social media, your cell phones, you have. I would have never imagined that I was going to send a WhatsApp text to my players. We may be a clip or maybe a comment or maybe a quote that I read on the internet that I thought it was interesting for them to read. You know, less is more. Like crossbar always says, we cannot have too many meetings, too many appearances all together. So the way you communicate with these people, I think, has been a A constant change. So you got to adapt to this. For sure, and I would have never imagined to have a son was that was listening to rap music all day, and I cannot label this with dumb because it’s what all young kids do. They love it. So I need to adapt, adjust to this and understand and be open to this. So adaptability is more being open, then being stuck with your say basics.
Patrick Carney: 31:40
Okay, let’s go like this coach, I’d like to ask you about your decision-making process and what you weigh when making decision probably more so some decisions off the court, whether it’s lineups, rotations, like we talked about earlier but you know when to make a decision that’s maybe good for the player, versus when make decision that’s good for the team.
Ettore Messina: 31:58
No so, overall, I always have a big question when consistency transforms into stubbornness and creativity, or being available to change becomes a craziness. You know what I mean. There is a line. You know Other things. There is something that always keep in my mind when everything is going downhill, you better change something, because at the worst you will keep going down right. So those two things, for whatever reason, are in my mind. So I don’t want to be stubborn, but at the same time, I need to be, you know, positive and try to create new things and so. But it’s a different balance. And if I can give you a quick report about my life in basketball, I made more changes in bad times than stick with the plan. I was lucky to have either coaches advising me or my gut feeling telling me let’s change. It Doesn’t make any more sense to keep being stubborn. You’re being stubborn, you know. And last one, I have a huge, huge part of me that reminds me of what the consequences of my decision can be going forward. So, for example, I’d rather save a player that I feel I have to be loyal to and respect for whatever he has done for my club and, for example, letting go down in the right way, rather than say okay, I don’t need you anymore, you’re done. I don’t know if it makes sense.
Dan Krikorian: 33:23
Yeah right.
Ettore Messina: 33:24
Yeah, I can tell you that you know what this time, but let’s find a way for you to go down in the right way. You know what I mean, yeah, yeah. So, especially decision related, I kept people and I gave maybe one year’s stations to players Because of the way they have part of the culture more than because of their basketball skill. You know what I mean. Yeah, so that’s important to. But the creativity and all this kind of things is more than creative creativity as a subtle Second meaning of craziness you know what I mean. Yeah, I’m more for logical creativity. Let’s put it out.
Dan Krikorian: 34:06
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Patrick Carney: 34:45
All right, coach, our next start subset for you is what makes a productive practice in your mind Okay, so would it be the competition throughout the practice, the flow of the practice, just being able to get in and out of drills, kind of build up, or is it the breakdown, kind of the teaching moments when you want to build a concept, and just how Effective, efficient those moments are? Very good question.
Ettore Messina: 35:11
I would like my players to go home and just remind the three things that we did in practice. So it’s outlining the goal of the practices and Go through those, both teaching wise and executing wise. I don’t think necessary, and I’ve learned this in the NBA and I’ve seen this now in Europe, where we play 90 games a year. I think there are practices where, let’s say, the competitive part is limited. Okay, because you don’t want to run people to the ground, yeah right. But let’s say, attention to details have to be there. Sometimes in the game you call it up for a lack of Details, carrying or efficiency or whatever, just with effort, and I don’t think it’s right to allow that in practice. I’d rather have less competition in terms of contact, whatever, but more mental effort. You know you’ve got to be there and understand what we’re talking about or we’re trying to improve. That’s why I think players have to learn how to walk through. Walk through it’s very important to do it in the right way. You know, we use a walk through with game pace, but not shooting and no hitting. But we gain pace. Okay, because if you go too slow, in my opinion, if you go too slow in a walk through, it’s easier to lose focus. You got to learn to stay focused when you’re doing fast. You know what I mean, yeah, and don’t fall asleep. So we learn through the year not to have maybe a Contact, meaning that we don’t do unnecessary contact, we don’t jump on a bay on a shot, whatever, so there is no chance of an injury.
Dan Krikorian: 36:48
But we do it fast, we do game pace coach, if you’re gonna with a practice and it’s like a breakdown segment or maybe you’re gonna put in the pick-and-roll spacing or something like that, what would that look like in your practice? Is it 510 to start and then it’s break down in the threes or fours and then back to 515, or how would you kind of introduce those? Good question.
Ettore Messina: 37:08
I usually do a teaching moment at the beginning of the practice, before you start stretching or going up and down. I get all the team and I just go slowly Telling them what we’re doing and why, and that’s specific thing. Then we stretch, then we start, usually Four and zero, four and zero. We go up and down and we take care of the details of the spacing and we do all the different Huh, and then we go in a let’s say what I call. Let me say in English it’s well, anyway, if we put the difference, but it’s 50% or we just shave, you know, so they started with us. Then we go next part of the practice, blah, blah, and when we go back to the office again we go five on zero, five on five. Then the day after If I had a day after, I can break it down in three on three, four, four, two on two, whatever this Okay. So overall, is the old school method, is the old part Correct? But probably you can do that. I’m for sure you can do that in one practice. I think sure. Okay, you need to go out list two. And then when they do play a development, let’s say we make sure they shoot or they come off a screen with reference to what we’re talking about. You know so, for example, that day we were talking about spacing versus an ice defense.
Patrick Carney: 38:22
We’re doing something related to that relating that to the flow of the offense, and when you’re maybe not with the spacing, but something maybe a more tactical or conceptual, where the guys are struggling, and I mean I think we both know this the struggle is good, it helps the learning, but will you then be willing to stay on it longer? Or do you think, okay, let’s keep it moving or else we’re gonna lose them?
Ettore Messina: 38:43
another good point beginning of my career. I could stay there two hours. Then I learned thanks to people who taught me, when it’s not working, let it there and get back next day, because that can put you in situation that you will lose it. You will become too hard on your practice, on your players. That can create bigger problems that execution offensively or defensive. So I learned that, okay, that’s it, that’s my one. Okay, no right, we’ll talk about maybe I can let you know I can raise my voice, but let’s go to the next note coach, you’re off the start sub or sit hot seat.
Dan Krikorian: 39:22
So thanks for playing that game with us and, before our last question here, thank you very much for your time today. This was a lot of fun for us. I really enjoyed it.
Ettore Messina: 39:30
Please keep me in your email, okay, yeah, okay, you’re mailing list so I can get also the other coaches and watch them on your podcast. Okay, absolutely, we will.
Dan Krikorian: 39:40
Our last question that we asked every coach that comes on is what’s the best investment that you’ve made in your career as a coach?
Ettore Messina: 39:48
I would say to the first one, I was very young, I was 22, and I was taking care of the youth program in Venice I messed it, by the way, which is the suburb right across Venice and my head coach. Back then we had a player, john Brown, who had played for many years with Atlanta Hawks, played for Norm Stewart, missouri, played for Cotton Fitzsimons, played for Yuba Brown, played for a bunch of great coaches, okay. So he came in the last part of his career and played in our protein and my coach in the summer arranged a trip for him to go see all the head coaches that John Brown had in his career. John was so nice to arrange a one-on-one meetings with Coach Stewart, Coach Yuba Brown, cotton Fitzsimons, plus a couple more, like Coach Karnasekka, new York. It was welcoming all the Italians. Back then Coach asked me and said listen, would you like to come with me Because I was fluent in English. He was not, so I just put all my savings and bought a ticket, a plane ticket. That’s where the best spent money in my career, because I had these two weeks where I talked one-on-one with, because I was the guy who was understanding English. So we were making questions to Coach Brown. They were all great to us. We spent hours with these amazing coaches, coach McLeod, so I mean beautiful Second every time I went to see somebody else’s practices. Those are always great investment in time learning. I was so lucky, especially the five years that I coached the Olympic team for the first time between 1997, I had some free time and I traveled all over Europe to see the top coaches in Europe. I was 33, 34 back then and I flew to the States to. I was welcomed by Coach Smith at Carolina, coach Rory Brown, again Coach Yuba Brown and a lot of great coaches opened the doors for me to watch practice and I learned so much. If there is something I can suggest a young coach, when you have free time, go watch somebody else running practice and ask, because we are, with very few exceptions, we are all very happy to have younger people coming to practice and talk to them. So my practice is always open and we always have people coming to practice and one day they ask me are you sure you don’t want to keep anything private? I said, listen, if the guy that comes is smart enough, we do something you consider smart. He will get to the same point sooner or later and if he is done, he can watch 25 practice and he will now learn anything.