Trevor Gleeson on “War Games”, Flex Offense Counters, and Leadership in Crisis {Milwaukee Bucks}

Transcript

Trevor Gleeson: 0:00

Everybody in the whole arena thought that Bryson come down to shoot the ball because he’s the best player, he’s our leading scorer. He drove in and threw the ball out to the corner, to our point guard. That’s not a very good shooter For him to throw that ball out and have trust. That’s the element of team playing basketball finding the right decision. And he passed that ball in. Our point guard. Damian Martin knocked that down in front of the opposition bench to put his three points up. With two minutes to go, this is the final. You don’t get more pressure than this situation and that just breeds confidence throughout the team. Everybody buys on that and then it’s contagious.

Dan Krikorian: 0:43

Hi, I’m Dan Kirkorian and welcome to Slapping Glass exploring basketball’s best ideas, strategies and coaches from around the world. Today, we’re excited to welcome five time NBL champion in Australia and current assistant coach with the Milwaukee Bucks, trevor Gleason. Coach Gleason is here today to discuss preparing for the unexpected, including winning with alternate lineups, new starters, injured players and much more. And we talk leadership through crisis and flex offense counters 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.

Dan Krikorian: 1:35

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 eager assistant coach whose ideas might actually work in a game. And now please enjoy our conversation with coach Trevor Gleason. We wanted to start with preparing for the unexpected end of game situations after timeout situations or things where maybe a guy fouls out or you have to play big or all these things that happen in a game, where it’s not perfect, it’s not pretty like you’ve drawn it up, but your team still needs to be prepared to play through it and hopefully win games and how you think about that. So, to start, how you have and still do think about preparing for the unexpected.

Trevor Gleeson: 2:45

There’s a lot of stuff happens in the game, you know, on the road or finals or whatever. But many, many years ago I went and visited a lot of college coaches and one college coach, coach K, had a full practice of the last two minutes of the game and I really thought that was like amazing for me to learn such an early age that he is one of the best coaches in the world spending time on special plays the last two minutes You’re up by three points. You may be down by three points two minutes to go. So I always made it a priority in our preseason to go through and spend time and put different game situations when you foul, when you don’t foul, when you go for two for one, how you want to use a long possession and use the clock out when you’re up. All those in game and that kind of developed into what we call the war games. So we would get all our coaches in a room, board room and telecoach. I want you to come up with three situations in the game that might happen or might not happen. What do we do? And then they came to life in our finals.

Trevor Gleeson: 3:56

When I was coaching in Australia, one of our best players got a hit on the head and was concussed and he had to go out for game three. It was the best of three series. It was one-one and we debated about who would we start if we started our sixth man. He wasn’t a really good starter and his role was off the bench to provide that energy for us and we kind of debated it for a half an hour and then came up and then low on a hold. Two weeks later the exactly same thing that we talked about in the war game happened and we went straight into it. We didn’t even think about it. We already had a plan in progress. We talked about it, debated it, so when the real life happened and that gave our team confidence and we had them lucky enough to go on and win that series and win the finals. So I think there’s a lot of war games that you can come up with possibilities, so you’re not scrambling and coming up with dreams that you might have time to think of.

Patrick Carney: 4:57

Within these war games, when you come up with the situations and I know as a staff you’re talking about it but then when you actually go out to the court and you put the situation, the guys are playing through it. How much coaching are you doing in that situation versus letting your players see what they can solve or figure it out on their own?

Trevor Gleeson: 5:14

Yeah, I think it’s kind of a time in school. Obviously you want your players to get groups for your offence. Or, if you change, you can go on small ball and play with five guards and you haven’t got a big guy. You’ve got to give them a little bit of time to work things out. Also, you can send them in the right direction. We want to look at this option because this gives us speed. This gives the floor a little bit open. We want to go for the drive instead of different options that you might do with a bigger bit. You certainly want the best and most powerful players. When the players understand, they get the concepts, they got the structure and then they don’t have to think about it. They’re playing freely. If they’re playing freely, you’re going to get the speed, You’re going to get some connectivity throughout the five guys playing on the floor.

Dan Krikorian: 6:02

You said, when you’re making that decision in game three about your sixth man not being a great starter and better bench player, I think a lot of times you think okay, well, let’s just start the next guy off the bench, type of thing. I guess a little bit deeper on those thoughts that you have with your staff and what makes someone maybe a better starter versus bench player, even though you lose someone, like you did.

Trevor Gleeson: 6:25

We tried an experiment through the season. We had 30 games of resource to go on it. His role was to come off the bench. He was used to that role to come off five minutes into the game when the heat’s out of the game a little bit. He gave us a really different dynamic With that starting group. It didn’t work. A few times it was the numbers went down. His productivity went down. Also, more importantly, the team’s performance went down because his role had changed Out of the process of thinking okay, I’ve got one starter out, we inject a new player into that starting group, I’ve still got my sixth man coming in. If things go bad, that’s not going to upset. If I had to move my sixth man into the starting group. We’ve got a new starting group. Now I’ve got a different problem to stall my sixth man. I could have had two different problems there. Fortunately it worked out. We understood that and we talked through it. We were lucky. It went seamless through there. I know that doesn’t happen too many times when you coach them.

Patrick Carney: 7:31

Along those lines. And then back to the war games. You mentioned helping the players give them a direct to find connectivity. How do you just think just in general in preseason, building connectivity on the court with your players?

Trevor Gleeson: 7:43

Yeah, that’s a good question. In preseason. I really let them go out there to play. There’s principles that you have and are negotiable. They may be defensive transition you stop the buck there but you also want them to be creative and define different avenues that you’re running out there In preseason. I’ll let that run a little bit more like a Phil Jackson philosophy you got yourself in and that you go and get yourself out of it to see how the team reacts, see how they can solve the problem out on the court.

Trevor Gleeson: 8:14

I think that helps you later on in the year when you’re getting into the season. You’ve got to be on point because wins and losses are important. Out of there, when the players understand it, you might go in a different direction. They said, oh, this is really good for these two guards, or this play is really good for this. I didn’t think of that. So to have that ability just to expand and see what works with your team is a great element to have. And the same thing you might say, well, this is really good in the boardroom and in the whiteboard, but then it gets on the court. It’s terrible. So you know, you hit that up and throw it away. You want to have that ability to find out what works best for your team.

Patrick Carney: 8:55

Along those lines. You know every team you kind of have, let’s say, if we focus on the offensive end, you have kind of maybe your clear cut like these are our go-to guys. You know, I know with Nampurthi at Bryce Cotton. So if you have like one or two guys who are going to be your decision makers, they’re going to have the ball, they’re going to be your impact players. How do you think in now again, like building that connectivity, stretching your team around those guys and especially knowing that you like to run the flex, like how you thought about offense with your best players?

Trevor Gleeson: 9:23

Couple of things there. I wanted my best players to shoot the ball the most. It was coming up with an offense and we can get into the flex a little bit later if you want. But the key elements are you want your first, second and third best players to shoot the ball most often. You don’t want your worst offensive player to shoot 10 shots a game unless they’re layups or in the dunkers pot. So that was number one and getting the element what’s a good shot selection and what’s for him and what’s a good shot selection for someone else, probably not as talented.

Trevor Gleeson: 9:51

So now I’m thinking okay, the defense are going to try and take that away. So if I got Bryce Cotton, for example, in a pick and roll, they’re most likely going to blitz him or a hard show. So now I’ve got to put my other pieces where I can get damage done. So I want to have an outlet pass. I might want to have a perimeter guy opposite him, so they have a long rotation. And that’s the beauty I find is great for coaching, because you can play around with the chess pieces to put your pieces where. When that happens, don’t be surprised. They’re going to trap your best player.

Dan Krikorian: 10:25

That’s going to happen and you want to put him in environments where you can make good decisions and it’s harder for the defense to recover from that Circle him back for a second spoiler alert but we might get back to flex later in the show but wanted to talk about the war games, the end of game situations and talking about your players and putting them in those situations, but also you and your staff and, I guess, the flow of communication and all that during those key crunch time moments. I mean you played in a lot of big time games, obviously winning five titles, and all that where it’s heated, there’s a lot of pressure on the line and decisions need to be made quickly, and how you and your staff set up before the game so that when you got to those key moments, you were able to communicate whatever needed to be done.

Trevor Gleeson: 11:12

Yeah, we would have a lot of plays at the end of the game and I’ll just talk offensively At a most shootarounds when we run through the plays skeleton with no defense, just so the players knew what the play was. We had one play for eight years. I never got to run it Because it was for my left-handed point guard with two seconds to go and he reminds me all the time that it was 100%, never failed, but we never used it. So everybody out of that play knew who the play was for. So we had another one where we flashed the guy at the elbow from the side out of bounce and we made sure we threw the ball a lob in the air, which is a little bit risky, but most guys defended the ball, turn and watch and when that happens we’re looking for a backdoor play and I didn’t need a time out for that. The players knew it was number three. That was a play. We knew exactly what we’d done because we went through training. We said what kind of pass did we want it? We want it thrown up high, we want it as soon as the ball were moving and those things that you can work on the details in practice. So when the game time comes again, the guys don’t have to think and they’re full of confidence to execute the plays down the stretch.

Trevor Gleeson: 12:29

And at practices, most of the time I would let the coaches coach the team when we were scrimmaging each other. So two assistant coaches, one each side, and we would play for four minutes or five minutes and if the game went down to the line they had one time out each and I thought that was good development for them as well, and they couldn’t use any of my plays. They had to come up with their own plays and then they get the time out. See how the players go to a coach in the last two minutes and I’m sitting out watching them. Who’s talking behind the time out, who’s paying attention, who comes out on the floor and executes All those things are important when it’s got 14,000 fans screaming and there’s loud music and the referees are cheating you know, all that kind of stuff is important and I think if you do that on a regular basis, when it comes down to crunch time, the players are a little bit more comfortable and confident they can execute.

Dan Krikorian: 13:24

I know it’s easier to talk about on a podcast than actually in the actual game and for you being in so many big games over the year, were there other coaches? You studied people, you talked to mentors, you had that helped you in that aspect of the game.

Trevor Gleeson: 13:37

Yeah, I got one over here in America, coach Mo McCown, and Mo has retired now. He coached in the NBA long 15-year assistant coach. He was a head coach for a little bit. He was a assistant coach on the Stan Elba Coached US basketball team when the strike was on.

Trevor Gleeson: 13:54

And I rang him up one day and I was very young in my coaching career and I said, coach, I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. We’re losing all these close games. I’m running these plays and the dish not going. And he said something to me that stays with me today your job as a coach is to get your player a shot. It’s their job to make the shot. If you run the play and he’s open and gets a good look, you’ve done your job. Don’t sweat if the ball goes in or not. They’re competitive. They wanted to go in but don’t sweat on. And that kind of released the pressure. And then as soon as I understood I was living in dying by every result of that shot, I relaxed a little bit and the players knew it, so I drew up and play and they would go out and, lo and behold, we started making and started executing. And, yeah, it was some timely advice and something I still hold on to today.

Dan Krikorian: 14:47

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Patrick Carney: 15:56

And if we go back to the war games when you’re talking through these situations, no, on that, hey, maybe we’re gonna be super big, maybe we’re gonna be super small. How you thought about this may be giving up mismatches on the defensive end, whether it’s a guard or a big, and just what you, as a coaching staff, discuss and then try to rehearse through in these Situations where it’s not again ideal rosters, an ideal starting lineup, and you’re playing against some mismatches on the defensive end.

Trevor Gleeson: 16:20

When I first started I was more of an offensive coach and like speed and go through, and then I kind of developed. But I want to win more games. Now I got to be a defensive coach so I kind of flipped that. So we had principles, values and principles and behaviors that were non-negotiable on the defensive end and I was very blessed to have a few elite defenders and sometimes they would be unorthodox, orthodox of what they’re doing, but I certainly gave them creativity to find out how they want to stop and how we’re gonna support that.

Trevor Gleeson: 16:51

So we’re walking through maybe a set play that the other opposition runs and I would ask them how do you want to defend it? If it’s not too far away from our philosophy and our values, that I’ll say, okay, well, that’s the way we’re gonna do it. Now. I had my way of doing it in the back pocket ready to use just in case, but I wanted to give the players the opportunity to express themselves and now I back them in. So if they said, hey, listen, I want to send this player left or I want to trap him and I’ll rotate out and we’ll get our rotation right, okay, now you got to do it. I’m gonna hold your accountable to do it now. That doesn’t work and we’re gonna go back to my way of doing it and if you can’t, I got to find someone who can do it. But you know, I was very blessed to have some great defensive Mines and IQ and use that to the most advantage I could what were your behaviors or non-negotiables?

Patrick Carney: 17:47

on the defensive end.

Trevor Gleeson: 17:48

Well, there’s really three things that we talked about. No transition you know you’re not gonna win a game if you keep on giving up transition points. And that starts on the shot. You know the. If you’re taking predictable shots, you can balance the floor. You can have that, you’re playing the right way offensively. If you’ve got someone wild and just taking shots, at the end of the day you get leakouts. Right, there’s leakouts happening, there’s easy points given. So that was our philosophy of no transition.

Trevor Gleeson: 18:17

We were big on that. We had some hard rules and we led the league in offensive rebounding. We weren’t just a run back team, we were crashing. We had three and a half guys crashing the glass and then our two guard was back I didn’t care if he got an offensive rebound all year and that started our defense and the guard could pick the ball up in the back Court, slow it down and then we building our defense out from that and Obviously you know you run them off the three-point line and you live them with the long two. If you get beaten by a long two, maybe it’s just not your night over the course of a season. You know you’re gonna win more times than not if you’re working on your defensive transition and your three-point defense.

Dan Krikorian: 18:57

You mentioned, you became more of a defensive coach later on, but you do have a terrific reputation. It has an offensive mind. Everywhere you’ve been and I also know you study the game deeply, look at past teams all over the place and I wonder when you’re thinking about offense, you’re studying other teams that you respect? What really stands out to you about where those great teams that you try to bring to yours and that’s a big thing in fever basketball and it just happened at the World Cup.

Trevor Gleeson: 19:26

You know, germany won the World Cup and you look down their roster and they got. You know, schroeder, they got the guys in Orlando not overly talented, but they team that played together the best, they played as one. That’s the element that I was always looking for. We wanted to be unselfish and we talked about Bryce Cotton before and one of the finals that stood out to me was a tied score with two minutes to go and Bryce was coming down on a three on two fast break and Everybody in the whole arena Thought that Bryce had come down to shoot the ball because he’s the best player, is their leading scorer. He drove in and threw the ball out to the corner to our point guard. That’s not a very good shooter for him to throw that ball out and have trust that’s the element of team playing basketball fine in the right decision and he passed that ball in our point guard, damian Martin, knock that down in front of the opposition bench to put his three points up With two minutes to go.

Trevor Gleeson: 20:28

This is the final. You don’t get more pressure than this situation and that just breeds confidence Throughout the team. If you’ve got your best player is willing to make the extra pass to help your teammate get better. Everybody buys on that and then it’s contagious when you’re paying the extra pass and it’s nothing better as A group, when you know you’re open, you’re gonna get the ball, because then you got a team working in camaraderie out there. You’re working, is unselfish out there and it’s a fun place to play. Now he might have missed the shot, but we might have got an offensive rebound, but that was the right play. So always encourage them to make the right play and to share the basketball, and when you do that, good things gonna happen.

Dan Krikorian: 21:14

Coach, this has been awesome so far. Thanks for your thoughts there. We want to shift now to a segment on the show we call start, sub or sit, and so for those maybe listen for the first time we will give you three different options. Around a topic asked you to start one, sub one and sit one, and then we will discuss from there. So, coach, if you’re ready, we’ll dive into this first one.

Trevor Gleeson: 21:33

Okay, let’s go.

Dan Krikorian: 21:34

So, as mentioned earlier, we might dive a little bit into the flex offense, which you’re well known for, and so we want to ask for this first, start, sub, sit, flex switch counters. So when you were facing teams that we’re gonna switch Either the pin or that flex screen action, here’s three different counters that you would maybe potentially do that would help with that switch. So start, sub or sit. Option one is setting a backside flare instead of a pin down, so turning the pin into maybe a flare from the flex screener. Option two is go right into a dribble handoff after the pin. Or option three is Slipping all the action, you know, maybe bouncing the shooter back off and then slipping the pin, just slipping everything to counter those switches. So start, sub, sip, those three options.

Trevor Gleeson: 22:24

Well, I like the backside action. We used to call that the hammer and we ran that a lot with the back screen and especially with your best player. They don’t want to switch off your best player. So a lot of those times, even your best player coming off the back pick, they’ll get send two players to him and then you’ll get the guy slipping after setting the back pick to the basket for an open Layup. We used to use that just to loosen up the defense a little bit out of that. So that was always a good option, especially with the spacing of the flex options, and allowed that avenue to happen.

Trevor Gleeson: 22:59

So certainly with the start the dribble handoff wasn’t real, that was a pressure release. We used the pressure release when we couldn’t enter the ball on the cross court pass. That was just a different entry to get us into the play. And the slipping we always liked the five screening for the two and look for the five man slipping out of that. Or back pick, as I mentioned before, an alley you for all those combinations where you got the two different size guards defending you. I don’t know if I started.

Dan Krikorian: 23:29

Sub will sit any of those Actually would love to ask I believe was your start which is that kind of backside action, the flair, back screen action and maybe zooming out of all of this and well known for the flex and running it and all the counters and Going back to maybe end of game stuff when you would maybe save this? Or was this a call? Was this a read? You know when you might use these counters against you know good teams 100% news.

Trevor Gleeson: 23:58

It against good teams and usually good teams by good coaches, very smart coaches. So I would refrain from using that in the first half. I would keep that in the back pocket to use late in the third quarter. So they didn’t have time and I’d learned that early that I go out there and I want to win the first course. It will. Now I’ve used all my ammunition. What am I going to use now?

Trevor Gleeson: 24:20

Because great coaches will make adjustments at half time, quarter time, three-quarter time and If you give them enough time, they’re going to come up with a solution. So those kind of plays Okay, let’s get through it, let’s get through to the second side, let’s go through to different options and then later in the game I’d come back and use that because the team or the opposite didn’t have time to make adjustments or One of the things. The game got so tight and normally when the game gets tight, when the tight scores or one or two Possessions, the defense really stays to their man. They don’t have the team defense of. You know your shell concept behind the ball. It’s I’ll stay with my man and that’s when it kind of loosens up as well that you get the flex cut open Because they’re too scared to leave their man.

Patrick Carney: 25:09

You’re talking about your non negotiables and your transition defense that it starts with generating predictable shots. I know there’s a lot of benefits of the flex, but was that? One of the things you liked about flex is that it gave you predictable shots.

Trevor Gleeson: 25:21

How I started with the flex I really used is a transition. Offensive transition used to get Spacing, get my center run into the rim and then spread in the court and it kind of developed after that. Around that time I started use Argentina I think they rent third in the World Cup in 2002 and I think they won the gold medal 2004 and he got you know, please, out there, you know, and they run a lot of flex. I said, oh, that’s a really good option. So I get upset when I was coaching defense that I’ll give a layup up. So I made a mistake defensively, I give a layup and I was looking at my offense those times and I said, okay, if the defense makers a mistake on my offense, I’m getting an open 15 foot jumper. I said, well, I don’t want an open 15 foot jump, I want to get a layup so that we had more cutters to the basket Enabled that loosen it up.

Trevor Gleeson: 26:14

And it was really good for us to work Five guys playing together and creating a shot for each other. That’s what I loved about it and Created spacing because you got your pin down, you got your back pick and then you got your options out of that of you know, dribble, hand off with staggered screens and you got some camouflage stuff that you can use out there as well. But out of that it was five guys playing together and normally you would get a predictable shot and that’s when you go. Okay, this is where I got a crash. This is when I got to get back. It’s when you get a player that’s kind of breaks, plays all the time we used to call it short circuit our offense and goes off solo, and then you’re out of sync and you got four players on one side of the floor and a shock goes up and you got no balance and they get a run out. That’s when I would get said hey, that’s not what we’re doing here. The defensive transition starts with the shot attempt.

Dan Krikorian: 27:10

I wonder, now that you know being in the NBA, that same concept of trying to get rim pressure all the time probably comes more from picking rolls or downhill drives, but how you still, you know, I guess, think about or delay action to having those aggressive cuts at the NBA level now, even though you’re not running flex all the time.

Trevor Gleeson: 27:29

I would love to have something like that in the NBA. I think it really suits the defensive three. Second rule over here that you get in cutters and clearing out. Actually I coached in the CBA when I first came over to America in 2002 and I ran some shuffle and that’s the Lindsey Gays, that iconic coach over Australia, that ran it for years. Andrew Gays at the international basketballers might know that ran it. They would get layups all the time, they get alleyoops and it used to drive me crazy.

Trevor Gleeson: 27:58

But I love the ball movement, the unselfishness and if the defense does make a mistake it’s a layup or a dunk and that’s something here in the NBA. There’s a lot of movement with the ball. You got to have the ball in your hands. So a lot of these players coming here don’t know how to move without the ball. They stand in the corner and wait for the three to cut the ball. To come to shoot the three or even getting players to cut through the slot is an issue sometimes In more FIBA and especially Europe basketball. There’s a lot of ball movement, a lot of cutters, a lot of move and pieces because they don’t have the individual talent that the NBA guys do have on their team, so I think there’s a place for it. Hopefully I’ll be here long enough I can slip a couple of plays in and let it grow from there. Who knows?

Patrick Carney: 28:48

With cutting and dealing with. You know, maybe when you brought a new guy in and trying to teach the flex, but wasn’t a good instinctual cutter. And now you said in the NBA maybe not everyone’s used to playing off the ball what’s the most important aspect that you try to teach or help the player understand when becoming a good cutter?

Trevor Gleeson: 29:04

And that’s the unselfish part you got to sell. We had a number of players that weren’t good cutters because they what’s in it. For me, that’s the current climate of plays and what’s in it why should I do that for? And it’s where you’re selling the unselfishness of the team. If you cut this opportunity, it’s going to create maybe two defenders with you and we’re pretty much.

Trevor Gleeson: 29:25

If the big fellas don’t roll to the rim, you know that’s a cut. The rolls to the rim they’re doing a short roll trying to get the ball. So, no, we used to call it a roll assist or a cut assist. So if you’re rolling and cutting, you can do that five, six times and we score out of that and we praise that and we encourage that that. Hey, this guy here was so unselfish, he made five cuts and Bryce Cotton got eight points out of that.

Trevor Gleeson: 29:52

No, that’s not going to turn up on the stats sheet, but that helps us win games. You just got to find out what’s to be in. You know, in our time it’s the same as the timing and the cutting and the angles are very important. It’s so easy just to stay in the corner and get ready to shoot the ball and hope that your man helps on the drive and then you’re open for a three. I think the fever in international game is a little bit more dynamic with that and takes a little bit longer to understand. But once you understand it you can get five guys beat a team much more talented than you, as we’ve seen in the World Cup. The last two, I think Germany and Serbia won before it. There’s some track records of success with that.

Dan Krikorian: 30:35

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Patrick Carney: 31:11

Slash Slapping Glass today, moving along to our last Start Subberset for you, this one has to do with coaching and a crisis. I’ll give you three options. Which one would, in your opinion, would be the most important when coaching your team through a crisis. Is it brutal honesty, ruthless decisions or knowing your coaching controllables?

Trevor Gleeson: 31:33

You have to be honest. That’s one of my points in there. You have to be honest and I think the players respect you for that. You can’t have an agenda out there. That’s one of the things I think the professional players don’t like, but they respect it and then they come to terms. When you’re being brutally honest with them, you’re not trying to harm. When you’re being honest, you don’t want to demean them. You’re trying to get the best option for your team and when the crisis comes, sometimes you’ve got to be brutally honest and hate. You’re not working hard enough. Oh, yes, I am coach. I said no, I hear some film for you. Have a look at this. You know you’re dying on screens. You’re not sprinting back, you’re jogging back on defense and having that brutal conversation might be hard, but in the long run it’s going to help your team and help you.

Patrick Carney: 32:20

I’d like to follow up with decision making in these times of crisis, how it changes. When, let’s say, things are going well, you’re winning games, and now it’s kind of like in this wartime decisions. What changes between how you make decisions and these good, bad times?

Trevor Gleeson: 32:36

Yeah, your principles should never change whatsoever. You can’t flip and flop those things and that you know your tactics. You might change your tactics, just it’s not working. We’ve got to change our defense. You know, and you’re looking, you’re on the clarity as a coach. You’re on the clarity through a crisis. Two things you’ve got to do through crisis is be up. You’re the leader. You’ve got to step up to the plate, you’ve got to be seen and you’ve got to have clarity of vision. You know that clarity of vision is going to give your team confidence that you can get through this.

Trevor Gleeson: 33:07

And if I just tell you a quick little story, I remember we started one year really well, like it was like 11 and four. We started really well and then we went through this period, we had two and 10. So we’re close to 500 and everyone’s screaming out suck the import, get another import. You know, because we only had two imports, then you can have three. And we evaluated everything. We were just injured, we were banged up and we had to change some strategy out there because it wasn’t suitin’ this team, even though last year was successful, this team, it wasn’t suitin’.

Trevor Gleeson: 33:42

But the clarity of vision says hey, we’re not changing imports. I’m playing, I’m backin’ our guys in. This is the team guys that we’re going to turn around with instead of having the players have been decided. If I’m going to get cut, I’m going to get released. It’s the negative feeling and being honest and then backing your team in. We were lucky to turn that around and we finished up winning the championship with the same roster and only two in ports in that year. So really having that clarity of vision and being held accountable, you’re a leader. When Christ is here, you’ve got to be in front. You’ve got to be seen, visible. You can’t go on holidays or give it to somebody else.

Dan Krikorian: 34:22

You’ve got to step up to the plate, zoom in out for a second. I know that outside of coaching you also speak to organizations, businesses, about this stuff, about leadership, and I wonder what it is that you feel coaching and athletics, sports, the leadership in our profession, helps what you talk about. That translates to an outside business or to an organization when you go in and speak.

Trevor Gleeson: 34:46

I really got into that last year. I think it was 10 or 12 corporate events last year and something I really enjoyed and there’s common themes that was the communication. How does one side of the research talk to the development? How do they talk to each other? How does the financial? That’s combative.

Trevor Gleeson: 35:07

A lot of the companies are combative. So we can’t do that in sport. If you’re combative, it’s going to be. You’re not working as one and it’s really talking about our culture, so you can let the cream rise to the top in sports. That’s what we want to do. We want the best players to be the best. We want to support them and encourage them.

Trevor Gleeson: 35:26

And how do you do that in that environment with your behaviors and your values? And a lot transcends through professional sports More than I thought actually into the business world and all that’s wrapped in your communication. If you haven’t got a good communication, I can’t get on. My best player that was maybe whore in defensive transition with two minutes to go or 15,000 people watching. I’ve got to have that trust and belief and build up that. I can be brutally honest in that 30 seconds. Hey, listen, you got to get your ass back instead of starting a heated conversation If you don’t have that relationship before the event. And it’s the same. I’m not trying to hurt you, I’m not trying to be little, I’m trying to make you better, for us to be successful.

Trevor Gleeson: 36:15

And a lot of businesses throw it under the rug. A lot of businesses, you’ll have people not staying in the lane trying to do someone else’s job. You know, do your job the best that you can. If you can do your job the best that you can, you’re going to get another opportunity. The most important job that you have is the one right now. So be the best in that. Other people will see that. Then they’ll give you an opportunity to be a manager. Then they’ll give you an opportunity to be a head coach. Then you’ll get that opportunity. But if you’re trying to be a head coach where your assistant coach and you’re undermining, you’re never going to be successful in the coaching business or business.

Dan Krikorian: 36:54

One quick follow up to that communication. You mentioned how important it is, I wonder, for you, going from so many years as a head coach and now back as an assistant, if your communication style has changed now that you’re in a different role, and what that looks like.

Trevor Gleeson: 37:09

Yeah, it was one of the hardest things I’ve done, coaching for 15 years head coach in Australia, then go to Nick Nurse’s coaching philosophy, so that was hard, just a different philosophy. And then communication, because you’re not talking as much collectively as the team. And now it’s really picking my spots that I can talk either individually to the players or to coach. I’m with Doc Rivers now and Doc’s very, very smart and very tuned into the game, so I don’t have to give him long phrases, I can just say one or two words and when he looks at you and yeah, yeah, okay, we got just to trigger a point off. So it’s not how I can talk, it’s how I can communicate. Same thing with the players.

Trevor Gleeson: 37:50

There was one player we had a sports psychologist come down to sit on the bench and one of our players. I would say, hey, listen, you got to set this screen and then you got to get this screen. And then, when that go and get and he comes to me after the game, I said why are you telling him all that information? He doesn’t comprehend that. You just have to keep it simple. I said okay, so he keeps it simple. I said, hey, chuck, I need you to get the next five rebound Bang. Keep it simple and true enough he’d get out there and get the basketball. Well, I want you to set screens on Bryce Cotton. So he come down and drag and said he didn’t need all that information. All that information is here was too much, and then he stopped doing it. So it’s really knowing your players or what you can talk to, and you’ll have another player that wants to know every detail. Why am I doing this? Why am I? And it’s building those relationships again.

Patrick Carney: 38:46

Coach. I just have one last question about coaching in a crisis and it has to do with goals and what the role maybe goal setting at the beginning of the season has and plays within a crisis, and maybe how you adjust goals and obviously no one had the goal like let’s go two and 10 at one point in the season so how that can help or hinder maybe when you’re in this crisis and how you have to think about goals.

Trevor Gleeson: 39:07

Even the crisis in the quarters in the game, you know let’s win the next quarter. And even when you’re on a poor team, when I first came in the CBL, I was on a team that was eight and 23. And I came in to coach the last 15 games and it was we didn’t have the talent. So it was okay, how can I get these guys competitive? And it was let’s win the next quarter. And then we won one game. We won three quarters but still lost. We didn’t learn how to win. Yet I said, guys, it was outstanding, we won three quarters, we just have to keep persevering. And then all of a sudden we started turning around and we finished up going seven and eight out of those 15 games. And it was just having those smaller accountable goals.

Trevor Gleeson: 39:47

But then if you’re talking to the season and you got a chance to win the championship we always talked about, we want to finish in the top two. You know some things happen. That you want to make the finals. Yes, we want to be in a position. Obviously we want to be number one. But sometimes that’s hard, with injuries, with travel, with you know some might happen.

Trevor Gleeson: 40:05

So we said the top two will give us the best chance and that kind of alleviated the pressure of the players that felt, oh, we got to finish first, we’ve got to finish first, and they’re their tense. Then it gave them a little bit of lead way of maybe we’re sitting in third. We still got that challenge. Get you know the fourth or, and now, if you’re not going well, you got to put it down, say, okay, that’s still our goal. Now we just got to get in the top six. Right, that’s still a goal. We want to get there. But let’s get the first step. Let’s get the first step, and then you can build it and keep on changing your goals to the situation.

Dan Krikorian: 40:38

Coach, you’re off the start sub or sit hot seat. Thanks for playing that game with us. That was a lot of fun, coach, we got one last question for you as we close the show, before we do. We really appreciate you coming on today. Thanks for being so open with all your thoughts. This was really enjoyable for us, so thank you.

Trevor Gleeson: 40:53

No worries, I’ve enjoyed it too, so far.

Dan Krikorian: 40:57

Coach. Our last question that we asked all the guests is what’s the best investment that you’ve made in your career as a coach?

Trevor Gleeson: 41:04

But our question has been the education. Well, I was a young 18 year old and I’m showing my age now. We had VHS tapes, video tapes. I would drive three hours to pick two new tapes up in Melbourne, australia, and it was just that constant education. And today I still do the same. I love going to clinics and camps, just if I can get one nugget. I love going to watch other coaches now in different sports in Australia it’s a football or cricket, rugby just to see how the coaches communicate. So I love going to be able to see that and say how do they deal with this situation? Or this coach has these guys eaten out of his hands and what a great communicator he is. And I really enjoy that aspect as I’m probably in the twilight of my coaching career that’s still ongoing to this day of the education that’s really helped me be a better coach.

Dan Krikorian: 42:08

It’s always fun to have a guest on that comes from a offensive prowess background. For us there’s always these interesting doorways that we can open up and go down, and a pleasure having him on. He’s got such a unique journey, coaching as a head coach for so long, highly decorated in the MBL5, mbl titles, now in the NBA, so great having him on today. Yeah, it was a lot of fun.

Patrick Carney: 42:32

I appreciate his thoughts. I mean doing our research. We’re really excited in this conversation just hearing him talk in a number of subjects. I mean I think in our prep that was maybe one of the harder points Just where do we want to start, whether it’s the flex or leadership. But ultimately I’m happy where we ended up with kind of preparing to win close games and unexpected moments, because in our prep we had heard him talk about his war games. I mean I think that was enough to kind of keep our interests and really dive into that and just how we thought about it and use those games to not only prepare for end of game situations. But I like to discuss end of game situations with big line of small lineups your starters, not in your best guys out.

Dan Krikorian: 43:09

Yeah, and you know credit to you on I think you’re the one you found him talking about the war games somewhere and I think when we started to talk about it ourselves, it was relevant to both of our situations too, on both of our teams of injuries and sometimes misfit lineups or you’re playing a team that plays funky, or you know all those things that come up, and it’s, I think, the mark of obviously a great team and a great coach that you’re prepared for those moments and you can still compete and be in games even when things are not perfect. And I think that what we want to get to him with him was how he thought about it, got to it, practiced it.

Patrick Carney: 43:44

Kick it back to you, though on some first early thoughts he brought it up and you followed up with it too when he mentioned preparing for one of our starters is out and he talked about you know, are we going to play.

Patrick Carney: 43:55

I mean he went kind of out of this worrying about are we going to start our six man or who to bring off the bench or you know how to again play with these misfit lineups, and I really like that. Just again. It kind of brought me back to our conversation with Stan Ben-Gunny just how you think about maybe your best players, your best decision makers and how the other pieces need to fit. And he mentioned connectivity and what he used the war games through to kind of build that connectivity, give them some direction. But you know I liked that conversation and how it kind of. Then we got into the connectivity and just how he thought about these are strengths we got to make sure. You know. He said like he said, if they’re going to bullets, bryce Cotton, we got to make sure that we have ways to punish them elsewhere and how those guys fit around teams taking away, in this case, cotton strengths.

Dan Krikorian: 44:38

Yeah, and the Stan Ben-Gunny podcast I know has done really well because it had so many nuggets in there, and one of the things I think that you and I have heard from other coaches back about that was his thoughts, stan Ben-Gunny. Now I’m talking about his thoughts on the players around. Your best players and what you know have to be a low turnover guys, low maintenance players and things like that. And I think that kind of tied into what Gleason was saying too of you know, just not starting your sixth man just because, but really who would fit in these alternate lineup situations as well, I think was a good point. He also just had a quote that I wrote down that I really liked was bringing a guy in five minutes afterwards when the heat is out of the game, and I saw it was a good way to put it and it’s so true there’s some players that are better coming in after a few minutes when I mean you know you played, you coached, the first four or five minutes.

Dan Krikorian: 45:27

Especially big games, there’s just a lot of heat in that first part of the game and emotions are high.

Dan Krikorian: 45:33

Players are nervous. You know everybody’s on their P’s and Q’s as far as all the details of the tack, all that stuff, and some players are better at sitting and watching for a few minutes letting the game naturally take its flow and then inserting a guy that is either a scorer or just they’re better off the bench, and this is an early miss for me. I actually would have loved to have asked him and I didn’t, I just more about like that decision, what kind of players that you put in there. And then also, I think that a part when he talked about communication later is when you don’t start your sixth man and they know the other players injured is. You know that can be tricky, depending on your relationship with that player or them thinking well, why am I not starting? And that would be something I would have just loved to have asked him as the communication piece to your team and to the players as to why you’re making those decisions.

Patrick Carney: 46:23

He raised another good point too with the six man kind of conversation that if he inserted the six man in the starting line he could potentially be creating two problems that one, maybe the six man, like you said, isn’t a good starter, and then, second, you’re taking away from your bench, versus if he just brings the seventh, eight to ever man into the starting position, you’re just maybe creating maybe one fire you got to solve with now this new starting lineup and how they play together.

Dan Krikorian: 46:50

And so true, right, I mean it’s so important, the role of your bench obviously so important, but like having someone that you know can come in and still provide an offensive punch is such a luxury and something that you need. And then, like you mentioned, if all of a sudden you take that person off the bench, putting the lineup, they’re not as good, and then when you do go to your bench you’re not going to get anything. Could be a double problem. Yeah, where do we go now? Yeah, exactly.

Dan Krikorian: 47:12

So moving to start subverset, two fun ones for us the leadership stuff, which let’s get to in a second, which was fun to research and then talk about with him. But then, with having coach Khaleeson, he’s just so well known for flex and we had to ask him at some point about it and what we thought might be interesting is something we haven’t heard him talk or speak about too much, or just switching counters and the backside flare, the dribble handoff after the pin and all the slips were just three things we’ve seen from him on film or heard him talk about as far as ways that they might counter, and so I’ll kick it back to you. Anything interesting. That first one.

Patrick Carney: 47:49

The continued level of fair we have with flares, I think, whether it’s out of the ladies or anything. But, like he said, that was his start, and not only. You know, he loved to flare for his best player, because they’re probably going to panic and send two. So now the guy flaring is open on the slip. That’s what stood out to me. I mean he mentioned you had the DHO. They use more as the release.

Patrick Carney: 48:10

And then of course you know those slip screens you know I heard him talk to and he mentioned the day as well when they said, like that five to flex screen and if they’re going to switch it, you know then they’re going to give up a seal, potentially at the rim.

Patrick Carney: 48:23

Just hearing his thoughts on the flex, and then I, like you know, as we kind of followed up the conversation, got into how he came to it when he mentioned Argentina, running their kind of Argentina break. That we’ve looked at too, which is more or less also a flex action and how smart it is. And we’ve talked about too whether it’s the shuffle, just initiating with the rim cut your offense and just like the pressure, one bills on the defense and maybe, like you said, you get a layup, but then how the offense can kind of build out of there, just by hopefully contracting the defense right away, protect the rim and then building out. You know we had a nice film session with coach Pannon and his five out. He kept stressing over and over just the importance of like a hard rim cut off of kind of that wide pin to initiate his five out every time. For me it was just another opportunity to reinforce just like the importance of like a hard rim cut to start your offense.

Dan Krikorian: 49:14

Yeah, and you’ve talked about Ryan Pannon from Alabama, though it’s not familiar. We did a whole five out series with him and, like you mentioned, he was so big on that first initial cut and then also made me think of coach Mark Albackov with running his kind of modern shuffle offense. He also talked about an early offense having an action that if the defense screws it up it’s a layup, and I know coach Gleason has talked about that as well too. With the flexes, 90% of the time they’re not going to get that layup, but they might once or twice the game, but really it’s going to loosen. Or he talked about flatten the defense and allow you to then flow into the other parts of it where the defense is chasing, and I’m with you.

Dan Krikorian: 49:52

I took away a couple of things, but one was that it was developed from his want to have nice spacing and transition, wanting to get his big to run to the rim, and then from there it was okay, what do we do after we get the corners flattened and we get the big to the rim? What can we flow into? And he talked about that’s kind of where it started. And then the other point that I liked was that when we talked about when you might run these counters.

Dan Krikorian: 50:17

I asked him about saving stuff and he brought up these little tweaks and counters waiting until maybe the third quarter and or fourth, when good coach can’t adjust and make those adjustments. I thought that was a nice little nugget as far as just some game strategy, game theory, where you guys coach, you got all these counters you like, but when do you run them? And I think that’s every game is different, where if you’re losing in the first half and you need to maybe get some baskets, maybe you need to pull some stuff out earlier, versus if your team can just kind of run your stuff and generate offense, maybe you save some stuff for later. So I also took that out just kind of some game strategy.

Patrick Carney: 50:53

I like his thoughts on kind of the gamesmanship of coaching as well. Yeah, moving to our last start subset, we talked about leadership and crisis Again, another one of our research on him. We know he asked him a great question to. He does speaking for businesses and just teaching leadership. So to throw it to you just your early takeaways or your thoughts on our leadership during the crisis this one.

Dan Krikorian: 51:14

We had a Spanish style where I think we just did the start and that was it. So it’s okay, still was awesome, but his start, I believe, was the brutal honesty was his start and, going back to what you just asked me, and like what I asked him to was, he does do this now where he’s taking lessons in leadership from coaching and speaking and always interesting going from the athletics world to the business world and what he talks about with teams, and he mentioned the communication, the trust, and part of that is the brutal honesty and being able to communicate, whether it’s across platforms, in a business or, like you talked about communicating with players, and I think that was interesting. The other thing at the very end to that I liked was hearing him talk about the differences in communication style and being honest, going from head coach to now an assistant and just how he still tries to make that impact when you’re not you know the guy out in front all the time.

Patrick Carney: 52:12

I think was interesting as well when I followed up about asking about his decision-making and how it may or may not change, and he raised some good points that of course, you can maybe change some things tactically on the court, but that your principles you’re non-negotiable, of course should never change.

Patrick Carney: 52:28

But then also the importance of a clarity of vision, stepping up as the leader and kind of giving them a clear vision, and I thought then that bled into maybe then giving them smaller goals. Okay, we set these preseason goals and now maybe everyone’s a little bit shaken. We’re in this losing streak and of course it’s like all right, well, are we going to make the playoffs or whatever the goal may be, but then just providing them a way out, kind of a light, like okay, you mentioned, with bad teams, we’re just winning quarters. Coach Van Gundy talked about let’s segment these next two weeks or these next five games and just try to have a winning record here. But giving these smaller steps that help you and your team get out of this crisis. Losing streak is obviously what we’re more or less referring to or talking about here.

Dan Krikorian: 53:13

Yeah, and I think you and I the basis of this question was not a what are a couple of nice leadership traits when things are going well and you’re winning and everybody likes each other, and that’s not really when leadership is needed as much, as opposed to going through five, six game losing streaks and players are at each other’s throats and practice and don’t like each other. That’s when you need it the most obviously, and I think that was the basis of our question and what he discusses a lot when we’ve heard him speak about well was that. And I think, going back to the honesty, the decisions and the coaching controlables are all things we’ve heard him talk about before and mentioned and kind of dive into those was great to hear. You know, maybe, as we close up here.

Patrick Carney: 53:53

That was one of my misses. I know he probably talked about it too, with having a clarity of vision and communication. But what are his coaching controlables? I wish I kind of followed up more and asked him about that.

Dan Krikorian: 54:05

Yeah, and I think you took the term from him somewhere. Ruthless decisions, right? Yeah, that’s a very specific statement. Ruthless decisions like what that?

Patrick Carney: 54:13

is yeah, I just didn’t want any to say that one of the ruthless ones, yeah.

Dan Krikorian: 54:17

Right, right. Well, yeah, I kind of gave a little bit of my miss. I know you just did there, but was there anything else as far as misses or stuff? You could have went deeper on, you know another one with the flex conversation.

Patrick Carney: 54:30

We talked about switching and the thought was, maybe switching can give the offense trouble. But I would have liked to follow it up too with you know what other defenses or defensive characteristics maybe bog down his flex and give the flex trouble when he was running it.

Dan Krikorian: 54:45

I also just add one more miss for me was I think we didn’t want to go way, way, way too long and tactical on the flex stuff, but I could have went deeper on a lot of different parts of it. One of them is just for me is always the teaching of the finishing on the flex cut, because even though it is a layup so like in delay or back cuts you’re getting a layup where it’s like rim facing, where the guy’s going at the rim and it’s a more, I guess, natural. You’re going to the rim, yeah, finish. You know that flex cut they’re going under the basket and away from it and I think it does require development and footwork and angles, like, do you break your feet down and post? Do you catch and finish with like a reverse layup? Maybe I could have should have asked him about that a little bit deeper, because I think it is, even though it is a layup, it is a little bit more unique than some of those other cuts.