Slappin’ Glass sits down this week with the Head Coach of Portland MBB, Shantay Legans! In this highly entertaining conversation the trio dive into Coach Legans’ thoughts on coaching with an edge, teams becoming an extension of yourself, and explore the “Deep” BLOB defense, along with protecting foul-prone players during the always fun “Start, Sub, or Sit?!”
Transcript
Shantay Legans 00:00
Figuring out that edge was hard to do, especially my first couple of years. You have 15 guys on the team, it’s 200 minutes and all they care about is minutes. And if they’re playing or not. And so I never thought of it like that as an assistant. I was like, hey, let’s get the guys hyped up. They’re good. I’m not worried about where they’re at right now. Obviously, mentally, I’m going to say keep being ready as an assistant coach, but as a head coach, no one’s sitting at your dinner table anymore. No, I had to drive a van. No one’s in my vans anymore. I’m like, dang, I’m self-howing this thing. What’s going on?
Dan 00:34
I’m Dan Krikorian and welcome to Slappin’ Glass, exploring basketball’s best ideas, strategies, and coaches from around the world. Today, we’re excited to welcome University of Portland men’s basketball head coach, Shantay Legans. Coach Legns is here today to discuss coaching with an edge and teams becoming an extension of yourself. Today we talk, protecting foul-prone players and the intricacies of trapping and zoning baseline out of bounds during the always fun start, sub, or sit. When coaches ask us what our favorite go-to software we’re using this season is, the answer is simple, just play. And now, please enjoy our conversation with Coach Shantay Leggins. Coach, we wanted to start with this today, and that’s the overall concept of teams becoming an extension of the coach. And some of the things that we’ve heard from people in your circle when you were doing our research and talking about this conversation today is that your teams are an extension of you, and that your teams play like how you coach, and it’s an ultimate compliment obviously from someone. And I guess all the stuff that you would think about how a team becomes an extension of a coach when you start to think about that topic.
Shantay Legans 02:41
It’s important, it starts in practice a lot of the times, but it goes back to when I was a player. I was raised by a single mom. So my whole life, coaches were like father figures to me. So I would kind of adapt to how they were. And I’ve had some crazy coaches and I’ve had some laid back coaches. And my favorite coaches have always been the ones that have been really amped up, fired up, fighting for you. So I kind of took that persona on as a player. And then as a coach, it was secondhand, it was easy. And so you put so much into coaching and you want you guys to play emotion. You want them to have emotion. You want them to be able to control it. But sometimes you get out there as a player. When I was a player, it would be strictly full tilt the whole time, didn’t know how to slow down, didn’t know how to figure those things out. And then as you start maturing and getting older, you start figuring out this is how it’s working. And so as a coach, you want your team to see that. You want your team to play with that edge because a lot of the guys you go and recruit aren’t the top talent, top five, they’re not the top talented guys, but they have to play the chip on their shoulder. And I coach the same way. I coach with a chip on my shoulder. And I played with a chip on my shoulder. Being a 5’10”, it’s not like you’re out there doing a lot of things. So it gets mixed up with, they call it little men’s. And it gets caught up with that. It’s not that. It’s more of having just a little bit of attitude. The new thing is have some dog in you. I got some dog, Coach. That’s what they always tell you. But I want those guys to see that. That’s in me. And I’m going to fight for them as much as possible.
Dan 04:03
Going a little bit deeper on coaching with an edge, you having an edge, where do you feel like that bleeds into your program most? Is it on the floor intensity? Is it their commitment to weights or film? Could you go deeper on where you think that mostly bleeds into your program?
Shantay Legans 04:20
I think it leads in right in practice, especially in the film room and those things because you’re watching the film and film never lies to you guys. So it’s easy to see who’s playing with that type of emotion, what the bench looks like. We record the bench. Even if you’re not playing right now, you’re still with your guys. So it bleeds into that. When I was at Eastern Washington, it’s a funny story. I was watching us, we’re getting blasted by Montana. It was like we’re playing for first place. It was the first time in Eastern history we had a home game, we were all black and it was the first time we’ve ever done that and if we win, we’re going to be in first place. We got all that stuff and so we’re coaching and I’m watching it and we get beat by about 25 points at home. We ended up winning the league but you go and watch film and I’m sitting there with my hands in my pockets and the guy’s fiery on this and that. So I’m watching film and the guy I’m yelling at the whole time during film with the guys was myself. I said, look at that guy. I didn’t say it like that, but the players that played for me at that time, they still remember that rant. I went for like about 30 minutes about on myself. I’m sitting there, someone said, don’t wave your hands too much when you’re talking to the official. So you could just see me holding my hands and it’s just a story that the coaches tell. So you see a lot of that film and then it bleeds over into the game and then you just start playing that way. But that was the one time I see myself really just laid back on the sideline, not really getting hyped up with the guys and that just wasn’t me. I don’t know what it was, if it was a black uniforms, they were playing off for, I don’t know what it was, but it looked really bad on film and I was able to go at myself for 30 minutes about, look at that guy, he thinks he’s doing this, this, and this, even though the guys knew probably I was talking mostly about them.
Pat 05:57
Bringing that edge that energy every day in practice and maybe kind of stepping back from infusing it in your team but looking at yourself how do you and I know it’s part of who you are your character but still bringing it every day ways that you think about or helps you come consistently with that edge with that energy and you transferring it to your guys?
Shantay Legans 06:21
Loving what you do for what than loving the guys you’re working with. I love Bobby, TJ, and Arturo, they’re family to me and so, love coming into work every day. I love getting here and it sounds like a cliche, but we live for this. This is exciting. It’s like you’re done playing. This is the next best thing. You’re in it with them. It’s just something I love to wake up and do every day. It’s fun, man. It’s the best job in the world. We always joke around, but I always tell my players, would you want to be up at 4.30 a.m. doing construction right now? Would you rather be running a line drill? I mean, they think probably construction at that time, but as you get older, this is a beautiful thing, man. You get to coach, basketball is taking me all over the world. I met my wife through hoops. I mean, there’s places that I never thought I’d go when I was a young kid, and probably no one thought I’d be able to get to as a coach or a player just because of basketball. So, loving what you can do and not holding back and speaking up when you have to and never being the guy that is just there. You always want to make an imprint on something if you’re helping your guys, if you’re out. My guys are right now promoting our games. If anything you do, we want to really put a stamp on it. And so, that shows them too that that’s how you got to be at all times. You got to be ready to go.
Pat 07:27
You know, the edge you start to infuse in your guys. You mentioned at the very top, the next part of teaching them, then to control the emotion or being able to harness, how do you go about that? Or working with your guys, maybe your young guys are coming in and getting all jacked up off your energy, but then also having them be able to think through basketball and execute.
Shantay Legans 07:46
That’s huge right there because there’s a lot of trash talking, right? I don’t mind it as much. I think that’s part of the game, having some fun out there. But reeling it in, we’ve gotten some technicals and spots that we should have never gotten technicals in. So that’s something that I work on all the time daily too, is where it’s good and bad. You want your emotions. You want to hype up your teammates. You want them to talk the right kind of trash. I was just talking to the guys, talk to them about their scout report. Tell them that coach has you on the scout, you can’t shoot, have the right type of energy. And so you got to be understanding when to do it and how it feeds your team. But I want each guy to be their individual self. And sometimes their individual self is a little bit too much. I’d rather have to reel them down, slow them down, than try to amp them up. If they’re low energy guys and guys that are quiet, you have some of those guys, you try to build those guys up. And those are the harder guys for me, I think, to coach at times. Because I can’t deal with guys who have emotion. I’m trying to slow, hey, this is where you need to do, this is how you need to do it. And so it’s an everyday thing because I want guys to be who they are. You play your best when you’re yourself and you’re comfortable. At least that’s how I feel. If you’re trying to be something you’re not, sometimes it’s hard. If you’re trying to fake the emotion or you’re trying to fake something, it’s really hard to play that way and be comfortable. And so I try to recruit guys who have that edge, that fire to them. You can see it in film, you can see it in practice. Now, you get a couple of guys that you’re like, hey, we got to just build him up and get him going because he’s that good. But yeah, it’s really hard in practice, and especially in games when things go against them. So I try to call really, really bad falls in practice. So the guys are upset, pissed off, start screaming, and I can throw them out of practice, bring them in, run them. There’s a lot of things you could do. So I’ll make a game. It’s a 12 point game. It could turn around, a team can get six points off a basket or a bad call. And you really try to poke those guys as much as you can. So when it’s in the game, they’re kind of used to it. And they feel like it’s the hardest it’s ever been. I’m trying my best to make it harder for them in practice so we know when they’re going to really elevate that emotion. And so we try our best to keep that edge, but we want them to be smart with it. And that’s the hardest thing sometimes to coach is these guys with emotion. It’s fun to me to coach those types of guys.
Pat 09:52
Just to follow up, you mentioned the low energy guys that sometimes you struggled to coach them up and you mentioned trying to build them up. Where has been the struggle for you and how do you try to build up those low energy guys?
Shantay Legans 10:05
A couple years ago, it’s like you’re trying to get a guy going, just like talking to a wall. It’s like, all right, coach, they look you in the eyes, but you don’t see that fire in them. Those are the guys that are hard to go. Now, you recruit a guy and I got a guy on my team right now, very talented, really good, just level the whole time, which I’m good with, but you’re trying to get him to be more emotional. You want him to lead your guys. And so in those situations, when I say they’re hard to coach, it’s hard because you’re showing some emotion to get these guys pumped up. They’re just looking at you with a dead face and they give you the fish high five or the fish handshakes. And that just doesn’t feel like they’re really into it. They’re trying to do it. But now you can see that they could be that way with me, but then be a whole different way with their teammates, which I’m fine if they’re like that with me, but with their teammates and different things, I want them to be amped up. And sometimes it’s just really hard to coach with my staff, with Bobby and TJ. If you ever watch this play, they’re really energized on the bench. They’re really excited.
They’re high five and they’re jumping up and down. So they kind of got that same thing I got. And then we got coach O, who coached me in college. His name is Arturo Ormond. He coached me one of that Fresno State. He has it in practice like crazy. He’s an OG on the staff. He has it in practice, but in the games, he’s really just quiet, laid back and lets us go and have some fun with it. Like I said, those guys with low energy, we’re trying to get them going. Those guys are hard, but if you get them to a point where they feel comfortable doing it, then they’re going to be really, really good for us.
Dan 11:27
One of the more difficult things as a younger coach or when you’re close to your players, but you also need to be someone that gets them in line and all the things we’re talking about right now with being themselves, want them to have emotions, you’re close to them. But then there’s times where I’m sure you need to reel things in or walk that line, that balance of being a head coach on also being on their side, being their friend. And I guess any learnings for you over the course of your career on walking that line so that it’s clear, but it’s also, you know who you are on both sides of it.
Shantay Legans 11:59
When I was an assistant coach, it was wild. I couldn’t do it. They were my guys. Those are my boys. It wasn’t like we’re playing video games together. We’re kicking. So when everyone says all this stuff, when you’re a young assistant, you’re tight with them. So the hardest thing was when I became a head coach after recruiting them and bringing them in that first year, it was really hard. Some coaches won’t talk about it, but it was really hard to go from being an assistant coach, literally being an assistant coach to the head coach that has to make sure you’re in that discipline that has to understand that everyone in the program at some point or another are going to hate you. It is what it is. They’re going to respect you and love you, but they’re going to hate you. You handle playing time. You handle what the assistant coaches are doing. You’re handling where the program’s going. And so that was the hardest thing for me my first year is to figure that out. Luckily, I have some coaches that I can go and talk to about it. Having those good mentors was really helpful to me to ask how to navigate that because I had no clue because our best player was Bogdan Bliznick at the time. No, he stayed. He could have transferred. He could have done a lot of things. And so he stayed and we’re close today. And so we still talk. Tyler Harvey, I was an assistant with him. Luckily, I didn’t have to coach him as a head coach because that’s one of my closest friends. And so figuring out that edge was hard to do, especially my first couple of years. Then it became easy because then I started feeling like, oh, I’m hurting this guy’s feelings or this guy’s not in a good space. How do I fix it? And how do I do this? And then it’s like, well, you have 15 guys on the team. That’s 200 minutes. And all they care about is minutes and if they’re playing or not. And so I never thought of it like that as an assistant. I was like, Hey, let’s get the guys hyped up. They’re good. And I’m not worried about where they’re at right now. Obviously, mentally, I’m going to say keep being ready as an assistant coach, but as a head coach, no one’s sitting at your dinner table anymore. No one’s rolling. I had to drive a van. No one’s in my vans anymore. I’m like, dang, I’m soloing this thing. What’s going on? And you had Eastern is like, I was driving vans. I had everybody in my van as an assistant going into year two as a head coach. Nobody was in my van. Then you go from their big brother to their uncle. And now as you get older, now you’re going from an uncle to a father figure and in some cases. And so it’s great to see the progression of that. But that was one of the hardest things to do, especially as a young coach for them to see that now it’s just like clockwork. They know when I’m about how I want to be and how I want them to be in the office and enjoy time. But they know there’s film, there’s on the court, there’s things like that. That’s why you have young assistants. They’re really good with these guys. And you could get yourself a little bit out of that as a head coach, but as a young assistant, it was hard going from that to the associate head coach to the head coach. It’s just a dynamic, a lot of things like we don’t talk about as you keep moving up in this coaching career.
Pat 15:43
Along those lines, what have you learned about relationships when you went from being a first year coach to now, what are you really aware of when forming relationships with your players?
Shantay Legans 15:54
You want them to have a limit to where they can go with you. I don’t mind hearing about guys and what they’re doing outside of school, having a girlfriend and all that. But it’s the other stuff that as an assistant you would hear and you don’t want to hear as a head coach because it might have a little effect on you in a certain situation. But just letting them know, hey, there’s a line here that you’ve got to draw a line in certain spots that this is a head coach and this is a player. But also, we’re super tight and we’ve got to be smart about how we handle each kid. Each kid’s different. I could have a close relationship, but I’m really tight with one of the guys that never play. And I’m not tight with one of the guys that play a lot. And so we just got to understand how your relationship is with each guy and how the recruiting process, when you learn all that stuff, usually during the recruiting process, I feel trying to understand each kid that you want them to understand that you’re trying to really pull their best out all the time. No matter how it looks, I’ve got to be brutally honest with them and their parents. If you’re brutally honest with the parents and the kid about playing time, how they’re acting, what they’re doing at school, you don’t sugarcoat things I think that helps with those relationships. It’s when you tell some why or tell, hey, you’re going to do this and hey, guy, be ready next game, we’re going to need you. And then they don’t play. Those are the things that really put you in a bad spot. I’ve taught myself doing that a lot as a young head coach, especially my first couple of years.
Dan 17:05
Could you go a little deeper maybe on why you found yourself doing that you didn’t want to hurt them man
Shantay Legans 17:11
You didn’t want to hurt them man because they are your dudes, but you didn’t want to hurt their feelings. You didn’t want, you know, you wanted to give them a shot, but you’re like trying to win, but you ain’t helping us win. But I really, really like you. You know, you’re helping our team in practice. I’m going to give you that shot. And then the game going, it’s like an eight point game. It’s like, oh, I can’t put down the road here. You know, I can’t throw you in now. But I was always honest with them after the game and just say, I couldn’t get you in. I’ll never put myself in that position where it’s like, hey, I know you’re going to play this game because you never know what’s going to happen. Right. And so it was tough my first year because those are my dudes, I recruited them. Those are my guys. And now it’s time for us to win. It’s like, well, hey, man, you ain’t helping us win. You know, and it’s hard to tell a kid. You recruited a kid that you’re really tight with. Now it’s like, you’re not doing this, this and this to help our team win. You need to be better at this. There’s more opportunity for you coming to practice, but you got to do these things. You know, I’m always going to play the best player. It doesn’t matter if you’re freshmen, sophomore, walk on. If you’re helping our team win and you’re doing what you need to do, you’re going to play. And then that comes in practice and all those things. Those are easier talks to have in my first year, though. So that was I was cut myself like seven, eight, nine times. Yeah, man, I got you. Yeah, you were going to be good. You’ll be able to get it, don’t you? We got you. And then it’s like a four point game. You look down and he’s looking at you and he’s trying not to look at him. And you’re like, no, we’re good, man. And then after the game, it’s like, oh, you know, that timeout huddle. Should we get him in? And your whole staff says, hell, no, no, but what? And so those are the things that you learn young. It’s not in a book. You know, you just got to figure it out on the fly. And obviously you get seasoned and then you start figuring out, you know, how to handle those types of situations and you don’t give kids expectations that you don’t think they’re going to be able to do. Now, if you know a kid’s going to play or he’s going to be one of your better players, yeah, but it’s the seventh, eighth, ninth guy that, you know, really are in that limbo. Am I going to get in? Am I not going to get in? And you want to keep them engaged as much as you can. And I feel coaches get in spots where they’re going to tell them, yeah, yeah, yeah, be ready, be ready. And if you hear that from the head coach, it’s a whole different thing from hearing it from the assistant coach. You know, because the assistant coach isn’t really handling the minutes the head coach is, and that’s why I tell everybody is going to at one point not be happy with the head coach. And so those are the situations you really try to stay away from as a coach.
Dan 19:18
You also mentioned that your first couple of years when you’re transitioning from Associate Head Coach to Head Coach, you had mentors that you would talk to about a lot of this stuff. Is there anything else that you’ve carried from those early years through your mentors that is important to you now?
Shantay Legans 19:34
You still got to keep those relationships, you know, they told me don’t change who I am from the relationships you built with the people that you helped you get to where you’re at, not the players, the guys you would call about a player, you know, don’t stop checking in with those guys, they’d call you and you email back, don’t stop doing that stuff. I reply to almost every email that I get, I found kids just off emails. And so they said, don’t change those certain things. Obviously, your time has to go to certain different places and times important your time as a head coach is really, really important. And what you focus it on, that was something that I really took away because I would try to do everything. They drew a circle before they said, All right, chuck them out and get your hand out of that. You don’t want to put yourself in that situation all the time. So figure out what’s the important stuff for you and your program as you build it. And so those are some of the things that I would always take with the timing piece. That was huge for me, because I try to do everything. Once you feel comfortable with something, you can delegate it to your assistants because a lot of head coaches will try to especially early. I try to do everything early. I mean, everything, I mean, from the academic piece, I mean, everything we would try to do it. So I learned that you got to trust those guys that are in the foxhole with you, they have your best interests, and then find loyal people that work with you, because that could be the number one killer to a lot of careers if you don’t have people loyal around you and everybody wants to be a head coach, but you know, you want that loyalty. So those are some of the things they told me that was important. I kept that with me. It’s really important.
Pat 20:55
Following up on the time piece, you mentioned, you know, learning to delegate stuff. What are the things that you still hold valuable to your time and that you still dedicate your time to?
Shantay Legans 21:06
Calls to the parents, spending time with the guys. I have my house the night before from scouting reports. I love recruiting. I love talking to the, you know, trying to figure out the guys and build our team. And then those are pretty tight relationships. Those are some of the stuff I want to keep doing.
And then practice and not missing any of that stuff. When I was an assistant, I’d go on the road and I missed three, four practices. I don’t want to miss practice. I want to be there all the time. I don’t want to be, I got to go watch this kid because the most important people in our program at this time are in our program. You don’t want to miss certain things because you had to go recruit or something like that. So that’s important to me. And then obviously now I got two kids of my own. I got to make sure that’s also a high priority. Having them around our players is also another thing. So that’s one of the things I like to do too. So being around the family and being around the guys is something I still got to keep is the most important thing.
Dan 21:53
Coach, this has been awesome so far. Thanks so much for going through all that. We want to transition now to a segment on the show that we call start, sub, or sit. We will give you three different options around a topic. Ask you to start one of them, sub one of them, and then sit one of them. And then we’ll discuss from there. So coach, if you’re all set, we’ll dive into this first one for you.
Shantay Legans 22:12
I’m ready.
Dan 22:12
So this first one we titled deep trouble and a little play on words there because you’re known to run the deep underneath out of bounds concept of the trap that kind of offset one, three, one look. We’ll let you describe it more, but these are three different things that an offense might do that would give deep or that baseline out of bounds defense trouble. So option one is the flat one, four alignment, four flat along the baseline. Option two is overloading on the strong side or option three is interior screening and cutting behind your madman or your guy on the ball and trying to slip in and screen beneath him. So start, sub, or sit. What gives that trouble?
Shantay Legans 23:03
I’d say the interior screening, but I’m going to have to fix that, so I’d start that. I’ll tell you why that’s going to be the toughest one. Then I’d say four flats the next one, so you could sub that and then you could sit the overload. I would love it if they overload it. I would love that. The reason I would say the start interior screen, the one that we’ve given us the most problems, and I love defense. No, I’d be wrong if I wouldn’t tell you, CY over from Florida State Charleston, he’s the one who talked to Bobby Swore as they work together at Florida State. Bobby was so amped about putting it in, and so that’s why we did it. If I didn’t say CY, he Incorporated, the owner himself didn’t tell me, but I’d hear some stuff from Bobby and from him, so I had to make sure. But I said that interior screening, and the reason I say is if you screen the inside, if you screen the deepman and he can’t get out to the corner of the trap, you’re screwed. That’s the hardest one for us to sometimes be, so we have to figure out what the team is doing. I hate scouting inbound. When I started deep, didn’t have to scout anything, we’re right into it. Now teams get prepared for it and try to score off it, and that’s kind of the tough one. So that interior screening, if you screen the inside of that guy, and if you get some good screening actions with our five or something in that spot. And the fourth flat is tough because you need to guard the hammer spot. That can also give you some issues with that hammer, so it’s really important you cover that spot, and then if they flash up and then flash back down, that usually puts us in a tough spot too. So that’s why I would say the overload, not the overload. I love it if teams overload. That’s the number one thing teams got. They do, and it sets it up easy. It’s a one-three-one slanted inbounds defense that it looks like. Those would be the start, sub, and sit for me. I definitely start with the interior screening. When you play the team, and I think, who did that to us? I don’t even know if they meant to do it on purpose, but I think it was Pepperdine. It got a guy-wide open shot, and they only did it the one time, and then somebody else did it the next game a couple times, and then we figured a way out to get that, but that got us a couple times. And then obviously, Kansas screening our big guy throwing a lob and getting that dunk and changing that whole tournament game was mind-numbing. But yeah, that’s how I do it.
Dan 25:08
Just for those listening on this one through one slanted zone, when you say I’m screening the deep man, is that the middle man?
Shantay Legans 25:16
Yeah, we’d call the landlord, the big guy, the middle. So that gives us problems sometimes.
Dan 25:20
Okay, when the ball is thrown into the near side corner, in general, I know there’s different ways to do it and you mix it up and all that. So who’s going to trap that
Shantay Legans 25:30
The madman, we call him the madman on the ball. So he’s got to be madman. Then the funnel guy. So that’s the guy on the far. Yeah, the funnel guy, strong size. So he funnels them to the corner, and they just trap it. And it’s always eyes not wise, you know, because a lot of guys reach down and try to foul and you’re just trying to get them to throw the ball and you got your interceptor, and then you got your guy in the hammer spot to try to get those steals. But that’s why he loved the overload.
Dan 25:54
Philosophically, for you, sticking with it, changing it here and there, but why you like it so much for Underneath Out of Bounds. So Bobby Flores, our associate head coach, worked at Florida State. And he came to me and was like, oh, we run this defense on inbounds at Florida State. That’s great. This is amazing. Yada, yada. So he throws it on film for me and I’m watching it. And I’m watching these dudes just jump all over the place. They’re big, they’re long, they’re athletic. They’re throwing the ball. The guys are running and tipping it. And then I’m like, okay, cool. Let’s think about it. So we go and then we turn on our film and we’re looking at our guys. They don’t look anything like the Florida State guys. He’s like, well, we got to try it. We got to try it. Trust me, I believe in it. This is something I got to do that we got to do it. And I’m like, I don’t know if we can do it. Those dudes are different than our dudes, right? They’re a little bit more athletically gifted than the guys we have. I hate to do this, but I’m watching Florida State doing it against Gonzaga. And I think Mark Few, one of the best coaches in college basketball, right? And they’re getting steals and they’re getting deflections and they’re really messing Gonzaga up with it. So I’m like, you know what? Let’s try it. The first game, we put it in all pre-season. And you know, at Eastern, you got to play all these power four, power five schools. And I’m like, we ain’t going to do it this game. Ain’t no way we’re going to do it this game. So we didn’t do it the first game. Second game, we come back and we do it. And I think it was against Oregon and I’m like, might as well, right? Let’s just see if it works. And we got like three steals out of it. And our guys were amped up. There’s not a lot of trapping and all this stuff I do in my defense, you know? So they got really amped up for us. They got like three, four steals. We went down and scored. It really took the other team out of their place. And when they throw it deep, our guys were juiced. They’re super excited. So the next day we did it, it worked. The next day we did it. It kept working and we’re taking away, you know, 10 to 15 minutes of us worrying about the other team’s inbounds place. Instead of them getting six to eight points on inbounds plays or shots, we were getting six to eight points off their turnovers. And so once we did that and the guys thought it was working and I saw it was working more importantly because at the time I was like, this is then we’re going to work. And so as we kept working on and getting better at it, then we started being able to morph it a little bit the way we wanted to do it in certain situations. And so that started building it. So we became really, really confident in how we do it. So now we try to do it three, four minutes a day, every day in practice. And sometimes the guys won’t be up for it. Then it doesn’t look so good. You have to be, see why I would always say, you got to play hard for four and a half seconds. If you can’t get your guys to play hard for four and a half seconds, go work at Walmart. So I felt I should have been working at Walmart a couple of times last year, but we’ve been getting better and better at it. So yeah, we try to do it, but that’s the philosophy that I want to keep it. It saves you practice time. And you don’t have to scout that much for in-bounce plays. And them setting that stagger, stagger, slip screens, and they’re getting layups and all that kind of stuff really put us in a jam. Cause you don’t want to help, you want to help, but guys can’t figure that out. But if you just tell them this is what you got to do, you got four things to do, it makes it pretty easy for them.
Dan 28:43
You mentioned the Florida State athletes versus your own athletes, but then you talk about it still worked. Why was it working with lesser athletes?
What were you good at that allowed you to do it with lesser athletes?
Shantay Legans 28:54
it made them feel like that was their aggressive defense like this is our big punch and our guys were so juiced to do it when i would yell deep if you would see our guys they’d be swinging their hands before the referees would totally sit down so that you know they worry about more on the sideline than anything else but our guys being amped up the guy the madman goes crazy on the ball so they get really amped up for and then they’re playing as hard as they can for that four and a half seconds i mean you got to think right there’s five guys on the outside versus four so you should be already at an advantage the guy taking the ball that means nothing you can get a five on four explain it to them like that we have smart guys they’re like well you know we’re not going to get oh well we have five guys we could do that for sure and so once they figured that part out and they believed in it it was unbelievable and then it just took off and we kept that you know we’ve been running it since i’ve been in portland last year was probably the worst year we’ve had at running it but this year i think we got some guys that are excited about it they get steals and they’re already going the other way and so it’s worked in some more scrimmages so far and it’s something that i believe in but we just kept showing it to them and they started figuring out if the guy’s trapped in the corner he could only throw it to two places right they’re either going to throw it to half court or they’re going to throw it across court or they’re going to throw it to the elbow and then try to get the swing swing our guys they would love to try to figure it out they start baiting them into it and so once they felt real comfortable and some of our guys are calling themselves Jaycee Horn and all this other thing it was the craziest thing they were having a lot of fun with it and a lot of football terms were being thrown around at the time so we got really excited about how happy they were it in this team just like that.
Pat 30:24
Coach, going back to your start when you mentioned, you know, teams that will try to screen your deep man. When you sniff it out that an opponent is trying to screen your deep man, what are maybe the small adjustments or what are you talking about the deep man in terms of him not getting screened or making sure he can still fulfill his duties?
Shantay Legans 30:42
Usually when when he’s getting screen, they can only go to one place, you know. So when we say the so the madman is the guy that gets screened, that guy jumping up and down the ball because he’s the first guy to go to the corner. So when we know that the team is doing that, we’ll send the landlord out and then have the man man become the landlord. Now they got a guy that’s out of the play because he’s trying to screen the guy that has nothing to do with it. Now you got two guys on the inbounds and now you’re doing a good job of understanding that now you got your obviously at your center, but it’s OK. They’re just trapping. And so that really puts them in a tough spot. And so we figured out ways, you know, when teams try to if they get us once, they can’t get us twice, you know, that’s something that, you know, Bobby takes a lot of pride in when we see certain things. There’s been a couple of like a guy will screen the funnel guy and bring a guy in behind them for three. That’s a tough one to guard. But when we see it the first time we know it, they didn’t work on three or four plays against deep. I mean, if they did, that took them 15 to 20, 25 minutes of there. And I don’t think a lot of coaches are doing it. I was thinking they’re going to do it once or twice, make sure we see it and then we can fix that and then we could turn it into something that’s going to help us on the back end because they’re getting, you know, they’re wasting, you know, a guy by screening this guy if we could do it right. That’s how we always looked at it.
Dan 31:52
Where are the eyes of the defenders looking while the ball is underneath?
Shantay Legans 31:57
All 10 eyes are looking at the ball.
Dan 31:59
The question I’ve heard on this is, you know, when you’re in a zone and there’s cutters and screeners, the guys start looking around, trying to find who’s cutting who’s screening. So if all time eyes are looking at the ball, how do they then navigate cutters and screeners?
Shantay Legans 32:12
So we call it bumper cars. As you see him, you’re bumping, you’re moving around. You can’t be flat-footed in this zone. It makes non-athletic guys feel good because they’re bouncing around and they’re moving around. The reason I say non-athletic guys because I had some head Eastern and I have a couple of years, so you got to make them feel like athletes, right? They’re division one athletes, but they’re bouncing around, they’re hitting people so it’s bumper cars. They’re not chucking because that’s a foul, but they’re bumping around and they feel then as the guy sees another guy, they start yelling funnel, funnel guy, they start talking to each other. The real hard one though is when you get that bottom side guy who protects the hammer, he sometimes gets wasted. There’s no one in the hammer spot, but he’s just standing there because we say don’t let it go. So that top guy that we call the interceptor guy has to pretty much see that and say, your dad, you’re wasted, you’re wasted, you’re wasted. So he starts moving over and once they start feeling good about it, I mean, it just takes a little bit of time. I’m going to send you when we’re off to see why it’s 20 minutes and he is like sitting at the entertainer while he’s doing it, you’ll love it. All these terms that I’m using, it’s the same ones he’s using, but he says them a little bit better. It’s one of those things where you’ve got all 10 eyes are looking at it, they’re jumping up. Our mad man’s cutting off there. Each guy has four jobs and if you don’t got a job, you got to get a job. You’re wasted, you got to do something. That’s something that we preach all the time. You know, you got four things to do. If those two things aren’t doing that, you should be doing the other two. If you’re a mad man on the ball, you know, you’re cutting off that sideline, you’re not letting them throw it to the hammer. Three, four, now you’re turning, now you’re on top of it, you’re jumping up and down. And so you got to make sure that they’re excited about it. If you see the mad man jumping going crazy, you’re going to do the same thing. You’re not just going to stand there because it comes back to the film, right? You guys live dead in this. And so you can’t have one guy do it in the other four or other three or other two. Not participate
Pat 33:49
If the offense makes it out of the trap, what does deep look like then the rest of the possession?
Shantay Legans 33:55
Scramble and find your guy. What I’m trying to do now is trust in our zone a little bit more. So if they throw it deep as much as possible, we’re trying to figure out different defenses to do. If they get it out of our trap or whatever, we’re going to stick to our man, we’re going to fly around. We want to keep our big in the paint as much as possible. So that means the mad man has got to fly around probably back to that baseline side. So if you guys have run it before, you know, that’s a hard thing, especially if they swing, swing, kind of toast, right? So we tell them to try to keep the ball on the one side, even though it has nothing to do with our defensive principles, but in this defense, and that’s hard for some guys to understand is when they catch that ball, they’re ready to swing it. We tell them to go up and touch the sideline so they can’t throw it that way. And so now they have to get back down or it gives that mad man a chance to get back to that, you know, weak side wing, where they’re going to get the three of the corner. And Northern Colorado with Linder used to kill us with that. He’d throw it in, swing, swing, and he’d get a quick three, you know? And so we figured something out for that though, as they kept doing it.
Pat 36:04
All right, moving to our next start sub sit. This one has to do with protecting foul prone players, the caveat being, this is a player, you need them on the floor. So three strategies to protect a foul prone player. Would you think about the coverages you use mainly, let’s say the pick and roll coverage, whether it’s a big or a guard protecting him with changing your coverages to keep him out of foul picking up fouls. Would it be the matchup you choose to put this player on to help protect him? Or would it be early substitutions? If he picks up a first foul, you’re going to maybe get them out early, just changing how you substitute this player to protect him. So he’s available late in the game.
Shantay Legans 36:51
I would go match-ups to start, coverages next, and then sell them out later to sit. I play guys with three fouls in the first half. You got to trust those dudes sometimes instead of your guys. Now, the reason I say match-ups is because there’s usually going to be a guy on the floor. Now, if it’s a big guy, it’s a little different. But if it’s a guard, you could find a guy that is just a shooter or he’s just a driver or he’s not really just a ball mover. And so I would try to put an out-prone guy, one of our guards, I’d say, hey, go guard their best shooter because he’s not going to try doing it. You just chase him around and take him all the way out. We would always say, hey, you’re in foul trouble. You got two, whatever it is, deny him the ball. Don’t let him make any three-point shots. Don’t foul the jump shooter. And they could pretty much do that.
The coverages is always tough because if you’re getting beat in some coverages, you’re just I would say, hey, let’s switch everything and keep the ball in front. And then if the guy looks, the guy’s coming off it, who’s guarding the ball, that’s in foul trouble. I say just trap it to get the guy out of it and then deny it back again. Try to keep him out that way as much as possible. And in the early subs, you know, that could really mess with the player’s rhythm. You hope your player is good enough. Now, if they have three in the first half, I’ve done it before, but you should sit them. Two is like, OK, you know, get him out and play in the last six, seven, eight minutes and then try to get him out the last two. So he’s ready to go in that situation.
But that’s how I would do that. I mean, we would just try to keep the ball out of that guy’s hands as much as you can. So you could turn him into a deny guy. And he knows that I’m going to deny the ball as much as possible. If my guy gets it and he’s a driver, then we’re sending another guy to double. So he has to throw the ball out of his hands. That’s how sometimes we get rid of that. And, you know, sometimes it’d be like, well, we can’t go double and we can’t do this. And well, there’s a lot of handouts and a lot of ball speed and everybody’s offense. So if that guy is the one we call him, you know, Orange, if Orange is the guy, you have to trap Orange’s guy every time. Get the ball out of his hands and Orange has to deny. And that we’re playing four on four shell. That’s what we’re trying to sometimes get to.
Pat 38:42
With the guards maybe being a little bit easier protect them because there’s less big guys probably is answer But why have you found it’s harder to protect the bigs?
Shantay Legans 38:51
because we want our bigs always at the rim. Our big guy is always going to be in the action because coaches always think, well, I could have my, every big guy, second guy, he’s the second guy in the stagger. He’s the first guy in the ball screen. He’s always going to be in everything, right? So it doesn’t matter. You can’t hide that guy unless you’re like, hey, go guard the point guard, you know, or go guard the shooter. Big guys are always in the action no matter what.
So you got to think, okay, if somebody gets beat, who’s there? You’re a big guy. If, you know, there’s a stagger screen coming to pin down or anything like that, usually it’s the big guy and how are you going to cover that? Or it’s a post-up and this guy’s kicking his butt. Do you send a double team? Yeah, you probably send a double, but your bigs in everything, even though he doesn’t want to be in everything, he’s in everything. It’s tough because you need bigs. I’ve had two bigs in my career, I could say, hey, they’re not going to get in foul trouble. They’re really smart. They’re going to play hands, but then on the back of their heads, those hands straight up ends up being, you know, left hand, left shoulder jump hooks, left shoulder jump hook, even though that’s not the way they’re supposed to let them go. They just stop playing defense. I don’t know why they think that helps just because, you know, your hands are there. There are no more banging, there’s no more physicality. You know, you never know if a referee calls a foul on that or if he calls a foul. They always call it a little bit different for big guys. And sometimes it’s like a New York Yankee strike zone last night against my Dodgers, right? It’s all over the place just to get it to game five. But the situation is you don’t know what the referee is going to call sometimes on big guys. You just don’t know. Now up top and everyone can see it more times and not, they’re not going to do that. Referees are smart and they’re really good. So sometimes they’re going to let stuff go on your better players, but sometimes it’s a bang, bang play and they got to blow the whistle. Just like human nature, it’s just something. And so that’s why I think big guys struggle when they get to foul trouble more than guard. You can see a guard, you could have four fouls and play the whole second half and a big guy being, being out because they’re going at the big, every possession.
Pat 40:39
You mentioned in pick and roll coverage is that sometimes, you know, you run a trap to protect your guard with a foul prone big. How do you think about pick and roll coverage is if you’re trying to protect the big, you probably just.
Shantay Legans 40:50
You probably just going to have to go veer. We call it veer, but a drop. Drop coverage as much as possible. Because if you’re trying to get up there and hard hatch, a good guard’s going to take that left shoulder or whatever, just go right off him. If he’s smart. I tell him, my guys, if there’s a big up there with two fouls, make the referee call it charge way out there. Make a collision. It is what it is. Take your one foul and get him his third or fourth. If that’s Saxton up top, go as hard as you can of Saxton and pray that the referee calls it. You got to put yourself in some positions to win. And so probably just drop and try to get over the top and try to go underneath and say, Hey, you got to hit a bunch of jump shots this game, at least for these next, you know, this segment or the next segment, you got to hit three to four dribble in jump shots, which now every kid can make because thanks Steph Curry, right? So every kid works on that daily. So now that’s a good shot for some kids. And so it’s just hard now. It’s like, all right, let’s fight over the top, make them go inside. But then again, they’re driving inside. Now it’s a two on one with a big guy. It’s just hard, man, because good coaches really know how to get those dudes to put big guys at bad spots.
Pat 41:48
You talked about what the bigs that it’s hard to protect them because all the actions gonna come their way and then they’re at the mercy too of how the referees are sometimes going to call the game but with your guards and when you’ve had guards that are. How prone what have you notice or common tendencies that’s putting them continually in foul trouble.
Shantay Legans 42:08
Really, really aggressive guard because he’s going to grow up and try to get the ball. You know, he’s going to be aggressive on ball screens. He’s going to try to get into the guy. It’s crazy to say it’s usually a really good defender because he’s going to put himself in situations because his number one thing is I want to defend this guy. So he’s going to cut a guy off or he’s going to try to poke a ball loose. And so those are the guys that I feel like always, you know, seem to get it again, another guy that wants to be a part of the action. He’s going to be on that weak side. That ball is going to come over the top. He’s going to run over there to try to take a charge. The guys that are smart players are always going to put themselves in a position and they don’t stop. They don’t turn it off, which you love as a coach, right? It’s usually the ones that can play forever are the ones that love offense. They’re not going to foul. They’re not. It’s usually the guy that you need to play good defense and that’s your best player. So now that’s how they get into it. And then another thing is more guards that get in foul trouble, they usually get an offensive foul or two offensive fouls on the other end, you know, being out of control. So if you can save those fouls and, you know, I was a big component of that European. We used to call it a you go is when they get the ball and they take it and go and they’re in transition, we take a foul and now that foul comes back and haunt you later. I got out of that. I was all into that early in my career. And now, you know, one of my best players has now got four fouls because of that stupid foul he took, you know, earlier in the game.
That’s a smart play. But it’s like, you know, and then that’s another thing you got to say, OK, well, you can do it, but you can’t do it. All right. So I want you to foul, but you don’t foul. Well, why is that? Well, he’s way more important and I hate to say it like that. But so now you’re going to do another thing. So, you know, protecting your fouls on smart things. You know, I was watching a clinic and they call it yellow defense where they just don’t foul. You can’t foul if you foul in practice minus six points lose, you know. So we try to adapt that a little bit into what we do. And so we’re trying our best not to foul foul and get you beat, I feel.
And so but also it takes your best players off the court. But usually your smart IQ guy that are always in the right place that are good defenders pick up an offensive foul or do something crazy on a handoff and then they pick up another one. Now they got two or three and you’re like, dang, where do you pick those fouls up at is sometimes on the offensive end.
Dan 44:06
My last question for you has to do with how you officiate or not officiate fouling in practice, especially like early season when practices are tougher, you’re trying to create an identity and what it is like in practice.
Shantay Legans 44:19
It’s almost impossible because like you ref away, you know, be tough, play through the foul. That ain’t a foul. That ain’t a foul. You know, be tough. Referees come out, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, you know, your clothes are a scrimmage of the foul. Now all of a sudden you got 36 fouls and you use eight timeouts in an exhibition and it took longer than you wanted. You know, then you get into practice and you get the next thing you got, you foul too much. You know, and that’s a whole other thing. And so I try to call the fouls really bad, but we got to be better at it because we’ve gotten dinged so much in our clothes or scrimmages this year, hand checks, grabbing, just dumb fouls. And so I didn’t do a good job early this year on that. If I could do it all over again, I’d call it really tight from the beginning where the hand checks and all that stuff we were calling. Now we are, but I wish I’d have done that earlier. You want them to play through fouls. You want them to do this. You’re not going to get that call in a game.
So we got to make sure that we’re going to be smart about how we do things and let the scout team go ahead and beat us up and not get foul calls, but we’re going to be on top of all the fouls. That’s something we started like about a week and a half, two weeks ago, calling every foul. I wish I’d have done it early, but it is what it is. I mean, give a team 34 free throws in a scrimmage. It’s awesome.
Dan 45:28
It’s awesome. Coach, great stuff. You’re off the start, sub, or sit hot seat. Thanks for playing that game with us. It’s a lot of fun. Yeah, I like that. Coach, we got a final question for you to close the show, but before we do, really appreciate your time and your thoughts today. Thanks for coming on the show.
Shantay Legans 45:44
Thank you for, like I told you guys, this is a big deal because, you know, you really make coaches think, I mean, this stuff is great. And then I love obviously the podcast listeners and other coaches talk, and this is really good to be a part of. I appreciate you guys having me.
Dan 45:56
Thanks, Coach, appreciate that. Coach, our last question for you that we asked all the guests is what’s the best investment that you’ve made in your career as a coach?
Shantay Legans 46:06
Well, it’s going to get me out a lot of trouble too. My wife, she was a hooper at Eastern Washington. She loves basketball. And so it’s a double-edged sword, right? Because she’ll tell you if you’re no good and she’ll call you out on everything your staff won’t. And so loves basketball, understands it. It’s great having her around because we were married when I got there. I was an associate head coach. It was my first year. We had our first daughter and I got the head coaching job. And when I tell you, she went through every text, every email with me that night when we got back to everybody, then you’re looking for assistant coaches, you have an idea, then you want a young guy. And so she was going through all their resumes. This guy I think will be good. This guy might not be good. You should look at this guy. And I always tell Bobby, he thought your resume was unbelievable. Obviously Dennis Gates, who was there, played with me at Cal, gave me a list of guys and Bobby was on that list. And she was going through all the resumes and made everything look good. She helped me with my resume and my cover letter and everything. It was really great to have her, especially at that time. And we’re engaged and all that. She gave me the idea. Why don’t you ever think about it? You don’t think you can be a head coach. I’m like, yeah, that’s everybody’s dream. Well, do you have this, this, this, this? She’s really smart. She’s a nice business lady. So she’s like, well, you should have all this ready for you. What happens if he gets a job with this happens? Or I already had it all prepared when it all happened. And she helped me envision and believe that I can do it, especially at such a young age when I got the job.
And so having her was the best investment possible. And her brother is seven feet tall. So my kids might grow a little bit. So that might be something that I was looking at too. She’s been amazing, especially when it comes to the basketball side of things. So keep it real. I don’t want to hear it sometimes. She’ll call me soft. You’re too nice in this situation. Just stuff you never want to hear, that you don’t hear. She’s really on it. And she’ll come in here and shape these guys up too, which is a good thing to it at times. But she’s been the best investment for me during my journey so far as a coach.
Dan 48:10
All right, Pat, let’s dive into this wrap-up. Coach Legans a lot of fun to talk to before and after the show as well. We just had a good conversation leading right into this. And a coach should definitely be fun to spend more time with, no doubt.
Pat 48:23
Yeah, and I can see like all the feedback we got onto prior just great energy was a lot of fun talking before during and after
Dan 48:31
Just headed out of the park today with everything and let’s just get right to our top three takeaways on this And I will kick it to you for the first one.
Pat 48:41
My first takeaway starting with the first bucket, as I just mentioned, you know, our feedback, we got just great connector elite with the relationships and coaching with kind of a chip on a shoulder and an edge the same way he played. So we kind of kicked the tires on it, but I liked where we kind of settled on like how a coach can take that edge or how they played or your personality and start to infuse it in the team. And when he talked about just how he thinks about infusing his emotion, his energy, that edge into his team, and then also balancing, controlling the emotion, you know, helping his players and start to control that emotion. I like, we got in a little conversation of at times how he struggled with like low energy guys and just trying to build them up, but for me, the big takeaway with all that said was when he really shared his growing pains or his experience going from an assistant coach, first year head coach to, you know, the coach he is now and just how he viewed and formed relationships with his players. And I thought he was really open and honest with kind of the mistakes he made along the way and funny at times with, yeah, maybe sometimes promising some minutes or that he’s going to make an effort to get them in. And then, you know, the real world hits you. It’s a close game and just not making eye contact with that player. Yeah, it’s probably very relatable for a lot of us. And when yeah, avoiding promises you can’t keep, but to me, that was like the big takeaway was just him talking about relationships and what he’s learned and how as a head coach, you form relationships through the recruiting process, but then also learn to hold the players accountable and the conversations you have to have as a head coach.
Dan 50:21
So the part that I’d like to double down on, I think was my favorite, that transition from the assistant, their friend, someone who spent so much time recruiting. And now, like he mentioned, it’s the inevitable thing. And I think that I personally took a lot from hearing that and some of his learnings. And it reminded me too of a conversation we had a long time ago with Stan Van Gundy And Stan had really, really good thoughts in his first appearance on the show with us about being careful about promising playing time. In that podcast, Stan talked about how, I think at the time when he was with the Magic, he had a backup point guard that was wanting more playing time. And he was saying, you got to be careful with telling them, hey, if you do this and you get more shots up and play better defense, you’re going to play. Because the reality is like Stan was saying is you got to be much better than the player in front of you. And for him, the player in front of that player, I think was an all-star or whatever. So he was saying, it’s not just that you need to improve, of course you got to improve, but you got to be significantly better to get on the floor. And you’ve got to be careful with how you talk about playing time and over-promising. It reminded me of that a lot because there’s the natural human emotion or natural human tendency as a coach to want to make them feel better, kind of tell them, hey, stay in it, you might play. And then the damaging part of if they don’t, it’s worse. So that’s a really tough, fine line to balance for everybody, even for assistant coaches. And you got to be careful as an assistant saying anything that a kid gets their hopes up for. And so I took a lot from that and just his thoughts on his mentors and what they gave him that first season about making that transition. I thought it was a really good part of this whole conversation.
Pat 52:03
Yeah, follow up on your Stan Van Gundy story and what coach Legans talked about to today is, you know, you can get away as assistant coach, talking with a player like kind of keep working, keep working, you know, that these kind of generalities, you can get away when you’re assistant coach, but then when it’s the head coach, and you actually make decide the minutes, you really can’t get away as time was telling them to keep working. Because to your point, they can keep working, but you’re maybe never going to really get them in. But, you know, now that you have that power, that responsibility, you can’t just throw out those platitudes, because I can’t remember who we also talked about, but it burns a bridge, you know, if you can only go to that well so much before it dries up pretty quickly, and you lose that player, they figure it out.
Dan 52:45
Yeah. And there’s been a lot of great wisdom on the show from coaches kind of surrounding this, but one of them also that stands out to me was Michigan State women’s basketball Head Coach Robin Fralick has the quote, clear as kind. And she talked about being as clear as possible, even if it’s not what they want to hear is way more beneficial than, like you said, the platitudes that make you feel better in the moment, but could spell disaster later. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Pat 53:08
Alright Dan, keep this recap rolling here, I’ll throw it to you for our second takeaway.
Dan 53:13
So I’m gonna go to the deep trouble start sub sit Which you and I were mostly excited about this conversation. We came up with the title of that. Yeah Coach Legans has a history of running the deep underneath out of bounds and he rightly gave credit to those before him see why and we had coach Shulman on who’s a member of that tree a few months ago and talking about the coverage And I really enjoyed getting into what beats it because I think it’s an extension of the conversation We have coach Shulman a little bit because we talked briefly about in that show what gives it trouble And it was fun to get even deeper into some alignments and screens and coach Leggins gave just a ton of great learnings You know the different things he tried and what I really liked was when we got into how Lesser athletes could still be effective in this because I think for most of us That’s the situation we find ourselves in at every level is I mean if you got terrific athletes all over the court Then a lot of stuff works no matter what it is But I liked the parts about it’s still working them still getting steals them still getting juiced up about running it even if they didn’t have the Florida State athletes and I like that part of the conversation a lot along with him giving good tactical thoughts on that inside screening and alignment stuff
Pat 54:32
Yeah, I like till we approached this conversation. I mean, we wanted to have the conversation about the defense, but approaching from viewing it through how you would attack it offensively. And, you know, I liked when he talked about when teams are trying to screen that, that madman kind of that simple fix they send in the landlord over to double the emphasis that he put on taking away like that swing, swing, and when they play out of it, I think for me, what really stood away to your point too, on just, you know, having a finding success with lesser athletes and even use the word, like it’s a punch that they can all get behind. Who was it that talked about it with, you know, it’s better to do something with conviction, you know, do the wrong thing with the conviction than, you know, the right thing without any, not that this is right or wrong, but you really just sold like the conviction that the guys get behind this defense, whether they’re six, seven, you know, can jump out of the gym or five, 10, you know, guards, it finds success mainly because just the energy it brings and it kind of ties in nicely with our first bucket about bringing the energy and that edge.
Dan 55:34
Yeah. And I’m not sure if this is the right one, but coach Will Voigt way back in the day was discussing peel switching and all that. And he mentioned, hey, regardless of whether you master peel switching or zone, like getting five players to play hard with conviction is ultimately the goal. Not sure if that was the one or if it was coach Shulman or, you know, at this point, there’s a lot of good stuff said by coaches on here. So we’ll give those to the cred. Yeah. Yeah. Well, good stuff there, Pat. Let’s move on to our third takeaway. And for that, I will go back to you on that one.
Pat 56:06
Yeah. So the third takeaway I’ll pull from my start subset thing I’ve been thinking a lot about recently because of kind of the makeup of our team. Well, there are two takeaways. The main one was just when he got into the distinction between protecting bigs and guards and how he’d talked about strategies to protect the guards and the match-ups and getting off, but the struggle at times was protecting your bigs and like he said, just so much of that action is always going to be putting the bigs in the play off ball screens, of course, pick and rolls. And so like the real struggle with how you try to help a big or hide a big and the difficulty it can present, I thought were just really good points he raised on the distinction between new perimeter players and big players.
Dan 56:49
I also liked the part of the conversation about he threw in some good nuggets. He’ll still play guy two fouls in the first half and I’ll give you a miss here from me, not from coach Legans, of course, but I wish I would have potentially gone down a rabbit hole with the fouls and the two in the first half, even mentioned sometimes he played three in the first half. And then you also threw in when approximately they would put a player with two fouls back in and then take them back out. And I think that’s always a personal choice as a coach, but when you do have foul prone players, but they’re your better players and you sit them for the rest of the first half and then they’re cold and how good are they the first few minutes of the second half, you know, like the psychology of sitting versus not sitting your better players when it comes to fouls was something I personally could have spent more time on. But then I also liked the part of the conversation he threw in the yellow defense and trying not to foul at the end. And just the conversation, I think it was my last question about calling fouls in practice, especially early season. And it’s just a lot of guys, I feel like end up fouling in early games because your practices are tough and you’re trying to create an identity and you may or may not call fouls in practice the way they are in the game, because you’re trying to get guys to play through stuff. And then all of a sudden, and referees too, are all jazzed up because they got points of emphasis out of their stuff and they’re trying to call it early. And so I feel like a lot of early season games are players in foul trouble and trying to navigate that in practice, I think is interesting to me. And I think it’s really interesting to me to see how they’re going to be able to
Pat 58:15
Definitely, that was my other takeaway too from this last start subset and it’s a conversation we had recently too with coach Sabina when, you know, he was kind of the same thing that Coach Legans hit on at the end, like calling it really tight in practice, you know, and they don’t want to foul and I think so much like you said, as coaches, we want to build this toughness and sometimes we, oh, you know, we’re not going to call fouls, you know, play through it, play through it. And then you kind of get out of the game on top of they’re going to get a lot of foul calls, but then you also maybe realize too, that you’re not very good at defense because your guys don’t know how to defend without fouling. It is kind of like a artful balance because I think all coaches like it’s a pain in the ass calling fouls in practice. We don’t want to do it. We want to coach our teams. We want to worry about the other stuff, but it’s important to these guys because they get competitive and we need to. And so the slippage that we as coaches can have and foul calling, not calling fouls or not putting enough emphasis on it can have big time repercussions on the court when the games matter.
Dan 59:14
And let’s be honest, has there ever been a time in practice where as a coach you call foul and the person agrees with your call? No one ever is like, good call coach, that was right.
Pat 59:24
You were right. That was a hand check.
Dan 59:27
Yeah, it’s always a little confrontation, always a little argument, so it’s like, you know, I’m just going to let that go, let’s play through it, you know. Pat, I gave kind of a miss on mine or something, I wish we would have went deeper on. Is there anything else from your standpoint you could have gone deeper?
Pat 59:44
the first bucket I wish I’d followed up on and he hit on a little bit when we were talking about the helping players control their emotions but also how he thought about coaching in-game with the edge and controlling his emotion and he mentioned a couple times the right energy in the game so like what the right energy in the game looked like for him as a coach I wish I’d followed up on.
Dan 01:00:07
Yeah, that’s a fine line and sort of a personality thing too, of reserved versus coaching with an edge and how it translates to your players. And I think, I mean, the rest of the conversation around that was good, whereas players know who he is. So when they get to the game, they expect, and he can, you know, bring more out of them.
Pat 01:00:23
I think too, like just balancing his emotions. So obviously like none of his player, like you said, they know who he is. He’s instilling it every day in practice, but yeah, that fine line of maybe when a coach’s energy can start to fluster the team, you know, if they are going to take on the personality of a coach.
I think it was what we talked about with Dr. Klein a little bit in the vocabulary and how you communicate during a game can also then, I mean, of course we know that influence your team and good or bad negatively, positively. And so again, just wanted to hear his thoughts on what he’s kind of calculated or thought about, you know, with how he coaches in game with his energy and edge.
Dan 01:01:03
Once again, we thank Coach Legans for coming on. Wish him and the team the best of luck this season. Thank you everybody for listening. Have a great week coaching. We’ll see you next time.