Slappin’ Glass sits down this week with French Professional Coach, Mehdy Mary! Coach Mary brings a wealth of experience from different levels of the professional game and sheds light on attacking the switch, actions vs. flow, and talks favorite drill constraints and the importance of concise language during the always fun “Start, Sub, or Sit?!”
Inside the Episode
This is always a big, big topic for ou coaches. are stopping and just playing off the switch? Or should we just keep the flow of the offense and the flow of the offense is gonna find the mismatch.? And sometimes I don’t want to overcoach. You know, I’m someone who’s really detailed. I try to spend time on X’s and O’s on paper and sometimes I’m like, ‘okay, never forget that flow of the offense is something that you need to keep and how you find a way to attack the switch without killing the flow of the offense.'” – Mehdy Mary
We sat down this week with the fantastic French Professional Coach, Mehdy Mary, in what turned into a thought provoking conversation about a variety of relevant issues including:
- Attacking the Switch: We discussed specific actions versus keeping the flow along with a ton of other nuggets about when and how to attack the defensive switch.
- Drill Constraints and Concise Vocabulary: During “Start, Sub, or Sit?!” we explored Coach Mehdy’s favorite drill constraints, along with why using concise language is so important in building offensive and defensive concepts.
Chapters
0:00 Attacking the Switch
11:49 Strategies for Attacking Defensive Switches
23:47 Start, Sub, or Sit
32:38 Repetition and Decision Making in Basketball
37:10 Traveling and Networking in Basketball
40:23 Wrap Up
Transcript
Mehdy Mary: 0:00
This is always a big, big topic for our coaches. How is stopping and just playing off the switch? Or we should just keep the flow of the offense and the flow of the offense gonna find the mismatch. And sometimes I don’t want to overcoach. You know, I’m really someone really detailed. I try to spend time on picks and those on papers and sometimes I’m like, okay, never forget that flow of the offense is something that you need to keep and how you find a way to attack the switch without killing the flow of the offense.
Dan Krikorian: 0:35
Hi, I’m Dan Krikorian and welcome to Slapping Glass exploring basketball’s best ideas, strategies and coaches from around the world. Today we’re excited to welcome French professional coach Mehdi Mary. Coach Mary is here today to discuss attacking the switch, including specific actions versus general concepts, and we talk favorite drill constraints and the importance of concise language during our always fun start, sub or sit With members from the NBA to high school levels. We’re excited to continue building a highly valuable learning and community platform called SG Plus. With SG Plus, we aim to bring the highest quality and deepest insights of the game from around the world on a weekly basis. Who are almost 600 video archive on SGTV, private coaching community app and our long read Sunday morning newsletter. If you’re looking to explore and learn the game on a deeper level or just save yourself time searching the internet for the best backdoor plays in Europe, visit SlappingGlasscom today and see why current members are calling it an essential platform for high level coaching anywhere. We hope to see you there and now please enjoy our conversation with Coach Mehdy Mary.
Dan Krikorian: 2:04
Mary Coach, thank you very much for making some time for us. We had a chance to see you in Las Vegas this summer, which was great, and so it’s nice to see you again. Thanks for coming on the show.
Mehdy Mary: 2:18
Thanks for the invitation. As I said, it’s an honor for me to join you guys Appreciate that Coach.
Dan Krikorian: 2:23
We like to start with this and we like to talk about switching, attacking, switching and so many defenses now have gotten great at switching all kinds of actions, whether it’s all the actions or just picking roll or whatever it is and we wanted to discuss thoughts on how to run offense and attack a switch when, let’s say, you don’t just want to come down and get a switch and play isolation right away, or you want to just dump it into the post, but you want to continue to run some kind of offense, and how you think about teaching your team ways to still attack a switching defense, no matter who you have on the floor. So we’ll start there and then we’ll dive in deeper.
Mehdy Mary: 3:00
That’s a big topic. To me that’s a very important one and I always try to spend a lot of time during free season for that, and especially during season. I have a rule in my mind the first day of practice after the game doesn’t matter what’s happened the game before I always have part of this practice attacking the switch. Why? Because back in the day when the team were in trouble, they were going zone defense, different kind of zone defense. Now, when the team is in trouble, you know they’re going to switch. It’s like the common answer that everybody can give and I believe that you got to be ready as a coach to this answer, especially to answer this kind of issue, especially because you know that a lot of teams going to do that if they are in trouble. And I believe that our job is to be prepared for things for sure, things that should happen, and we got to anticipate things that cannot happen. But for sure, many times during season you’re going to have to face switching offense, especially if you are doing a great game. And then, second thing is, I believe that bad offense of switch is a really difficult for coach because the game is, you know, static, nobody’s sharing the ball, everybody starts being frustrated and that’s expose this is my feeling that expose a lot of time. The coach, you know we don’t have an answer to this kind of issue that the opposite team is proposing to us. That’s something that I really thought is spend a lot of time and my mind is already like this First day of practice doesn’t matter when our last, doesn’t matter what’s happened last game, we talk about how we will attack this week.
Dan Krikorian: 4:29
Coach, maybe diving in right away. What are some of those things that you discussed at first practice on attacking the switch.
Mehdy Mary: 4:35
Because everything is about personnel you have. You need to decide. My idea is to decide how we want to attack this week, and I always think you need to have generic and specific. What does it mean? Generic is how we’re going to attack the switch if we don’t know that they will switch. We are running something and for whatever reason they are switching, they are in delay. That’s in the game plan, but this is the very beginning of the possession that you have this because, after a timeout or whatever, this is how we’re going to attack switch in a generic way. And now we need to choose something for sure. As you said at the beginning of our conversation, it’s easy, if you have a crazy eyes of players, to say, okay, we’re just giving one-on-one or at least boom ring pass and one-on-one. If you have this type of player, you don’t have to show everybody that you are someone special as a coach. You want to go more complex stuff than what your team needs to win. If you have a crazy eyes of player, just one-on-one, just boom ring, one-on-one, maybe some flare screens or just space the floor, be ready for offensive rebound, okay. Or if you have a crazy poster player, you’re going to give him the ball on the block, he’s going to do some, but if we don’t take those stuff, there are many different ways to attack the switch. So I try to split Generic how are we going to attack generic Like we don’t know they are switching. They are switching how we can manage it and specific and after. We can go in detail on both. Specific is we know they’re going to switch. We know this is hand of quarter, few seconds. We have a ball screen. We know they’re going to switch. So at the end it’s like how we attack the switch, but we know they are switching and we have like some specific situations, perfect to attack the switch. Let’s say it’s like on, we’re talking about pick and roll, but it’s like you’re playing golden state and you are switching the off-screen. You know they’re going to set a flare screen, they’re going to slip it and play on that. We all know that. Right, off-screen switch the warriors flare screen. They slip it and they play on that. To me it looked like a specific they know they’re going to switch, they use this. So this is, yeah, the two ways and after, if we go about, maybe you want to go more in detail for both now Absolutely. My mind I have like a excelled worksheet All the defense that you can have in a game, from very aggressive to non-aggressive, hard edge, quick show, contain ice. You know everything and this is a way to manage my mind and all the possibility. And after I cross with this team, I can do this and I pick, okay, generic, I pick this, this and this for my team, for what I am, because, let’s say, when I look at the Zagiris playoff last year during Euro League, they were doing something very interesting to switch. I have a big man on me. They pass the ball to someone else. This guy is driving to, moving far from him Maybe you saw that and then I run. It’s like a boomerang, but first of all I make my defender with a big run. So after it’s not like it’s really a close out. You know, even if my man is not helping, you know because we used to say, okay, someone drive the gap, the big is gonna want to stand or just help. And when I receive, we kick, I receive, I play one on one on the catch, but it’s even more movement than this. I’m running, he’s running with me, we clear out the guy driving to me, pass me in middle ball and then I play one on one. That could be a good option and I try to have tons of different options in my excel and then after I’m like, okay with this team, what should I pick? Let’s say something else, something that I like. We set a first ball screen. They switch. We come to reset, but we know they’re gonna switch it, so we slip it. So it’s like screening, you roll, come back, slip and that’s create confusion. Let’s say To me at the end of the day, it’s to have a lot of material as a coach, but especially be ready to which one I’m gonna pick because of my team.
Patrick Carney: 8:30
And when you go to specific and you know the switch is coming whether you mentioned the Warriors what are you working with your screeners then, in terms of do you screen, do you slip when you know it’s coming? I guess? How are you working with your screeners on and off the ball?
Mehdy Mary: 8:45
Let’s say I’m my last team, france is specifically because we are very short point guards and sometimes it’s not that easy for a big man to screen and seal because we have a lot of short point guards. You know there is not many league in Europe with so many short point guards. So sometimes when you want to take advantage on the screen and seal, you know like screening is switched under. So how I pivot to keep him on my back or switch over how I pivot In French league sometimes I don’t feel really confident on that because so small, fast point guard it’s not sometimes really easy for a big to touch them without offensive arm. So my last team I was more about like screening, okay, when on specific actions like dive and we know they’re gonna triple maybe. So we decide who’s gonna be the triple, you know, and then we try to have the first pass after the pick and roll for a great passer and then after the guy who pass can I mean here the first mismatch can give spacing we let the big man dive and seal the guy who’s gonna probably do a triple and then here we have the ball to our best passer who find the open man. But especially was about sealing the B.
Patrick Carney: 9:58
That was the first idea In that triple situation, coach, are you looking to put another weaker defender who you know will triple switch, or is it a shooter or is a specific, like offensive personnel you want that could also be receiving off of a skip?
Mehdy Mary: 10:14
Exactly, we try to both options. Sometimes we try to use a specific. There are three options Specific defender, let’s say this guy, if they switch on this, we are putting this play. So we have this defender over there and we seal him, or night long Okay After. I’m always worrying about to not make it too much a chest game. If you do this and a great shooter of your team is not guarding by this guy, you don’t put a great shooter of your team in situation to shoot. You know what I mean. Because your great shooter is there but the help is coming from here. You know that he’s never gonna receive. That will be inside pass help on the weak side, pass over there. Or maybe you set a flare screen on the weak side but your best shooter is here and he’s not having the ball, so can be a bad defender, can be where our best shooter is and sometimes it’s like, especially against triple switch, we can run a set without a triple. You set a side pick and hold empty corner. Not difficult I mean difficult. You know side pick and hold to go inside. If they go to that, that’s a very, very difficult situation. To answer about your question about the screener, I’m not kind of guy who have like one way. That’s always the way. You know what I mean. Yeah With national team. You know U18, u19, U20, we play different teams, as you know. And let’s say, you play Greece sometime. They have a tall guard. It’s okay, you can set, seal him. He’s going to fight with you. So you set, you seal him, you keep him on your back and you can have hook pass over. You receive. You’re playing in France with not so many guys like this. That’s a danger. Let’s say Offensive foul always the same danger.
Dan Krikorian: 11:49
Coach, we’re talking a little bit about some specific actions. I’d love to go back and ask you about the generic actions and, if you’re just not sure if a team’s going to switch what it is that you’re teaching and thinking about to still help the offense move, if you’re just not sure what they’re going to do.
Mehdy Mary: 12:04
This is always a big, big topic for us coaches how is stopping and just playing off the switch or we should just keep the flow of the offense and the flow of the offense going to find the mismatch. And sometime I don’t want to over coach. You know I’m really someone really detailed. I try to spend time on picks and knows on papers and sometime I’m like, okay, never forget that flow of the offense is something that you need to keep and how you find a way to attack the switch without killing the flow of the offense. And I had issue against Chalet a couple of years ago. You know Chalet, the team who used to have a lot of French guys, and you know the Colo Gobert and everything. Herman Kunter were the coach of it and they were switching, but with the really athletic team. So the three other guys were really hard on passing lane. They switched by two and the three other guys are hard on passing lane. So that’s not easy to keep the flow of the offense. It’s not like they are switching, but the three other guys are showing themselves real strength and everything you can keep the flow and the other guys know they switch and the three other guys denying hard and they let you play two on two and against those team. You cannot keep the flow. So it’s always a balance. You know, I used to convince myself because me internally, if you ask me, okay, they switch, we know exactly how we want to attack, even if it’s a generic. We didn’t know, but we have a really you know, clear idea about how we want to attack the switch and we go this way. You know, at some time I’m convinced myself and be like no, no, don’t kill the flow. So it’s a battle.
Dan Krikorian: 13:32
Let’s say Coach and other conversations we’ve had. Attacking a switch, if you know a team is kind of switching a lot of your actions, how much you think about slipping or ghosting or just hard cutting versus trying to screen or trying to be, like you said, a chess match and tricky and get a mismatch. How much of that part of that flow is just discontinuing to cut and slip actions versus try to actually screen.
Mehdy Mary: 13:56
But with the format it’s pretty clear. If a team is switching the pick and roll with the four, that’s clearly because it’s a stretch for who can make trees and everybody is running by this way. So I love the idea of having a RAM screen from the five or maybe something like even more complicated, but like, let’s say, you set a stagger with the first one turn and the four, we use the screen of the five to set a ghost and pop. I was running these kind of things you know a lot Ghost and pop or RAM plus ghost and pop because we know they are switching with the format. To me it’s really clear why. Because if you let them switch without advantage and you want to please mismatch on the past, that will be five in the paint helping everywhere. So it’s not that easy. In France we have a tradition of playing the mismatch of the four around the elbow. You can imagine that pick and roll with the four switching. The four is going elbow, we try to give him and he’s playing almost a one on one, similar to back to the basket with the five men on the dunkers, but an opposite ready for offensive. We won and we play one on one from here and at the end it’s not that bad, because if you bring the ball on the elbow you have both corners, you have one dunkers, but the big, the other player, is stretching the floor. If someone helped you can see the whole court. Nobody’s help and maybe not an easy basket because six, five is still here, but maybe a fail away and everything. So with the four, sleep gusts or rum plus sleep is pretty clear of what I like, and with the five, as I said, really really depend on personal. I don’t have issue to say okay, with these five men we set, even if they switch, and we play other continuity, and with him we just sleep it because he’s like faster and more able to do something. It’s not that easy to run, sleep it, receive and the game is over there. So it’s not, you know, that easy. So I try to keep it simple but in the same time use the personal.
Dan Krikorian: 15:53
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Patrick Carney: 17:00
Slash Slopping Glass today, which within this flow, versus stopping to attack mismatches, and we’re looking at the generic component. What role does maybe the shot clock play in terms of we should try to get the switch earlier so we have more time to hunt the mismatch or hunt a solution? You know, I guess. What factors do you consider with the shot clock now and to how you want to attack a generic switch?
Mehdy Mary: 17:24
For sure, short clock. We don’t have any idea to bring the board on the block. They trapped, we got to skip up on it. They run off. You know they close out half. We don’t have any options. So the idea will be to play outside game. I love for sure the idea of boomerang, but especially boomerang to attack back in the same side. I pass, I receive, and during the pass you know all the defense is moving and if I attack they will be ready. But that’s like more generic, let’s say, idea than I have. But I don’t try to put too much on the head of the player. But the rules will be more about having screens on the weak side. There will be more about this, you know. Okay, short clock, we have to play one-on-one off the catch, like boomerang or just one-on-one. But we need movement on the weak side. That will be specific and something that I will, you know, work on many actions of drive, like if someone drive. I believe that we cannot let 3-on-2 on the weak side all the time, but try to create 2-on-1 by someone setting a screen and then on the weak side will be more. If someone had, there will be more 2-on-1. You know, the national team coach Vincent Collet is doing, you know, is trying this a lot, especially with his team during the season the team he coached during the season. They’re having a lot of flare screens on the weak side and doing the one-on-one of the switch. That would be the idea.
Patrick Carney: 18:40
And you see a lot too, let’s say, in these specific late clock situations and you, boomerang, are going to ISO, where the defense will just basically run a double at the ball and force the pass. How do you think about maybe attacking that? Or, I guess, working with a run-and-jump late clock on that perimeter mismatch?
Mehdy Mary: 18:58
Yeah, did you see the Euro League game not this one, but Final Four the year before, when Micsic had the one-on-one against Berserkhoff? Did you see that? Yeah, they didn’t double him. Do you remember? Yeah, they didn’t double him. I believe that some teams and that’s a good idea to bring the ball out of the hand of Micsic, let’s say, the best one-on-one player. To me it’s like how you and that’s a big topic for the Jons it’s like how you attack the full court defense, the zone press, the run-and-jump. Next defense on the pick and roll is the same idea about moving without the ball. That means, if you have the mismatch and my man is coming to W, I got to put myself available to generate a four-on-three really fast when the ball will go out of your hands, and I got to show you that if you go trap, I will follow you and I will give a passing lane to the ball handler and maybe you will take the ball out of the hands of our best player. But because of your action, you will generate a four-on-three, because I will be at the perfect spot for Mike James to pass me the ball and then we have a four-on-three. To me, it’s more about moving without ball to generate a passing lane and put the defense in trouble if they do this unbelievable action. Because, let’s be honest, so far from the basket, doubling the ball at the pro-game. It’s a big topic, you know, because if the ball is in my hand, let’s say around three-two, because you double, maybe I go more from to the half court line, maybe I go between both defenders around free to is like a short role, but he’s never a big man, so it’s like playing a short role with a guard. I’m a guard, I would receive the ball on the free throw and we are four on three Shooters in the corner, shooters in the corner, one big inside. I got to make you pay the price of this very big gambling. If not, mike James will be mad because that’s easy, doesn’t matter. What you’re doing on the pick and roll Doesn’t matter. You switch and then you trap him. If you don’t want to edge or whatever, you switch, boom, you trap. We don’t give solutions to him. Keep the ball too much. Not easy to generate passing line. And then the four on three is a four on three and a half. Hope it was once again a four on four. Okay, they would keep doing it. It’s the same. This is what I was saying before about how we attack, let’s say, full court defense with the youngs. Make them pay Be. It’s not about passing, it’s about moving without ball at the right spot. So the ball arrived and you got a layup. One, two, three layups Okay, it’s over. They cannot cut your timing of your reference by doing this. His mistake against Badalona Turalik Jr. When I was coaching the junior team U18 team of Asve, they were doing this all game long Run and trap run and jump full court and everything, and we never made them pay the price. We were crossing half court organizing our game and we lost by very few points. But after watching the game I was like, yes, sometimes they made some stills who gave layup, but by not attacking it in a good way to score baskets, we encourage them to keep going the same way.
Patrick Carney: 21:52
If it’s in the generic attacking sense. We’ve been looking a lot at ball screens, we’ve talked a little bit about off screens, but when you know a team switching going to more, let’s say, handoffs or even more like split actions in terms of trying to punish a switch that way, and what you think about moving away from on ball screens and what actions you like to go to to punish switching teams, For sure, because it’s not something major, let’s say off screen as a ball screen, but it’s something that we can have and I believe Golden State is doing a great job of this.
Mehdy Mary: 22:22
Off screen switch with the flare screen and slip the flare Back screen but keep the guy on the back screen. And then how you can have these actions against attacking off ball screens, switch, you get it, yeah, and all the split actions which is not easy to attack. I like one way of. I cannot say maybe it’s split action, but it’s like when you give the ball on the block to another five men and you try to have like a stagger on the weak side, but the first screen is by a guard and the second one is like a big man. And then you play on this first one because if it’s a team who wants to switch, your first screen is set by a point guard, on the two, on the three, on the four, doesn’t matter, but that’s a very first switch middle of the paint with a short pass. You know what I mean? You put the block on one side, you set this and that’s the short pass. If they switch, the mismatch is right under the basket. You know, you curl and you use, and then, after the set, the first can use the stagger, use the screen of the five men going high. This type of actions are something you know I try to value, to have in mind. You know, before the game Maybe you have Argentinian transition. You get it, one pass to the big and go handoff, and then the two rings on the corner exchange and we set a cross came for the big. That’s a great way to attack a switching team Coach, this has been great so far.
Dan Krikorian: 23:44
Thank you for all your thoughts on the switch. That was a lot of notes there. We want to transition now to a segment that we call start, sub or sit. We’ll give you three different options around a topic. Ask you to start one, sub one and sit one, and then we will discuss your answer from there. So, coach, if you’re all set, we’ll dive into this first one.
Mehdy Mary: 24:03
I set myself and I start both of you.
Dan Krikorian: 24:08
Let’s go. Thank you, coach. This first question has to do with being a good teacher on the court and what it is that you value, or that you’ve seen that you think that great coaches, when they teach something well, what it is that they possess on the court, let’s say they’re teaching a new action, and so start, sub or sit these three different traits of great teachers. Option one is adaptability. Option two is creativity thinking of different ways to attack things. And option three is concise language, or having a vocabulary that you can express to the players that they know what they’re talking about.
Mehdy Mary: 24:47
Wow, I would start that ability for sure. Okay, I would concede language on sub and creativity maybe on the serve. That’s not easy because all the three are keys, but I believe that teaching new, new actions, you need first to adapt to your person, especially at the pro level. As I used to say, it’s better to spend very few time on something really good for your team considering or your player, what he can do, than do something perfectly Many hours but this is not the best way for him to play.
Dan Krikorian: 25:17
Coach, I actually love to go back and ask you about your start adaptability and Pat and I were talking a little bit beforehand about great teachers. Especially as we’re recording this, it’s somewhat early in the season and teams are figuring out who does what, who plays well with each other and how. You just think about, say, in a practice setting, putting players in a situation where you can kind of see how they play together and then what you need to maybe adapt to as the season continues to progress.
Mehdy Mary: 25:44
Success is preparation. So it’s about video session. It’s about me watching what they did before After the court, especially pro with the pros. The court should be just a validation or not about what I saw before, but watching them play before and sitting and talking with them keys for prepare yourself about what you should do with them, because time on the court have too much value to take risk of spending hours on something. That’s not the best ways. You can never be sure. But if you watch what they did before, I don’t mean you need to keep the same place, but maybe watching the action they were comfortable and everything you see. If you talk now, I decide I made a mix about everything and we try on before.
Patrick Carney: 26:28
Another factor we were considering with adaptability is also so many players learn differently. So how is you as a coach, how do you discover how they learn and then start to apply that so they can pick up these concepts?
Mehdy Mary: 26:40
I work with a model. Model is a process communication. I don’t know if you guys know that or it’s like you have come colors, you have MBTI. You have different kind of model. Process communication is a model of management and helps me out to know who got which kind of energy. Let’s say someone who is analyzer. Let’s say we used to say work colleague there was the name before, but since couple of years in this model they say analyzer. He needs concrete information. You don’t have always to explain him the big picture, the reason why you are doing this. You just need clear information. I need you to go here to there this way and that’s enough for him. And that’s some other kind of personality who needs different type of communication, who need to understand the why, who need maybe to think outside the box. So we don’t feel comfortable if you put them in a too small box and they just believe that they are soldier. They just have to go from point A to point B. No, they don’t feel comfortable. So it’s. I’m using this model. There are many models, but I love this and I try to use this to understand myself better first, and I think it’s key as a coach to understand yourself better, because who you are and what is your job is really going together very deep as a coach. This is why Messina used to say that to be a great leader, you need to be in peace with yourself, and I love that. I mean game day. You guys know that that’s so emotional, so inside, so deep, that you need to be in peace with yourself. So I try to adjust my communication depending who they are and what kind of thing they need. That’s funny. I had Marcus Guignard coming from University of North Carolina in Limarch and sometime last minutes of the game he was coming to me and be like but he knew that, but he was kind of analyzer coach, we are okay that with the five men we are going hard edge, we don’t deny first pass, we are ready, and with the four we try to stick under and reset with switch. And I was like exactly Marcus and I was repeating and everything you know he was this kind of guy we are needing, you know, concrete information, positive reinforcement or just reinforcement, none more. Not why? Or could we do something else?
Dan Krikorian: 28:53
No, Coach you’re, cit, creativity and I know it’s probably a difficult one to sit of all these three. When you think about trying to be creative, what are your sources of creativity? Watching other coaches film of your own players? How do you find your source of creativity as a coach?
Mehdy Mary: 29:11
It’s the difficult part for me. I used to watch hours of Saras Sarona Shazkevichu’s games with Barcelona and everything. Everything is really well organized, prepared and everything. That’s who I am and what I like. Sometimes I’m going too deep on that and that killed the creativity a little bit of the player. What I do is I start stopping a little bit or reducing type of coaches I’m watching. I love Israel, israel Consultants Exactly Things doing with Alba. I now watch the game. You know what I bought on your website, something you did with him about defense. I started watching him. You asked me how I developed this creativity. I started watching his games and how the team play. It’s more about concepts than plays. That gives a little bit more freedom on the guys. I spent a couple of times with Barcelona, the ACB team, and I watched some practices. That was crazy, because they are preparing a game and the opponent that was Tuchteleka and Mankara and they are switching the top ballscrew like a week or ice between ice week. It doesn’t matter. That was the idea. They work on how many ways to attack this possibility. It’s more about being creative. You can give go handoff. You can give cut. The next one is going to come. You can give split actions and everything In my mind. That was very, very interesting. It’s far from me, but I know I got to go this way a little bit. I spoke with Israel a little bit in Las Vegas and I thank him because you are helping me to go outside of my comfort zone of what I like. I was also in Manresa watching some practice, but Manresa is like me how things need to be done and they repeat, it’s not so many different ways to attack than what is preparing. This is how I try to, but I know I’m not the best at this.
Dan Krikorian: 31:02
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Patrick Carney: 31:58
Moving on to our next one, you have some experience with the national teams U20, u18. To use this Start Subbersit has to do with constraints that you like to use in a drill to help teach decision making. Your start would be the one you like the most or you think is the most effective with helping decision making. Is it a shot clock constraint, is it a scoring constraint in terms of placing different values on the score, or is it an action constraint, in terms of again trying to encourage certain actions and giving them more value over others?
Mehdy Mary: 32:32
The third one would be my start, the second one would be my serve and shot clock would be my bench.
Patrick Carney: 32:38
I would like to follow up first with a broader question in terms of with actions and helping guys become better decision makers. How much of it is repetition based versus actual randomness, in terms of just them able to obviously first recognize the situation and then make the correct decision out of it?
Mehdy Mary: 32:58
This is a great question. This is something I value more and more. I believe that repetition without spending time reading, in the same time, you lose time With elite players. I believe that more and more, everything got to be done, considering all the different concepts. Let’s say we are doing on the closeout offense, we are you and me and you should not know what’s going to happen. You are shooting, I’m defending someone is going to pass you the ball, or I’m going to pass you the ball. I don’t want you to do. And let’s say, you make 10 trees and then now you go right, 100 ball shot. You go left, step back. No, it’s got to be a little bit. Got to be like a warm up, not warming up your body but warming up your ability, but really really fast. Got to be like okay, you got five closeouts in a row. Okay, ready, we start on the baseline. You have one. Second one is 45,. Third, one is top. Okay, fourth, fifths, I’m defending you, someone is going to pass you the ball, but you don’t know what I’m going to do. First one maybe I take, I go back, you got to take decision and shoot the ball. Maybe. Second one I jump on your inside shoulder and you got a decision and, in the same time, working on your game versus repetitions, without thinking it’s something really big to me, because right now you don’t have a lot of time to take the decision during a game, so it’s maybe better to spend time on both more than cutting. We work repetition and then we’re going to work on quick decision making.
Dan Krikorian: 34:21
Let’s work both. If I could actually go back and ask you a question with the attacking, the switching and you talked about early in the season and every practice, just practicing against the switch, how do you introduce a drill? Or how do you introduce attacking the switch? Are you doing three on three, four and four? How are you actually teaching it if we kind of go back to the first bucket?
Mehdy Mary: 34:43
What I love to do, especially because it’s beginning of the week and first practice, and sometimes you don’t want to go very, very tough on this first one, especially with pros. You got a game, let’s say, on Saturday In Europe. You got a game Saturday Mainly Sunday you can be off and that’s a Monday practice and next game maybe Saturday. So you don’t want to drive them, run them like crazy on Monday and take some risks. So I try to work on situation where the mismatch is already set. So let’s say you start with the five men on the free throw line with the ball defending by a guard. You put two wings on the both wings and one is defending by his player but the other one is defending by a big and from this situation, the big man having the ball pass the ball on one side and then we play three on three. We are more working on the end of the switch and we manage. Okay, we pass, maybe he’s probably going to dive. What’s going to do the guy in the opposite If he does nothing? Probably the guy defending the big is going to front him and the guy opposite is going to play both and you have nothing, especially if he’s athletic like players we have in Europe. So maybe he’s going to come high post. So the guy needs to adjust. If he say, low, we got the ball high post, maybe we can have high low. If he goes high, maybe we can have a low pass. And we start like this and then after we do same kind of drill but we go four on four Big man top of the key with the guards, two wings and one other wing in the corner, and now we put with the coach having the ball top of the key and he’s passing the ball with to someone. But we still have the mismatch from the very beginning and we play from this and then after that, okay, we go four on four and we go switch. But I try to always think that we start with the end. So when we put the beginning of the action, which is the ball screen, we know we worked already was going to be the next action, the action after the action. That was the second and then I put the first. When we are working on the first, we already have worked the second. So we win time.
Dan Krikorian: 36:39
Let’s see Great coach. Love that You’re off the start, sub or sit hot seat. Thanks for playing that game with us. Loved your answer. That was a lot of fun, thank you. Thank you, coach. We’ve got one last question for you before we close the show. Before we do, thank you once again for coming on and being so thorough and walking through all this stuff with us. This was really great, so thank you.
Mehdy Mary: 36:58
Thanks a lot, guys. I’m going to keep watching you guys.
Dan Krikorian: 37:01
I appreciate it. Thanks, coach. Coach, our last question is what’s the best investment that you’ve made in your career as a coach?
Mehdy Mary: 37:09
This is a great question. I think the fact that I’m passionate and I love my job and I love basketball. I’ve been traveling a lot to see different ways to play the game. Let’s say, before I was with national team, I was going every summer to some European championship at different places and watching different games, talking, meeting people, talking with them. When I do clinic in France and I does a couple of, I always try to say to coaches spend time doing summer in Austria. And this is what I did and I think that was a great investment. You know, going somewhere you can go. I don’t know Latvia. Now Latvia is becoming a great basketball country, but in Latvia, let’s say, almost every summer, you’ve got the European championship U16, u18, u20, it doesn’t matter, but you’ve got something. And if you go for the last round, like quarter, semi and final and all the other games, you can see a ton of games and great basketball games In a couple of days on Good Area. That made me see different ways to play the game, meet different people and then after, with the network I built, I can go in different places. We met in Vegas and that was there because people have met, but it’s not about networking to be friends with people. It’s about networking to know more things, it’s not more people to share the passion that we have. This is the first thing. And then to share, you know, ideas. What we did now was interesting for me to share my ideas. And then I watched a couple of other things that you did with Slapping Glass and I loved that and that was a way for me to know different things. And then, after this guy that I have seen, or Slapping Glass, or you guys, we will meet somewhere we don’t know where we’ll meet and we’ll talk about what we say and I get better and I love that passion and I get better. So biggest investment to me was about, you know, traveling, meeting people, seeing different games, and when you know people, they can, you know, spend time with you, talk about how they prepare, what you see from the game, how they work on that, and that was good. You know, last time I was in Vegas not the last, the one before I had a meal with Dainis Adomitis, you know, who were the Lithuanian national team coach and who were coaching in Naples, jerusalem, when I was in the barge and we played each other in European competition, and that was good to talk about the game, about you got to travel to have this. If you don’t travel, he’s not gonna give me a call and say here, you did this in third quarter. I was not ready, I put you in trouble, that was great. You know, I came out of this meal, took some notes and that was good, very, very interesting, great moment same patient and also, you know, around.
Dan Krikorian: 39:43
All right, pat, another fun conversation to have after we once again got a chance to meet Coach Mary in Vegas as well at the social, and so it was fun to continue the conversation here as well. And we had only eight or nine hours ago and we talked about at the very end wanting to talk more about tacking switching, and so eight hours later, when this one was scheduled, it was like perfect, our minds refreshed to dive right in with someone that teaches it very well. So that was a fun scheduling happenstance for us.
Patrick Carney: 40:23
Very serendipitous and we appreciate Coach Mary’s thoughts and going into a level of detail he did. I think what we appreciated again refreshing Barak at the very end is he laid out kind of a framework for how he thinks about attacking switch. Jumping to Coach Mary, I enjoyed the framework he presented it in in terms of thinking of attacking a generic switch versus attacking a specific switch and this was a conversation you and me had in our prep for Coach Mary of concepts versus action based switching attacks. It was perfect in terms of how he viewed it and our prep. So that was nice. Yep, I enjoyed then, yeah, being able to kind of pick at that from a generic and specific standpoint and how that influenced actions, screening concepts and all the stuff that we then proceeded to go down with him.
Dan Krikorian: 41:09
Attacking switching is a huge conversation that I know every level Coach is discussing and trying to figure out because it really can stymie an offense and I think we wanted to, like you said, have the conversation where it’s not like an obvious okay, boomerang it back and just let a guy operate against a slow footed big or dump it inside. I mean those things are great too, but just more of a general conversation and it’s so layered because we were talking about before in our prep, talking about attacking switching, where you know let’s say they’re switching everything versus they’re just switching the pick and roll, late clock versus they’re just switching off ball actions and they’re playing more regular in the pick and roll, and just all the things you need to be prepared for as a coach and then to prepare your team to play against when the game hits, so that they’re not just seeing something for the first time and they have ways to play against it. What we really like getting into was the specific actions versus the concept or the general stuff, teaching teams how to just play if they know a team is switching generally versus from the sideline. As a coach you can kind of dictate, let’s say, a late clock or an early clock action to either provoke a switch or make it hard to switch, which he went into with the like the ram action a little bit. So it’s a big world when we’re talking about attacking the switch, but it was just like a plethora of interesting ideas for coaches to think about, based off of your personnel.
Patrick Carney: 42:34
One of the ideas I really enjoyed was when he knew against the triple switch and positioning, like he said, either another inferior matchup that would go on to that triple switch or a shooter who could benefit off of maybe that skip pass when they got off it and allowed the triple switch to happen. Yeah, reminded me a lot of our conversation with coach Bieliszewski, just understanding the nature of a triple switch and how you can kind of move the chess pieces around to continue to get advantage off of it and not just allow them to kind of get back to neutral or get favorable matchups, really like Nugget he shared there.
Dan Krikorian: 43:07
Yeah, it does all boil down to like you think he mentioned at some point, like can you create a closeout somewhere? And the discussion of not getting your offense held up versus just continuing to let things flow and hope that your movement, your action, creates a favorable closeout at some point. He also this is just like another thing he threw in that France playing one-on-one from the elbow. I like that a lot. Yeah, you and I talked about this recently. We did a little clinic thing on it too, with UCLA did a good job with that, with Jaime Hacas getting the switch playing through the elbow and then having good spacing around that, and he said that France does that really well. So I like that too. Just as little Nugget of an action to run against the switching team?
Patrick Carney: 43:48
Yeah, definitely, and I think it was around that conversation too. He started to mention the importance of them having weak side movement too, around these mismatches to continue to create some. I mean he said maybe with weak side movement you can go from a three-on-two to create a two-on-one and again create some more closeout, some other opportunities around that switch, and that’s something too that Coach Barac mentioned in his podcast. That switching can also lead to some better closeouts and offensive rebounding, and I like too. I asked him about we will see a lot If they are going to isolate, you do have that great perimeter isolation player that teams will run and jump the ball Again, talking about creating advantages and four-on-three to follow that trap and create a passing lane to punish it and so really enjoy just how you also can think about weak side movement, weak side screens as well, to punish switches.
Dan Krikorian: 44:39
A really detailed, great conversation about attacking, switching, and there’s always the option just to ISO and use your Hezzi package up top and jack that all the way. Three, two.
Patrick Carney: 44:48
We didn’t get as deep into that, but yeah.
Dan Krikorian: 44:50
Yeah.
Patrick Carney: 44:52
I did enjoy the flow, versus when to just stop and isolate, and the delicate dance I think that everyone thinks about.
Dan Krikorian: 45:00
He threw the other nugget about, I think, is Zalgress. We got to look that up about them, adding a little bit of movement, the little cutting action, to then catch with some space to operate against the big in the ISO A nice thing as well. All right, moving to start, sub or sit, as always. We talked for a long time about both of these, but I’ll kick it to you on takeaways from. I guess we could start with the first one, with the adaptability, creative and concise language.
Patrick Carney: 45:25
Yeah, I enjoyed the conversation when we got into how he kind of learns his learners and his process communication method and just understanding like who’s analyzers that just need specific details and who are the guys that need kind of the wise and the bigger pictures, and the importance this plays in being an effective teacher and communicating. I think he’s also a very reflective coach in himself and I thought that came across even when we were talking about switching. He always kind of had the preface that you know this is the way he would like it and always trying to keep it simpler and understanding that maybe he has all these ideas and these specific actions but he can’t freeze his guys up trying to think about this and that he also has to let them play. And I think this process communication method and he got into that he also used it on himself and that’s when he mentioned Messina. What was it the quote about being?
Dan Krikorian: 46:14
a piece with yourself, yeah.
Patrick Carney: 46:15
Really enjoyed that conversation within this start subset.
Dan Krikorian: 46:19
Yeah, for sure. I thought that was a nice thing too about him learning his players and taking those tests and learning how they like to receive information. I think we’ve talked a lot with coaches about how important it is to getting to know your players is sort of a general saying, but really getting to know how they learn and how they prefer to be coached.
Patrick Carney: 46:37
Yeah, I can throw it to you, maybe with your takeaways then moving to drill constraints and helping with decision making.
Dan Krikorian: 46:43
Yeah, I think that it’s always fun to just ask the constraint drill question to different coaches and with different levels and he’s done work opposite the pro level and then also with youth and so just what translates over his start being the action itself and just putting them in it and adding variability to it. And you could tell he kind of lit up a little bit about excited to talk about repetition, variability, randomness within the action and really teaching them how they have to understand all the different parts of the action. And I mean, maybe it wasn’t quite as important to him to have the other constraints before having them thoroughly understand the action and what they want to do is what I kind of took from that.
Patrick Carney: 47:24
I wouldn’t say I was surprised, when it’d be the right word, but yeah, that he sat the shot clock. I feel like we’ve had a number of these conversations where I think putting a time constraint, shortening and making producing quicker decisions has been what would you say like a reoccurring topic. This is why we like these start subsets and kind of recycling these questions, because you get a different answer, a different perspective every time. My fault was first starting with the shot clock and why he sat it and I like in his order of operations. It’s like, well, that’s kind of the last component of getting them to make the quick decision, but first teaching them to understand and comprehend and make correct decisions.
Dan Krikorian: 48:01
And then the conversation then flowed because I got a chance to go back to the teaching, the switching and how he prefers to teach it and he had a couple of nice little things in about starting with the big already, with the switch at the elbow, and I guess I’ll add this was my miss or my I wish we had more time. I think it was interesting him talking about working on the way things end and I just think that’s a great teaching point on starting with the end. So players get used to the pictures of how a lot of offensive possessions end up a post switch on an elbow, whatever it is, and just starting from that, because then, like he mentioned, you can start it however you want. You can get to that a million ways, but then having them play through and understand that kind of more later in the clock I thought was a really cool thing that I like that he talked about. But also I wish we had more time because I think that’s an interesting conversation.
Patrick Carney: 48:56
You nailed it. I think that’s so important to building in offenses you know how situations are going to end. So how do we play out of this spacing? How do we play out of a post? How do we play out of a hedge? You can start it a million different ways. You know, I think sometimes we get caught up in how we like to start it, the Iverson, all these kind of movements but at the end of the day it’s still going to result in some sort of baseline action and you guys got to know how to play out it and solve solutions from there. I’m with you. I think that would have been just another great conversation, but obviously a longer conversation to have with them, and we didn’t want to turn it into a two-parter.
Dan Krikorian: 49:30
Yeah, well, maybe we can just make that the bucket for the next coach to come on and eight hours from now. Once again, we thank Coach Mary for coming on. We wish him luck this season. Pat, there’s nothing else, we’ll wrap this thing up. That was good. Thanks everybody for listening. We’ll see you next time.