Hey crew, I’m shutting down this Skool community at the end of this week. I’ll just be honest with you, I didn’t love the platform. It felt clunky, and that it wasn’t built for real basketball conversation. It didn’t feel like the kind of space I want to build long-term. So instead of forcing something that isn’t right… I'm simplifying. I'm moving this group over to GroupMe. Here’s what you need to know: This WILL become a paid community in the near future. But if you join right now through the link at the bottom of this page, you’re in for FREE. For life. No subscription later. No surprise charge. You’re grandfathered in. Thanks for joining early on here! Inside the GroupMe: 🏀 Film breakdown discussions 🏀 Practice structure and offensive/defensive ideas 🏀 System conversations 🏀 Direct access to me 🏀 A room full of coaches trying to actually teach the game the right way Now that the season is coming to an end, I want to build something valuable for coaches this offseason. If you want in before it becomes paid, join here: 👉 https://groupme.com/join_group/113294671/sYRjrYeC Look forward to seeing you all there! — Coach T

Anyone have any good books they have read over the years that you feel helped give you a new perspective/way of doing things? I’ve read Coach K’s The Gold Standard, Dan Hurley’s Never Stop, and am starting on Coach K’s leading with the heart. Just looking for some more ways to expand my coaching knowledge and I feel that reading is an undervalued way of doing so.

I recently heard Idaho head basketball coach Alex Pribble talk about something he calls “NBT” — No Basketball Talk. During practice, he intentionally builds in moments to talk with his players about anything but basketball. I love that approach. A season is long. Practices can become repetitive. Relationships can quietly slip into being transactional. I tried this with a group of my middle school players one season, and it was refreshing. We talked about what was going on in their lives, what they were into outside of basketball, what they were excited about. You could feel the shift. Walls came down. Trust went up. If you coach, consider building in intentional “no basketball talk” time. The season is long. The relationships are what last.

Most coaches I’ve been around can talk offense all day, but not nearly enough time is spent on defense. The reality is this: a large portion of your offensive success can be built by playing great defense—especially when you teach your team how to run in transition and create clear triggers. The beauty of defense is how much ownership you have over it. Your defensive philosophy can be shaped to match how you want to play on offense. The principles you emphasize on that end should directly feed into what you want to become as a team. Here’s an example of what I like to run. Defensively, our focus is pressure. We want to speed the offense up, force them to make decisions, and play reactionary basketball. With this style, I’m comfortable knowing we’ll get beat at times and give up an easy basket. The tradeoff is worth it. Aggressive defense leads to a higher turnover rate, and those turnovers turn into fast-break opportunities for us. Because of that, we dedicate practice time to playing with an advantage on offense—specifically scoring in 2-on-1 situations and making quick reads. Our structure is built from the ground up: defense → transition offense → secondary break → half-court offense → set plays. I love talking defense, and there’s a lot more we can dive into. If you’re interested in defensive concepts and how they connect to offense, let me know.