Adam Pike on The Noah Laroche Offense (EP402)

Awesome to welcome Adam Pike to the basketball podcast. Adam Pike independently covers the Memphis Grizzlies and Memphis Hustle Basketball teams from a coaching and exesano's perspective. Today we're going to examine the No-Alorosh offense that was used by Memphis last year and in Miami Heat this year and dive deep into the concepts to be able to give you insights into this offense. Hey coach, a brief interruption of our podcast, you know the best player development is coaching development. So let's work together to get your entire basketball organization or program unparalleled expertise and access to basketball immersion's group memberships. It's affordable and your players will thank you. Contact us today basketballmergine.com contact page or DMs on x or instagram. Get your coaches full access to extensive coaching video library detailed courses and modern evidence based coaching ideas. You can have proven coach development at your fingertips for all of your coaches. Elevate your coaches, elevate your teams, get started now. Basketball immersion group membership is where innovation meets excellence. Contact us today at basketballmergine.com contact page or DMs on x or instagram. Now back to the podcast. Adam, welcome to the basketball podcast. Thanks for having me, Chris. I'm very excited to join you. So I followed you for a while, love your stuff, love your breakdowns, so many great insights and just shows the intelligence level of so many basketball fans and people that cover the game. Just awesome stuff. So maybe just start, give the listeners an idea of how you got into what you're doing, which is sharing great content on the Memphis Grizzlies and the Memphis hustle. Yeah, for sure. I grew up at Vancouver Grizzlies fan and then followed them when they went to Memphis. So that's the team I really closely follow. I like to follow the draft and stuff too. But for me, I see some other teams in larger markets, maybe like the next or the Lakers, so I've really good coverage from multiple sources or someone like Caitlin Cooper who covers the Pacers, Samson Folk with the Raptors. So I wanted to do something similar with the Grizzlies and by extension the hustles. So that's mainly what I focus on. It's like X's and O's. Not necessarily coaching decisions, but like coaching style, systems and stuff like that. You couldn't have picked a better team to cover over the last couple of years. Lots going on in Memphis always. And the reason we're here is to dive a little bit deeper into the No LaRoch offense that the Grizzlies use that share. And of course, Miami heater using this year. So let's start maybe give us a one minute elevator summary of the LaRoch offense. Yeah, so LaRoch offense. The first time we really ever saw it was coached by Rob Santa Cola. He was with Southern Maine and then the St Joseph Monks in Division 3. He who now works with the Memphis hustle. But basically what you're looking at is a conceptual offense where it's a lot of spacing principles, a lot of cutting principles. So it's five out or someone's in a dunker spot, someone's in the playmaker spot, but you're always keeping the shape of the offense. So there's driving gaps, cutting gaps, and similar principles to that. So we saw it last year with Memphis. A little different than we saw in D3 and then this year Miami is a little different in division 3. What we saw is like everyone is so connected. The trigger is like cut and fill pass drive or drive pass in Memphis. We saw it mostly. It was like a wheel shape. I think JJ Ratic was the first person I saw call it a wheel, but I'll go over some clips later. And in Miami this year, it's more focused on spacing and getting below the free throw line from what I found. So many connections and coaches. I know we can go down a rabbit hole of like where this came from. What it looks like. All the different influences on it and offense nowadays is influenced by other offenses and really the beauty and the perfection of any offense is blending all these different concepts together and you reference teams changing it a little bit to suit their personnel and to suit their people. So that's why we kind of go through the history and kind of dive into it a little bit and Rob Bigshadow, incredible stuff, great innovator and probably not as well known as you should be in a lot of ways, but former basketball immersion member as well. So I'll give him a shout out. But let's start with maybe some of his stuff. Is I see that's what you've got cute up here and gives a little bit of an outline of kind of how it's started. Yes, Rob Santa. Cole was actually Noah LaRoch's coach. It's supposed to been like 27 years ago at the D3 level. And from my understanding it's like about in 2019, Robert asked Noah for help on implementing a new offensive system and Noah's been working with integrity at that point, doing training for years. And what he brought in was a system that's like no, no handoffs, no picking rolls, no ball screens, no back to back drive. So it's really focused on that spacing, I said, I have some clips from the monks, which was the last talk he was with before joining. This is like one of the very first examples. So what you're going to see is the past cut and fill. And that's their main trigger. So instead of like a conceptual offense, they might have a trigger with a ball screen, a get action throwing chase, something like that. This is really past cut and you have to relocate after you cut. So we'll just show us the example. So he started in the corner, past cut, past cut, three point attempt. And it's really pretty standard really concept is the passing cut concept out of it. Many teams obviously run it out of five out. The differences here are the shape is generally four out one in, right? Yeah, so like it'll start as five out a lot of times, but you'll see it can develop until a dunker spot. So right there, the guy was in the dunker spot when the shot went up. And sometimes you'll see it where there'll be a player in the playmaker spot, which I'll talk about a bit, but that's basically right there. Playmaker goes back to five out, keeping the shell, and then you get the cut after the pass. So there's this a lot. And even though it's like a four out one in, it's still the same ideas of five out because when you're in the dunker spot, that last defender has to decide between helping on the drive or helping on or staying on his man. And if there's like an empty corner, then like the help the helper isn't as close. So the idea is really you want to keep the same shell all the time throughout the possession. And even dunker/playmaker is still like conceptually a five out offense, even if it's like the physical alignment is four out one in. And the goal is to create space to drive. And that is one of the problems. Coaches, we talk about this a lot on the podcast is, yeah, we have to say we're five out and we have to say we're positionless because that's good for parents, good for development, all those different things. But at the end of the day staying five out is not good offense. And it doesn't create as many gaps to be able to drive. Positionless and spacing. Talk to us about that. Yeah, so like you said, positionless is a great example of the heater doing that a lot this year with LaRosh's a consultant. But it's basically any player is going to be able to initiate the offense and grab the rebound you dribble up. It doesn't matter like what your positional designation is on a box score sheet. But you're going to go in and you can start it. However, there's like wing entry or corner entry here. They're just starting from the top of the key and we see the cutting. But you can see number two right there. That's like point guard size player and he was just in the dunker spot and he can replace like a traditional number one is a lot larger here. So he's going to cut right to the corner. But he can replace him in the dunker spot. He can replace a guard or a wing size player. Really anyone. It doesn't matter who is playing what position. It's everyone is positionless offense. And here's that. So that's a playmaker or playmaker spot example number two again cut to the dunker spot and that one. So see they don't really care who's where. Now when we start with Memphis last year, I'll point it out a little later. It was a little different. They they to make some considerations with players like Zach Edie. But really what you're looking for LaRosh the D3 level is you want everyone to understand their responsibility and they all share the same positional designation slash responsibility. How deep do they go or do you understand creating space off of cuts is one thing but then understanding where to go after the cut so that you're not taking away your teammate space is an important part of this. We say get into space, get out to space. But it doesn't necessarily mean sprint out to space. It means sometimes you're old to dunker. You said the playmaker. Talk to us a little bit about that re-spaceing concept which seems to be so powerful and seems to be talked about a lot about when it comes to this offense. Yeah so the re-spaceing concept a lot of it is you're going to read your teammates there might be something like if you're passing you have to read whether that player is going to drive or he's going to shoot or he's going to pass again if he swings again then the passer was the original passer was supposed to cut but if you pass and he's driving then you can't be cutting into the same spot now after the drive if it's not like effective or they don't get a shot off he's going to pass it back out you don't want another drive coming into the paint because you already have at least one defender there and then the other man's defender. So the decision is on that guy if he's he has to cut out to the spot so it might be like if he drives he's cuts out to the far side corner and then the person that was in the corner is going to read where he cuts and he's going to lift to the wing and it's all going to restart so it's pass pass drive and you're going to read and react based off that. And coaches if you're watching this video on YouTube you can see the kind of the more constant motion that the division three team runs whereas at the NBA level it's not as much constant motion from off the ball was one of my general impressions was that a fair distinction on? Yeah and they're a little slower to relocate a lot of times after an initial drive it's definitely not as active as we see with like monks or with southern Maine and it's less like all five players are reading and reacting together and it's more one player does the trigger maybe and then you'll get a little movement along the perimeter so I'll show that in a little bit with Memphis. And I just want to qualify that for coaches because one of the important things to understand the difference and I think we all understand the differences at the NBA level players are much better at creating their individual advantage whereas at the division three level and say high school level youth level they need a little bit more catching it coming to the ball on a replacement cut being able to attack that space with an advantage already rather than having they've just statically great the advantage. Yeah and someone like Miami or last year with Memphis it's like they're not running a lot of picking roles but they are still running some with D3 you're going to see there's no picking roles so it had to be adapted to that a little bit. Yeah haven't seen one picking roles. Talk to us a little bit about that philosophy and maybe some of the good and some of the challenges of not running a lot of picking role because I think in Memphis we saw both. Yeah so some of the good is you don't bring two defenders together to defend one action so you don't have let's say you don't have traditional drop coverage or like ahead you don't have to read the pick and roll coverage that the defense is playing and it creates wider driving lanes. Something like when you're just when you have five out and it's fully based off like a drive then you can get stuff like gap help but you can sometimes you bring three defenders together to guard one pick and roll possession with the drop defender the ball defender and then the gap help with this you're creating much wider lanes. One of the challenges Memphis had last year a lot was the players on the team were really used to using picking roles as a trigger like John Morant had been among the league leaders every season he's been in the NBA and even at Murray State as his possession starts with a picking role and he's going to try to attack the rim. Another thing is the player setting the ball screen a lot of the times it was Zach Edie and when you're talking about positionals basketball Zach Edie gets into like he's a single position he's seven four his basket is probably rim running so he's not going to be on the perimeter a lot and Memphis they had to make some changes to like the wheel pattern or the cutting pattern to implement that. You mentioned the wheel pattern. Yeah you mentioned the wheel pattern I know that comes up a little bit you referenced obviously a concept from JJ saying that and then we famously've seen Dremont talk about this a little bit in terms of the penetration reaction the re spacing type of stuff. Can you highlight that a little bit for coaches? Yeah so one thing I'll just show just like one more place so we'll see how everyone is cutting and reading off of each other so it's not necessarily like a scripted pattern like we're going to see with the wheels but it's the same idea like drive left everyone cuts left drive right cut right and fill behind on right right. So drive left move left drive remove right and see that pattern go from there but before you go there I wanted to think because we got into that with video just as you're finding the next clip here again coaches you can listen to this or you can watch this but one thing that I saw with the monks from your edit when I watched it before was like sometimes there's double cuts happening and I didn't see that as much at the NBA level right where coaches if you're thinking about this I passed the ball to Adam I cut traditionally the next player filling that space fills the space and holds the space but often that second player on the replacement cut was cutting again normally that is triggered by denial pressure but sometimes they were doing it regardless. Do you have some theories behind that? So like the difference in the NBA a lot of the time you're going to get just like a slot cut instead and also in the NBA I feel players are more prone to driving or shooting they don't without the cyst like years and years of practice or even like the training camps they get I think it's harder to make the past decision and it's easier for a player to just drive or shoot a lot of the time even if it's not the highest quality shot they're looking for so I feel like you're gonna get less moving you're gonna get less past past decision. You're gonna get more past. I want to highlight that it is less movement at the NBA level than it is at the division three level and that's intentional and somewhat personnel driven and obviously it's so much as because the gravity on the NBA court is much different than a division three court as well or a high school court. So this is these real three point makes because I was working on a video for this but this is basically Memphis Grizzlies wheel pattern and I'll show some clips and describe it but what you're looking for is really everyone following the decision makers so Bane has the ball right here he's in the far corner from where the camera is but what we're looking for here is based on his decision we want to see what the other four players on the court react to Bane's so O'Donnell has the ball here back to Bane so when you see the drive Bane is gonna drive to his left and there's three players on the other side so O'Donnell is gonna slide away from the top of the key to the wing smart's gonna make the cut from the wing to the corner and Edie who's in the dunker right now is gonna do a dunker cut just to the other side of the dunker and it creates a long closeout Jazz 0 at the top of the screen he he's in the lane to provide gap defense help and you can see that the long closeout situation here means Aldama has a wide open three and that's from the slide away cut. So the wheel action is literally this concept that I call push pull many coaches call that if you're dribble towards your push and you're dribble away from your pulled which means that drive went left so everyone moved left the difference is obviously what does the player at the rim do and that's the key feature that's a little bit different in this just keep going with these clips so you can drive this point home because I think this is really important for coaches. Yeah so that's the decision they made with Aldama here you'll see they have five shooters on the court J-Huff can shoot so the consideration when you're cutting is a little different now this one is initiated by a trigger that's a that's what makes Memphis different is sorry it's a ball screen trigger they ran a Thomas Isolo was one of the assistant coaches last year now the head coach of the Grizzlies the Iverson follow empty trigger is really ladsets one of his babies he runs that all the time but the same concept applies where it's wheel pattern so you'll see jaw we got all we got Jake LaRavia cutting from the corner to the dunker and we got J-Huff who was at the top of the wing he's gonna make the corner cut on the weak side and long closeout situation again because the head was turned so components of that just pause for a second but components of that is obviously drive and you're driving towards a two side the corner cuts and the 45 fills the corner and that's part of this movement that I think is really effective and traditionally like certainly 10 years ago more tradition would be the 45 burn cut but cutting from the corner and filling that corner creates well creates more space and obviously creates more variability I feel for the defense and that component you see over and over again in this offense don't you yeah and dream on was one of the players who mentioned it last year's like it's unique and it's weird is what he called it because it's not like the normal cutting rotation or cutting pattern that you'd see so here it is again with Zach Edie and we'll see Jake has the drive here and he's gonna get the same thing where it's Aldama cuts to the corner two side action and you're gonna get Luke and Ard who cuts to the corner from the wing and corner cut corner fill corner cut corner fill yeah so this one looks like it's gonna be high low action at first but it gets denied here but you can see Jake Lurevia just very carefully he just like tribbles into the paint and you get the same thing two side action slide away cuts the playmaker spot do the NBA teams refer to that or was that just for the feature of the monks yeah so coach Jenkins mentioned the playmaker spot I'll open a clip here from this is this is army black knights woman's college basketball team from 2020 2021 no La Roche he consulted with the team to set up their offense so I can show just a quick example of what the playmaker spots going to look like it looks a lot like post-op positioning but we'll see it here and there's gonna be a few different sort of a few examples so the arrow is the playmaker spot then you're gonna see the cut cut clear out the side and it's basically a post-op possession at that point but you don't have to necessarily dribble it or sorry you don't have to necessarily set it up like that you can dribble into the playmaker spot or you can do post entry passes like typical NBA you'll see there's playmaker spot cut cut and post-op possession now Taylor Jenkins did or coach Jenkins did mention the playmaker spot last year but Memphis used it a lot differently it didn't look like like the monks or what the army woman's team was using I'll show you here it was almost always featuring Jaren Jackson Jr which means it wasn't the positionless playmaker spot we saw and you don't get the post-entry cut cut clear you get you get the similar spacing idea where it's Jaren outside and then there's four players on the perimeter but you don't get the playmaker spot anywhere close to the same as like at the D3 level it's mostly just for post-op possessions or if the defend if like a double team and in the previous possession they ran a double team you can run a help eater to beat that kind of like a pin-in flare or like a burn cut 45 cut but mostly no it's just being filled up for Jaren Jackson Jr the playmaker spot in the NBA so mid post and a lot of back-end post-ups and a lot of playmen off that and then coaches a lot of billboa action off of that for different teams not if you need necessarily Memphis but just different teams run a lot of billboa action off that as well yeah so you look at this possession you don't get anywhere close to the movement that we saw in the army black night possessions again static at the NBA level because there's more space and there's more gravity on the court and obviously individuals can create their advantage much easier really good clip to highlight those differences that's excellent yeah I can show just like a couple clips from the Miami Heat just two uh since he's there this year or we're gonna get the same thing so this one they actually are gonna dribble into but you're not gonna have the you're not gonna have the movement you're gonna have basically just the stack to coaches but Wiggins dribbles into a barkly becomes the playmaker yeah man here you're gonna see post-entry pass the harmy hawk as and middle four out spacing and just the post-up possession so it doesn't look anything like the movement patterns we saw before since we're on Miami and we're gonna go back and forth a little bit but maybe just pause for a second as we talk about Miami what do you feel is one of the differences it's not that it wasn't successful in Memphis but clearly Miami has had a little more success in terms of their personnel being able to apply these concepts do you have a theory behind that the running theory would be you know Eric Spolstra has been in the NBA for a long time he's coached a lot of these players like BAM for a long time and I think the Miami Heat organization already have the Spolstra buy-in particular to maybe the different offense as I feel Miami has always played a little more egalitarian than a team like Memphis has played so the personnel is probably better suited to a more egalitarian offense where it's a whole bunch of people sharing the ball together instead of one player having 30 to 35 usage yeah it's such a great point let's always call BAM has been with them anyways in a sense so this is good for them and players like hawk as in particular looks so good in this offense the ability to be able to create space and then turn a drive into a post up in the Barclay and just so many multiple skilled players as well and arm palc clearly as well we know how good he is and him and space has been really fun to watch as well was it really just a case sometimes of being able to adjust your mindset from not running a lot of ball screens last year Memphis the closer to the end of the year there were the adjustments just didn't work they at the beginning of year they tried to run fewer ball screens but then eventually even with the wheel pattern they had to implement the ball screens back and move away from the five out offense so it didn't work there and they made the decision to move on but yeah from Miami they have they've already they've already decided they're going to run through ball screens but also someone like BAM who used to run like a lot of maybe although like DHO actions or a lot of a lot of leadership actions yeah he like he's probably the leader of the team and just collectively they all decided that this is going to be the offense they run which is very impressive they just basically changed it overnight and it'd been very impressive so the argument in Memphis a little bit was it like a really did help jaren jackson on almost an NBA level season clearly and it didn't necessarily help some of the other players is that kind of what you think of that offense now in terms of Memphis yeah like it really helps aldama really helped jakelor ravia and jaren all NBA almost but yeah the players who probably at the beginning of the year like bane had a hard time adjusting particularly with bane i think it was like the drive pass shoot decision and then with john marante i think it was mostly just like he he needed that ball screen trigger he felt to be more effective and that's kind of what they went back to this year you can see yeah awesome what's up can you highlight a little bit for us then some of the differences maybe between how Memphis ran it and how Miami ran it yeah pull up some of the Miami possessions so Miami again when the most important thing here for them is going to be the spacing so they really want to create the gaps here so at the top of the key you're going to see i think that's collau where he starts the initial cut to create the spacing in the driving angle no driving angle pass pass decision pass back and then there's another cut there from wiggins and you're going to get the corner drive from norm powel it's not necessarily the same wheel pattern norm powel when he drove there you didn't get everything moving the exact same but you did get like the constant cutting and relocating to open space to create those driving gaps the Miami one more closely reflects the division three one in that sense but there's just more pass and cut type of movement to it it seems yeah there's a lot more pass and cut movement and even there's even fewer Austrian triggers than there was at Memphis you're not going to get like the same movement again but the pass in cutting yeah there's CLI drive to the basket let's try to find another one and we don't know the exact cue they're telling players but generally the feel for watching Miami in particular is that if they have a match up then they're supposed to attack the match up and then be able to play off of that decision right yeah so you could encrate the length and you can see like the gigantic gap they had there for the driving lane for norm powel here's another one so again like anyone can initiate but call where he's going to cut big driving lane and I think that's the idea on Mitchell has the path to the basket just one on one the other thing with Miami is with the spacing they want a lot of the times they want clear let's see if we have a clip somewhere here there's another driving lane but it's going to be the cutter at the top is going to have a very clear one side okay so here's like an example that spacing so you get the ball at the top of the key far from the camera and on the camera side you're going to have four players all on the same side of the basket you're going to have Jaime in the dunker spot clow wear is going to make the cut here and then you're going to have the other two extended be on the three point line and it's basically just another huge gap driving lane and she's going to go one on one with his defender and that's a lot of that is Miami wants to start the possession or at least get the initial drive they want to be under that free throw lane line and I think they're out of bio even set it like when he was on a p-cock or NBC something like that he called it a random stat and said if you can get below the free throw line like the expected points per possessions a lot higher but it's not a random stat it's a real stat so you're going to see again the clear side the drive and he's all by himself and that's what that's what the static motion is where on the one on one like everyone's watching but then there's there's stuff broken in like on a drive you get the occupy the corner so you're the so you have the pass asking lane and then maybe someone's going to do the burn cut like they normally would something like that they're going to class their offense hey coach brief time up from the podcast to bring you the analytics minutes sponsored by hoop solidics do you know which players should be taking what kind of shots an analytics system like hoop solidics can help your team make better shot selection decisions you can track every kind of shot each player takes where the shots come from rate the shot quality track of the shot was contested and see the results for example see which players are taking mid-range floaters and measure the results versus catch and shoot jumpers as an added bonus hoop solidics shot charts are fully interactive so you can filter by shot distance shot type even specific areas of the floor then watch video clips of all those shots or see the points per shot hoop solidics brings the most powerful analytics to teams of all levels it's easy to use and affordable it's like AI for basketball coaches visit hoop solidics dot com slash ball today that's h o o p s a l y t i c s dot com slash ball today to learn more and start analyzing your game for free the other thing i want to talk about in particular is the connection between this and i know you dove into a little bit the connection between this offense and player development and the synergy that's supposed to exist between those two things we develop our players we sense this and especially in the modern era we spend so much time on individual player development and how that connects to this offense in terms of being able to use your individual skills yeah so i know so last year i was no all a roach worked with integrity and joe boilyn was one of the other assistant trained assistant coaches they had who has previously had a player development for minnesota so he's a big believer in cla that can strengthen that approach and using that two train players and he recently released an article where he wrote about mcdaniel's on minnesota and how he became like a much more but much more improved player because he was following these little cla principles and like the small-sided games that they have i've seen one where it's the monks running offense with no all the roaches the instructor and it's just a three on oh they're just cutting passing relocating three on oh just practicing that over and over until they get it right and then they incorporate the fourth player then they incorporate the fifth player so it's all basically working together on those small-sided games but then together as a team to get there so there's a little bit of pattern recognition coaches which can be developed in different ways and then obviously the power of this offense are the basketball decisions and joe and no both been on the podcast talking about that so you can go back and listen to their episodes talking about kind of player development in a cla approach but obviously the importance of making a decision and that's what this offense is all about and generally what we're seeing out on the lot is we're seeing one-on-one score but when you draw two pass and that's really what's showing up constantly through this and that to me is like connecting cla and running offense yeah and then on the other end of that is once you make the pass it's really the like the point five decision-making that gets talks about all the time whether you're gonna pass or you're gonna drive again or you're gonna shoot both players really have to make that decision i just i mean it just happened there with davion davion Mitchell coaches but the ability of a player and i think this is really important to inform all of us about better youth development in particular is the ability of a player to be able to be confrontational to take a tj tj saint lines who's now with the nix but like to drive through people rather than around people and you're seeing this constantly from my auntie how they're being confrontational in their drives trying to drive through people but then what davion Mitchell just showed us is that ability to be able to attack encounter like they don't use all these like moves to shake people they're trying to drive through people and then if they get stopped they might counter once but then after that it's move it and play out of that and they really do a much better job than what you saw in Memphis in terms of that yeah agreed last year one of the things was in this what this came from the development side but i forgot the name for it now but when the player would drive to the basket and they would stop playoff two feet so that was that's like at the basket that was one of a counter move when you're already completed the drive but yes playing physically like on the drive was definitely different in my army than we saw in Memphis last year we call it a protection plan Adam it's a protection plan in the sense that what happens when your drive gets stopped really important part of coaching is like telling players okay what happens on dead what happens when you don't have a shot and how do we get out of trouble so that we can re-trigger and get an advantage again and that's what you're referring to and you're seeing this sort of these clips by the way coaches when you get chance to watch my army play you'll see these opportunities they don't always score and they don't always create an advantage on these drives but they sometimes trigger an advantage on the protection plan part of this that's a Doug Novak term coaches if you want to go listen to his podcast no yeah that's perfect yeah the re-triggering is very important too so did you get a few just before you go on did you get a feel for players a little bit they would strike me and this is one of the reasons that I wanted you have you on is it strikes me that players would enjoy this the ability to be able to again be individually the best version of themselves and to be able to have space to be able to show that yeah when you hear a no more or a bam talk about the offense they were very excited to talk about it I find and they even did the demonstration with Dirk and Nash I feel they really enjoy it last year in Memphis it like it did allow the role players to be done best their best selves and training camp we got there was a lot a lot of positive feedback that we heard on media day about learning the new offense by the end of the year I don't know if it suited everyone but the players who do enjoy it and maybe not the primaries on every team but yeah they seem to enjoy it a lot because it's really fun and it's not like you're not teaching players plays like you said at the youth level I think this would be very applicable because they're not learning plays all the time but they're just their playing just based off triggers and quick decisions principles triggers and then reading their advantage and then obviously inform them about the type of shots that are good in terms of that some of the shots being taken at the NBA at level aren't necessarily good shots for the youth level coaches if you're thinking about it that way but it is really good it gives them kind of a conceptual pattern to be able to attack advantages and then be again the best version of themselves out of my say this all the time to players and coaches but the beauty of basketball for especially at the development levels is all five players should be able to handle the ball and attack because that's the best part about it nobody when I played hockey in your Canadian so we can relate to this is like somebody at one point decided I was a defenseman and then I quit playing hockey because I was like wait I don't get to go shoot all the time and try and score it's not as much fun but basketball solves that for us because all five players should so that's one of the beautiful things about this offense coaches to be able to look at and consider for the youth level especially yeah and I feel like a lot of the innovations in Europe like over the past couple decades have really been like teaching everyone all the positions and responsibilities on the court like when you watch yoga so you can see you might have grown into a seven-fold body but he understands where everyone is supposed to be what everyone's role is supposed to be and that's outlier example but I feel like I'm not an expert on the player development side by I feel like America in the American system's catching up to that can you help us because I think the sticking point for a lot of coaches even when I share stuff about conceptual offense like I think they get to stuck on 504 out and you've already referred to it as it's constantly changing shapes to a certain stand anyways but talk to us about that kind of that fifth player whether they're in the dunker they're in a playmaker spot do they stay there all the time sometimes it seems like some of these teams as you said was Zachini they'd stay in a certain spot but so it's more of a four-out type of movement pattern but with the heat they generally seem to move players in all five spots right yeah they do on on the driver's show where you'll get the empty side and it'll be one-on-one decision they will tend to occupy the dunker spot and that's because you really want to get that last or that low man to make the decision whether he's going to help or if he's going to stay on his man that makes the decision to either finish at the basket or help him or get help from the dunker spot same with like they're in the corner you can occupy the corner spot and you again you got to let the last he's going to either make the decision to help off his man or stay in the corner and that's going to make your decision as the driver a lot easier so like in Memphis we saw Edie might do a dunker to dunker cut or he might do like a circle cut where he's in the dunker spot and then comes around just in the paint to be a passing outlet and because otherwise like his man is just going to be there and he can play too but you don't want him to be able to defend both the decision and the last so like for Memphis yeah they made that commitment to Edie since they drafted and this is how we're going to incorporate you in the offense at the D3 level they everyone was replacing each other but with Miami I've noticed a little more it's like Kallalware and Bam out of Bile will stay in those dunker spots but they're also inverting the floor a lot where they'll put like Davie on or Jaime in that dunker position and then they'll move based off the relocation. Yeah definitely a big thing over the last few years is putting a guard in the dunker spot in the NBA and to inform people a little bit there's a lot of reasons to do that but one of the biggest reasons is you remove the big help at the rim so often it's small help at the rim which is a huge part of that as well but I don't know if you dove into it much or if you have clips of it but Ben Taylor thinking basketball shared some stuff from this breakdown and one of the things they did with Jay Huff is that he would actually back out of the dunker spot to fill the get back to the three-point line which is where his comfort level was so he might sometimes start the dunker but instead of like always emptying under the rim and that dribble drive kind of reaction he would back out did you get into that much in terms of some of your breakdowns? Yeah so really the consideration was for Edie and Clark are going to make the decision to go from dunker to dunker but someone like Jay Huff or Jaron Jackson Jr. they can shoot I don't know exactly if I have any examples of that right but like the second clip here was Jay Huff and he's not going to stand a dunker on this possession he can go from anywhere on the floor. They're more five out right now for sure with Jay right? Yeah they're more five and even though they're going to go with the Iverson trigger but you can see he's still above the break there and then he's going to cut to the corner and the raviour was going to make that corner to dunker cut. Now if Edie was in that dunker you'd have l'Raviour bypass the dunker and then relocate back to the corner which is a consideration they had to make but when you have a player like Huff you're going to get l'Raviour to cut to the dunker and Huff or a similar player can cut from the dunker to the weak side corner as the passing outlets. That's how you get like the different players in and that's more of the positionless side even though Huff is like over seven feet tall that's that's how you get all the five players playing in the same role. Adam again what's fascinating about this offense and kind of this conversation is obviously there's parts of it that has really worked and there's parts of it that have been a bit of a struggle a little bit but talk to us about blending it particularly with kind of the different coaching and the different coaching tensions that they had in Memphis last year. Yeah so Memphis hired both Noah LaRoch last year and Coach Isolo from who is in Paris at the time in Euro Cup and they really they tried to coach Jenkins tried to blend those two ideas together of we're not really going to run ball screen triggers but we are going to keep the cutting in the player movement decision making the collective basketball as Tomasi Isolo calls it. So this is in Paris there's 2j shorts so you're going to see in this example that Isolo is running the similar cutting collective basketball pattern but he's doing it with a ball screen trigger and on that we're going to get the corner and the wing cut and we're going to get the lift behind. I have a few examples here but we'll run this one too. Well five ball screen coaches and then on the drive towards the two side corner cut and corner film. Yeah so yeah and all of you want this is like just a strong entry with the double screens and then we get a high ball screen and again it's two on the side and the player was driving to the left initially so you get the corner cut and then you get the sorry you get the wing to corner and the corner to dunker. There is an example in here of them driving towards one side which I want to look at. Here's a ball screen driving towards the three side occupied and you get the dunker relocation you get the corner to dunker and you get the wing then they're going to go back and trigger. Oh chisolo was on the basketball podcast coaches it was a long time ago it was before Paris is when he was still coaching in Germany and he talked extensively about collective basketball if you want to go reference that it's on YouTube. Yeah and so like really you're getting the same cutting pattern and this more closely resembles the one Memphis used last year specifically because there's different rules so you're going to here's a good one you're going to get TJ shorts high ball screen and he's going towards the single occupied side so on the weak side you have the double on the strong side you have the single occupied and you're going to notice that there's no cut from the corner to the dunker because that would cut right into the driving lane that TJ shorts is trying to occupy so that's like the same real idea but really like that's a rule you have to occupy that corner so you don't disrupt the drive and the other thing I want to point out on this one specifically is the corner man on the two side he's going to read TJ shorts he's not necessarily going to follow the drive behind he is initially but once TJ gets gets to the brake line so the three throw or sorry three point extended then the corner man is going to read TJ shorts he did do the initial lift he's going to go and occupy the corner now because TJ shorts needs a passing so it's not the completely the wheel you're going to follow left left really you have to read that drive to see where he's going to go and where you have to be the passing outlet and corner three point make so that's really going to space not spots yeah they're going to space not spots and then off the single side it's basically hold the single side because there's already a gap created and you're driving towards a double side we need to create that gap so that's when the cut and corner cut and corner fill takes place perfect yeah so that was like the single side one and then I think most of the others are the double occupied spot so it was the same idea and it is like collective basketball but maybe not as positionless because you're still getting the ball screen you know they did run a lot of like guard to guard or go screens with their two guards but a lot of the time you're going to get the small big pick and roll and then the cutting base off that good stuff you can see a lot of the influences blending into this it's initial offense and can you talk to us a little bit about Emerson and the influence Emerson has had on this yeah so one coach we mentioned was Joe Boylin who played Division 3 basketball at Emerson for coach Hank Smith I'm gonna touch on two things here now this is Joe Boylin's video that I just saved so this is some of the Emerson offense that Hank Smith ran and if we go just a lot of it's transition at the beginning but if we go to some of the half court stuff little grainy we're talking about D3 from mid 2000s but you can see the same ideas it's the five-out spacing keeping that shell and then you're doing a lot of ball movement a lot of passing drives and then the players reading and reacting to each other so again a lot of collective basketball and this is obviously Hank Smith like his legacy in the NBA these days is enormous and this is just like another one that kind of flonder the raid idea of Joe and Noah they really they work together on the player development side I know they have they have something going on right now outside of the Miami Heat with Noah that they're working on but this is really this is where the idea started even if Noah didn't go to Emerson he's a similar network where he played in Division 3 coach Santa Colo's in Division 3 coach Smith was in Division 3 and like all these ideas are just from spending years and years together we love it we love the shout out to the history of it and the kind of the evolution of it and all the different people that have influenced the things that happen it's beautiful that's such a beautiful part of basketball talk to us about the open concept and that influence on that as well yeah so the open post offense I have a clip from Bob hugging West Virginia teams but from my understanding it's like it's a lot of influence from Lace and Perkins so coach Perkins who ran and taught a lot of open post offense and Emerson took that is like the base for what they really wanted to do with those teams so this was even before Emerson open post offense we're getting a lot of same as like ball movement cutting reading your man soft flair screen there but it's relocating and it's a lot of player movement and this is then like be taught again at all levels because you're not doing you're not teaching set plays and it's at least looks fun to me from what I know the open post offense is supposed to be a lot of fun to play in but I didn't have coach Perkins examples are readily available so this is what I went up with right now coach Perkins tremendous he's online everyone knows coach Perkins he's awesome great cheer up the game so grateful for him and all he's done for the game as well yeah so these were like two elements that I hadn't seen discussed a lot like either nationally or by other people but these are like two very similar offense concepts with relocating the spacing the cutting collective basketball that I've helped create at least a little bit the no-alorage offense or what Rob Santa Culler ran in D3 well the influences of this offense in particular are throughout basketball there's no question the problem is and I want coaches to think about this as you listen to this and you watch this podcast is the problem that I'm seeing in youth basketball with people running five-out offense is it's generally just pass and cut and pass and cut to the rim and that's not really it doesn't create fast gaps it takes too long to create gaps it allows defense to cold positions whereas you watch this the Bob Huggins one for example and then all the no-alorage stuff that you've shared with us is that it's really random and variable sometimes there's screening sometimes there's dribbles into post-ups and it's a lot more certainly there's continuous movement that doesn't happen at the NBA level but there's a lot of variability which makes it hard to get to say okay we get to just stand here so move away from just pass and cut and add some variability would be might take away from watching this and then the no-alorage stuff that you shared with us out and I like what you brought up about the heat earlier where they're like being physical really it's like you got to commit to the cut you got to commit to the re-spacing to the screening it's like it's not just you're not cutting just for the sake of cutting it's something you really got to commit to and I find like in the WVU example they're like very strong at committing to the cuts and the re-screening little like pin-in flares there that they have well and to be truthful I'm glad you brought that up to like the other part of cutting is I think we're like in the past it used to be given goes pass and cut to score I would say that very it doesn't happen very often where you just get a pass and cut score so the value of cutting is about space creation and I think that's more the modern game and what we're seeing from the influence of this offense on the game is that it's the cut is to create space to be able to drive that space yeah drive this space yeah you're not necessarily going to get like you said you're not going to get a look at the basket every time but you create that space relocate and that's how you set up successful old team this has been awesome stuff Adam I really appreciate you taking the time and sharing with us and let people know where to find you and where to read you and watch you and follow all the stuff that you're sharing with us and oh thanks Chris I am on Twitter as Grizzlies film I mostly cover Grizzlies and hustle but I got really deep into Noah last year and I'm still following the heat this year also do some college basketball stuff but mostly you'll find me on Twitter or I do have a YouTube or medium where I do post longer articles but you'll find those just linked on my Twitter at Grizzlies film on Twitter it's a must follow coaches a give Adam a follow there's so many intelligent people in the game sharing awesome stuff that just helps us all as coaches and I want you to know Adam you're one of them so keep sharing and thank you so much for sharing with us in our audience no thanks so much coach I don't think you had me on very excited for this