EP152: Implementing Conceptual Offenses in the G League with Mfon Udofia

[MUSIC] This is the Transforming Basketball Podcast. This is the podcast helping coaches and practitioners change the way we think about basketball performance. Our goal is to provide the ultimate resource for making sense of applying contemporary skill acquisition ideas within basketball. Within this podcast, we unpack how an ecological dynamics framework impacts our perspective of the game. If you're ready to join us in our quest to transform the basketball world, this is the podcast for you. [MUSIC] Welcome to the Transforming Basketball Podcast. Our guest today is Mufon Udofia, the head coach of the Long Island Nets, the Brooklyn Nets G-League affiliate. A former standout captain at Georgia Tech, Mufon played professionally in the G-League and overseas before rising rapidly to the coaching ranks with stops at the Hawks, Wizards, and Clippers organizations. Mufon brings a unique perspective as he has also had head coaching duties for the Nigerian national team and assistant coaching duties there under Mike Brown. Mufon, welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks for having me. Glad to be here. So how are you seasoned started? How's that journey going for being a head coach there for the G-League team? I'm great, you know, the season just started, extremely excited to get going, get playing, you know, throughout the summers, you're building your philosophy, you're trying to figure out what you want to do different the next year. So I'm sure you decide to get the season going. No, amazing. And I want to talk about so you were a high-level point guard at Vordatek and then you played in the G-League. How much of your coaching philosophy is built on your own experiences and from what you've learned from some great coaches at your stops along the way? And how much of it is built after now that you've taken on the role and that you're learning new things in this journey now with the G-League team? That's a great question. It's funny you asked that question. I'll say not much because, you know, I felt like we're young, you know it all, right? You know it all and of course, though you get the wives you get, that's where they're in life and in basketball. I tell my coaches to this day, my older coaches that coach me in the past, I'm sorry, I understand your frustrations from the shots, flexing to the miscoverages and now that I'm coached, I feel it now, you know. But as the players, you know, I always want to be the extension of the head coach. I'll always doubt in, always focus whether there are teaching things. I'm willing to make sure that I was doing it the right way and I was able to help my teammates do it the right way as well. But of course, you know, you want your team to take on an identity of the head coach and I played a hard and both as a floor. And that was just the foundation, played a extremely hard. And now that I've been coached for a few years now that I'm able to build out no kind of my philosophy is obviously a deepest philosophy is the nature. And in terms of that, you know, playing hard, like how do you instill that as a non-negotiable on your team? Yeah, we have someone called WNPs, right? Win the momentum plagues, right? And that's kind of some ways we can quantify if guys are playing hard or not. That's 50/50 balls, gargis, shy goes up, are we boxing out, are we hitting first? So those are some of the things that we quantify, you know, if guys are playing hard or not. But that's kind of like the foundation, you know, the effort which you especially at our level to get you on a floor, I mean, do you have to play hard? That's like the buy-in. I like that one. I love that one. Hit first. So you're hitting first. It's such a small thing. You can't really track it, but it's, you know, you can see it. I also want to ask about, you know, you talked about as a head coach now, you know, when players miscoverages the shot selection, when you're looking at film with players and you're looking like, you know, is this a good shot? Like, you know, why did you mess up on this coverage? I guess it's a lot easier now, maybe than it was before with all the technology with holding players accountable. How else do you hold players accountable? Obviously, you have the film there. How else do you have that? Do you build that relationship so you can hold them accountable? Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I started each season before the players come to the market. I reach out to every player, you know, I let them know I'm a straightaway side to coach him. And no matter what your previous situation is like coming here in our environment, you know, it's going to be a clinch late. I tell the truth, try to be consistent in my approach. Whether we win or lose, I want to be as consistent as much as possible because in the G league, of course, things change so often, right? If I'm not consistent in my approach, you know, the player is going to feel that and they're going to see it as well. But I'm constantly checking in. I'm constantly creating dialogue with the players. And also like before I see the start, we have what we call the IP individual development plan for each player. And we talk about three things that they do very, very well with their strengths. And we also talk about things that they can improve on. But that's also an opportunity for those guys to give dialogue, have dialogue to talk about their goals and what they see, what they want to get out of this year coming from a foreign player, you know, you don't get that, you know, it's more so, hey, when did you do this? When did you do this? When did you do that? We see you playing his role, not that role. So kind of give those guys know to freedom and to dialogue, to speak on what they're trying to get out of the G league. Because that's the most important thing, right? Like basketball comes kind of first. And then once they feel like you care about the basketball portion of what their next level is, that's when you can start to build those relationships off the court. Right. And that's just like, you know, those conversations you have before practice, after practice to build those relationships. I love that, you know, you have the IDP and you let the players speak because I do think a lot of the times coaches are like, this is what you're going to do. And that's how it is versus like, all right, what do you think is best for you to help this team and giving them that voice? Because it also might be things that they can help you find about how you can make the team better. For sure, you know, because I mean, especially at our level, at the G league level, you know, everybody's next level is different, whether it's a guy is trying to get a call up, right? That's just maybe his next level or a two way guy trying to get a standard contract, right? That's much level or a guy trying to use this g league as a springboard to get better opportunities over C. So everybody was different. So you want to give the players the space to express that. So just going into the season, we can know what they're trying to get out of this. And then as far as it's to create a dialogue, that's not a stop. And in practice, that's a big claim in the airports. That's when we're on a bus, especially for my staff and myself. I'm constantly preaching that we've got a TV just touch these guys. Action, you know, like for example, I asked him what they ate last night. Little bit, you know, to get the middle person outside of basketball. Absolutely. So moving on now, I want to ask you, how do you teach a player to make better decisions within conceptual offense instead of just running set plays in your interconceptual offense? And you see the defense is going over, you know, a screen away. How are you actually teaching that? Is it the games that you're deciding at practice? The drills you have at practice? Is it from film? Is it a mixture of both? Is it a conversation with the players? How do you teach those decisions? Yeah, that's a mixture of a both film, individual instruction. We call it vitamins and it's right. You know, majority of good offense usually comes from random offense, honestly. The sets that we script every day, they're just sets to get you organized, right? Like we're very ingrained to know where our spacing and like a lot of turnovers and poor decision making and shots to come from backspacing. So we give the absolutely the neat plays and get paint touches when we have the correct spacing, but the spacing won't always be perfect. And so in fact, we put guys, if you give guys situations that they'll see in the game. For example, let's say a guy driving the shot and then the low man comes over and trap the box. Like that's the situation that they'll see in the game. So what are the next reads from there? Right? But if a guy comes up with box that after that means the guy is sinking down. So the tool on the backside. So now his reads are, no, I got to lay up at a rim or I'm swinging it to the corner or to the wing. We call it the 45 guy, you know? So just put them in situations like that and practice where it's not so much the sets that you run is more so situation that you may see in the game that you got to be able to read and make the right play. You know, especially if you're going left and maybe it's a right-handed player going left being able to make that pass at the left hand is hard. You need to be put in those situations to learn how to make those decisions, especially with the length that you have in professional basketball. I mean, it's very hard. And then from like a team aspect, we're true that as well in practice as well. While we put those guys in situations where it's funky spacing to where we have their strengths. Like, hey, balls are going to start here on the 45 and you can either pass it to the wing, go get passed to the corner and that's when we're live, you're right? And we're trying to find the next action, you know, whether that's a guard to guard to flip out, whether it's a guard to guard push pick. How can we be through your flow playing a random basketball without one of a quote on quote set? Yeah. And how like I've always wondered how coaches do it. Like, you know, different coaches have different ways. So maybe if it's, you know, if you pass it to the 45 and there's on that second side and then there's two guards there, is that an automatic guard to guard, you know, ghost or how do you decide how did the players decide? I guess my question is, you know, what action they should be going to. Yeah, great question. So we have some we call non-verbals, right? And it's also dependent on, right? The player's skill set. So I might pass it to a guy that's going to five and there's be a really good three point shooter in the corner. He might use a non-verbal where he's having his hand out and he's sending a guard to guard street ball because he's a really good three point shooter. Or as another nonverbal where he's not really a good three point shooter, he's a bigger wing. He might set a push pick. We hit the bottom of the fender and then we roll and he used to let the ball handler know what screen that we're going to set. And you know, it's not always screens either. It could just be a simple swing pass, right? I can call it decision and some confusion as well. And you can find the next action with that as well. Yeah, I just always find it interesting because obviously different coaches have different ways. And I think the game is training more and more towards like more concept based action. But then how do you determine which concepts you want to run at any given time in the game? I want to transition now. And obviously Brooklyn that's Long Island that you guys are both, you know, you run the picking roll a lot. There's a lot of play conceptual basketball. I want to ask you, what are some of your biggest keys for teaching the picking rules? You know, it's relationship with that's the point guard, five man or guard the guards, no picking roles. Our state of the point guard is always starts with a set up to defend her up. Usually I like to set the defender up with rejects. You know, that can get the defender shipped in its feet. And that allowed a big time to get a really good screen angle. We tell our rigs, we want them screening where their butt is facing to the corner. So we can force the defender over top. And then from there, you know, with the guard, have a really good set up and the big is having really good screen angle as the guard is coming off. He's reading whatever is the deepest is playing, you know, some teams are a drop deep just team where expires kind of protecting the basket. Some teams are up to the level team where the low man is very pulled in, right? So that's when we teach those reads then, you know, as you come up the picking roll, you're reading that low man. If you pull it in, that means corner might be open or that 45 guy may be open, you know, the big is in the drop. You're attacking that big and gazing at bigs. You might have a pocket pass, you know, or you might finish at the rim. Like let's switch it now. Big is keeps for defending the picking roll. If you're in the drop and then we'll go to the switch as well. Or actually, let's keep it drop and then up to touch drop as well. Yeah, the biggest thing is, you know, the communication. That's first and foremost, right? The biggest yelling, no, what direction the screen is coming from? Whether it's coming from the left side or the right side. And then we teach our guards, right? To get into the body of the guard, right? To take away that airspace, to have ball pressure, just so you won't be easily screened, you know? So that guard is going to the ball press. He's spying over. He's trying to get back in front. The biggest in a drop, if you can't get back in front, usually call that a late red, right? When you see the crack, the free throw line, and you see the back of his numbers, like the community hit a late red, where the big will take the guard and then you will veer off and take the big, right? And so, like just so I understand it for the coaches listening as well, you know, the ball pressure is there about an arms distance away. But as that pick is coming up to set it, they're pretty much hugging the offensive players so that it can get room skinny and get through the big. Is that right? Yeah, yeah, it's right. So like as the screen is coming, like you said, we're armed lift this is away, right? We're not super hugged up. You know, you have some defenders as better than others. Would they they can have extreme ball pressure and not get blown by? Right? Yeah, some guys that we want to be up the tux, where we're armed lift this is away and have the leader screens being called. That's when you want to take up that airspace and that's when he gets his body so he can get skinny and fight over that screen. And as he's coming off, you know, you're big. He's either up to the level screen or he's in the drop. And that just in the drop. He's playing swan two. He's retreating, standing at the ball and not letting the roller get behind. No, if you're big, he's fighting up to the level screen. You know, he's up to the level screen. He's jammed at the ball to try to have the ball handler, you know, take a step back. Pack the ball handler because he's going to have help with his low man on the back side protecting the role. So that's super important as well. Like I guess when you're gripping it, you don't even do like a two on two game to work on it because you need like to work on that up to touch because you need that tag man to be there. Yeah. So when we're working on it, usually we have three to four guys out there on the floor. There's the one you're up the touch. You know, when you're up the touch, the biggest at the level screen is him. It's pretty much like you're blistening the screen a little bit, right? You got two ball. So that big is rolling. No, the low man is in between the dots in the chart circle because he's protecting the roller and the guy that said the top of the eye, he's sinking to take first pass because if the point guard gets out the pick a roll, he throws to the corner. That's sink guys taking the first pass. God else protecting the roller. He's taking a second pass. And then you want your big up to touch as well to just recover so there's no switch either. I want to be up the touch so he can impact the ball. He's pretty much helping the ball handler. I mean, the guy that's guarding the ball handler, he's helping that guard out, you know, we don't want that guard getting downhill. So our biggest up to touch, impacting the ball because we don't want that guard getting downhill and then our guard was fighting like hell to get back in front. And then as soon as he's in front, the biggest is back to his check. Yeah. So as soon as he's in front, he's calling. In terms of like he used a square, he's calling a square square square. He's yelling at three times, you know, because what a half early allowed continuous communication. So he's yelling at square three times, letting that big know to get back to get that he can release and get back to his man. My love it. That's great. I appreciate that. I always think it's so interesting. The terminology used in the buries, I think it really kind of sets the communication apart. And obviously some things that you know, coaches everywhere can take and fly with their own teams. All right, moving on now, I want to pivot biggest takeaways being the youngest head coach of the Nigerian national team in the Afro-Basket qualifiers. Oh, the biggest takeaway. It's a good one. It was a couple years ago, but honestly, that's my first time being at head coach, you know, being in that coach's seat at the time, like, Brown, the head coach of the team. And he had some obligations with the NBA team. So he was like, Hey, you up next. You're allowed me to coach in that window. I was extremely nervous, but I was excited at the same time because I'm so confident because I spent years in the G-League, you know, finding my voice, going around my philosophy, things of that nature. But there were some guys on the team that I knew previously. So I have some career with the players, but they made it a lot easier. But you know, the biggest takeaway is that you got to make all the final decisions. Over in-game adjustments with the practice times, plus scheduling. But that's the biggest takeaway, man. It's like, especially if you've never been at that leadership role, you have to make the final decisions and everything end up on you. So it's simple, you know, with Afro-Basket and Fibba, the Paul pressure, physicality, physicality, extreme, it's super extreme, it's very, very physical. So the student is very simple. That's one of the biggest takeaways. Yeah, I always like, when I was head coach in last season, and it was like, you know, we had a little staff. I had two assistants. I found it really interesting how much I relied on them, just to voice my thoughts before I make my decision. Versus just going straight into a decision. Whereas sometimes I felt like, man, I just need to make a decision because like, I know what I want to do. But then there was that balance that I had to learn as I was going through the season as well. No, for sure. You definitely have to find out balance, you know, because we might have the final say so, but you also got to lean on your systems as well, you know, because sometimes they have the best affirmation of something or maybe it's their scout that they've been working on. So you do have the great dialogue and you get the stressors here, assistant coaches as well. No, no. I want to ask biggest lessons you learned from that environment when you were working under coach Mike Brown. And also just to touch on like, you know, you worked with Brett Brown, Wes and South Jr. You know, the coaching staffs from all those teams, Lloyd Pierce. So like, what are some of the biggest lessons from all these great coaches? Yeah, no, I've been fortunate and blessed to work alongside to observe a lot of great coaches. You mentioned it, you know, it's crazy when I first got into the business. Messer miles with Delaware, 87th, the Philadelphia D. Lee team. And we were able to sit in coaches' meetings at the time. You know, G. Lee's around, it's ready, camp. We're able to sit in coaches' meetings. And that was my first time seeing Lloyd Pierce. Right. Lloyd Pierce was assistant at the time and Philadelphia. And just watch your him in meetings. He was very, very prepared. We just knew what he was talking about. And once I was seeing that, I was like, you know, that's who I want to be like the great repairs organized with the players. And I was like, you know, what I see where I want to be. I see what I want to be. And sometimes that's what it's like, you know, if you can see somebody, you can see somebody else doing it. Live you to do it. But I learned a lot. I learned a lot from Mike. I learned a lot from Jordy. Of course, I work with Jordy now a ton. But the biggest thing, especially with all those coaches, is just a ditch in the detail, you know, those guys are very organized and they're very intentional about the craft, very busy. It's about the day. That's the biggest thing I learned from you know, all of the stuff. They're maximizing because the season, you really think about the season so short. And there's so many principles you want to implement that you have to be kind of on it, especially at the start of the season, right? Where it's like a sprint and then it turns into that big marathon. But you have to be super organized to your point and all these coaches is what stuck out from them. Yeah, I mean, like I said, I work with Jordy a ton, you know, I see him on a daily basis. And like he's very intentional about what do we do on her day and practice this message of the day, things like that. What people don't even think about, you know, what are the first three days of training camp going to look like and then from there, what are the next five days going to look like? Like that's well thought out, you know, that's planned, you know, and of course, like things may pop up in that way. Like I said, he's got very, very organized, it's a big thing. I love it. Yeah. And just one more thing before I ask the next question, it's to your point, you said like seeing them actually work just like, you know, like, all right, that's what I need to know. It's, you know, I always say like being in the same room as people that you want to aspire to be or where they're at. It's just so helpful for you to just know what it actually looks like. So you can start applying it in your own life. No, first tour. What's warning long held basketball with these that you've had to reevaluate or throw out completely since you started coaching. Oh, that's a good one. That's a good one. I would say three man weave or three man weave drill. This man is going to love that one. Yeah. No, that's a back of all staple, you know, some people may be mad at me about that one, but that's a back of all staple. But you know, that drill is for you just to get loose, get warmed up, you know, now that I've gotten older, you know, there are other ways that you can get loose, get warmed up. For example, there's different ways that you can still incorporate your concept office and defense. You have the same time when you get to work time, when you guys are getting better during the warm up, you know, like I talked about the two grand hydra where coach is driving on a right slot. He jogging down a lane, you know, the low man comes trapped the box and now the top guy had to sink and now you throw it to the the inside corner. So now that's the ex out. So we teach our guys, you know, trapped in the box, our shell defense. Now it's going to get our guys communication on the ex out and then we teach our guys close outs, close not what it's they can. And from there, we try to issue to offerings. Now we try to don't put the flow down to office and now we're working on kick your heads and coach to be there to set a drag screen to come off and that's a single side tag. So we're working on office and people at the same time while we're warmed up and loose before practice. It's crazy how ingrained the three men we business like basketball coach. I remember I said to my players last season, I was like, guys, you do the warm up today. I want you to think about how to talk about what you want to do for warm up and then they did the three men we thought that was hilarious because we net we hadn't done it all season. Yeah, but what's going on here, but you know, I let them go with it. They thought it up. So that's the basketball staple, you know, that's the basketball staple. It does get you loose. It gets you warmed up, but it's how can we incorporate our concepts and get the most out of our practice? You want to be super efficient with your time. So we're trying to implement little drills and concepts within the small things, you know, just to get to get that guys remembering like little drills and concepts and stuff like that. Yeah, man, it's just like you said, like, you know, we were mentioned like the seasons, it goes by quick. And if you can use that time, that warm up time to actually, you know, continue to learn and learn about your concepts and teach your players that it's just going to make, you know, you obviously learn a lot quicker and then make your basketball team better more efficiently. I'd say, I just have to have one last question for you and fun and it is our transformative tip question. If you could leave coaches with one piece of advice that can instantly transform their practice environment, what would it be? Be our authentic self. Don't try to be someone you're not because your authentic self will always come back around. Yeah, that's a great point. My, thank you so much. I appreciate the time here today. It's been great chatting to you and just talking hoops all the best for the rest of the season as well. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed it. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Transforming Basketball podcast. 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