Matt Van Pelt on Defensive Switch: Packline to Force Left (EP409)

Excited to welcome head coach of the Vietnam men's basketball national team as well as the Hanoi Buffalo's head coach Matt Van Pelt to the basketball podcast. Van Pelt is a head coach of the Hanoi Buffalo's the reigning champions of the Vietnam basketball association. He now has basketball experience in 28 countries having ran camps and clinics all over the world and is also the owner of Van Pelt sports management and the co-owner of Procoge's Academy and the performance lab in addition to being a fee-bought certified head coach in Vietnam. Matt has been in Vietnam on and off since 2017 where he's the winningest coach in the nation's history with the record of 81 wins and 16 losses between two leagues and with two organizations. Matt won three straight VBA championships and three straight supporters cup championships with a saygone heat. The country's oldest professional team. Matt also led the saygone heat to the number one seed and a final appearance in the Asian basketball league which formerly hosted 10 teams from nine countries in Asia for the first time in the organization's history in 2023. In addition to five and five ventures, Matt has also been the head coach of the Vietnam 3 and 3 men's national team from 2022 to 2024 where he won a VBA 3x3 championship silver medal in the 2022 Southeast Asian Games and pushed fit into its best ever finish in the 2025 Feebup Asia Championships. Do you know which lineups and player combinations are the most productive? Hoop Solidics has the most comprehensive lineup analysis system available. Coaches can see how each group performs offensively or defensively or excels in special situations. For example, if you need to force a late game turnover, you can see which group has the best defensive turnover percentage or see which four athletes work best with your star player. And you can do the same team-based analysis for groups of two or three players as well. 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. Discover how Hoop Solidics can help you make better data-driven coaching decisions. Visit HoopSolidics.com today to learn more. Matt, welcome to the basketball podcast. Thanks coach. Appreciate you having me on. Long overdue. We've been in touch for a while now and just hearing about your journey has been fascinating. So let's start with that a little bit. How did you add up in Vietnam and what's it like coaching there? I started in Southeast Asia as a player. I actually playing for a team called the Hanoi Buffaloes that I'm coaching now. And then I, after playing a season in Vietnam, I was actually playing for the Buffaloes, but we played in Thailand, the International League. And I was playing for a guy that eventually got a head coaching job in Vietnam. A friend of mine named Kevin Yerkes, he was my head coach. I was playing for him in Thailand. He got a job with an organization called the Saigon Heat. And I was still in my playing days. And he asked me if I wanted to come assist him. And I thought, yeah, I'll do it. Maybe go coach a season. Then I'll go play somewhere else again after that. Because I thought I was going to play as long as I could. But essentially I retired early because I started coaching and I just stuck with it. I loved it so much. I've been in Vietnam and I just loved it here in Vietnam and I kind of stayed. I've been a few other places on and off since I started coaching. But this was 2019 when I officially stopped playing and started coaching in Vietnam. But originally just from following a coach I was connected with out here, assisted him. And then after a year, he kind of moved on and opened up more coaching opportunities for me to take over his job. Very cool. It's amazing how these things happen. I love for coaches and know that. And you've had great success since you've been there as well, which is part of it. And now you're somewhat entrenched in the whole basketball scene and the basketball, basketball ecosystem there, which is also a cool thing. I know and we'll get to that. But coaches, we're going to dive deep in terms of a bunch of different areas. But one of them is like this concept of adjusting your defense, which I think is on a lot of people's minds nowadays, just with how good offenses are getting. So maybe take us through that process initially in terms of your thought process about adjusting your defense. Yeah. So when I started in Vietnam, I was coaching the team called the second heat. And we were heavy in the pack line really just trying to force contested outside shots. In a large part of that was it's just not a great three point shooting league here. So we really just tried to force the lowest percentage shots and contest them. And and we were able to I think three seasons be first in opponents points per game and opponents points per game in the paint. And I always wanted to play fast offensively. So I called it pack and pace. But when I was realistic with myself, I realized we're not playing as fast as I want offensively. Our pack line did a good job of forcing contested shots. But we weren't necessarily nasty on the ball getting deflections because in the pack line, everyone was in the gap. So while we could pressure the ball, we allowed the ball to be swung. Right. There's no one really in the passing lanes. And that didn't allow us to play fast as well. So actually this last season, I completely flipped after four or five seasons in the pack line and having success with it. I just got out of my comfort zone a little bit and ran a defense I had never run before. Just kind of a lot of research. The lock left defense tweaked it a little bit here and there and tried to be a little bit more aggressive, a little bit more pressing denying one pass away on one side of the ball. Because our idea was we're trying to get more deflections so it favors our offense. Not to say you can't run a pack line and play fast, but the way I was doing it, we were just heavy in the gap. And we weren't nasty enough for how I wanted to play and how I wanted to compliment our offense. So I sacrificed, actually sacrifice opponents points per game, which sounds crazy when you want to have great defense. Right. This past season, I guess my best season ever as a coach in Vietnam. And we were third in opponents points per game instead of first, but we were first in possessions. Right. We forced quicker shots, which then complimented our offense a little bit more. And we got a lot of deflections, which we tracked every game. We were getting steals, we were getting passing lanes, just able to get transition buckets. We were first and fast break points and I think I just had to be realistic with myself that I think every coach says now they want to play fast, right. It's just it's the sexy thing to say and the sexy thing to do. And there's a reason for highest points for possession and transition. And I wanted to get a piece of that too. And I just realized our defense wasn't really complimenting that. So I think just self evaluation, self analysis, trying to figure out what it could do better. We won some championships. We lost some games. We thought maybe we could have been more aggressive on and we could have got more fast break opportunities on and just try to find ways to be better ultimately led me to adjusting the defense. Well, I love this. And I think if coaches haven't gone through this process, they may go through this process and say this off season. So it's a great thing to be able to dive into and you reference obviously scoring and transition, but also playing against non-set defense, the more type of deflection, turnovers, disruption, the different things that you can play with a more aggressive defense and force those. You get more opportunities for that as well. But let's maybe first start with the mindset. What did it involve for you and for your players in terms of a mindset change? For me, it was just I wanted to coach to my personality and I mentioned I started as a player as many coaches do, but I didn't pass the eye test by any means as a player. I'm five foot nine on a good day, short white guy. And I had to basically pressure the basketball, play 94 feet, be one of those pesky point guards. And that's just still my personality. That's what I love my players to do. So even this off season, I'm in the off season right now trying to evaluate ways we can just get more pressure, press off makes, press off misses, which is just it was a philosophy change. I used to think if you press you give up layups and you get beat, you might get some steals, but you give up some laps. And now I'm just that's the way I want to play right. We'll find a way to make it work for us. And it's more fun for our players, the guys that are dogs, you want the bulldogs, celebrate at the mouth, those are the type of players I think every coach loves. And we were fortunate to have a few of those guys that could really move their feet. And I just thought it was also my first year with a new team and looking at the personnel. I wanted to take advantage of some of those players that could move their feet, can get up and pressure instead of just sitting those guys in gaps. I wanted to take advantage of their skill set. So I think for them is just it's more fun, more opportunity to take chances. I think the biggest adjustment for me is I was always a coach said be solid. Don't gamble. Keep them in front of you and force contested shots. Now I tell them go get that thing. Just a mindset change. If there's a pass and we're sniping, we call it sniping one pass away, go snip that thing and try to turn it into a dominoes the other direction, try to get us an advantage. I think it just come from the personality of how I wanted to play. And then I had the players to match it. Talk to us a little bit deeper about force week lock left. Obviously Dave smart made this famous for a lot of us and the way that he did it and all the different things that came from it. But talk to us about that in terms of maybe first on the ball defense and talking about that stance and some of the things that you had to teach technically to be able to help your players effectively do that. Yes, so different. It was different for a lot of our guys. Most of our players came from just a traditional force baseline stance with my new team, the Buffaloes. So it starts always starting on ball, you force and everybody left, even left handers were forcing them left. So I call it the chasers, the guy who stops the ball in transition. Even if it's not your man, you're chasing the ball to the left side of the floor. So instead of traditional ball pressure where you're turning them, you're just sitting on his right shoulder, forcing them to the left side. And that's something I had my assistant coaches track in games. We're trying to get the offense to start on the left side of the floor, at least 70% of possessions. Because I think 70% of possessions typically start on the right. So even just by doing that, It's something very. small and minute that teams maybe aren't used to doing. Maybe you can throw them off a little bit just by getting the ball on the left side of the floor, but it's just sitting on the right shoulder. And then in that side of the floor, we call it the jail side would be the left corner. So we're trying to get the ball to jail close to the left corner. So if you're on that side of the floor, the jail side of the floor, you're in the gap. And then the opposite side of the floor, we called it the free side of the floor. So you have jail side of free side. In the free side, what we call sniping. So we're denying trying to snipe passes, get steals. So one pass away on that side, you're in deny one pass away in the jail side of your gap. Because the idea is if you're gap on the jail side of the floor towards the left corner, they see they can pass that way, right? We want the ball to go left. You're not denying it. You're allowing the pass. So if the ball gets passed to the left, now we deny the pass back to the right. So we're always just trying to get it to that left corner. And then with our close outs, where we had terminology for close outs, as I know many coaches do, we have curried close outs, Kobe close outs, Rondo close outs. But we're always running them off. If we're running them off the lines to their left hand, if it's Kobe or Rondo, we're closing out a little bit shorter, but with a high hand, trying to force them left, not short, choppy steps. We're more right left, right foot left foot every time. And that ends up forcing them to their left hand with our stance. And then if you're too pass this way, you're on the wall. So you're either gap, snipe, or you're on the wall. And if you're guarding the ball handler instead of saying ball, traditional communication, we actually have them call left just because the defense or the offense is thinking, why is he saying left, mess with a little bit. It also reminds our players the obstacle, right? We're trying to get this guy left every single time. We're just really trying to force that thing weak and then make sure we're flooding the wall. We'll love the phrasing, love the terminology that goes with it. And I love that mindset too. Like I always said, if we need to call ball, that's a bigger problem if we don't know where the ball is. So definitely inform yourself and inform your team where you're forcing the ball. But the thing that I love the most is what you just said, that it subliminally plants something in the offense players had basically telling them to go there or literally again, not to go there because he knows we're set to go there. And both of those are good because we're messing with them constantly. Yes, exactly. I think it's just a wise he's saying left. Most people haven't heard that before. Just kind of mess with the ballhandler a little bit. Then there's ways we try to do that ball screens right? We ice on the left side of the floor to try to keep it there on the right side of the floor. It actually be forcing it to the middle, but we typically hard hedge on that side of the floor and try to get the ball handler to retreat. But we're always an ball screen comes. We're still in that right hip and we're just forcing them left. So the college just comes from the big guy, but not too much adjustment for the guards. Yeah, it's interesting the psychology of this. A lot of coaches think it's complicated, but in a way, it does simplify things, especially with those ball screen coverages, doesn't it? Because we're consistently locking it left every single time no matter what's happening. Yeah, I think it becomes easier for the on ball defender, right? You just, especially if you're guarding a quick, shifty guard, you take away half his options. You just force him left and that's where our help is going to be. That's what we're going to live with. So if he's dancing the perimeter, just sit on his right hip and then trust the help to do the rest. Similar to what I used to coach the pack line, we were always forcing into the screen to the middle, right? So you're sitting in the hip there. Now we're just forcing left regardless of where it is on the floor. You got one job to do and that's don't let them get to a right hand layup pretty much. Sit on that right shoulder and make him drive left. Now that we understand a little bit more of the base philosophy, you reference sniping and obviously you led the league and steals deflections turn over his force. So where are those opportunities in your lock left defense to be able to be more aggressive, say in denial or sniping? Yeah. One example would be if we're in ice ball screen coverage on the left wing, big guy pops, right? We want our one pass away to go snip that pop. We're trying to steal that thing. Also, if the ball is maybe on the left corner and your two passes away, you'd be at the midline, which we call the wall, the midline, any skit pass. We want to try to go steal that thing. So anytime you're leaving the midline to let's say the ball gets skit from the left corner to the right wing, I tell my guys go for it. It's not even 50, 50 go get that thing. Go get the steel. It's just a mindset like a corner back, right or a safety in American football. We want to try to go steal that thing and turn it into layup opportunities. But I would say those are the most prevalent. The sniping the pop after icing a ball screen that skit pass it. Even sometimes ball gets left corner in jail. We just sniped that one pass up. So we are keeping it in the corner to nigh one pass up and they can't get it out of there. It's exactly where we want the ball to go. Now they are forced to make a play. They have to do something from that corner. And this is how it now compliments your offense, right? Because now they have to go. They might end up with a quick shot. Maybe they drive for a layup, but it's going to be a contested layup against our wall with the weak hand. We'll live with those results if they miss it. Now we're out. If we made it, they didn't get to run any offense. Right. So this is especially effective against coaches that love their set plays or motion offence is that need a lot of swing passes or no exactly what like what screens they need to set where we can blow that up. So they can't even get to those screens just by denying those passes away. We get the ball left. We keep it left. It's like a dictating mindset. We dictate where the basketball is going to go. Doesn't always work that way, but that's the mindset, the theory of it. And when we're really locked in, we can be pretty good at it. Of course, a lot of the philosophy initially behind Lock left force week was the people think it's about dribbling, but it's really about the lesser ability to be able to drive to your weekend and pass off your weekend. I'm curious at the professional level. Is that still the case that you find players are less effective passing going to their weekend? Absolutely driving left trying to hit the shaker, the guy in the opposite corner pulling up that left hand hook pass. There's not too many guys that can make that pass. If they can, they shouldn't be playing in Vietnam at my level. Like those are the lucid donge. It passes the best players in the world can make that not too many guys here can, which is more reason we're sending it left because of that. It's of course you want to make guys finish with their weekend, but especially offences like I said that are run with these offences where they're trying to go from side to side and they're swinging the ball a lot. We're even taking away right hand passes and that just makes it difficult if we're truly pressuring while we're doing it and we're sitting on that right hip. Guys have to pass with their left hand. That's an uncomfortable thing. A lot of teams aren't working on passing drills. Right. And you're also just not used to making that hook pass, shake pass with your left hand. So we find that place in our favorite two and then those if they do make the pass those become ones that we definitely want to snipe. Yeah, it totally makes sense when we use in college, even if you got beat, it was a much harder type of situation for them to put us in dominoes because even if we rotate, they weren't necessarily making a clean pass or the perfect pass. So it always gave us extra time. I felt to be able to recover in those situations. Of course, the other part that goes with this and I know we're going to go in a deeper conversation about scouting, but scouting becomes obviously a little bit of an important thing, but I'm curious at some point you referenced at the beginning that we're forcing everyone week, even the left handers. And that's for simplicity and learning, but at some point are you then with scout, forcing the lefties. So we do not force the lefties arm. This is something we've thought about as a coaching staff is how do we want to guard left handers, right? But it's our defense. We're getting the ball. We want to go and we found that left handers want to go left. We want them to go left. So they are just going to do us a favor and go exit actually where we want them to go and our help should be built for that. So in a way, plays into our hands more. If they're just coming down and they're left handed, they want to go there. They're going to go there. That's where we wanted to go. I think when it becomes maybe a little bit more difficult is now we're in scramble mode and on a closeout. And maybe our help is we're already in rotation a little bit. That's when maybe we close out a little bit more straight up. So we've had moments with certain players that are really dominant lefties where we'll close out and will be a little bit more straight up. Never forcing right though. And for the majority of the time, we're still just we're all in. We understand they're left handed, but this is our defense. They're going where we want them to go. We just got to make sure our wall and our gap are ready. Love that. And we always you referenced the wall, the helpline, we always said you're wrong if you're splitting the helpline. You're either on one side of the other depending on the matchup. And this makes sense to me because if you're planning against a lefty, you're probably cheating a little bit more to rotation and help in terms of that. But talk to us about playing on the wall. Are you having players adjust relative to who's potentially attacking relative to ball screen relative to things like that? Or they planted firmly in the wall. Yes. So we first of all, in the ball gets to the jail side. Our terminology is to flood the wall, especially if he gets to the left corner, flooding the wall. We want them outside of the restricted circle. Traditionally, we are back to the baseline kind of scanning, seeing both right pistols out. But in the ball gets to the corner, we are fully turning our back to the man, leaving the restricted circle and almost like we're showing like we're going to come trap it. And then just ready to rotate down again on the weak side. That's specifically when it gets to the left corner. Just in general on the wall, we shade left to the left side for a little bit more when it import as the ball. Right. And Vietnam specifically for my pro league, there's two American players or two import players. I should say per team. And usually the guards are dynamic and average 20 to 30 points per game. So those are guys we really got to emphasize more trying to slow down just from a scouting. perspective. So in those type of cases, we'll make sure we're more towards the left side of the floor on the wall. But in general, where we are just making sure we're close to that midline, if you're a goddess shooter, we have shooter rule. You're a little bit closer to that shooter. And when the ball gets left corner, we really got to flood that thing and show them that if he drives, you're there to contest. Going back to scout and everything with that. That's one of the challenges. And I think one of the big changes in basketball too over the years is how scouts used to be obviously pretty long and pretty, pretty boring. And maybe this goes back to your time with Ryan at spring armor. But it talks us about simplifying scout and the constant challenge of that, especially I can imagine for professional players. I'm still a young coach, but this was probably the number one area I had to improve on from my first season coaching is just rambling about everything that popped into my mind and everything I thought our players needed to know and realizing that we have to simplify in more areas than one and scouting a port is one of those typically even for players, I would put paragraphs on there my first season as a coach and realize, okay, we should probably make it bullet points, condense this for me. It's as simple as I give everybody a close out type. So we got to know how we close out on the shooter. I mentioned curry close out means we run them off the line. They're not allowed to shoot it where they catch it. So it has to be a left hand dribble if they catch a ball in the perimeter. These are players that we want them dribbling into the lane trying to attack. And then we have Kobe close out. We get there with a high hand and understand they're a pretty good shooter. And then we have the roundout close out. So we always want to know there are three point shooting percentage. If there's a really bad free throw percentage shooter, we'll put that on the scout because we have a terminology for if we're losing we call it Mayday if we're losing and we need to fall, we would put who the Mayday candidates are on there. Aside from some of these shooting percentages things, it's really just maybe two extra bullet points per player with some of their maybe go to moves or just overall analysis about that player. Something that kind of defines what they do. If they're just in elite crash or just it could be as simple as we have to box this guy out. Right. And just finding kind of creative ways to say that where you're not just putting box out on paper. I think that can be boring for some of the players, but just highlighting what that guy does in about three points is what we try to keep it at. I laugh a little bit because I know some of the college coaches I've worked with through the years and I just get their scouts and they're like these massive productions and they look impressive, but it comes back to again how effective it is and one of your players consuming. But one of the things that I always help them understand is like, we don't need to put the obvious things on the scout, which you just referenced like boxing out. Really? We should box out. That's a part of it. Different things like that to be able to just say, you don't need to put things on there that are obvious and that you do every day. And it's more about kind of the specific things that are a little bit unique and different. So talk to us about delivery of scout that you mentioned simplifying it. What how are you delivering scout? So we typically if we have a game on a Thursday, I try to go over scout on a Monday or Tuesday. And then it gives us it gives us one or two practices to know or what we're looking at before we go into the game. So scout before practice and then the game. But we are just simply having a film session 10 to 15 minute film session. Usually we go over a couple of the other teams plays. We'll go over maybe some clips from their main players and then we'll just go over it player by player. The thing is in Vietnam, a lot of these guys know each other already. They've been playing the league for years. So I might be on one player and say you guys know what he does. Just make sure we take this away. So I don't have to spend too long on each player. Usually the import players are new to the league. The local guys have been around for a long time. All the locals know the locals. So for those guys, it's a little bit quicker. But we do this with, like I said, we combine it with a 10 to 15 minute film session about three days before game day. So curious a little bit again, I imagine the makeup of your league is not traditionally tall mainly because of the domestic players. So like switching from a pack line to a more aggressive defense and it reference, you reference yourself as well in terms of your dog mentality. That these things align a little bit more in terms of some of the skill sets. So maybe it allows you to be able to maximize some of your players a little bit more on the defensive side. I'm curious about that. But I'm also curious then on the offensive side, what are some things that help them as well? Yeah. So defensively, my past team was a little bit bigger. Partly why we were in the pack line, we had a bit more size in the gap. We weren't as quick. Now, just even with like you mentioned, Vietnam's not the tallest of nations in terms of the height we get with our players. So we had a bunch of small fast guards. And two of my imports were, we had basically a double point guard lineup. So we wanted to take advantage of that. So we were getting out pressuring and just understanding that we got to take advantage of these guys speed. If we're sitting in the gap, then it just doesn't favor our God-given traits, I should say. And Vietnam in general, I think is a league where guys try to get up and pressure. Even Asia in general, you look at some of the better countries in Asia, the Japan markets growing like crazy. I was just in Japan a couple of weeks go watching some games and they're just a bunch of pesky guards. If they're just sitting back, not pressuring the ball, they're doing themselves a disservice. Right? Because they got to take advantage of their skills set and they got a bunch of guys that are quick and small and feisty and they just take advantage of that. I think you have to play to the strengths of your God-given abilities and your natural traits. And that's essentially what we were trying to do when I switched defenses this past season. 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 basketballmurgeon.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 basketballmurgeon.com, contact page or DMs on X or Instagram. Now back to the podcast. You mentioned Scout and kind of delivery of that and simplifying with that. Talk to us a little bit about the different types of game prep and game management type of tools used from half time talks, post game talks, post practice reports, et cetera. Talk to us about some of these things. So this is where my coaching staff really comes into play. We do post practice reports. This is something my assistant coach brought to me with his idea. Post practice reports after every practice. Not right away. It's something that guys go home, enjoy their dinner or whatever. Is that night they'll get just a one-pager of, hey, we put this in, we worked on this, just a reminder on this. It might be four bullet points, three bullet points, just some simple refresher. So when I go to practice, go home, it doesn't just go out the window, but it's something that we have a little bit of a re-emphasis on. And we ask guys to read that, it takes about 30 seconds. We do the same thing with games, right? When we finish a game, I don't think that's the best time to analyze all your exes and nos and I told you I had to simplify after my first year and improve some things. That's something my first year as a head coach. I was talking too much after the game in locker rooms. Guys just played a 40-minute game, they're tired, it's emotional, they don't want to hear me talk. So it might, we might not touch exes and nos at all. It might be, hey, we did this really well. We got to clean this up a little bit. It's more of just a general, more touch on the intangibles and our overall effort in terms of, I think, when we close a post game talk and analyze the game, and the time for exes and nos comes in our post game report. So the following morning, we will send a post game report. I rotate that with my assistant coaches. Usually I don't like meet with the team the following morning or the following day. I like them to get away from the coach, have some time to themselves just decompress from the game, but just read this report. Again, it's one page. What we do is things we did well, things we need to improve on, did we meet our goals. So before every game, we've got about three or four goals we put on the whiteboard that kind of highlight the game plan. And then the last part is just the overall summary of how the game went. So those are our post game reports. We try to do those after every game as well as after every practice. These are these generic or these specific to players. Are there specific points for each player or more generic towards your team? No, it's for the whole team. And giving me, we also have some non-English speakers. So these are things we have to translate. So I have to depend on my Vietnamese assistants for those, but these are more just overlooking how we did as a team. I might put some specific individual things that we need to do better for one or two guys even on the team report, but for the most part it's all team oriented. I love it. I love that idea, especially again for players. What did we do today? What did we learn? And I can think of this particularly for youth teams that I'm around. It's like this type of summary of ideas for them is probably a really effective way for them to be able to move things from short term to long term memory, consolidation type of idea, a really cool idea and a great concept with it. Then how are you delivering information at halftime in post game then? So halftime typically, again, something I had to improve on, stop talking so much. I usually get into the locker room and first analyze, are we winning or are we losing? If we're winning, he means we're doing something well. So just pick whatever we're doing. I like that. Keep doing that. Usually there's always something you can improve on. So I try to pick one thing offensively. One thing defensively that we can definitely improve on. If there's more than one, I'm not going to say that I can, I have to be so simple. I can only touch on one thing realistically as coaches. We have a lot of things in our minds that we feel we can do better. It's just about what do I think they can take? Right? What do I think they can handle? But first, when the halftime starts, I let the players talk first. I'll meet with my coaches outside of the locker room. We'll go over and maybe stats that are outliers or anything that major that's going on, go to bad, decide what we need to share with the team. And then we go in there. It's usually, like I said, an offense thing, a defensive thing. And then maybe we have to keep our energy or we need to pick our energy up, trying to find creative ways to say that. But if we're losing, first we need to see is it because of effort or is it X as a nose? That's then where we need to make a couple more adjustments. But same thing, we don't need to, if we're losing, we don't need to go in there and tell them five things we need to do better. That's just going to overwhelm them. So trying to keep it simple, but trying to, if we're losing, break it down into micro games. All right, maybe we're down 20 and a half time. We turn this around, we can cut it to, we get it to 14 by the first five minutes, things like that, trying to make it micro games, micro goals for them. So I help try and make it seem manageable if you're down big, if you're down in a close game, right? It's a little bit easier to manage, but I'm just trying to keep it simple and then deliver the message based on the score and how the game's going. And then post game same thing, just keep it simple. Don't talk too much and then just tell them to read the post game report the next morning. - If you referenced doing some kind of pre-conversation with me, like coaching and fear to do new things, talk to us about that. - Yeah, I think that's as a young coach, I think you wanna, of course, win the respect of your team and then once you have that, even when you have respect, I think there's still a fear of sometimes some guys might not buy into everything I'm doing, if I'm doing something that I'm not comfortable with, right? If there's something that's new for me. Even when I switch from pack line to lock left, first I was nervous that I didn't know the defense, the ins and outs of it. How can I start teaching it if I don't necessarily know everything about it? What if a player asks me a question, I don't know, you don't wanna look bad in front of your players, right? I think this type of fear is normal for coaches and I've had many instances I can think of, even just the first time I asked my players to meditate before a game and thinking about, am I gonna get some looks for that? Is that gonna work? Is everyone gonna buy into it? I remember the first time I did that, 2023 coaching. So, a few years of not doing that at all and first time I did that, it ended up going great. One guy kept his eyes open the whole time 'cause it gave him a headache. If he closed his eyes, everybody else was locked in and fine and then we ended up visualizing this was before a game, visualizing the scouting report as we talked about it and then we had our best shooting game ever, one by 40, I don't know if that had anything to do with it, but they say visualization helps, right? So, there's a lot of science behind that, but I just remember being a little bit nervous to try to get our guys to buy into that and then remembering it was a great experience. Even just things with fun warm-ups, right? I don't like to do dynamic warm-ups. Sometimes I try to mix it up, I have the guys play soccer or I'll do the passing tag or all the guys gonna buy into this, are they not? But just being willing to try things, I think, one, if it works, great, if it doesn't work, you learned what didn't work, you had a learning experience, you can grow from that and it just adds to your repertoire as a coach, but I think you have to be willing to, just like symbolic of life, face your fears as a coach, right? And it just adds to your bag as they say, if things work out, you learn more tricks you can do. Like I said, more, for example, I use the passing game, you can use more warm-ups, add to your bag, more tasks, if you wanna give them the meditation, whatever you wanna try, just don't be afraid to try things. I think as a coach, always do what you are afraid to do. I think that's a quote that sticks out with me and I know that the basketball gods, I think favor the coaches that are bold. If you wanna try this press that you've been working on, give it a go and don't fear it. If you never try it, you're just gonna live with that thought that you never try it. So that's one thing I think I've really bought into over the last couple of years, is just not being afraid to try things. Of course, everything has to have a rhyme and a reason and there's gotta be thought put into it. But if you believe in it, you gotta go for it and just see what happens and let the cookies crumble as they fall. It helps you get past that moment of saying, this won't work for my team or this won't work for these guys or this won't work for that. And I love the idea of like, you mentioned the warm up piece in particular, like when you float that to them a little bit in advance, it also prepares them for the possibility of it. So they're a little bit more open-minded in the moment as well. So I love that idea that goes with it. Assistant coaches, you've referenced them a number of times, being a professional coach, having assistant coaches available, talk to me about how you can utilize them and some of the things that to have added value for you as a coach. - Yeah, so I've been fortunate to have some great staffs. I've got four assistant coaches with the Buffalo's. I had five with the national team. And they helped me a lot. And first of all, I start, like I just mentioned, I don't like to do a traditional dynamic warm up before practice. So we do vitamins before practice. I know that's a popular term around the coaching world now. Just for us, it's our pre-practice, just skill work, pre-practice, 15 minutes. And we have four hoops we can break up that. So I have each coach take a basket. They might take two to three guys each. Some guys might be doing some small-sided games, some anything two on two, three on three, one on one. Somebody else might be taking one guy, give him a shooting workout. Somebody else might be taking the big man for some post moves. Just any vitamins I give that to the assistant coaches. And that's hard for me because I love player development. As a player, you start by training guys, right? That's kind of how I started as a coach at a big player development background. But it's my way of giving them a role that they can own. All right, if I do that too, then you're just taking an opportunity away from your assistant coach to grow. Of course, sometimes I hop in, right? Mid-season, a guy asks me for a workout, or I feel I just, I need to connect with a player. A one on one workout is a great time to go connect with a player on a relationship level. Maybe there's something in particular that I just feel I need to work on with a guy. So every now and then, I'll hop in the vitamins. But I think as a head coach, it's your responsibility also to give your assistant coaches roles that they can own and they can make their own. And for me, vitamins is a great way to do that. You're in charge of this work on with them and whatever you want to work on with them. And just given that trust to my assistant coaches, also those post practice reports I mentioned, they helped me with those. Some days I'll do them, some days they'll do them. Post game reports. My assistant coaches with the bufflers, they lead individual film sessions with all of my players after every game that all the guys that played. And that could be one clip for some guys. It could be six to 10 clips for another guy. So just trying to give these guys things outside of practice before practice and then in the film room that they can own. And then in practice, I want them to get that head coaching experience. So I'll be the manager of practice. I'll run the drills and then I'll have one coach to black team, one coach to the white team, every water break they sit in their teams and they are huddled amongst their coach. So I want them to get those, even they are coaching their teams. If it's an end-of-game situation, they're drawn up the plays in practice, not me. And then when I feel I need to do that, because I need to get in the nitty-gritty reps, then I'll have one of those coaches run the practice and I'll coach a team for practice. So now they get the experience of managing the show and I can coach the actual in-team practice. Because when I started as an assistant in Vietnam, when our head coach Kevin Yerkes allowed me to start taking over parts of practice. And I remember that. And that meant a lot for me to allow me to grow and get confidence to become a head coach. And he really helped to develop me. So I've taken that with me. I want to help all my assistant coaches. And we've got a young staff, bunch of young hungry coaches, but they all work hard and they feel that now they're on a path towards becoming a head coach just by getting these daily reps, I think. - I love that. - Being able to empower them and make them feel like they have a voice and obviously a voice in front of the players in particular makes them more confident as well when you do need them. So I love that. And you reference practice a few times and the vitamins part of it. But in terms of the bulk of the practice, what does the practice look like for you at the professional level in Vietnam? - Practice starts with the vitamins after that. And now we don't have a set routine. We do every time, but we like to do defensive reminders early in practice. We rotate defense reminders one day. The next day will be offense reminders. So what I mean by that is again, two coaches are, let's say I have two coaches this day, one's taking that hoop, one's taking that hoop, we break up half and half. And we're going through, if it's defense day, it might be 90 seconds to two minutes per drill. Maybe it's how we guard the post one on one. Coach shows it to the post. We're working on three-fourths to Nile and bouncing back. Offense has three seconds to score. So we're also working on quick decisions for offense, one dribble. And then we might go to closeouts, just 90 seconds. I don't like to do a ton of closeout drills. I think guys did a lot of that in college. I'm less more fundamental, more figure it out, but we do a little bit of it. And then it'll do maybe two on two. All of our ball screen coverages. We've got four colors, black, blue, green, red, going through all those. Again, just two minutes. So we're just quickly repping it out, trying to keep it intense guys talk. and then we'll maybe guard handoffs, two on two, guard pin downs, two on two. And we did all of that now in 10 minutes. And we've just touched on how we guard a lot of different actions. That's how we'll often start practice. And then the flip side will do it on offense. We're running a conceptual offense. So we'll just play out of some of our concepts. Maybe two on two, maybe three on three. Might do a little bit of three on two, just quickly to review a few things and how we want to move off the ball. And then we'll come together after that and we'll get right to the four on fours of the five on five. It's usually starting maybe with some fast break stuff. We try to play fast. So I like to keep all my drills ideally six minutes max or less. I think four is a perfect sweet spot because we're trying to play really fast. My team last year in particular, I had the two fastest guards in the leagues. I think if you want to play fast, you have to practice fast. It doesn't make sense to say that and then do half court drills all day. So we're really trying to run and trying to keep our drills short because if you're playing a 10 minute quarter just human nature, they're not going to be sprinting every now. Every sprinting down and back every play relentlessly. You might have a couple plays where somebody doesn't get to half court and now you're enforcing bad habits. So we try to keep it to six minute games, sometimes four minute games playing with a 12 second shot clock, playing with a 14 second shot clock to reinforce those pace, to reinforce that pace. Sometimes it might be, okay, we're playing with these triggers. Sometimes it might be, you have to get a post touch here so we can play out of our post concepts. Sometimes it's, we're just trying to reinforce our transition game. So if the outlet is not in the go or if you don't get a rim run, it's a turnover. If the corner racers don't get to the corner in four seconds, it's a turnover. If the ball's not across half court in four seconds, it's a turnover. We do a lot of drills like this, kind of in the middle of our practice and we're really getting up and down. And for me, ideally 90 minutes is perfect. 80 to 90 minutes. I will have some two hour practices at the beginning of training camp and there's more to put in, but mid season, sometimes it's even 60 to 90 minutes just depending on the place we're at in the season. But I guess that starts with the vitamins and then we get some reminders, either defensive or offensive and then we get up and down. And then sometimes we'll finish with, maybe we got to review some half court sets or some blob slabs might finish with some five and five half court. And that's a, of course it always varies, but that's a typical practice. - That's great. Thank you for sharing that and then referenced a little bit some of the constraints that you use. And I know, Offline, we talked about that that constraints over drills is a part of your philosophy. - Yeah, even just, for example, rebounding. I'm starting to teach tagging up for the first time and somebody just asked me, how are you gonna teach it? I said, I'm gonna tell you guys to run to the hoop. That was being sarcastic, but I'm not gonna do a bunch of rebounding drills to teach rebounding. It's we're playing and maybe I like to use point systems, right? To emphasize what you need. It could be a simple of it. As if that guy doesn't crash, the other team gets a point. I would rather do that than just doing a rebounding drill, right? Where guys are static, they're taught to box out, like they've been doing for years. I prefer much more to try to use different point systems or use constraints to get those points across. For example, even just like conditioning, we're not running sprints. We're just playing fast in practice. I think if you're playing with a 10 second shot clock, you basically have to run sprints, right? I know I might draw some flack for that. I don't think you need to run sprints in practice and you can play fast. So we don't really do too much of it in terms of trying to add conditioning, right? I'll just, if you don't get to the corner in four seconds, it's a turnover. Now that player has to sprint. That's just an example of a constraint. Some seasons I've played no rim runner, some of that I've played with a rim runner, but we teach now rim run and get to the opposite corner. If you don't get it, if nobody rim runs, maybe we make it a minus one for a team, plus one for a team, just finding ways to add constraints and point systems. I find it to be much more valuable than just doing kind of static drills like your traditional boxed out drills or shell drills or whatever it might be. That always have a purpose, right? Just not my style of how I prefer to coach, if that makes sense. - No, those are some awesome examples of this. Constraints let approach and action. And also again, the idea that basketball helps your players develop at basketball clearly with the different emphasis that you put forward. So I love that. And you mentioned throughout a little bit this concept of being a former player, relatively young and coaching. Obviously a lot of success really on. I can't believe how many conversations I have with former players that are just out of playing. And I ask them, why are you doing this? And they said, "Obviously, my coach did it." And I said, did you like that? And they say, "No, I hated that." And I'm like, "Why are you doing that?" And I know you've gone through some with this introspection yourself a little bit about being a former player and some of the things that you liked and some of the things you valued. So share those with us and maybe some of those lessons. - It's funny, I was just thinking about this today. Just I want my practices to be enjoyable experience. I know that some coaches might think that's soft, right? But I just, I want it to be a place where guys want to come into the gym and have fun. And I think certain drills ruin that. Like, we're at a professional level. So I think, I think Joe Mozilla just said, "You have to define fun, right?" Like fun does not just mean you're playing games, right? For him, fun might be or working really hard. And maybe for him, running sprints is fun, right? But I think just, I want guys to come into the gym and yes, we work hard, we compete, but there's certain drills that suck the life out of the gym. And I just try to avoid those. So for me, just playing and using constraints or point systems is a way to keep playing instead of drilling. I'm not saying I never do drills, I do drills, I do some stationary drills when I feel it's needed or maybe to initially teach something. But I've just, I know what it's like to be a player, I know what's fun, what's not. I know you can still learn without having to do some of these more boring box out drills, for example, or just as an example, more traditional drills. So I just, I want it to be a place where guys want to come. I think it's, I keep saying that, but that's as simple as it is for me. And I think trying to create that environment where we're competing, like we're tracking every win, we're tracking competition, but we're playing basketball over here. As a player, I know players love to play in practice, they love to compete, they love to get up and down. I had a couple practices last year where we had zero energy. And I realized it was my fault. The drills that we're doing were so slow, I said, okay, we need to play. As soon as we started playing, guys started talking trash, they started picking up, they started sprinting, they started pressing the ball, which wasn't happening at all in the drills. And I was like, what are you doing? You got a pressure at the basketball in this drill, you got to get up, you got to get nasty and just wasn't happening. It was clearly my fault. It was a boring drill that just, and not saying every drill has to be super fun, but it wasn't impacting what I wanted it to impact. So I just had to let the guys play and immediately the energy changed. So for me, that was the lesson I learned is, the more you can play five on five, the better off, the more fun your players will have first of all, and then they'll want to work harder for you because of that. - It's such a great example of-- - The fun part of practice, and again, fun, we're not taking more frivolous. I love that, and I've talked about this many times that fun for most players, even youth players that I'm around, is competing, getting better, and some shared experience with their teammates. And that's fun, and that's why a lot of kids play sports, and certainly the professional level, to a certain extent, there's still kids playing a sport. So it's a beautiful example. You've also talked a little bit about having a relationship with your coach. Like that was something you valued as a player. So it's something that you're hyper aware of as a coach, is like the relationship that you have with each player. - Yeah, I think coaching is not just, of course, it's not, but it's not just about X's and O's or knowledge because knowledge is at our fingertips now. I can go watch one of your podcasts anytime I want, as can every coach in the world, and I can learn anything I want. And I do, all your podcasts are saved on my watch later. I can go on my YouTube watch later playlist. I can go watch it and I can learn. I can go run the same set plays as Eric Spolst, or Steve Kerr, 'cause I can see what they're running, and I can go running, and now I'm running NBA sets, right? That's not what coaching is about now. It's about their relationships, getting players to want to play hard for you, to be motivated to feel a part of the team, to be confident. I know you know Ryan Coddingham, who was my head coach and I was at Spring Harbor. He was awesome with that in terms of just made it feel like a family, really cared about you. And that's something I've taken with myself and the coaching now is just, your players have to feel like you value them first of all. And professional basketball can become transactional. And sometimes some teams are maybe have the family theme, some teams are run more like a business, and I've been a part of both. And just trying, regardless of however the organization has run, you have to first build that time, that camaraderie with your players, and just that those conversations have to be had, they have to realize that you value them as a person. You're not just using them to get you stops or get you a siss or get you buckets, right? And the more they know that, the more willing they are to play hard for you, or run through a wall for you as they say. So it just starts with the small conversations. I personally think one-on-one conversations with players throughout the week is if you could do anything, that's the most vital thing you could do as a head coach. I could not put in a play all week. If I just talk to every guy in my team in a one-on-one manner, I think I'll get more benefit out of that than even if I'm not a player. even touching on the X's and those, especially if I'm mid-season, the X's and those already put in, right? So I just think it's so valuable. You also really understand where the players at mentally, I've had seasons where I've had to catch myself. Hey, I haven't talked that guy in a while. I might have gone longer than I wanted to without talking to him just on a personal basis. And that's on me and that's something I have to continue to work on. But when you had those conversations, maybe you didn't realize this player was struggling. And that's why it's affecting this game. He's got something off the court or whatever it might be. Or he's having a great time and he wants to talk about that. So I think it's just very important to have those one-on-one conversations. And I think in a professional season, a college season, any season that we have a busy schedule, I think it's valuable to actually write it in your planner and plan these things. Plan when you're going to talk with players. If you don't have a set meeting time, I know a lot of coaches come to my office on Monday and talk to me at this time. They have those set meeting times, which is great. If you don't, I think you should really start to plan that in because when the season gets busy, sometimes you can miss out on those opportunities. And I really believe one-on-one conversations are the single most important thing a coach can do throughout the season. Agreed. And you're up to that. But I always wanted my players to like me. Or enjoy being around me at least. And I know that was a hard thing, right? Bouncing that intensity and pushing people. And then also having them actually value you and enjoy you as a person. And I'm not saying friends, but I'm saying like literally that made the whole experience better for all of us if we had some type of personal relationship. I love that is something that connects with you as well in terms of that. And one last thing I knew you referenced in before we get into some of the business stuff, but you referenced a little bit in practice like when you are scrimmaging that you never set a score at zero zero. So talk to us about that. Yeah, just something I started doing really over the last year. If we're having a four minute scrimmage, for example, instead of zero zero, let's make it feel game like let's say to that 70 to 70 black team has three falls white team has three falls black team has two timeouts white team has one time out, whatever it might be set the time out set the falls every single practice every single five and five drill because now we are creating end of game end of quarter situations without having to designate 15 minutes after practice to work on end of game situations. That's one benefit of it. Another is now those assistant coaches who I mentioned are coaching black and white team. Now they might have to draw up a game winning sideline out of bounds play or decide if they want to follow on the last possession or not. Now they're getting some game like head coach like reps. So just by tracking falls, you're working on your terminology. For example, we had a call bingo means we needed a we had a fall to give. Mayday means we needed to follow. Now we have opportunities to work on these if we're actually tracking the falls, we're playing it like a fourth quarter. We have a score. It's not just zero to zero and we're playing for six minutes and whoever is a higher score wins. There's you're still accomplishing a lot with that, but you're missing out on an opportunity to work on how you run a timeout. Now your chance to drop ATO is every coach loves to drop ATO's right and ATO sideline out of bounds for the win. That's as sexy as it gets and now you got a chance to do that in practice. For me, it's made in practice more fun too. We talk about fun. Now guys have a chance to go make game winning shots or defend game winning shots if it's a right if it's we're tracking falls and timeout and it's a maybe a one point game with 10 seconds left. Now we can use that timeout advance the ball right and we can get one of these end-of-game situations. So just a lot of benefit from keeping track of falls, keeping track of time out, setting a score, just makes it feel more like a game. So we try to do that with every single drill now when we're five on five. It's an awesome perspective and it does remind me like one of my main arguments to people is not about constraint-let approach or games approach or anything like that. It's just literally playing more basketball in practice because it's more fun to coach basketball games and it also increases your ability to be able to develop as a coach because you're in more game situations. So you become a better game coach because you're coaching the game in practice. So I love that and I'm grateful that you shared that perspective with us. Matt, one of the original reasons we connected was a little bit more than the coaching. It was a little bit more of the the Van Peltas sports management that pro coaches Academy, performance labs, some of these other things that you've done will say on the side, but we know that these are things that are paramount to your life and the way that you've built your coaching ecosystem. So talk to us about doing some of these other things and the value that I've added for you as a coach and a person. Yes, so I've got a few other things going on Van Peltas sports management. I started in 2015 actually when I was a player and I remember going to an exposure camp as a player and at this exposure camp they get guys jobs to go play overseas and I had made some connections. I remember one of my teammates at the time saying you could do something like this and then that's literally how it started for me. The next year I did I was able to get four guys jobs overseas made a few mistakes on that first one. Learned a lot. Got some guys jobs. It was rewarding and turned it into a sports management company where I get coaches and players jobs overseas essentially. Similar to an agent type deal, but you can't be a feeble certified coach and a feeble certified agent. So more of a ran a little bit differently than an agent would, but I do place players and coaches with jobs and that's really rewarding and it's also something that can bring me benefit and just in terms of really helps my network. All right. To network with different teams around the world. I also place youth academy coaches, players with jobs. So it's just a great way to help me but also do something that's rewarding and then I also have pro coaches Academy, which is my favorite side hustle. I guess you say the one I'm obsessed with now because it's just about like this, right? We do podcasts. We do coaches clinics. We have a group chat of 140 coaches from 40 countries right now and we're really just sharing ideas, sharing drills, set plays, picking each other's brains, talking about philosophies concepts. So just learn from each other and networking with coaches. We share job openings, things of that nature and we have clinics every six weeks. You are kind enough to do one for me, which was awesome. I learned a lot from that as we always do when we listen to you, but just trying to connect with other coaches, other like-minded coaches through pro coaches Academy has been awesome. And then I co-own the performance lab, which is a youth academy in Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam, a skill lab or kids of all ages really that take it seriously and they can at least train four to five days a week. They go into our location in Ho Chi Minh Vietnam just to get better. So I got three side hustles. My main thing is coaching, but pro coaches Academy is becoming my main baby now. I spend a lot of time on. It's just the stuff I'm obsessed with trying to learn as a coach and it's just been fun for me. Love it. Love your passion for the game and for coaching and sharing and all those different things and for many of our audience, they're hearing of you the first time and incredible value and incredible share for all of us. So thank you so much for sharing the game. Thank you, coach. Appreciate it, you.