Mihai Silvășan on Practice Intensity, Risk/Reward Tradeoffs, and The Art of Motivation {Cluj-Napoca}

I'm a big fan of Thomas Isalo, you know, I follow him a lot and I watch his games since the day he was in bond. And I took this call from him and I really believe in it as very, very logic. If you put the thing at the beginning with your team and it looks good, that means it's not good. That means you don't push them hard enough, that means you don't do the right things in order to make the team progress. I'm Dan Cricorian and I'm Patrick Karning and welcome to Slaping Glass, exploring basketball's best ideas, strategies and coaches from around the world. Today we're excited to welcome the head coach of one of Romania's top teams, Cluj Nipoca, Meehai Silvishan. Coach Silvishan is here today to discuss motivating players at different stops in their careers, building intensity and focus in practice. And we talk, decision making in pace and balancing risk reward during the always fun start, sub or sit. The practice lab is now live inside SG+. It's a new space for building what drew Dunlop around practice design, player development and helping coaches bring ideas from film and workouts onto the floor. Think of it as a workshop for coaches, a place to study practice ideas, tinker with the constraints and take something back to your next session. Drew walks through each idea with voice-over breakdowns, looking at what the drill is teaching, what cues players are learning to read, and how coaches can shape the task for their own players and system. It's another major addition to SG+. Alongside our film breakdowns, newsletters, podcast extras, clinic presentations and growing coaching archive. You can explore the practice lab now on SGTV. And now, please enjoy our conversation with Coach, Meehai Silvishan. Coach, thank you very much for joining us. We're really excited to talk to you today. Thank you very much for inviting me. I'm a big fan of your podcast. I'm following it from the beginning and I want to congratulate you because you're doing a really good job for basketball coaches, for the information that you put out there, or the guests that you have. I'm looking for a good job. Thank you, Coach. Coach, we wanted to start with this. We were chatting a little bit before the show and whatnot. It's individual versus team motivation. There's some cross over there, of course, but just how you as a head coach think about one motivating your team to play hard, pre-game, practice, all those things. Kind of just motivate maybe a player and we can dive into both separately, but thought we'd start there with individual and team motivation. That's a huge topic for me and I think it's the most important thing to be able to make your team to play harder than the opponent. That's the first thing that you need to have in order to be successful. If your team doesn't play harder, it's very hard to put whatever tactics you want there. There's big chances that you don't have success if you're not making your team play harder. I think these two things, team motivation and individual motivation, they need to be connected for sure. If you don't have motivated players for sure, you won't have a motivated team. For me, it's very, very important the way we start the season, starting with the first meeting. There we set the tone. I have some very simple rules that I make sure that the players understand those rules from the beginning. And first of those rules is not being late. I want players to be on time. That's a matter of responsibility. And I believe that each one of us need to have that responsibility. Like signing a contract, you need to make your part of that contract. Then I want the players to be ready to practice. I believe a lot in practicing, even if we play two games per week, it's very hard to find time for practicing hard. But practicing good doesn't be necessary running sprints all day or practicing hard or two hours each session. For me, it's very important that players come ready with the right mindset, with the right focus. So we are able to have a good practice. Even if practice is 30 minutes long or two hours, they need to come with their best abilities there. So we can improve like a team because I believe in focusing at the present, I believe that the most important thing that we can focus on is this moment of practice. If it's a practice, then step by step we can consider games and whatever duties we still have. So I try to make the team understand that and also I try to make the players and I point it out whenever I see I put out from the practice players just not being ready and not having the right intensity. I don't get upset or go crazy on players if they make some mistakes or they make a bad pass if they are trying or if they miss a layup or of course if they miss a 3-point shot. That's part of the game. But if mentally are not there and they are not focused on the test that we give them or they make a lot of mental mistakes, I hear this term a lot in your podcast from different coaches. Actually this is a term that I have from one American coach, maybe you know tap ball win. He was the coach of New Zealand National Team in 2002 when they played a semi-final of the workup. So I was lucky enough to have him here in Cluj when I played and he was big with this mental mistake and I stay a lot with that. And for me that's very important. I'm not going crazy if players do physical mistakes but if they are not ready and they are not focused then I think I need to make sure that they understand that's not good. Coach, you other thing also find interesting especially at your level where they're professionals and but at different levels of their professional careers is how you think about motivating the individual, whether they're you know a veteran versus a rookie somewhere in the middle and trying to provide for families and things like that. Which obviously is a lot different. Of course, different individualities they can motivate themselves from different reasons. When you build a team you want that puzzles fit perfect and you want to have experienced players which they need to be professionals and a good example and their motivation probably at this point of their career when they are 35-36. It's a lot about money, it's a lot about pride, it's a lot about legacy what they live behind them who in a championship maybe to win a cup or whatever. You need to have hungry players that their motivation definitely is to make a statement and to make a name from themselves and you need to treat them a little different because you understand that sometimes they may be selfish. Sometimes they may be overexcited sometimes they are emotional not as stable like experienced players so you need to treat them a little different and you need to have role players that are understanding that they're rolling that team is maybe just to play defense or maybe to come from the bench and give 5-10 minutes to the team. I really believe that and I try to make them understand that during the season not the stars are the only guys that matters. The guy that go on the core 10 minutes to give a rest to the star guy or to the main scorer if he's doing a good job the team have bigger chances to have success if he's doing a bad job and his negative definitely the team have more chances to fail. And here in close we count a lot and the way we scout and the way we try to build the team it's a lot about chemistry and it's a lot about making this puzzle fit very well together. We don't just bring players that are skilled we need to have enough talent for sure but we can't bring 10 players that all want to have the ball and all want to be stars because that will be a total fiasco and good luck for any coach to handle that. Yeah definitely coach if we look at motivation now like through the course of a season and navigating the ebbs and flows the ups and downs the wins and losses especially over the course of such a long season like you guys have what have you learned from that standpoint from more of a season overview. It's a huge topic and of course when you are for example we had a month that we had eight games and seven of those games were away and that's different to motivate a team in those circumstances when you see each other every day and they don't stay home with their kids and they live just in hotels and they travel a lot in commercial flights because we don't use charters here and from those seven games away you will seek out of that. So good luck in motivating them you know that's a challenge we had another month when we have seven games home and we win six out of seven we just lose with a Euro league team in a ball and that's easy to keep them happy and to keep them motivated but the bottom lines. You need to have some clear objectives from the beginning and here definitely one of my favorite thing and my favorite world is overachieving you know and I try to make them understand that under my guidance and me being their coach they will need to try to overachieve whatever the situation is so we never try to find excuses. We never try to be over excited when we win we just try to take it step by step next practice next video session next conversation with a certain player next conversation with the whole team these little steps if you do it consistently well I think help you build some type of resilience that in those hard moments which I told you because we were in that moment this year and we lose. six out of seven games away. And after we come after the last game, we just have a decisive game for qualifying further in Euro Cup against Aris. You know, so that was a challenge for us, but we show resilience and we managed to play a great game and qualify further. And I think if you don't stay consistent with all this stuff and keep telling to the players and to the whole team that each next step is the most important. Next practice is the most important. Try to be focused. Try to stick together. Try to be resilient and we'll find a way to get out of this. You know, because in this hard situation, it's very easy to break like a team because the players don't like, they didn't play enough. You know, when you lose a lot of compliments come from different players, fans try to question you, you know, and it's very easy to break. And I think here is a very important aspect which a coach needs to take care of it. You know, this mental side of the game, especially when you're losing it, but not just when you lose because I believe sometimes also the success is the same and it's hard to handle, you know, because people can stay in a comfort zone and relax more than necessary when you have more success. I'd like to jump back to when you talk about practice habits, you know, building the motivation and the count abilities you're going to hold the team to after the first meeting. You talked about having the right focus and the intensity and practice on your side as a coach. How do you think about then on the days you are going to practice? How you structure practice and you how you have not necessarily what drills you do, but the design of the drill so that it creates an environment for the players to practice hard and have the focus, you know, versus sometimes I think we all want that. And then the way we structure practice kind of flies in the face of us allowing our players to go hard or to stay focused. I'm honestly thinking a lot on this situation, you know, was the best structure for the practice in order to cover all the things that you want to cover, you know, for us a normal practice let's say two days before the game because that's a little more intense than one day before the game. We have a tactical part where we start after the conditioning course do his thing in the way lifting room, you know, warm up or some lightweight. We try to have a tactical thing that's either 4 on 0 shell defensive drill when they just need to react to show their hands, you know, to stay in the passing lanes. Either an offensive to on 0 or 4 on 0 drill that we try to put them in situations that next opponent will put us in defense, you know, I mean, it's different solution if next opponent play drop defense or it's different solution if the next opponent play hatch defense and it's different solution if the next opponent plays switching defense. And we try to remind them which are our solutions, three four solutions against each defense depending who we play. And we use that like a warm up, 3 on 0 or 4 on 0. Maybe sometimes we have dummy coaches that go aggressive hatch so they take decisions against that, you know, so it's just the mind happy building drill, you know, that they put them for example against strong hatch, first solution need to be short roll always that's the most important for me. Second one need to be a pass elbow to elbow. Okay, so if you have two guys behind that means we'll be a pass behind if you got have two guys in front that means we'll be a passing front and all the players on the court need to move according to what is our solution. So we go through that then almost always it's a 5 on 0 which we go three possessions and that means we do some of our sets which we believe that will help us against next opponent in 5 on 0. Again, we try to make them think what the defense will put in front of us from the next opponent. So if we play our flow in transition, a lot of teams play drop and over with the guard that means what our solutions against that and we go three 5 on 0. If we play a set offense and they hatch, we go to our set offense against their hatch. If they switch again, we try to do different things what we do. So this is basically the warm up then most of the times we go 5 on 5 two or three topics and I put a lot of accent this season in transforming defense into offense. That's big part for us. Like we talked before, we had a little chat and we are the quickest improvly this year in Euro Cup. We have the biggest pace that we play with this season in Euro Cup and we scored the most points. We wasn't the most efficient offensive team but we scored the most points mainly because of our pace and also because we had some efficiency there. A lot in practice, we try to put accent on that to transform defense into offense and normally that can be half score 5 on 5 can be a close-out drill depends what I want to have can be an advantage drill for offense which where we need to rotate and to play good defense can be a ball screen defense that we want to use next game or can be normal game but always after the defense we give a point just if we transform it with a fast break or with a good offense there. That's a two possession game. That's the simplest one. Then if we want to always we keep the score, always we try to make it competitive. Then we go in probably the most intense part of the practice where we add one or two more possessions in this type of drill. We can start with a transition 5 on 4 plus 1 and then we continue with defense offense defense and we need to do three good things to have a point or when we want to have more intensity we play games to 5 points and we want to put accent on the speed we never stop the game. I mean we don't stop for fouls, we don't inbound the ball, we just keep playing and normally we keep this two or three games to 5 and that can be rarely challenging if you don't score points. So the execution need to be good, the decision making need to be good in order to find the best shots possible so you score because players don't want to play this 5 minutes, they will be dead. We try to find different type of challenges but all the drills that we put they need to be competitive and players that are not there and they don't compete. I make sure that everybody understand that and see that and I may stop the practice, I made them run, I can take them out from the practice. Normally I do this with the best players because those are the players that you want to give example with, you know, you don't want to put out from the practice or to go crazy on a young guy, you know, because there's no logic with them, you need to give them confidence and to talk with them. But if people see and players see that the best players is put it on the bench or I put him to run or I go crazy on him because it didn't have the right intensity, you know, that sets an example for everybody. The offseason looks quiet from the outside but coaches know better, it's film, portal lists and recruiting boards all running at the same time. Huddle keeps it from becoming a logistical nightmare, sports code, fast recruit and huddle in-step all in one place, one workflow instead of three browser tabs and a spreadsheet. The programs that clean up their operation in May are the ones who aren't scrambling in September. Learn more at huddle.com/slappingglass today. You mentioned when you're going to the high intensity part of the practice that you sometimes play some games with no fouls or no out of bounds. When you first start to do that drill or if I were to go into jam and start doing that drill, how do you get the buy-in from the players that they don't want to murder each other because there's no fouls being called? When you first start that drill, how do you navigate it as a coach to make sure it's getting its purpose and it's not just turning into, I mean, you want chaos but not just like absolute chaos. Always tell them this, there's a chaos drill and you need to take the right decisions and do the right things in these chaos. It's not that I don't call fouls. If it's a foul, I call it, but we don't stop when is that foul to shoot to free throws. If it's a foul on a shot, that means two points, you know, or if it's a down foul, regular foul, immediately the offense, if take the ball and try to attack and organize something. Usually I give two fouls and the third one is a point if the game is still going. You know, so it's not like we are that wild that I let players kill each other. That's not the purpose of it, but you don't do this in the first couple of weeks. I didn't do that, especially that pre-season first week. I never do live stuff. I do principle from the mental things, dummy defenses. Then when you go in live things, you do it progressively. You don't go this drill 515 like this to play five minutes in a row without stopping. Anyway, when you start with this drill or when you start to play more aggressive and with more intensity, the things will look bad. I'm a big fan of Thomas Isalo. You know, I follow him a lot and I watch his games since the day he was in bond. And I took this call from him and I really believe in it. It has very, very logic. That means you don't push them hard enough. That means you don't do the right things in order to make the team progress. For sure, if they do it right from the beginning, something is not right. Because especially in our case that I always change at least half of the team. You know, so each year it's starting from the beginning. I don't have the luxury. to keep like eight, nine, ten players. For this year, for example, I kept just two players from last year. So starting from zero, everything from zero, you know, so things can look good. You know, anything that I want practice at the beginning looks good because we record all the practices and we watch the videos with all the practices, especially in preseason, need to put different challenges, and more challenging things in practice. So they can make mistakes, they can fail in that things, and just like that, I believe they can't improve like a team. Going back to motivation, and we talked to earlier about the team motivation, talked a little bit about individual motivation. Interested also in like you motivating, I guess, yourself and your staff through both success and failure. You mentioned losing six out of seven, the road trip, and you mentioned some winning streaks, and that success can be hard to handle as well. And I guess as you've evolved over time as a coach, you know, what are ways that come into the office every day in practice that you yourself and your staff continue to stay motivated in the midst of a very long difficult season every year? That's a very good question. And honestly, being my 10th year in the same team, you know, with the same people working around me, of course, I changed the stuff a little during the years in assistant coaches. I don't have the luxury to have a lot of assistant coaches I have just two, but the medical stuff is same, the conditioning coach is same. It's not easy to stay motivated, but I'm still a young coach. I'm having great ambitions from my career. I'm still hungry, and I still have the desire to learn a lot of new things, because I believe when you stop having that desire, learning and improving yourself, that's the start of the downfall for you in your career. I really believe in that. And losing for me is not a bad thing at all. Of course, you don't want to lose the season, you know, and the championship, for example, here in Romania, we are winning the title five years in a row. Now we want to have it the sixth year this year. You don't want to lose, but losing from time to time is not that bad. And I'm honest with you, the best thing that happened in my career was losing. You know, that was my third year, like a head coach. After first year in which we won everything, I was 30 years old, 31. Like any young, unexperienced human being, not basketball coach, I believe that I knew everything, and I believe that was much better than I actually was. And then my second and third year, we lose the title. That was, I tell you again, the best thing that happened for me in my career, you know, so like a little advice, of course, you don't like it, it's not comfortable. But if you treat it right, you can take you in the right spot, you know, for me, losing was the chance to meet and to work with the late Tuschov Uyoshevich, you know, I mean, we talk about legendary coach that just died a few days ago, so I'm really sorry that happened, but I had a chance to work with him and to learn a lot from him, you know, and this is what losing brought to me. Since then, I'm not afraid of losing at all, you know, if you have a bad period, you need to understand that a bad period never stays like that always, you know, like every time after the summer or after the autumn comes the winter. I mean, that's natural. Like that is also with the bad things in your life, with a bad period. After a bad period, at one point, we need to come a good period, you know, if you stay consistent in doing the right things, if you keep learning and if you have the right motivation, you will go out of it and the good things will come. That's why right now, I try to not be overexcited when we are winning, when we have a 5, 6, 7, 8 winning Syria, or never try to be too low when we are losing 6, 7 games, you know, like we had the season 6 games in a row, we lost. So I try to transmit that also to my team with team conversation, but also with individual conversation with the players that can be more sensitive against losing or can be not that experience to treat well when we are winning to stay with the foot on the ground and to focus on the next step and on the next step. So that's the way I see these things with motivation, you know, I'm a big believer in the focusing on the present, you know, and I try to do that every day. Coach, really well said, thanks for your thoughts there in that first section. We want to transition now to a segment on the show that we call start sub or sit. We're going to give you three options around a topic, ask you to start one, sub one and sit one. I'm nervous now. That might take every part of the show. Well, coach works. I did dive in on this first one and this first one has to do with surprises or risks that you as a coach would think about taking and your start here would be the one that you feel like would have the biggest potential reward or biggest payoff for you from a competitive advantage standpoint. So I'm going to give you three types of surprises or risks that a coach could spring on their opponent and you're going to start, subset, which one has the best upside. So first option is mixing with or changing your starting lineups or rotations. The second option is on the defensive side, adding a trap, whether it's a half court trap, full court trap, some kind of trap on the defensive side. And then the third option is alternating your pick and roll coverages. So maybe it's slight, but something that you think going into a game, let's just mix up the pick and roll coverages and that might be the biggest reward. So start subset risk reward starting lineups, defensive traps or alternating pick and roll coverages. Oh, like Andrea Trinkier is talking with last podcast with you. That's a great question because all answers are correct. You know, that's right. Depends. I can go with one. I use all three of them, but depends how I feel when I watch the opposite team. Depends what I consider that will work better for that type of game. And look, I had before, this isn't, I didn't use that, but before like three, four, five years ago, I may use also another one that I will start the game in zone, just a couple of instances. I can't choose which is my favorite. Probably what I use the most and I will use this like a start will be the trapping part. I like maybe this isn't not too much, but last season, most of the after timeouts or most of the beginning of the game, I use some type of trap. I believe in that because that takes out what the opposite coach prepared in timeouts, you know, and they prepare some executions, some ATO that they want to give a shooter the ball or whatever. And I can trap immediately how the guy received the ball or I can trap from there, weakest shooter or I can trap only the ball screen. So I use this a lot so I will start it. Like a sub, I will choose defensive coverages on pick and roll. Even if I don't have those many coverages, I mean, we have an aggressive defense, okay, which is hedge and the guard can go under or over depend on what we want. Most of the times under and that's probably the defense that we use the most this season. We can have a drop defense which we use it with our biggest position five and we can have switching defense, you know, and this one I can mix it with the starting lineup, you know, because I'm not the coach that starts the game with the same players. I think no one from these teams started all games. I may change, especially the big guys. Tutory change is probably each game, you know, or two three games I play with the same starting lineup and then I change depending on the opponents and like the question depends what type of surprise I want to be to bring on the court. But look, like an example, I have two centers, one is seven foot one or two, you know, and one is six foot five. So that's a big difference. I can't play the drop coverage with the six foot five guy. When instead when he's on the court and when I start him, I want to be very aggressive or to switch with a bigger guy, I can play the aggressive coverage is like hedges, but not too much. I want to keep him more in drop and to keep the defense as much as possible in two because when I use drop defense, I don't want to use too many rotations and I want to keep the defense as much as possible. And he's a great shot blocker and I want to force the opponent ball handlers to attack him and try to finish over him. So that means the guard's job is to stay like a glue near his man and not let him take a pull up three or two and to force him to drive, you know. Again, I think the start would be the traps and I think both of the other one will be the sub because they're not active in my system. Coach, yeah, great answer. I wanted to start sort of in general and your thoughts on risk in game in general. You know, there's all these different things that we just talked about you can do, but you're going back to the first conversation you talked a little bit about kind of staying even keeled through wins and losses and how you look at the game from that standpoint. So when it comes to risk, how much is too much or how do you think about what you want to do game to game taking risk as you mentioned that you've used all these things and why you think there could be a competitive advantage for you. Taking risks depends of the situation you can be full. force to take risks or you can want to use those risk takings like a strategy. I'll give two examples on each side. One month ago we played two games in a row. It's a Davidan and we didn't have ball handlers. I mean, all we had four perimeter players, three were injured and one was suspended. And basically we had two perimeter players. We had some junior guys that are not usually in rotation and we have five big eyes and I was thinking because look, the options that you have in this type of situation is to find excuses and to say, "Ah, if we lose that game anyway, we've had a lot of players missing." And you can find this like an excuse. But that's not who I am and I never try to do that. And on the other side, you try to find solutions. And the solutions that I find, I try to play with five bigs at the same time in points of the game, switch everything. And I put this center, the six foot five guy that I had playing the point guard. My only question was how we bring the ball in offense and he was handled it really well. But that gave us a big advantage in defense because we were big, we were athletic and was very hard to score against us. So that worked. Of course, I couldn't play a tall game, but at the beginning of a quarter, beginning of the game, I used it three or four minutes and that put in trouble the other team because they didn't expect. You know, so why you want to take some risk or to do the different things because the other team doesn't expect those type of situation and you want to surprise them. On the other side, if I have all the players capable, there are games from time to time when I want to risk something. And let's say we start with switching defense, which we didn't do it for five or six games. And we play, I had games last year that I start switching defense and that work. And I play all games switching defense because I didn't need to change it that worked. You know, but on the other side, you need to pay attention how much you want to change and what different things you want to give to your players to think about it and to put them out from the normal way of playing from those habits. I believe a lot in forming the right habits and not changing them too much. There, you need to pay attention and to see which players can understand the change of the strategy and which players can't understand. For example, last year I had a player that was very physical, very skilled from physical point of view. But with him, I need to keep the things extremely simple. So that means when he was on the court, we play just while we practice. Simple. That means aggressive hedge and him going under on both screen. That means in offense, our flow, our two three action that is most comfortable with and then the team plays through habit and through what they are practicing every day. But sometimes if the distance don't work, I'm the type of guy that will try to resounding and change something. Sometimes can have effect, sometimes can't, you know, talking before about Thomas Isalo's things. For example, he never changed the coverage in both screen. He played all season, all games with the same edge and the gargoying under, you know, to take the short-road situation. And all season, he plays same, you know, when he was in Paris. And that worked for him very, very well. And for me, that has some type of logic because you find solutions with the same type of defense on the problems that the opponents put to you. You don't give the opponents different type of looks. I'm somewhere in between and I still try to find my best way of doing things. Of course, I never think I will find it, you know, but it's very important to keep searching it and to keep thinking on the structure of the practice is the structure of the pick and roll. How many coverage is you want to have? How many risk you want to take when you want to take the risk? You want to be a conservative guy and use just one coverage like we speak about ESALO or like was do le viochevich when he was with me, we had just one type of coverage in both screen or you want to have a backup plan or a third option, you know, in defense. At this point, I'm a guy who changed things and I have three options in both screen coverage. That means aggressive. That means drop and that means switching defense, which I use in some type of setup. I'm looking at traps and studying your team this year, you guys have deployed a 1, 2, 1, 1 trap on a zone press. With any zone press, why did you settle on a 1, 2, 1, 1 when there's 2, 2, 1, 1, 2, 2, I guess the formation alignment, the 1, 2, 1, 1 and kind of the benefit you're able this year with your team to derive from it. Honestly, I'm the most familiar with that 1, 2, 1, 1. I played it before. I didn't install it at the beginning of the season. I install it somewhere in November, something like that because we needed something, some type of defense after that balls that can delay the other team's offense or make them think. And honestly, I saw how these play offense against this type of defenses. I play offense, for example, Cédevit, I would meetrovich, use a lot, this type of delay type of defense, Borg, when we played them last year and two years ago, they use this type of defense. And if you're not prepared well enough, that may set you back a little from your flow and from your way of executing things, because it's one to start the offense 24 seconds and you go there and you have 20 or 18 more seconds to execute the offense. And it's other thing to have to see a press in front of you that can be with trap or without trap because we use three types of press, from this one to one. We may trap full court, we may trap half court, or we may just delay the offense. These are three different calls which we use and depends how I fill it. We play it after that boss, you know. And it's different for the team that they go from through this type of press and then they have 12 or 13 seconds more to execute their offense. And they need to go out from what they prepare or what their coach tells them to play. And they need to go more in some individual solutions or a two-man game from the beginning. You know, so that's the reason. And the answer is that I face this with the other teams and I didn't feel comfortable playing and attacking it and going to execute it, especially in the games that you didn't see it in scouting or it's a new thing. You are really that these type of defense make you step back from the flow point of view, you know. Shifting to your ball screen coverages and you talked about one you'll be in the hedge and going under versus one you'll be in the drop. If we look at your weak side rotations, how do you help your defense understand the responsibilities the weak side based upon if you're going to be super aggressive in the pick and roll or you're going to be more conservative and drop. So you're not over helping in a drop coverage and under helping in an aggressive hedge coverage. This is a great question and this question I put myself in the beginning of each season because you don't want to make your players overthink you want to play as simple as possible and you want them to be like their second nature to understand every time what they have to do and that comes just with practice. That's why I don't change it too much. I have just three coverages, which one it's switch and that I mean it's switch. You need to practice it but they are used with it and I have dropped which the emphasis on it is not too much help from other players. I tried to keep this defense in two and here comes the focus part and the mental mistake part in this because that's the hardest thing during games to translate their mindset from an aggressive defense which you play a five guys and the weak side need to be there. There is responsibility to take the roller, the X-guide rotation need to be there in his spot to take the first pass and all these things and it's hard to translate if you want to change it different times during the game from that mindset to a just two-man game defense mindset where two-man play defense and if the guard attacks our big with switch between those two players and I always have this rule that when a guard drives the big guy it's always responsible for everything what's high. You understand? I mean if that guard go and shoot over him it's his responsibility to contest. If that guard go and try to throw a lob pass it's his responsibility to deflect that lob pass and to be and everything what's low and that means the bounce pass is the responsibility of the guard and if the offensive guard attack our big strong then obviously the five men take the ball and try to contest the shot but the guard have the responsibility to switch and to go in front of the big. So in this type of defense we don't rotate too much we try to keep it in two I mean every defense put you in a position that you give up something so you need to give up something. is not a perfect defense, like Isal always said, defense is always wrong. And like offense, you just need to find the right solution to attack that. Coming back to the question, this is the hardest part in changing defenses. This mindset that the players need to have, transforming the aggressive mindset and rotation mindset to more conservative mindset, where you don't need rotation. And of course, this comes with practices with a lot of repetition and a lot of times I told you about the warm up when we use 4 on 0 drill. Sometimes we use 4 on 4 dummy defense drill, which we put offense to play the ball screen and the defense just to move, I call it, before each defense I can call two defense or one down or one up and they need to react according to what type of coverage it is. And like that you make them by practicing and by creating these habits, you make them doing a better and better job in games also. It's never perfect, you know, but you try. A quick reminder as we head into the summer. One reason we're excited to partner with the NABC is the work that they continue to do advocating for coaches. The NABC serves as a national voice for coaches across all levels, making sure they have a seat at the table as major decisions shape the future of college basketball. They're also supporting coaches through first chair, a new virtual seminar for NABC members entering their first season as a college head coach, built to help them navigate the unique challenges of leading the program. We're proud to support that NABCs work helping coaches grow, lead and have their voices heard. Learn more at nabc.com. Alright coach, we'll keep it moving. We'll get to our last start subset question and this has to do about playing with great pace. You mentioned already, you guys are one of the fastest teams in Europe this year scoring the highest points in the Euro Cup. This question about pace, you know, I think we all talk about, we want to play with pace, we want to push the ball outlets, fill corner spacing. We're going to give you three kind of the back end decisions or maybe the secondary decisions that kind of come along with playing great pace. Which one do you think would be the most important one to take into account or that you've had to take an account over your seasons as you've increased your pace? Is it option one substitution patterns, maybe just the frequency of substitutions and thinking about that to maintain the pace, keep bodies fresh? Is it training decision making that when, you know, you want to play fast, but you also have to work like, was that a drag screen you wanted to attack? Was that a shot we wanted to take? Was it a second side action? You know, all the kind of the layers that go into maintaining pace, but that don't get killed by bad decisions. And then the third one is you mentioned working with your strength and conditioning, but just like training movement patterns and training your players to become better movers as the season goes along and not getting stuck in narrow minded movement patterns of the players, but continuing to work on their ability to move so you can play with great pace, get up and down the court, change directions and demand the intensity and effort. Again, more complex answer also for this question and I will give examples from my experience, you know, I don't think I know the best, but I know what we had. That's my view right now, maybe if we're talking two years will be different. I will start the decision making for sure. Why? Because playing quick will bring you more turnovers and we have this experience and unfortunately for us, we wasn't great at that this season when we try to play fast, especially first part of the season. We were much better when the end of the regular season came and the playoff in Euro Cup came, you know, and there we won the games because we didn't turn the ball over too much, but I think playing quick, it's huge in putting essence on not making easy turnovers and that you can't do just if you practice like that. You can't just tell the players, "Hey, don't turn the ball over. Don't turn the ball over." Of course, they don't want to turn the ball over, but you need to put them in patterns and in situations in practice that will make them improve this type of decision making and coming back to our practice structure and drills, I try to make them that game that we play to five. That's a great example in it because it's a chaos. And if they don't turn the ball over in that type of chaos during games will be much, much better. I will sub the substitution pattern, but here it's a big question, Mark. In an ideal world, you want to have 12 players that you use whenever you want and they are all on the same level. Now, the reality, especially in my situation, come and hit you and check you out. If I take 12 players that are all on the same level, honestly, till now, I don't think we are at that level to be able to take 12 very good players that when you put them on the court, you don't feel the difference. So till now, also, this isn't, we try to use a 10 player rotation. And the number 11 and 12 are players that are used if we have some injuries or in games that I have four to put them. And this is for more reasons. And one of the reasons is the mental aspect of it. At my level, a lot of players come to this team to, especially the younger ones, to play well and to move to the next level because we are not the top level budget team in Eurocup, Abali, not even close. So we need to be smart in this. And if you bring a player, a young player that is first or second year in Europe and you put him to play 15 minutes or 17 minutes, you may have problems with it. Of course, you can explain him, but in his mind will be how I get to the next level if I don't have minutes and if I don't have stats or if I don't play. Now, the challenge is to explain him that teams look at you not just from the statistic point of view, but also from what the impact you bring to the team. And you give him that example. Like Paris was like Valencia is now, you know, that they always use 12 players and you hope that they understand and you keep explaining them. But that's a challenge also. If you have 12 players, it's a challenge to satisfy them all and to make them play with confidence. Now, the most important thing in this, in my cases, when you have two, three injuries because during whole season, I don't think we play 20% of the games in full roster. Okay, so we had a lot of problems set back, not big ones, not huge season ending injuries, but one week, 10 days, two weeks, you know, five days, whatever, one month maximum. And that make you reconsider a little the way you want to play in certain games. If I have a seven guys rotation, which I was forced to play a couple of games, seven or eight players, then of course, you don't want to run like that whole game because you don't have any advantage. Your players will get tired and the other team for sure will have an advantage in this situation. But what I believe in very, very much is if we are used to play quick and if you practice like that, you know, every time and you make a statement in front of your players that you want to play quick and all the drills that you do, you play in that type of rhythm, then it's easier to slow things down when you are forced to slow things down. But if you practice just slow and you don't practice in a high pace and you don't put accent on that, it's almost impossible to play at a quicker pace during games. So I will sub this pattern substitution. Normally, when I have 10 guys, especially in first half, I try to split a minute close to equals of each player, player on 10 minutes. It can be eight, it can be 12, it can be seven, whatever, but somewhere there. So we are fresh, you know, and after five minutes, I sub maximum five minutes, I sub. I'm not on the level that Paris is doing now or they did before that three minutes boom, out three minutes, out three minutes out. I don't know if I wish to go to that part. I still try to experiment, you know, with this type of game that bring this type of game quick pace, bring us a lot of success this year. And again, we are for the third year in a row in top eight teams in Euro Cup and this year mainly because of this type of game. Of course, you need to have players that are able to do it. You know, if you don't have quick pace and athletic players, it's very hard to make them play like that. You know, so you need to adapt to the players that you have, obviously. The pattern movement, I will let it like a sit because honestly, we don't do that. I mean, we do, if you consider these five on five drills, like a pattern movement towards that, yeah, you can take it. The special pattern movement with conditioning coach, we are not doing for this. The conditioning coach job in my team is on the weightlifting room to keep them fresh from the muscle point of view and to keep them to recover them, you know, with some light weights and weightlifting after the games because we have the habit especially when we play home to lift immediately after the game and to keep them as safe as possible from injury perspective, you know, their mobility, their balance, all these type of things, their core stability, all these things that can be done. and bring them injuries, we work on these things with a condition in coach, but patterns towards this type of speed game we don't do. So I will see that. - Going back to decision making, and you talked about like the unforce turnovers that are gonna bound to happen as you introduce pace. What decisions are you constantly correcting or what unforce errors at the beginning of the season? Are you constantly correcting or trying to work with your team that keep reoccurring when playing with high pace? - Honestly, we do on 500, 300 or 200, 400, we work on that different type of passes, solutions of passes according to what defense can be. And we work from the first day, okay, if it's drop coverage, because we play a lot of ball screens. I mean, if you look at our synergy stats, you'll see that we play a lot of ball screens. We don't have post ups too much. Off ball screens, we don't have players that should coming off the screens too much. So we play a lot of ball screen. And we work on the decisions and the solutions. And we work with our ball handers and our pigs. What type of solutions they can have? And we start with 200, 300, 400, the movement pattern on the court, and the type of passes. I mean, on drop defense, what you have, you have a lot pass, which should be with the exterior hand throwing up, okay? With the same hand, if you don't have the lot pass in rotation, you may make them read to pass outside. You have a quick bounce pass, you know, pocket pass for the big eye. And we work on all these type of solutions. If it's aggressive defense, we work on a quick pass in front. We work on a short roll passes, which can be a short lob pass or can be a quick bounce pass. We work on the big eyes role according to what the type of defense is in front of them, because it's one type of role. If it's a drop defense and it's different type of role, if it's hatch defense, you know, so we work on all these things. We start with 200, 300, 400, and then as much as possible, we try to do it as close as possible from the game. And we put defense and we do this type of solutions against both screen coverages against defense and live defense, you know. And there, I think, is the best way where you can improve, play against what game give you. You form the habits, you've given them the solutions, but then you need to practice it, practice it, practice it, live every time. And I think we had pretty good success near the fact that we turned the ball over pretty much, but we are also the top team in assisting Euro Cup. We average around 23 assists per game. And we are first team in Euro Cup by number of assists. So we put accent on that and we try to correct this type of mistakes as much as possible. And of course, we work with players individual, we show them video, we show them their decisions and solutions against different type of defenses. And we try to make them understand why it's better to, for example, against hedge to pass quicker the ball, you know, because if the big guy goes far on you and you don't pass on time, you give him opportunity for the big guy to go back. And then the advantage that you create is not that big. And the whole point in this basketball is create an advantage, take the right decision on the right time and make the advantage bigger, bigger and bigger till you create the best shot possible, which is a catch and shoot three, or it's a layup or you draw foul. Okay, these are the shots that are high efficient for us. Coach, you're off the start supper set, hot seat. That was a lot of fun. We could keep going probably on a bunch of different stuff. You didn't expect for me to talk that much. (laughing) It was great. So coach, our final question to close the show that we ask all the guests is, what's the best investment that you've made in your career as a coach? - That's not an easy question because during your career, you do a lot of investments if you want to improve. But at this stage of my life and my career, I believe that the biggest investment that I did and I still and continuing doing it is in education. I really believe at this point of my life, not just regarding basketball, but regarding your development like human being, like whatever you want, the biggest asset that you can have in your life is the ability to learn. I really believe at this point of my life that ability to learn is really the biggest asset that you can have. For that, I try to read every day, try to read even if I'm in a traveling part, or whatever, I find 10, 15 minutes at least, that I read, and I put a call that all year, 2026 is not passing one day without reading something. I almost every day listen to podcasts. I go to clinics, of course, each summer when I have the opportunity to go. I listen to your podcasts to other basketball podcasts, but not just basketball because at this stage of my career, I'm not just about learning about basketball. I'm into a lot of things like from nutrition to sleep because sleep, I believe, is really, really important. I talk with my players about that a lot, especially at the beginning, covering stuff. Even investments, what you do with your money, from all type of domains, I like to educate myself because that is something that I believe is the biggest asset that you can have. So maybe in five years or 10 years, I will answer you different, but I don't want to be like that. I want to keep growing and to keep improving. So definitely, investment in education is the biggest one that I did and I will keep doing it further. (upbeat music) - Our Pat, Hale top in to this recap. Before we do, shout out to Coach DeFan, Odia. We have our guest recommendation and coach reached out to connect us with Coach Silvashan. And so thanks to Coach there. Anybody else that has great recommendations, please feel free. It's usually in our Sunday morning newsletter, which has been fun. We've got a ton of really great recommendations that go into this year. So shout out to Coach there at the top. And then second, great conversation about a ton of things from motivation to pace to taking risks, surprises, learning, curiosity, all kinds of stuff in here today. So what a fun episode. - Yeah, I think getting the chance to watch Coach Silvashan's club, Hlush, we've really admired what he's done. The clubs continue to grow from the Romanian League into Euro Cup and now they're playing in the ABA League. So it was really looking forward to the chance to get to meet Coach one and then pick his brain on basketball today. - Absolutely. Well, I know there's a lot to get to. For the first takeaway, I'll throw it back to you. - Yeah, so we'll start with the bucket on managing Egos. Again, like you mentioned through the recommendation form and talking with Coach Odia. And then also then get in the chance with our communication before the pod. It was clear that managing Egos player motivation was of great importance to Coach. He mentioned it at the top. Getting our teams to play hard is the most important thing because even with great tactics, if the players aren't committed, if they're not playing hard, it's no good. Scheme alone isn't going to win you games. So it was excited to dive in there and hear his thoughts. I mean, the things that jumped out to me right away, the first meeting, I go back to our, I think we referenced it a lot here, podcasts with Preston Klein. I'm just the importance of the first meeting, setting the tone, he said it, drawing a line in the stand, what are the standards, what are they gonna hold you as accountable to? And it spoke to immediately. We want to play hard here and that means we got to prepare our bodies, we got to come to right focus and it starts in practice. So I enjoyed that part here. I'm kind of go through the preparation. He puts into the first meeting. And then the other part I really liked was in the motivation piece. When he talked about the importance of putting the team together and having the right mix of players. And he hit on it too at the end in the start, so sit on the substitution, but having the mix of experienced players, hungry players and role players and how they're all gonna be motivated differently. And as a coach, we have to find the tools to speak to their motivation. So the team is motivated. And I think not only you have your non-negotiables, of course, that you hold across everyone, but kind of understanding that where these players are at, across their careers, how you go about not only from motivating them, but coaching them. I thought was a really interesting piece that coach hit on early when this whole, us as a motivator of the team. Yeah, I think the practice design that helps then bring out competition, motivation, players playing hard, I think was an interesting part of just saying it, telling players to play hard, finding players to play hard is one thing, but then designing a practice, designing environment, designing structures, that then allow that to just come out naturally was really good. He mentioned how he's just so big on them, showing up focused and ready mentally for practice, and then designing the practice so that that stuff comes out. I thought was really good. I did like when it just took a little detour into some drill structures and some of the things like you to use for teaching within practice. He did mention coaches solo many times throughout. And I think what's fun is obviously coach solos had an impact across coaching over the last few years and then seeing people that have followed him, studied him, been around him, taking some of those structures and then making it their own clubs. And I think you see someone like coach Silvishan, I think was fun team to watch because you can see some of the roots of what Isol did in Bonn and Paris and all that. And then you also see where then he's added his own play. an element to it. And so what I liked going back to the solo was what he mentioned that somewhere in the first bucket was if things look good, then they're not good. And it goes back to a lot of us preseason. We talk about here on the show a lot that it's just preseason learning is messy. Some of the best offenses and defenses like it just looks like chaos in the first two, three weeks or month of the season when you're figuring things out and that, you know, how is a coach? Do you know, you know, how do you keep moving forward on? This is going to be good for our team. It's just going to take a while or this is going to be how we play our identity. It's just we need to work through the muck a little bit. And so I thought that was a good teaching point in there too of like you can make things look really nice and pretty early. But is that going to be good enough to beat the best teams on your schedule? And like you mentioned, it's probably not. All right, Dan, let's keep it moving here. I'll throw it to you for the second take away. So I'm going to go to the start subsit and I'll stick with mine, which was the surprises and risk rewards and all that stuff. And you know, in our prep for coach, that is something that we know he likes to do just to be a little different in certain areas of the game. And so was Greg here, his list of thoughts and going back to tranquiry of it just depends and it's very complex and definitely understandable. All these things depend on your team situation time of the year. I actually will start with I think it might have been his sit, which was the starting lineup. Yes. And the being his sit. Yes. And I know we talked about it a little bit, but he did talk about changing starting lineups and why and then also how many you play we got back to us with pace later. But in general, I think coach Silvishan thinks about lineups and rotations and how many you're playing versus how you're playing at a deep level. And so I did hear him kind of working through a little bit of that. I'll give a miss here, not from coach, but from me. I wonder, you know, when he talked about different starting lineups and just based off who you're playing and all that going back and tying that back into motivating players and just how he does that because I coach young guys, you coach pros, there's a whole lot of players self worth and ego tied into who starts and who doesn't and, you know, if the starting lineup is sort of changing all the time, how do you make that a positive for your team rather than like always in these constant explanations with certain players every game about why this guy is going to start versus you or I can see a lot, a lot of benefit to it, of course, but also just how he does that. I thought what had been an interesting conversation as well when you're constantly shifting your starting lineup from that standpoint. Yeah. And it ties into the next start subset, the substitutions to if you're going to play with pace and you have a team, let's say, full of the young, young hungry guys or even 12 equal players in this world that never exists. Yeah. But to explain to them like, yeah, you're only going to get 15, 17 minutes, you know, but they're trying to build their careers at this point or they're a freshman. It's hard to really sell them on like the long term goal or the playing the long game. Right. Again, just as a coach flying the right buttons to push how to motivate based on because style of play determines the substitutions or if yeah, you're a coach that you're going to change up lineups because you think one strategy or another is going to favor you. And I mean, we never stopped kind of selling, I guess, ourselves as a coach to our players in a certain sense. Mm-hmm. It's really interesting. Yeah, versus if you have a team full, maybe the experience veteran guys who will get it, understand versus team full of hungry guys are like, hey, I got to play because I'm trying to build my career. Yeah. Just these non tactical off court considerations that always are creeping into the profession. For sure, we were asking the question more about like the surprises and the reward and, you know, that avenue. So he sat there from like a surprise reward element and went with the start of being the defensive traps, which I think was an interesting conversation and kind of gets to some stuff we've circle around on the podcast a number of times, which is just being a little different out of time outs. I mean, I know a lot of coaches are fans of it. Jeff and Gandhi wasn't last summer. I don't think as much pushback on us on that. But I think like teams are just looking at how do I not have to remember or prep my team for 99 ATOs and let's just trap the ball handler sometimes and be different there. I think what coaches mentioned can have a lot of reward. Yeah. On that note, I thought to your follow up of just like looking at risk in general, he raised two good points to when deciding when to take risks or when to maybe implement game specific strategy, let's say, but talking about can your players handle the mental stress that the strategy or the risk is going to add on to them because obviously they have to go out. They have to yeah, okay, shit. We're in a one to one one press and then we're dropping back and we got to get our pitch or, you know, strategy coverage scout specific. So, you know, knowing your team as always, but the mental load that they can handle if they have to remember can they remember three things can they remember two things? I mean, again, he mentioned one player had to keep it the most simple. So it was that. And then also how much does the risk or strategy at times fly in the face of the habits that are the most important to you? The habits have to bend a little bit is your team capable to understand. And this coverage, whatever the habit, we can give up, we can funnel middle, let's say, or something like that. Or no, I want you to get beat because it forces a trap versus then the half court is like, no, I don't want you to get beat anymore. We got to play one on one. So also again, knowing what habits you can bend on a little bit or can your team understand that, okay, these habits we can not ignore. But yeah, these habits are less important in this strategy or during this time when we're going to be risky versus the 90% of the time when it's our transition defense. It's our half court defense. It's our pick and roll coverage. And I thought that was a really good point. Absolutely. Pat, let's kind of keep it moving because I think we dipped our toes into the third star subset. So maybe I'll just throw it to you to kind of continue on there. I'll always go to our pace conversation. No surprise, just the decision-making, I think, is always interesting when you want to play fast. We didn't talk about it, but even like the shot selection, of course, stuff that become important when you want to play fast because it doesn't necessarily mean we need to necessarily take the quickest shot. But we've talked about like just being able to get to several actions within maximize the actions as much as we can because then the defense is more likely to make a mistake. But within each action, there's a decision and understanding not only the person with the ball or the screener, like he mentioned, but how the three guys are going to move around it that influence if the correct decision is made or help limiting these unforced turnovers. And so I appreciate his thoughts on just how he built it out going back to the practice structure, the drill format, going 2103104, and just talking screening, passing types of pass against types of coverage and spacing around it. And I think this was one of my misses too. I would love to ask. When looking at early, unforced errors, does he find that it is a skill deficit? So whether it is, you know, we mentioned the hedge, the unforced errors are coming because we lack the ability to punish it with, you know, the over the top pass of the short rule or we're getting into trouble because we lack the ability to space. So is it like a hold space, keep space, kind of the tactical solution or the team solution that's presented on these early 2103 buildups, you know, that we often when we're playing fast in these chaos are losing our space. And that's what's really creating the turnovers versus our guards can't make the pocket pass. So to speak, for sure, it's going to be completely at the pens and it's a little bit of both. But I would have liked to have followed up there when he really started get into the pick and roll solutions. Yeah, this is just a personal thought on early season, all season turnovers and transition with pace. A lot of times I feel like it's coordination problems between cutters, spacers, ball handlers, screeners. It's so it's like a coordination deal where you're just like, oh, I thought it was going to cut. And I think that's where the great pace teams when they get to spacing early, then your decisions become clear because you're in the correct spaces. I agree. I think that's where I fall to that. I think it's often the spacing automatics, the spacing that's not being created. That's leading to these turnovers. And the pace because players, I think, very rarely will try a skill they're not good at. So maybe you can't throw like a lob pass, but very rarely do you see, well, I'm just going to throw it anyway. You know, I think it's more often they're cutting at the wrong time, not moving with the penetration that lead to these passes versus, yes, players need to get better and you can help them find the solutions. But in the game, I think it's often not them trying to do necessarily stuff they can't do. I think players don't want to make turnovers. And so they're not from a skill perspective. I mean, some will of course. And those are the guys always have fun coaching. But yeah, most of the times they're going to play to their strengths more than not versus playing to their weaknesses. Yeah. So my last thought here on the pace stuff because this won't be the last pace conversation we have on the pod. It's so team dependent. But what I think is interesting, we look at obviously the Europe a ton in college and the NBA and I know there's I've seen some stats out there about this season, how some of the worst offenses and all that are the highest pace teams in college, like NBA as well. And the most efficient ones are again towards the bottom. I think Europe's so interesting place to look because I think Europe you see in a lot of places pace increasing and some of the better teams having that pace. And I just think there's a lot there to look at because is it because they just space better and they're not like in the US, we're just saying play faster. And so guys are taking tough shots early. And it's like it drives your efficiency down where Europe is so much about the pace and the movement of triggers and actions and spacing. And so they're able to like create an advantage faster and then actually still take a really good shot in transit or in their pace and then they're not just full trapping the whole game, but they're finding these ways to maybe create turnovers or increase the pace through trapping situations or two for ones or after free throws. And so I think it's just much more than let's just play fast. It's like a very systematic thing. I think that Europe seems like they're doing it at a higher level and it's worth continuing to study these teams like coaches today. Yeah. I completely agree and I think that's why I wanted to ask to about the substitution, you know, because these teams are really with the understanding that we want to play faster. They need to get to 10 guys and they need to keep the bodies fresh because they're not only demanding more offensively, but also defensively. You know, like we said, they want to trap. They want to find these moments to be aggressive because maybe they can win possessions or get transition opportunities or even just win the conversions, but that requires great effort and intensity sustained throughout. And one of the weapons to do this is your bench and how do you substitute? Yeah. You're starting to see it across not only, I mean, he mentioned Paris and Paris being the extreme, but I mean, we haven't had coach Mac, Mac, Macers at Akon. And but if you look at know the southeastern and then if you go to the other side, like not anti pace, but Ben McCallum seems to the past. If they play slower, you can play less guys because the style of play is less demanding. I mean, it's still demanding, but less demanding from an up and down anaerobic for lack of a better word, like really burning sprints and everything. But that's why I think substitution patterns are also like a number thing. I think Europe is, I think you can say that NBA has been on it too, but I think more so probably driven than style of play for NBA 82 games. It's a lot. I think European defenses are so complex and good that if you just walk it up, I think they'll swallow offenses because they'll hedge the first. They'll switch to second. You're going to be playing with less advantages than let's say maybe other places in the world where you can still run the clock down and create great advantages. I'm not saying that Europe doesn't do that, but yeah, good teams in Europe, if they create the first advantage in the five to seven seconds and they get a rotation, these players are good enough, they're spacing, they're cutting, it's good enough that they're going to get a good look earlier in the possession, just based off all that stuff. So, yeah, once again, we thank Coach Silvishan for coming on and for such a great conversation. We appreciate everybody for listening and we'll see you next time. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Please make sure to visit slappingglass.com for more information on the free newsletter, slapping glass plus and much more. Have a great week coaching and we'll see you next time on Slap and Glass. But do we have a name yet for this thing? I have like slapping backboard. Slap and glass. Slap and glass has got a funny. I like that. What was wrong with slapping glass?