Playing Through Triggers w/ Taylor Tucker

(upbeat music) - We are fortunate to have Taylor Tucker on this episode. Tucker is the associate head coach at Des Moines Area Community College in Iowa. He's also the coach behind the incredible resource that is @tucker_thoracent account on X. I've benefited greatly over the years from the clips and many clinics he offers regularly. So I'm super excited to have him on the podcast today. Coach Tucker, thanks for talking some basketball with us today. How's everything in Iowa? - All's good here. So we, I guess for our team, we finished up recruiting early for, and for us as a junior college, usually we're chasing guys down till the end of July and in August. And so this is kind of uncharted territory for us. So we got some time on our hands and it's allowed me to dive in some different film projects, kind of look at some things for next year and explore some of that. And so had some time to do that, but definitely excited to talk some ball today. - Nice. And just a quick question about the junior college, like when do the kids come onto campus? And when you start working with them, what does your summer look like? - Yes, we'll have, everybody does a little bit differently. We'll have a week where they come down in the summer and that'll be here in about two weeks. Here in June, they'll come down for a week, work some kids camps, do some workouts. So we'll have a jamboree. And so just a good time to get everybody together, start to meet the new guys, kind of see what we got in person, how it looks all together. But after that, we'll send them home and then we won't see them again until August. - Gotcha. Well, good luck this summer and good luck this season. So anyway, one of the reasons why I had you on, like I said, you've been a huge resource for me, but especially recently with some of the mini clinics that you've been doing. And so kind of combining two of them here that I've watched and some questions I was gonna ask to you. And obviously I'll provide the resource on how you coaches can go out there and watch them. But one of the things I want you to kind of start with is when you're thinking about the anatomy of a possession, what's the purpose of a retrigger? And I know that that term's used differently and stuff like that. So a trigger, retrigger, what kind of actions are we talking about though when we get into those retriggers? - Yeah, so I guess first off, thinking about kind of the anatomy of a possession. So I'll kind of start from the beginning and kind of work backwards. So I think the goal of possession in general is first and foremost, get a paint touch. And obviously if you get a high quality three, in transition, team lose the guy and a guy's standing open on three point line shirt. But in general, I think you're trying to get a paint touch and that leads straight from transition. I think you should be in attack mode to get a paint touch with maybe no action. Just a numbers advantage, space advantage, whatever. Get paint, if you can't do that though, that's when I think if you haven't, if you either haven't gotten a paint touch or created rotation, that's when it's time to get into a trigger. And I think it's the same for whether it's transition out of a set, whatever. I think same thing with a set, you run Spain action, whatever you run, if you don't get a paint touch or you don't create rotation, then it's time to get back into a trigger or re-trigger. And so for me and just kind of my philosophy in watching film and stuff, like I really want to avoid isolations, two reasons. One, I don't think it's the most productive form of basketball. And then two, kind of the culture piece of like, I think it can become toxic and it has kind of a cumulative effect if you overdo the ISO. So I want to avoid isolations. And so to do that, well, you need to get back into another action. And so basically when the defense is reset, it's time to get back into another action and try and stimulate a paint touch, a rotation or a high quality three. And so the type of actions I would look at is like, I think there's two kind of basic categories would be on-ball actions, which would be like your pick and rolls and your DHOs and then off-ball actions. So maybe split type actions, flares, pin downs, that sort of thing. And I think a lot of this too comes from the philosophy that the best office is generally gonna come off of action. And so that's when you're most likely, in my opinion, to crack the defense or create the dominoes that eventually crack the defense. - All right, so, and you talked about here, this could be out of a set or something like that. So when you're putting these triggers in, what are some pros and cons of playing out of that? - Yeah, so I think one of the biggest pros and one of the, we did this this past year, played a lot of triggers, I really liked it. And I thought one of the biggest things was the idea of like leveraging your time and effort on what's most important within the offense. And so the way I looked at that is, you know, I think a lot of times an office possession gets into a breakdown scenario where you don't score off the initial action most of the time. And so you get into some form of a breakdown scenario. And so I guess I would say, the triggers help you play within that and get back to really good action. And so you spend the majority of your time on what I think is really important. And that's playing in those unscripted moments. And then I mentioned unscripted there. I think the other big benefit is it is unscripted. It's hard to scout. You know, we don't know exactly what's gonna happen on each possession. And I think there's a lot of creativity that can happen within there. So I think the randomness, I think randomness is very hard to guard. And so if you can offensively have a good idea of what you're doing. And I think another purpose of the triggers is to find different scenarios within the randomness that all five guys are on the same page. They know what's happening. And that creates decisiveness, anticipation, and aggression. But simultaneously, it's random for the defense. And so that creates confusion and things like that. And so that's, I think those are kind of the top two. The other part, it's flat out, it's fun. I think our guys really enjoy playing like that. You know, it provides a lot of freedom. Another, and one that I think is important too, it allows players' games to evolve in that they're not put in a specific kind of box or, you know, they have to play in their little system. It allows them to grow throughout their career and throughout the year. To, as they get better at different things, their roles and what they can do to expand, because there aren't those parameters necessarily always around them. Now, I do think it's important to put parameters around players and have them play into their strengths, but it does allow for kind of an evolution of both the team and their offense and players and their individual development. So, and I think playing through triggers and playing on script is a great way to just kind of naturally stimulate player development and get players better. The Collins, I would say it takes time. It's not the quickest route from, you know, the start to being a really good solid team. You know, I think there's other routes that are quicker. So, that's something coaches have to take into account. I also think the IQ of the player matters. And so, you've got to have players that can handle it. And I also think I would say, you know, the IQ of the coach, and that's not to say coaches can't do it, but you got to, I do think it's important for coaches to coach within their strengths and coach what they know and what they feel comfortable with. And so, that could be a barrier of like, is that something you've really looked at, you really thought about and you really believe in, and does that kind of fit your personality? Another column would be, I think, early on, or just in general, if it doesn't go well, it can look bad, it can look chaotic, it can look, you know, and not only can it look that way, it can be that way if it doesn't go well. So, there is a little bit of risk involved there. And then I would also say another big one would be sometimes as you go through, execution can suffer. And so, you're playing random, you're playing unscripted. Now, to some of your details with, like let's say you're getting into ball screens, to some of your ball screen details start to break down. And so, I think that's something coaches have to be aware of too, is like, you've always got to go back and kind of refine those details and know that you're going to maybe lose some of that by some of the randomness and the unscriptedness, but you got to make an evaluation of like does speed and pace trump maybe a little bit of a drop in execution. - All right, so, you know, and this, I think the next question lends itself to kind of where you finished there, because I get this question all the time from coaches and it's like, well, okay, we've gotten out of dominoes, we'll say. And so, how do you get players to recognize when they need to get into that trigger? - Yeah, so I think the first goal and the biggest goal is to create feel with the players. And the reason being, I want them to anticipate a stall out, well, it's why I would call like a stall out. I want them to anticipate that versus recognize it, because I think when you recognize it, there's a delay in like, oh, he's stalled out, it's time to come back, get back into action versus like understanding that having a feel for the rhythm of the possession. And they're like, okay, nothing's going here. And now hopefully kind of seamlessly getting back into action with as little lag time as possible. And so I think one of the ways to help do that is like, help players identify some mile markers along the way. So one of those would be like, typically when the ball hits the corner and it's passed back up, unless it's like, there's a paint touch, ball hit the corner, now they're in rotation. But typically if the ball's moved to the corner and that player is not able to attack and that pass is moved back uphill, back up the floor, typically that's a pretty non-threatening pass. And so that's kind of a mile marker I would use to like, hey, this is typically ball hits corner. We don't have anything. It's time to start thinking about getting into more action. Another one would be like if the ball sticks and so if the ball hits a player's hand and he holds it or if it hits a player's hand that is not capable typically of creating, that's probably a good time to try and get back into action. And then the other part too is like, I talked about kind of the rhythm of a possession. And so the way I would describe it is like, you wanna play from action to action. And so there's like, there's an initial action and then a burst of passing and opportunities to be aggressive. And then hopefully you can get back into another action. And then there's a typical, another burst of passes and opportunities. And so kind of the way I look at it is after an action, you've typically, and this is not exact, but typically got about two passes to hit the paint, attack a closeout, something like that. And if it doesn't happen within the first two passes, usually I think you're getting into kind of an isolation situation. And so it's time to get back into more action. And so again, I think you could script out exact times and whatnot, but I think realistically getting players to recognize those and like I said, mesh those together seamlessly without that lag time is hard. And so I think the goal is again to develop the feel for it. And that's again, putting in a couple of mile markers and helping them develop that kind of rhythm and that feel for when those stall outs might come. And the way we've taught that is a combination of through film, we film the practice, film the games, find those situations where things have stalled out. So film, emphasis, talking about getting into action quite a bit and then drill work. And so we'll do a combination of like three on O drill work, four on O, five on O. And just put them in different situations where the ball is likely to stall out or we'll script the first part of it and script the stall out. And then kind of transition built up into that five on five situations to where again you know, like we did one where we would start in like a, we typically ran out of like a four out one in type scenario. And I would stand out of the basket and thrown out to random player. And we would maybe say, hey, that player's dead. He can't dribble or you know, you can't really attack until we get back into another action. So then players have to kind of self organize and figure out, okay, how do we get back into an action here? - So, you know, one of the things is that I talk to a lot of coaches and they're like, I'm really, really interested in this, but it's kind of out of my wheel. How like, so can you kind of take us through like, especially maybe some examples from this last year of like some teaching points that you found are really, really helpful in installing these triggers. - Yeah, I think the first thing, understand you got to give it time. It's definitely a, you know, step backwards before you take steps forward. So I do think you have to understand that going into it. That it is going to take time. You know, the other thing I would say is like, you got to constantly find the balance of like, what allows me to get into the most amount of action and the most hard hitting action I can get into, but also doesn't lead to confusion amongst the players, slow thinking, indecisive play. And so finding that balance, I think is a constant, like every time you're thinking about, you know, what kind of triggers, what do I want to add? You've got to find that balance of what gives us the best opportunity to attack and create advantages, but what also allows us to play with, you know, if the switch of value, pace and speed and aggressiveness and assertiveness. And then I think the other thing too is like, you absolutely have to fit it to your personnel. And so what is your personnel? What fits with kind of your basic philosophy and what your general principles are? Finding out what, making an evaluation, what fits with those? - So when you kind of delve into this, one of the things that you identify, and if you just watch an NBA game, you're going to see that there's all kinds of actions that you can run as these triggers. So what are some tips that you give to coaches that are trying to filter through all those to figure out things that they want to run? I mean, obviously you just talked about like knowing your personnel, like, and so can you give us a few tips in that direction? - Yep, well, so we talked about knowing personnel. You know, I think you have to identify certain guys that are trigger guys versus other guys, I don't know what you want to call them, craters, whatever. But I think you got to have at least, you know, one or two trigger guys out there. I think you start getting to where everybody can get into triggers, where everybody can initiate triggers. I think that becomes kind of a mess. We're just too many guys trying to do too many things. You know, I also think it kind of goes into the idea of like, you want players hunting what they're best at. And so we had, this year we had two all-American waves, really downhill, strong attackers, really good players. We didn't want them really worried about getting into action. That was some other guys' jobs. And they were more of the receivers of the actions. And now we want them looking to be downhill, create, put the ball in the paint, that sort of thing. And so I think that would be a big part of it. - Yeah, and then I also think, like I learned this when I had Alex Serama come to my school and go through a clinic. And one of the things when I was driving him back to the airport, he said, hey, there's all these things that you can do, but understand like, you only need a couple of these things. - Yeah. - I mean, do you find that to be the case that, like you don't need a whole, whole big playbook of stuff? - Nope, nope. You know, and I also think too, if you can pick things that is one simple, one or two simple actions that have multiple reads and counters off of them, you can get really good at that. I think that's a big deal. And so like a lot of our triggers in it and some kind of ball screen or something. And so then, you know, we teach in a lot of detail how to execute the ball screens, the different reads, different coverages, you know, how we want to play within that. But actually getting to the action wasn't that difficult. So yeah, I think that there's definitely something to be said about the simplicity of picking a few, getting good at those, and then just making sure the ones that you pick mesh together. You don't want actions that collide together. And so again, I do think, and we talked about the cause, I do think that is probably one of the biggest causes. I think coaches have to be really intentional about thinking through what they're implementing, how they're implementing it and how, you know, if I want to add a new trigger at some point, like how that affects everything else you've taught, everything else you've done up to that point. - Yeah, for sure. I'm transitioning to coaching a new program. I went from girls to boys. And so we're implementing it. Our call list is really, really small right now. And one of the things I have to keep reminding myself is that, okay, it might not look good right now, but I got to give it some time as well. Like you just got to let them play out and like learn all the coverage solutions and stuff like that before you scrap it and say, okay, we're going to go to this next one. - Yep, that was a big thing for us initially too, is I think coaches have to understand like, you've got to be willing to live through the mistakes. And so for us, like there was an action, we kept trying to have players get to, but they would get lost within it. Other things would happen and it would, it would be a little bit of a mess. And so for a while we just said, just get to the action and like forget the execution, forget, you know, if the ball stalls out and we don't fold it in seamlessly at first, it's fine. We just need to get comfortable getting to the action. And then we'll kind of work backwards and clean everything up in between. And so again, kind of that constant balance of like, we're going to go backwards first, but it's going to allow us to then take multiple steps forward. You also mentioned having calls and stuff. I think that's something that helped us too. If there were certain triggers or certain actions we wanted, a lot of times we'd introduce them as a set first to get players to really understand that. And I think the advantage of the set is the set allows them to be really decisive in what they're doing because they know that's what's coming. And so once they start seeing that and start executing it in the set, I think it becomes easier to execute it randomly and to start understanding what the setups are for that and when those situations occur, that makes sense. - Yeah, no, for sure. My group did not know anything about GITs. And so we're introducing those. And one of the things that I have, I guess learned is that I need to incorporate that as you said into a set or, you know, we call it an early offensive action that we're going to get into that GIT action. And the idea is down the road, it's going to be able to be pretty free in how these players get into it. But right now I have to call that out and it's super important to kind of give them that structure. And then you can start to let them go. - Yep, yep, and another example of that, now I don't know if it's necessarily a trigger, but like we had a big man that we wanted to look for just kind of random duck ins. You know, hey, your man's in help, ball reverses, like look to jam him in, duck him in, really struggle with that. Well, then we decided to put in a set or two where that was the action. It was like false action on one side, ball of move back over. And now it's ducking in. Sure enough, he started finding those more naturally after we put a set or two in for him. So I think that's kind of a highlight that. - Yeah, so you've talked about the idea of the importance from your perspective on getting players into kind of duet actions or trio actions and stuff like that. What about the people are off the ball? Like what are you trying to teach them as you're going through these concepts on what they should be doing? - Yeah, so that all comes down to spacing and reading the action. And so hopefully you're, within the actions you're running, you're finding familiar setups. And so like if it's a pick and roll, there's only so many different types of pick and rolls. You know, there's an empty pick and roll, there's a spread, there's a step up. You know, you're either on a side of two, a side of one, or like in an empty, you're on a three side. And so like off the ball, you're going back to your principles, your penetration principles, your ball screen principles. And so basically you're having players just read the action, play off those principles. And that also kind of relates to what we talked about about putting in sets and whatnot. So a lot of times we start off very, with very simple ball screen sets, added some of those different scenarios, and then teach them how we want them moving and reacting off those. And so now when you find them randomly, they've got some framework and some structure with it to kind of recall back to. I guess I would also say they look for cutting opportunities. And so whatever your cutting principles are, that good time to look for cutting opportunities. The other thing I would say off the ball, something else we talk about is like keeping, keeping the offense circulating. And so like, if you're on a side of two, would maybe be an example, like maybe just a simple exchange, like as the action is getting ready to occur. Don't always want to do that during the action, 'cause that can create messy reads sometimes, just kind of depends on what you're doing. But like, if you can get into a little bit before the action starts, like I said, a simple exchange, you know, a simple cut through and a guy filling behind, some of that type of stuff, can kind of keep the defense occupied and keep things circulating throughout the offense. - Cool, and you know, one of the things I actually learned last night, or we were having a, we'll call it a controlled scrimmage, or just a working practice with another team, and they did an awesome job of, they would start five on O, two people would get into the trigger, and then those two people would, the ball would end up in a third person's hands, and the two people that ran the trigger would eventually move to defense. And so it really got that off ball movement action going and stuff like that early on. And I thought that that was a pretty fun way to kind of teach those one, you know, you're going on air through your trigger, but then it turns into, okay, now we have to read off of that and get to spots and just play out of that. - Yeah, no, it is interesting, I like that. - What role, and so this kind of carries over to the last mini clinic that you did, what role does the closeout play in today's game? And it'll make sense here in a little bit, like why we're talking about this. - Yep, so I look at the closeout is basically a counter. And so typically you get a closeout because the defense was trying to help or take something away. And so I think it's important to be able to counter that. You know, if the defense wants to help, they want a tag, you got to be able to counter that and combat that help. And I think the way to do that is through a closeout, whether it's the shot or drive decision. And so I think that's kind of the initial, so if you can counter that well, you make your initial actions better because now they're more hesitant to tag, they're more hesitant to help, they hug up a little bit more, so there's less of a closeout. So that can increase your initial actions and then also provide really good opportunities to attack. And then the other part too, kind of the idea of again, leveraging what happens a lot. So like if you look on Synergy or you're looking to break down a team's, like where they score most of their points, almost across the board, number one, or number two, sometimes majority of the time, number one is spot ups. And so spot ups being, you know, a catch and shoot three or a closeout attack. And so spending a lot of time on what matters is a, I think it's a big deal for a coach and player development stuff, is can you spend time on what matters and what happens the most? - So can you give coaches one or two ways that you see teams manufacturing closeouts and how they might incorporate that into their practices? - Yep, yep. So I think kind of the simplest way is like just ball movement. And so whether the ball is quick swung and so that's every now and then a player catches it and with no decision, just immediately swings it. I think that's a great way 'cause you know, if you think about like shell, like shell defense, if a guy quick fires it, quick swings it, the defender goes from two passes away to on the ball very quickly. And so that typically creates a closeout. The other one would be skips. And so those, any type of ball movement where the ball changes size of the floor is typically gonna create a closeout. The other great way to get closeouts is to get into action. I think kind of relates to what we talked about with triggers. If you're in action, you're typically, you're doing something that's stressing the defense and causing some kind of reaction. So example, a pick and roll. Whether the player rolls or pops or whatever, it's gonna create some sort of tag stunt something. And now if you can move the ball well out of that, you're gonna, on the backside, probably have a closeout to attack. - What are some, and I really appreciate your time, last question here, what are some of the key teaching points coaches need to identify to their players when they're playing out of a closeout? - I think the first thing is to make quick decisions. And I think that's kind of something that it helps you attack closeouts and it's just good practice, but then also kind of the culture piece of like, you want guys making quick decisions because that leads to the cumulative effect of the team culture. And so I think you got to have quick decisions. So the other part of closeouts is an attacking immediately is you're, I think Jay Wright said, you're most open right when you catch the ball, which is true. And I would also say the defense is most compromised right when you catch the ball. You're on ball defenders in recovery and the help defense hasn't shifted over into their gaps, into whatever their rotations would be. They're usually kind of in a little bit of flux there. They're still in that process. And so not only attacking your man, you're more likely to go by them, but also you're more likely to break through a gap because the defense hasn't loaded up at that point. So quick decisions, I also think just keeping it simple, like I don't think you need a whole lot of moves with the closeout, probably a catch and go, a catch, quick jab one way, go opposite. And then maybe if a guy tries to jam you like a high rip over the top of his hands, something like that. But it really doesn't have to be super complex. And then the last thing would be, and this is where I think a lot of players can either take kind of the next step and be really good at closeouts, or it can be the thing that holds players back from really being good at it, is understanding that second layer of defense. And so a lot of times on a closeout, it's not, you don't have either option left or right. There's typically one gap to attack. And so one side of the floor, you're gonna run into help, you're gonna run into maybe the baseline, whatever, versus the other side of floors where the opening is. And so getting players to recognize that, I think is really a big part of attacking closeouts, is understanding that second layer and looking beyond their initial defender. I think that, again, I think that's what takes players kind of the next level on attacking closeouts. - Well, I really appreciate your time. It's been awesome to talk to you, and I want to thank you for all this, just knowledge that you've shared to me and other coaches around the world. We really, really appreciate it. Final question for you is just like, what are you kind of focused on next? What are you looking at? What's been interesting to you in regard to kind of studying the game? - The triggers has been a big thing for me this summer. Wanting to kind of keep going down that path. After that, just trying to find different ways, I guess it's a different ways of playing to guys' strengths. So how do you play with a non-shooter? How do you play with a guy who's just a good defender, but that's kind of it. How do you play with a big man that is maybe not very skilled, but is just athletic? And so trying to identify different ways to play with guys that maybe have certain deficiencies. - Great, well, I appreciate your time and I just want to wish you the best of luck this summer and next season. And then also I'm looking forward to talking to you again sometime soon. - Absolutely, I enjoyed it. (upbeat music) (gentle music)