On the latest episode of Move the Sticks, Daniel Jeremiah and Bucky Brooks are joined by USC men's basketball head coach Eric Musselman. The trio explores the crossover between football and basketball, diving into concepts like spatial awareness — is it innate or can it be developed?
They explore the challenges of building a strong locker room culture in the age of the transfer portal, how Musselman and his staff approach high school recruiting, and the specific traits they prioritize in a point guard.
Plus, Musselman opens up about his journey to becoming a head coach, and offers valuable advice to new coaches on the importance of veteran mentorship and experience.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
And now Move the Sticks with Daniel Jeremiah and Bucky Brooks.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
What's up, everybody? Welcome to move the sticks, DJ Buck
with you. Buck excited about this episode. Today we've got
USC head coach Eric Musselman and not football head coach.
I know people thinking, wait, that's Lincoln Riley. We're talking
to basketball coach Eric Musselman because I think there's a
little carry over here what we can learn on the
football side.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Yeah, there's always things to be learned, and DJ, you
and I are lifelong learners. We believe that we can
learn for people who have success in so many different
aspects of business, even in sports. And so with Musselman,
really intrigued in terms of how someone who is an
NBA coach has become one of the best college basketball
coaches doing it his way.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Yeah, there's tremendous care of you're gonna hear in this conversation.
You're gonna hear a lot of football. You're gonna hear
about a conversation his father had with the legendary Paul
Brown and advice he was giving to a young head coach.
And I'm telling you, guys are going to be fascinated
to hear all this stuff. There's lots of great stories
in here, lots of carryover from one sport to the next.
(01:07):
But before we get to that conversation, Buck, we got
to handle some business here. It's time for Hot or Not,
brought to you by with Sabi Hot Cloud Storage. Hot
off the press here Rashad Bateman new contract for the
Baltimore Ravens. Someone who didn't really pop till year four.
Speaker 4 (01:23):
Buck.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
The first three years kind of underwhelming statistically this last
year not a ton of catches, but did have nine touchdowns.
I think you averaged almost seventeen yards per catch and
really can't settle into a nice role there with the rapis.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
You just sell into a nice role in DJ you
talked about nine touchdowns on the season.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
Has yet to have that thousand yard season.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
But what the Baltimore Ravens are gambling on or banking
on their banking that he's going to continue to grow
and eventually be a high end number two receiver to
compliment Zay Flowers. And one of the things that we've
always talked about when we work for teams, the importance
of being able to resign your own players because you
understand the players strengths wingless is you also know how
they fit into the culture of the program and for Babment,
(02:01):
even though it was a slow process in terms of
him finally popping and making the impact plays that they
hoped he would make after drafting him out of Minnesota,
he has settled in and have.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
Been more than a chain mover.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
I think they are excited to see him continue to
grow and progress and become a guy that can give
them the big plays that they're looking for opposite of
Zay Flowers.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Yeah, I think it's a good move. Nice to see
a guy get rewarded and sometimes it takes a minute
and the light came on and it worked out quite
well for the Baltimore Ravens. I think we're going to
see more contracts done by the way across the league
over the next month. You know, this is just the
time of year where some of the stuff gets handled,
so we'll be on the lookout for that. That was
this week's Hot or Not segment, brought to you by
with Sabbi Hot Cloud Storage, store more and do more
(02:44):
with your data. Try them for free at Withsabi dot com.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
Buck We teased it.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
This is a conversation we've been looking forward to having
for quite some time. This is a man who's known
by his energy, the must bust if you've followed college
basketball or you're a fan of the NBA, familiar with
his background, but someone who grew up in a coaching
household and who has a lot of unbelievable takeaways we
can glean from the basketball side of the world that
(03:10):
we can take over into football. Here's our chat with
Eric Musselman, coach. We appreciate to taking some time for
us today. First of all, calendar wise, I'm not as
familiar on the college basketball scene with what goes on
during this time of year. So what is happening right now?
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Yeah, so right now we're first of all, thanks so
much for having me on. But we're in a four
hour window over eight weeks. So we start on Monday.
We'll go Monday through Thursday, probably an hour each day,
and then they're allowed to lift for an hour four
days a week as well, so and then we jump
(03:45):
into our twenty hours once we get closer to October
and then get ready for the season. So it's a
long off season with no exhibition games. We don't have
Summer League, but it is with the changing lands Gate,
practices in the summer become vital because I mean, this
is the second year in a row now where we've
(04:06):
only had one returning player, so there's a lot of
there's a lot of teaching development that goes into this
summer segment that we have coming up the next eight weeks.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
Coach, let me follow this up because I'm a high
school coach here and we just started our summer workouts
in those things, So I'm curious, when you only have
one hour a day, like the first part of it,
what are the important things that you're trying to get accomplished.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Then, well, what we try to do is break everything down.
It's actually super interesting that our practice segments are really
taken from football practices because we do a lot of
like guard work, big man work, and then we do
a lot of drill work that's not done with the
(04:50):
whole team, and we try to break everything down. The
one thing that we do try to do is once
our eight weeks is up, that last practice, we hope
to have everything in as a team. So starts off individually,
then goes into positional groups, then goes into technique per
positional group, and then it'll end up the five man thing.
(05:12):
And we want to have like all of our offensive
defensive schemes, press breaks, late game situations down down three
with only two foul shot attempts available, and what we're
going to do where we're going to miss the shot,
how we're going to react to that. So all those
things we're trying to get in so that the last
practice we could go play a game, and then when
(05:34):
we come back then we really break down, you know,
all of these aspects that we've already put in, we
break them down and we start talking more about timing,
we start talking more about third.
Speaker 5 (05:46):
And fourth reads.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
So that's kind of how we use our summer segment.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
There's so many crossovers. This is one of the reasons
I was stoped to have you on, you know, with
basketball and football, and I think I spatial awareness just
right off the jump. We're evaluating for the draft and
we're watching slot receivers. That's going to be a big
component of their success at the next level. Tight ends
the same thing. Can they feel are they aware? It's
it's it's a natural thing. I'm curious in basketball a
(06:11):
how important is spatial awareness and be can it be
taught or is it you got it or you don't
have it?
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Well, certainly, I think the second part of the question
DJ like spatial awareness, So you have it or not?
I think that the great players have it and it's
kind of innate their their basketball IQ.
Speaker 5 (06:29):
I worked for Chuck Dale and he used to.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Talk about basketball geniuses, you know, and he and and
those were guys that understood spacing, when to slide away
if the balls dribbled at you. But I but I
do think that you know, you can teach some of
these things as well, when to cut, when not to cut.
But I do think the great players certainly have it.
And like when we think about spatial awareness, soccer and
(06:54):
hockey have been two things that we've kind of studied
as far as space awareness, showing our team film of
those other sports and how it correlates.
Speaker 5 (07:05):
To our game.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
What real quick I want to piggyback on that we
talk about and Bucks heard this a million times, but
as a quarterback, I always like guys, we always say, hey,
show me, you got to give me your numbers, Like
show me your numbers, like make yourself big? Is that
I know the language is probably different, but is there
a correlation with that type of thinking in basketball in
terms of making yourself a big target.
Speaker 5 (07:26):
Yeah, for sure. I think.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
You know, like with post players, we talk about goalposts,
you know, getting your hands up, palm showed. We talk about,
you know, shooting pockets in other words, having your hand
ready to catch and shoot, and how that can have
an effect on the passer. You know, if you have
your knees bent and you're shot ready, it certainly makes
(07:49):
the ball handler, you know, his his his brain is
thinking past to a guy who's ready to shoot, rather
than a guy that's standing there with his hands on
his hip. That guy's probably not going to get many passes.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Coach basketball in DJ and I both like huge basketball fans.
It's so interesting to see the changing dynamic. And so
you mentioned having only one returning player coming back when
we as leaders always prod ourselves in creating and establishing cultures.
How do you do that when it's such a transient
nature in the college game right now?
Speaker 5 (08:30):
Yeah, Bucky, I think it's daily.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
You know, it's it's because like we never wait on
a player like if our what I mean by that
is if our bus time to leave for practice on
the road, or our bus time to leave for a
game is three o'clock for a six thirty tip.
Speaker 5 (08:49):
I don't do a head count.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
I don't look back and say, hey, who's here, Who's
like at two point fifty nine, we know the bus
is pulling out, And so for us, I think that's
the beginning of culture, is respecting the time. But what
I've done is I've tried to pull clips from all
sports that are talking about being on time, like there's
(09:11):
a chancey billups quote put an address on it. In
other words, in timeouts, I want our players to understand
when I address them in the time out, I'm not
going to generalize. I'm not going to say, hey, we
need to play better defense. I'm gonna look a player
in the eye and I'm going to say like, hey T,
will you have to play better defense? Or hey T,
(09:31):
will you have to get in better help position? And
so all those things, Bucky. What we try to do
is we try to incorporate that over the summer, and
it's going to be a learning process, Like somebody might
be late and then they're going to find out that
they're not allowed to practice that day. And so I
think that you establish a culture daily. It certainly becomes
(09:52):
more and more challenging when you don't have a player
run locker room, because we all know that when the
players control the locker room and control the culture, it's
a much better culture than a culture that's led by
the coaching staff.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
I've heard coaches say over the years, you want a
tough team, then go out and get tough players like
you can try and make guys tough once you get
them there. But it's nice to find guys that have
that wiring and the way they're put together. In the
football scouting side of it, that's we're always trying to
find the makeup the wiring. I'm curious, as someone who's
been in the NBA, what is the difference in trying
(10:27):
to understand the wiring of a college kid versus I
cannot imagine how in the world you can dig in
and find out enough about a high school kid and
how they're wired.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Yeah, I mean, DJ, That's that's something that we talk
about in our staff meeting, recruiting meetings all the time
because just look at the NFL draft, look at you know,
the NBA draft, right, there's mistakes made and those guys
have much more body of work they have private eyes
looking at that players. They have players that they send
on campuses to talk to strength coaches and you know,
(10:59):
trainer and they'll walk around campus and observe how somebody
goes to class. And so they have all this body
of work and still make you know, a lot of mistakes.
Speaker 4 (11:09):
Every year, every year.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
And yet in college you know, our fan bases expect
us to hit on one hundred percent when we're trying
to project where a guy is going to be both
college football, you know, college basketball, all the collegiate sports,
and then you look at Major League Baseball draft there
are a lot of misses. And why there's a lot
of misses because they're drafting players that are much younger
(11:34):
than the NFL and much younger than NBA draft picks.
For the most part. Same thing in the NHL draft,
there's more mistakes. So for us, it's about how do
you dig into the character as much as you possibly can?
You bring up the toughness part of that aspect DJ
For us, we actually want players that have played other
sports when they were younger. I know that you know
(11:57):
today's landscape is players focus on on sport, But I
look at a player like Anthony Black that played for US.
He was a one and done player at the University
of Arkansas. He was a great wide receiver in high
school football as a freshman in sophomore and that made
us really really dive into his recruitment much more than
(12:21):
some other guys because we knew that as a point guard,
having played football, he would understand film study much better
than basketball players. He would understand discipline, toughness. Because you know,
the truth of the matter is the football coaches are
the best coaches in the world. They're the most organized coaches.
They have more players they have to deal with. The
(12:43):
way that they structure practice is much more organized, much
more detailed than any other sport that I've ever observed.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
You know, Coach, is so interesting that you're talking about
the point guard and you're talking about toughness and intelligence
and those things. Obviously, in football, the quarterback is the
one that has that. So I want to use your
experiences with point guards in the past to talk about
the ideal characteristics and qualities that you want not only
from that person as a player, but as a leader,
(13:13):
because we are struggling to find quarterbacks and what are
the intangible qualities that separate the good from the great ones.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Yes, so it starts in our recruiting process. We actually
will put up NBA clips and then we'll have the
player walk us through the reads the of where the
ball is. We'll have him actually do reads on cutting. Basically,
it's a you know, it's a small version of like
(13:42):
an IQ test, but only talking about basketball.
Speaker 5 (13:46):
And then once the player leaves, will meet.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
As a staff and kind of rank them one through
ten on basketball field basketball IQ. But I think from
the point guard position, number one is can he lead
your team? Can he be an extension of the head coach?
Does he have unbelievable discipline, unbelievable work ethic? And then
maybe just as important as any of those is will
(14:10):
the locker room respect him? Is a big, big key.
And then how does that player react when things are
not going his way? Because all eyes are going to
go right away to your leader, to your point guard,
to your quarterback, to the pitcher, to the catcher. That's
where eyes are going to. And how can a player
(14:31):
handle those situations when things are not going his way?
Because the last thing you want as a leader, if
you're down in the game to exhibit any characteristics of
not having great will to win, not playing the full clock.
All those things become extremely important from a leadership standpoint
when you're talking about certain positions.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
I know there's buzzwords that get used and you see
him in business books and you hear them from coaches
all the time. But we've talked about a couple things,
and first and foremost, I would say grit is a
word that I love it. I don't think it's cliche.
I think it's real. I think you can see it.
How do you quantify it and how do you continue
to develop it.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Yeah, we use the word because so many people. Obviously
the Detroit Lions have really used that word grid a lot.
We've shown our team clips of their coaching staff talking
about it.
Speaker 5 (15:24):
We use the word sewer rats, and.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
The reason we use that is I was being a
little bit soft to a loose ball when I was
in sixth grade, and after the game, I got in
the car with my dad and my dad said, you
need to play like a sewer rat. We kind of
talked about what a sewer rat really was, and so
(15:50):
for us, it's diving on the floor for loose balls.
It's having the ability to take charges. It's also the
toughness when you're down. You know, as a coach, some
of the some of the greatest things that have ever
happened to me are down twenty five points at New
Mexico with nine minutes to go and knowing that our
(16:11):
team didn't quit and we came back and had one
of the greatest comebacks in the last fifty years of college.
It's playing in the NCAA Tournament to Texas and we're
down ten with like three and a half minutes to go,
and we don't quit and come back and win. It's
being down twenty two points in an NCAA Tournament game
the Cincinnati and that stuff is going to start with
us now because we're going to show those clips of
(16:34):
these comebacks, not just that we've had in the past,
but comebacks and other sports. To talk about the mental
toughness because it's easy, you know, to go through the
motions and to say, oh, we have another game coming,
and so I think the mental toughness you can also
do it in some of your drills.
Speaker 5 (16:52):
In practice.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Sometimes we'll do close out drills where we're actually closing
out with a high hand with weights. You know, my
dad had his and we can't do it in today's world.
But my dad had his starting unit at the University
of Minnesota practice most days with a weighted vest while
the second third team did not practice in a.
Speaker 5 (17:11):
Weight When you're competing.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
In one group has a weighted vest and another team
doesn't have a weighted vest, and my dad used to
call it the overload system, and and and and then
some days he would have the starter's practice. You know,
they used to have the old ankle weights. Ers would
practice with ankle weights the starters and not the backup.
So we're not going to that drastic extreme, but certainly
(17:36):
to try to put your players maybe in certain situations
where you're down ten with X amount of minutes left
and can you overcome that? Or rebounding drills where there's
a where there's a bubble on the rim and you
got to get five rebounds to get out of the drill.
So certainly there are ways, you know, to to try
to create mental toughness, both through film work, through discussions,
(17:58):
and then on floor stuff as well. Well.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
You know, coach, one of the things that i'morrey about
you is your ability to, i would say, continue to
evolve as a coach. After spending time at the pro level,
you make your way to the collegiate game and you've
really grown in blossom. But during your time and way
when you made the decision to leave pro sports in
to go to college, what were you looking for when
you made that decision, and how have you evolved from
(18:23):
your initial years as an NBA coach?
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Yeah, so I think that I've evolved every year, even
while I was in the NBA. Constant learner. I would
much rather learn, grow and evolve through coaches of other sports.
You know, we had two scholarships open last week. The
first phone call that I made after I met with
our own staff was to Michael Lombardi to ask Michael
(18:51):
his thought process on and I told him the player's name,
where is from, and all that, but it was kind
of irrelevant. Phil Nevin, who was a former manager in
the Angels, I asked them all the time questions about
recruiting and building a team. So I hoped to you
know that we're always constantly evolving. But for me, at
(19:11):
that particular time, I did not want to go back
and be an assistant coach at the NBA level. I
had been fired from the Sacramento Kings. I wanted to
be a dad. I was recently divorced, so I wanted
to be around my two sons and be engaged with
them on a daily basis. So I took three years off,
and it gave me time to really evaluate where I
wanted to go in my career. I went spent two
(19:34):
years at Arizona State as an assistant coach. I thought
for sure if I was there one year that as
a two time NBA head coach, that I would get
a college job. I sent resumes, made phone calls to
places like Campbell and San Jose, and I could not
get a job because the lack of respect amongst athletic
(19:54):
directors for the for the pro level went to LSU,
and that helped me get the Nevada job. So perseverance
is certainly super important, and then not just evolving. But
you know, I went in a totally different direction from
the way that I was raised. I was raised by
a coach. I was raised by one of the all
(20:16):
time great disciplinarian coaches. And then I got very active
on social media. I was at University of Nevada. I
wanted to try to take Nevada to a final four,
which is, you know, a little bit unheard of. But
we did get to a sweet six, and we did
get seventeen straight weeks ranked in the top ten. And
in order to do that, social media became a big
platform for us to recruit nationally.
Speaker 5 (20:39):
So I went.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
From being in a super you know, discipline environment to
trying to be super creative and go way outside the box.
And so evolving, becoming better learning from others is certainly
part not just of I don't think just of leadership
or sports, but any walk of life or any field
(21:02):
is to try to get better and improve and learn
from others.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
All right, let's take a quick pause and we'll get
right back to our conversation with USC head coach Eric Musselman.
If we have some football only folks that are listening
or watching right now. By the way, if you haven't
seen coach coach, it is high energy. It is it
is always always on eleven and he gets the most
(21:28):
out of his guys, Which is going to get me
to my next question. Because I haven't been around Andy Reid,
I don't think people would associate Andy with kind of
a little bit of a stoic you know, you know, look,
if you're just watching games on TV. But Andy has
phenomenal energy and he I remember I always have told
the story he said in one of our draft meetings
one year, We're talking about a player and he said, guys, remember,
(21:48):
everybody we bring into this building is going to bring
energy into this building or they are going to suck
energy from this building. So keep that in mind as
we're bringing guys in. And I think of coaches that
are getting their opportunity in the end. Coach, you were
such a young head coach. I think about Ben Johnson,
who's going to get a chance with the Chicago Bears,
who has been creative, has been energetic. I mean, what's
(22:09):
your advice to someone like that? Where I think there
may be is a little pressure to be like, Okay,
well now I'm in the big chair and now I've
got to kind of tone it down and I've got
to kind of be a little bit more of a senator.
What would your advice, not just to him specifically, but
just to any coach as they're getting a step into
that chair for the first time.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Well, this a little bit off subject, but in the
same realm, DJ so, Tom Thibodau and I are very really.
My father brought coach Thibodeau into the NBA and I got,
you know, an opportunity before I was forty years old
with two NBA teams as a head coach. Tom didn't
(22:47):
get his first NBA head job until he was over fifty.
Speaker 4 (22:51):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Nobody realizes that coach Chuck Daily really never got an
opportunity as a head coach until he was after fifty
years old, and he was a Hall of Fame coach coach.
Speaker 5 (23:00):
And I bring that up because when I.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Got my opportunity in my thirties, I did not know
half of what I know now.
Speaker 5 (23:10):
And so.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
I told Tom, I said, when you get your job,
and it became true, when you get your job, watched
you're going to be an NBA head coach longer than
I was because he was more mature, h he had
seen and worked for multiple people. Where I had a
small sample size of who I had worked for. I
(23:33):
had a small sample size of the superstars that I
was around. And so that all becomes a part of
being a great coach. And so, you know, the one
thing that I would say, you know, for any young coaches,
you've got to be super humble.
Speaker 5 (23:48):
You got to.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Understand that that it can be taken away from you
in a in a in a heartbeat. And then I
would say, surround yourself with veteran head coaches. I think
that's really really important. I was surrounded by great coaches.
My assistant coaches in the NBA, David Fizdale who went on.
Speaker 5 (24:07):
To coach three and the us the USD guys, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Guy, Jim Boyling who went on to be an NBA
head coach. Scottie Brooks was a coach obviously in Oklahoma City,
and so I had all these great assistant coaches, but
they were right around my same age.
Speaker 5 (24:27):
And one of.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Our assistant coaches was was Hank Egan, who was my
college coach. But then coach Egan had walked away and retired.
He did the same thing to Mike Brown. He did
the same thing Greg Popovich, and he did the same
thing to me. He would work for a while and
then retire and then come back and be an assistant
with one of his former players. But I think having
(24:51):
an older coach is super important. I watched the Dynamics
this year with Jeff Van Gundy on the bench with
the Clippers and coach tylu and I think that that
stuff is super super important, especially as a young coach,
because the natural thing is to hire people that are
around your same age, but they're going to have the
(25:11):
same thought process.
Speaker 5 (25:13):
I always tell.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
The story Chuck Daily could predict the future, and when
I was young and in my twenties and working for him,
I couldn't figure out how he knew what was coming.
He would know when when we were going to go
on a losing streak. He would know which referees we're
going to have a good whistle on the road, to
which referees we're gonna have a bad whistle on the road.
He could project when our players would be tired. Well,
(25:35):
it was just through experience, and certainly for any young coach,
I think that's super important to have somebody that can
project and predict what's about to come around the corner.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
You know, coach, I'm I'm so curious because you've manned
so many different teams in the NBA and at the
collegiate level. Are you one who believes in I'm going
to build my system around the players. Well, I'm going
to recruit players to fit the system that I want
to run.
Speaker 5 (26:02):
Well, I think Budgye. It's two things.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
One, at the pro level, most times you don't have
the it's not your.
Speaker 4 (26:11):
You get what you get.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
As you say to kids, you get what you get
and you don't throw a fit. That's little kid.
Speaker 5 (26:17):
It was awesome.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
It's great for Greg Pofovitz all those years because kind
of draft and what he wanted and he was you know,
it was kind of his show both as a GM
and and coach. But yeah, I would say that as
a coach in today's professional world, you're going to have
to adapt to the players. It's really all about the
(26:39):
player strength. It's not about you know, your scheme. Certainly,
if if players fit into your scheme, that that that
makes it, you know, easier. But I think you really
got to. You know, you got to whoever you're coaching.
I mean in our sport and basketball. If you're coaching
a basketball team that's got a good interior play and
(27:00):
you're a coach that likes to play a free flowing well,
that's you got to adapt obviously, because you know, coaching
is somewhat overrated, but somewhat underrated.
Speaker 5 (27:11):
What I mean by that is.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
While the game's going on, there's adjustments there's things that
happen at halftime that are super important. But if you
don't have players that are like have this artistic ability
to break schemes, you're not gonna win. No matter how
great your scheme is. It's always about a player who
can make a play outside of the scheme that really
(27:34):
takes you to the next level. We all think it's coaching,
but in reality, it's talent and then how that talent
is meshed together and how you can kind of stay
out of the super talented players way. You know, Like
when I coach Gilbert Arenez, it was always about allowing
him to do what he does and never getting in
(27:55):
his way. And I think that's super super important and
it's kind of under talked about, and I kind of
see that going on in today's NBA world with the
Indiana Pacers. Coach Carlisle is a super disciplined player or coach,
but he's really allowing his teams to play and giving
them freedom with reads and things that are not being
(28:16):
controlled by the sideline coach.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
I want to follow up on that because you took
me to where I want to go with the Indiana Pacers.
So Rick Carlisle obviously watching him in college because he
was a UVA and I'm a Carolina fan.
Speaker 4 (28:27):
But he has always coached a team in a certain way.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
He was always more half quarterly in defensive friendly And
now I'm looking at this Indiana Pacer team that seems
to be a drastic departure from what he's always done
coaching wise. Then they're up tempo, they pressure the ball
ninety four feet, they play fast. As a coach, how
hard is it for you to switch styles or switch
schemes when you've always kind of been reared one way
(28:53):
to didn't think about.
Speaker 4 (28:54):
Approaching the game a different way. How does that happen
for coach? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (28:58):
I think the way it happens is just, you know,
studying other teams. Like right now, a lot of NBA
people are watching, especially for offense. They're watching teams in
Europe because the ball is moving more. And then quite frankly,
if you watch WNBA, the ball moves more, the spacing
is a little bit better. There's not as much isolation play,
(29:19):
there's not as much defensive loading up because the ball
is constantly moving, people are constantly touching it. And what
coach Carlisle's done is he has extended the defense to
pick up and pressure more, which is also what Oklahoma
City Thunder are doing. Now watch what will happen next
year in the NBA in training everybody everybody, because what
(29:44):
happened when Phil Jackson ran the triangle is everybody would
run the triangle. Not everybody, but ten to twelve teams
would run the triangle in training camp and they'd have
to get out of it. And I kind of bucky
when I got the King Sacramento King job. They had
kind of run this elbow action with coach Adelman, and
(30:05):
we got about ten games in and Jeff Petrie, the
general manager, called me in and started diagramming some of
coach coach out of stuff, and I said, hey, man,
I don't know that stuff inside out.
Speaker 5 (30:18):
I can't teach it. I don't feel comfortable.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
I can look at a playbook, but it's got to
be innate where I really believe in it and I
really feel good about teaching it. And so I think
that in order for somebody to adapt like coach Carlisle has,
he's really got to believe in it. He's really got
to buy into it. And then what he's done is
that's what his roster. That's what his talent is suited for.
(30:42):
And he's been willing to adjust because Rick played for
my dad with the Albany Patroons. Rick was a super
disciplined player too. He was all about cutting at the
right time, and he was not a high gambler on
offense or defense. And that's how he coached the first
fifteen And now all of a sudden, it's completely different
(31:03):
than the way he played, and completely different than the
way he's coached prior.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
Yeah, this is all fascinating to me thinking about you know,
one of the things you mentioned earlier was, gosh, only
one returning player two years in a row. Now we've
talked about some of the greatest offenses in NFL history.
If you look at you know, look at the Peyton
Manning Colts and look at what the Patriots grew into
later in Tom's career. One of the benefits was they
just kept stacking. You had the same offense, you know,
(31:28):
the same voice in their ear for the majority of
that time, and they could just keep building and building
and building, and there was so much of a rolodex
of plays and any type they saw a new defense,
they go to the sideline. Okay, we saw this three
years ago. We can go from there and I think
about a brand new team over here. Do you see
it at the end of the year that you're able
to do things you know that you just simply couldn't
(31:49):
do in the early portion of the season because now
you actually have some experience together.
Speaker 5 (31:54):
Yeah, for a show.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
I think one of the teams and we have had,
you know, when I first got to the that it
was how are we going to be different? Like, we're
not going to get a five star at Nevada. We
eventually did get the first McDonald's All American and five
star there, but the first couple of years we had
a lot of transfers, so we were way ahead of
this transfer a game, so to speak, as was Fred
(32:16):
Hoiberg when he was at Iowa State. Interestingly, two coaches
that came from the NBA dove into the portal. It
wasn't even a portal then, but the transfer market. And
I think it's because that's much like free agency and
professional sports, and so the teams that improved towards the
(32:37):
end of the year, I think those are teams oftentimes,
those are teams that have higher changeover in their rosters,
because we know, like in November, even this year coming up,
we certainly should not be the same team in November
that we are in January. A lot of it has
to do with when can you really do the bulk
(32:58):
of important teaching. It's really when your own team's playing.
I mean, you can go through all this stuff in
the summer, but it's you know, the mistakes that are
made in game with your current roster is really when
I believe you can really grab the attention of your players.
And so if you've been together like the Patriots were
(33:19):
a year after year after year, and you have wide
receivers and the same court, it certainly your adjustments become
much easier. And when you don't have that, it becomes
much more challenging. But you certainly need to grow as
the season goes on. And I think that's why we
have had really good March success in the past. We've
(33:40):
actually played better in the postseason.
Speaker 5 (33:42):
Even this year.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
You know, we went to a tournament called the Crown.
I thought we played better there than we did certainly
in November and December.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
You know, Coach, when I was young, I just retired,
I read a book from Brick Patino called success is
a choice, and one of the things he talked about
was the importance of conditions, strength and conditioning and how
important it is to a turnaround. In football, the strength
coach is oftentimes viewed as the most important part of
the program because he touches the players.
Speaker 4 (34:10):
He impacts it.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
In basketball, how important is the strength and conditioning aspect.
Are you able to maybe make up for some talent
deficiencies by having a superior conditioning program that allows you
maybe to play a little differently in those things?
Speaker 5 (34:29):
For sure?
Speaker 1 (34:29):
Like in basketball, you know when you look at like
the best conditioned if you just like looked at the
last twenty years, like the best conditioned team is usually
the Miami Heat. You know, pat Riley had always had
a conditioning test. Doc rivers teams are usually in great
condition because he took that heat test and continued to
(34:51):
use that same conditioning test for US collegiately. Because bodies
are still changing both college football, college basketb ball. Our
strength coach is super super important.
Speaker 5 (35:02):
He is the guy that.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
You know is with our players, especially in the summer,
the same amount of time as I'm with our players.
So his voice, his message becomes just as important as
as as the head coach's voice. And then I do
think you can change. And we've seen the numbers change
jumping not much, but but you can see an increase
in jump. You can see an increase in lateral foot speed.
(35:29):
And then certainly weight, whether it's weight loss or weight gain,
depending on what a player needs. That is is super
important at the collegiate level as well. But when we
went to hire a strength coach, I wanted to get
someone with with pro experience. So our current strength coach
was with three NBA teams. But most importantly, he's always
(35:52):
coming up with something new.
Speaker 5 (35:54):
He's a new wave thinker.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
We don't lift weights like most program is much more
of a pro mentality. How we lift, you know, with
with elastic bands and core stuff, and so I do think.
Speaker 5 (36:10):
That you can.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
You've got that weight Room's got to be super super important.
And then for us, we do a mile test every year.
You've got to pass it under a certain or else
you continue to run it. And so it allows the
guys the eight weeks over the summer to get ready.
Once we get back together in late late August early September, it.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
Is impressive to see how some of these guys are
put together though some of these colleges, I don't know.
I know, I know you're in the Big Ten now, coach,
but you're in the SEC. We Bucky and I was
talking with this turn of the time we get a
turn time. They have a different weight room for SEC
basketball and everybody else in the country, Like just body
type wise, as scouts, we can't get away from it.
We're just looking at body types the whole time. But
it does feel like there is a difference in terms of,
(36:50):
you know, what people in different programs are working with.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
No, the SEC is super athletic, super physical in basketball,
and the Big Ten is very very physical, you know
a little bit uh size is a little bit more important,
meaning sized, you know, height wise, whereas in the SEC,
it's it's reaction to loose balls. It's it's you know,
(37:13):
a faster paced game than what I've seen in the
Big Ten. If you just had to generalize.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Is that is going back to your time in the SEC.
Is the reason for like the SEC's dominant baseball, I
mean they got thing half the tournament field, it seems like,
and then look at basketball to rise over the last
ten years, is this is this is football and origin
there in terms of revenue producing that led to this
or is that totally unrelated? Just so happens that all
these sports have all come up together in that conference
(37:40):
at the same time.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
Well, and so I was in the SEC for five
years in that time, and it started right kind of
right around the time that the first league meetings that
I was part of. Commissioner Sank wanted basketball, uh to
equal football as much as possible, you know, I mean
when he when he made that comment, we knew that
(38:04):
football was always going to be king. That's that goes
without saying. But I think Commissioner Sank, in his own way, however,
he did it let athletic directors know the importance of
bringing in maybe coaches resources to men's basketball and and
and that's what I saw in my time. Every year
(38:26):
there was a league meeting, I really looked forward to
when Commissioner Sankee would come in the room. I thought
that basketball was was was something that that that he
wanted to be really to grow from where it was,
because you know, fifteen years ago SEC basketball was not
anything close to what it is now. And then you
look at what's happened with SEC baseball, they're sold out.
(38:48):
You go to Baseball State sold out, You go to
an LSU baseball game sold out, You go to bumb
Walker Stadium in Arkansas, sold out. And then you look
at legendary coach that are coaching. You know, in the
SEC baseball programs. The Vanderbilt coach is a great baseball
coach to study, Coach Corbin. So that league has done
(39:10):
a great job. The gymnastics, you know, when you look
at gymnastics in the SEC, they've done a great job
with all their sports, as has the Big Ten. I
think those are the two premiere conferences right now when
you look at athletic programs as.
Speaker 3 (39:26):
A whole, your coach, I want to tap into your
experience because you talked about you know so much more
now than you did when you were a younger coach
heading the team, and I want to talk about the
tough moments that you ultimately face in a season where
maybe you have a multiple game losing streak or you're
coming off a disappointing campaign and you're standing in front
of the team trying to turn it around. As an
(39:48):
experience coach, what are the things that you're thinking about
when your team is struggling and you're trying to get
them back on track.
Speaker 4 (39:54):
How do you approach those situations?
Speaker 1 (39:56):
Well, Bucky, I would say, like the importance of you
talked about You made a comment about standing in front
of your team. So when we moved to San Diego,
my dad was the head coach of the Minnesota Gophers.
We moved to San Diego. It's going to be his
first time ever coaching at the professional level, so he's
coaching in the ABA, the San Diego Sales. Well, I
(40:19):
kept come home from school and there's an older gentleman
meeting with my dad and they're having an in depth conversation.
I'm on the couch listening while they're at the kitchen table.
It was Paul Brown, Oh, my dad, And the part
I heard was for about an hour. Paul Brown was
(40:40):
talking to my father about the importance of the very
first team meeting and how there was going to be
a group of professional players sitting there and they were
going to judge and evaluate how much you could help
their careers grow and put money in their pockets based
on your knowledge and the scheme you were going to
put them in that conversation and then to hear my
(41:03):
dad years and years later reiterate that conversation and the
lessons he learned. Every time I go before the team,
I am prepared. Nothing's off the cuff. Obviously, in game,
things are off the cuff because things are happening that
you got to address in the timeout that you got
to address in live time. But if it's a team
meeting pre practice, if it's a team meeting post practice,
(41:26):
that stuff's already been addressed in my own mind or
with the staff because of hearing Paul Brown many many,
many years ago talk to my dad about the importance
of a player's antenna and how they were going to
evaluate everything that comes out of your mouth. So, as
an experienced coach, I think you have a much different lens,
and it's a longer term lens than as a younger coach.
(41:49):
When you're a younger coach trying to prove yourself, you're
so much in the moment that you can't see three
to four games down the road. And Chuck Daly was
phenomenal that Mike Furtella was phenomenal at that about understanding
you know, like, hey, we I mean Chuck Daly put
would put would put a play in for a player
(42:12):
knowing the player was going to fail in a timeout
so that the player wouldn't complain in a future game
about not getting the ball. So wow, he literally would know, like,
all right, this guy's being defended by a great defender.
He's been complaining about not getting the ball in pick
and roll play. I'm going to put him in pick
and roll play against two great pick and roll defenders,
(42:35):
and now I don't have to hear this guy complain.
That's fantastic a lessons that Chuck would deliver on some
of these things. We had a player that he never
wanted to sub out in live ball action because he
felt like that player would let's say that the dead
(42:58):
ball was furthest away from the bench. The player would
would then be subbed out and he could walk all
the way to the bench slowly. He could be verbalizing
with his lips his unhappiness. So Chuck would diagram a
play for this particular player, and then before we broke
the huddle, he would say, Hey, let me give you
(43:19):
a blow right now and put so and so in
for you, because Chuck felt like that player couldn't demonstrate
his displeasure.
Speaker 5 (43:25):
For coming genius.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
It's genius. So he literally would sub this particular player
out in huddles almost every time. He never sent a
guy down on the scores table to sub in for
the guy because he didn't want National TV to see.
You know, he was a genius in every little detail
you could possibly think.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
That is fantastic. By the way, we've got to step
our game up in football. On nicknames, Buck, I'm just
just over the course of this conversation we've got we've
talked about the mayor Fred Hoiberg. In this conversation, we
talked about the bar of the telestrater, Mike Fotello. I
think baket Ball's got us a nickname, and the.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
Player I'm talking about the coach didn't want to sub out.
I don't mind saying it because he's a friend of
mine now, but that was mad Max.
Speaker 4 (44:12):
It's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
I can understand that one. I think I remember seeing
some of those over the years on Vernon Maxwell. Last
one from me, coach, I'll let Bucky hit you at
the final one. But we've talked forever. I know in scouting,
Bucky and I have told the story about seeing Antonio
Gates early in training camp that first year with the
Chargers when we were out scouting preseason games, and we've
seen you know, Tony Gonzalez. There is a long list
(44:36):
of successful basketball players that have crossed over. I feel
like we haven't seen as much of it lately. And
I pose this question to someone on the basketball side,
and they said, because these guys can go to Europe
and make so much money that that's kind of been
the barrier to entry of Like, man, I'm gonna try
you in this NFL thing, but man, I've got this,
this this contract waiting for me overseas. Is there a
way we can get it going again? Can we do
(44:56):
something to get this funnel of these six foot five
post players that have no future in the in the NBA,
get him back over to football.
Speaker 5 (45:03):
I hope.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
So we had actually Simeon Rice's son, Jordan Caroline, played
for me. He was an unbelievable basketball player. Jordan was Uh.
Simeon thinks he's a great basketball player. He still plays,
but Jordan.
Speaker 5 (45:20):
Was a great college player.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
He worked out and played on the Lakers summer league
team and then he went overseas. But he would have
been I think he could have been an Antonio Gates
type player. I think he could have been an All
Pro football player. But he's been playing over in Italy
and Spain. He's actually got a house over there and
live in a great life. But that is why guys
(45:43):
won't do it. Jordan just didn't didn't want to try
the the NFL route. He wanted to try NBA and
then go overseas. But we had a player a couple
of years ago at Arkansas by the name of Trey Wade,
and he actually tried out with two NFL teams. His
knowledge of run past patterns and stuff was just too
far behind.
Speaker 5 (46:03):
But from a at.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
Least the feedback I got from the two NFL teams,
where that is athleticism, strength, toughness, all of that, he
actually could have probably been a starter based on talent,
but he just lacked understanding what the position.
Speaker 5 (46:18):
You know, like, the longer he was.
Speaker 1 (46:20):
There and the more detail oriented the training camp became,
the less impactful he has gained.
Speaker 5 (46:27):
Translated.
Speaker 4 (46:29):
It goes last thing.
Speaker 3 (46:30):
I just would love one nugget of advice that you
would give to any aspiring coach, something that someone passed
along to you that you feel compelled to share with
the next generation of aspiring coaches.
Speaker 1 (46:43):
Well, this probably doesn't this doesn't have to do with
necessarily just being a head coach. But when I was
in elementary school, my mom would pack my lunch in
a brown paper bag. She put the turkey sandwich and
the lazed potato chips and before she you know, finished pack.
And my dad would always write effort, energy, enthusiasm every
(47:05):
single day, you know. And I got the junior high
and I'm like, Dad, I don't want to walk around
with the brown bag that says effort, energy, and enthusiasm.
But he did it all the way until I got
to high school. And then at that point I said,
you know what, I'm gonna buy my lunch instead.
Speaker 5 (47:19):
Of bringing that paper. That's that's the one.
Speaker 1 (47:24):
That's the one thing that we talk to our team about.
I talked to our coaching staff just you know, if
you can bring energy, bring enthusiasm, and bring effort, and
then the fourth E is always execution. Those four e's
are are super impactful to our program and anybody associated.
You know, even in my house, like my wife, she
knows she's got to bring energy every day, bring enthusiasm,
(47:44):
my daughter. That's just kind of how we how we
live our life or try to.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
We both worked with your wife, and we know unbelievable,
unbelievable person with unbelievable energy. By the way, the next
at least from our standpoint, being around her, the next
bad day where she's not smiling will be the first fly.
So fun to be around. She never had a bad day.
Speaker 1 (48:04):
Man.
Speaker 5 (48:05):
Yeah, anyway, and she's my best recruiter.
Speaker 4 (48:07):
Oh, I bet she is.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
And by the way, your daughter, we feel like just
just from keeping up with you guys over the years,
I feel like I've watched her completely grow up, and
I'm like, I don't know how in the world she's
so big now. I feel like I'm five years old.
Speaker 5 (48:19):
I'm one DJ.
Speaker 1 (48:21):
This is super this is this is tough on a coach, right,
Like all these NCAA tournament runs, my daughter gets hired,
you know, to do like some of their social media
some way, shape or form. And so the last two years,
like this year, we get like halfway through the year
and we haven't made the tournament. The last two years,
she goes, Dad, this is January, are we gonna make
(48:41):
the NCAA tournament? All she cares about is getting FaceTime during.
Speaker 4 (48:50):
Well, she's sneaking ahead. Man. She can.
Speaker 2 (48:52):
Hey, she can do whatever the heck she wants to go.
With the experience that she's got growing up, she's gonna
be I'll bet on that one. I'll sign up to
be her agent. Just let me know when that job
will come available. Hey, Coach, this is I mean, this
is one of the things I love about. We've just
got pages and pages and notes here that help us
not only as people in the sports world, but I
think there's some great nuggets in here in life in general.
So we're big fans of yours and we really appreciate
(49:15):
all the time you gave us today.
Speaker 1 (49:16):
Yeah, DJ Bucky, Thanks, it's awesome joining you guys.
Speaker 4 (49:19):
Appreciate it. Man, Thanks Coach.
Speaker 5 (49:21):
Thanks guys,
And now Move the Sticks with Daniel Jeremiah and Bucky Brooks.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
What's up, everybody? Welcome to move the sticks, DJ Buck
with you. Buck excited about this episode. Today we've got
USC head coach Eric Musselman and not football head coach.
I know people thinking, wait, that's Lincoln Riley. We're talking
to basketball coach Eric Musselman because I think there's a
little carry over here what we can learn on the
football side.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Yeah, there's always things to be learned, and DJ, you
and I are lifelong learners. We believe that we can
learn for people who have success in so many different
aspects of business, even in sports. And so with Musselman,
really intrigued in terms of how someone who is an
NBA coach has become one of the best college basketball
coaches doing it his way.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Yeah, there's tremendous care of you're gonna hear in this conversation.
You're gonna hear a lot of football. You're gonna hear
about a conversation his father had with the legendary Paul
Brown and advice he was giving to a young head coach.
And I'm telling you, guys are going to be fascinated
to hear all this stuff. There's lots of great stories
in here, lots of carryover from one sport to the next.
(01:07):
But before we get to that conversation, Buck, we got
to handle some business here. It's time for Hot or Not,
brought to you by with Sabi Hot Cloud Storage. Hot
off the press here Rashad Bateman new contract for the
Baltimore Ravens. Someone who didn't really pop till year four.
Speaker 4 (01:23):
Buck.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
The first three years kind of underwhelming statistically this last
year not a ton of catches, but did have nine touchdowns.
I think you averaged almost seventeen yards per catch and
really can't settle into a nice role there with the rapis.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
You just sell into a nice role in DJ you
talked about nine touchdowns on the season.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
Has yet to have that thousand yard season.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
But what the Baltimore Ravens are gambling on or banking
on their banking that he's going to continue to grow
and eventually be a high end number two receiver to
compliment Zay Flowers. And one of the things that we've
always talked about when we work for teams, the importance
of being able to resign your own players because you
understand the players strengths wingless is you also know how
they fit into the culture of the program and for Babment,
(02:01):
even though it was a slow process in terms of
him finally popping and making the impact plays that they
hoped he would make after drafting him out of Minnesota,
he has settled in and have.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
Been more than a chain mover.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
I think they are excited to see him continue to
grow and progress and become a guy that can give
them the big plays that they're looking for opposite of
Zay Flowers.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Yeah, I think it's a good move. Nice to see
a guy get rewarded and sometimes it takes a minute
and the light came on and it worked out quite
well for the Baltimore Ravens. I think we're going to
see more contracts done by the way across the league
over the next month. You know, this is just the
time of year where some of the stuff gets handled,
so we'll be on the lookout for that. That was
this week's Hot or Not segment, brought to you by
with Sabbi Hot Cloud Storage, store more and do more
(02:44):
with your data. Try them for free at Withsabi dot com.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
Buck We teased it.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
This is a conversation we've been looking forward to having
for quite some time. This is a man who's known
by his energy, the must bust if you've followed college
basketball or you're a fan of the NBA, familiar with
his background, but someone who grew up in a coaching
household and who has a lot of unbelievable takeaways we
can glean from the basketball side of the world that
(03:10):
we can take over into football. Here's our chat with
Eric Musselman, coach. We appreciate to taking some time for
us today. First of all, calendar wise, I'm not as
familiar on the college basketball scene with what goes on
during this time of year. So what is happening right now?
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Yeah, so right now we're first of all, thanks so
much for having me on. But we're in a four
hour window over eight weeks. So we start on Monday.
We'll go Monday through Thursday, probably an hour each day,
and then they're allowed to lift for an hour four
days a week as well, so and then we jump
(03:45):
into our twenty hours once we get closer to October
and then get ready for the season. So it's a
long off season with no exhibition games. We don't have
Summer League, but it is with the changing lands Gate,
practices in the summer become vital because I mean, this
is the second year in a row now where we've
(04:06):
only had one returning player, so there's a lot of
there's a lot of teaching development that goes into this
summer segment that we have coming up the next eight weeks.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
Coach, let me follow this up because I'm a high
school coach here and we just started our summer workouts
in those things, So I'm curious, when you only have
one hour a day, like the first part of it,
what are the important things that you're trying to get accomplished.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Then, well, what we try to do is break everything down.
It's actually super interesting that our practice segments are really
taken from football practices because we do a lot of
like guard work, big man work, and then we do
a lot of drill work that's not done with the
(04:50):
whole team, and we try to break everything down. The
one thing that we do try to do is once
our eight weeks is up, that last practice, we hope
to have everything in as a team. So starts off individually,
then goes into positional groups, then goes into technique per
positional group, and then it'll end up the five man thing.
(05:12):
And we want to have like all of our offensive
defensive schemes, press breaks, late game situations down down three
with only two foul shot attempts available, and what we're
going to do where we're going to miss the shot,
how we're going to react to that. So all those
things we're trying to get in so that the last
practice we could go play a game, and then when
(05:34):
we come back then we really break down, you know,
all of these aspects that we've already put in, we
break them down and we start talking more about timing,
we start talking more about third.
Speaker 5 (05:46):
And fourth reads.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
So that's kind of how we use our summer segment.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
There's so many crossovers. This is one of the reasons
I was stoped to have you on, you know, with
basketball and football, and I think I spatial awareness just
right off the jump. We're evaluating for the draft and
we're watching slot receivers. That's going to be a big
component of their success at the next level. Tight ends
the same thing. Can they feel are they aware? It's
it's it's a natural thing. I'm curious in basketball a
(06:11):
how important is spatial awareness and be can it be
taught or is it you got it or you don't
have it?
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Well, certainly, I think the second part of the question
DJ like spatial awareness, So you have it or not?
I think that the great players have it and it's
kind of innate their their basketball IQ.
Speaker 5 (06:29):
I worked for Chuck Dale and he used to.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Talk about basketball geniuses, you know, and he and and
those were guys that understood spacing, when to slide away
if the balls dribbled at you. But I but I
do think that you know, you can teach some of
these things as well, when to cut, when not to cut.
But I do think the great players certainly have it.
And like when we think about spatial awareness, soccer and
(06:54):
hockey have been two things that we've kind of studied
as far as space awareness, showing our team film of
those other sports and how it correlates.
Speaker 5 (07:05):
To our game.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
What real quick I want to piggyback on that we
talk about and Bucks heard this a million times, but
as a quarterback, I always like guys, we always say, hey,
show me, you got to give me your numbers, Like
show me your numbers, like make yourself big? Is that
I know the language is probably different, but is there
a correlation with that type of thinking in basketball in
terms of making yourself a big target.
Speaker 5 (07:26):
Yeah, for sure. I think.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
You know, like with post players, we talk about goalposts,
you know, getting your hands up, palm showed. We talk about,
you know, shooting pockets in other words, having your hand
ready to catch and shoot, and how that can have
an effect on the passer. You know, if you have
your knees bent and you're shot ready, it certainly makes
(07:49):
the ball handler, you know, his his his brain is
thinking past to a guy who's ready to shoot, rather
than a guy that's standing there with his hands on
his hip. That guy's probably not going to get many passes.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Coach basketball in DJ and I both like huge basketball fans.
It's so interesting to see the changing dynamic. And so
you mentioned having only one returning player coming back when
we as leaders always prod ourselves in creating and establishing cultures.
How do you do that when it's such a transient
nature in the college game right now?
Speaker 5 (08:30):
Yeah, Bucky, I think it's daily.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
You know, it's it's because like we never wait on
a player like if our what I mean by that
is if our bus time to leave for practice on
the road, or our bus time to leave for a
game is three o'clock for a six thirty tip.
Speaker 5 (08:49):
I don't do a head count.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
I don't look back and say, hey, who's here, Who's
like at two point fifty nine, we know the bus
is pulling out, And so for us, I think that's
the beginning of culture, is respecting the time. But what
I've done is I've tried to pull clips from all
sports that are talking about being on time, like there's
(09:11):
a chancey billups quote put an address on it. In
other words, in timeouts, I want our players to understand
when I address them in the time out, I'm not
going to generalize. I'm not going to say, hey, we
need to play better defense. I'm gonna look a player
in the eye and I'm going to say like, hey T,
will you have to play better defense? Or hey T,
(09:31):
will you have to get in better help position? And
so all those things, Bucky. What we try to do
is we try to incorporate that over the summer, and
it's going to be a learning process, Like somebody might
be late and then they're going to find out that
they're not allowed to practice that day. And so I
think that you establish a culture daily. It certainly becomes
(09:52):
more and more challenging when you don't have a player
run locker room, because we all know that when the
players control the locker room and control the culture, it's
a much better culture than a culture that's led by
the coaching staff.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
I've heard coaches say over the years, you want a
tough team, then go out and get tough players like
you can try and make guys tough once you get
them there. But it's nice to find guys that have
that wiring and the way they're put together. In the
football scouting side of it, that's we're always trying to
find the makeup the wiring. I'm curious, as someone who's
been in the NBA, what is the difference in trying
(10:27):
to understand the wiring of a college kid versus I
cannot imagine how in the world you can dig in
and find out enough about a high school kid and
how they're wired.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Yeah, I mean, DJ, That's that's something that we talk
about in our staff meeting, recruiting meetings all the time
because just look at the NFL draft, look at you know,
the NBA draft, right, there's mistakes made and those guys
have much more body of work they have private eyes
looking at that players. They have players that they send
on campuses to talk to strength coaches and you know,
(10:59):
trainer and they'll walk around campus and observe how somebody
goes to class. And so they have all this body
of work and still make you know, a lot of mistakes.
Speaker 4 (11:09):
Every year, every year.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
And yet in college you know, our fan bases expect
us to hit on one hundred percent when we're trying
to project where a guy is going to be both
college football, you know, college basketball, all the collegiate sports,
and then you look at Major League Baseball draft there
are a lot of misses. And why there's a lot
of misses because they're drafting players that are much younger
(11:34):
than the NFL and much younger than NBA draft picks.
For the most part. Same thing in the NHL draft,
there's more mistakes. So for us, it's about how do
you dig into the character as much as you possibly can?
You bring up the toughness part of that aspect DJ
For us, we actually want players that have played other
sports when they were younger. I know that you know
(11:57):
today's landscape is players focus on on sport, But I
look at a player like Anthony Black that played for US.
He was a one and done player at the University
of Arkansas. He was a great wide receiver in high
school football as a freshman in sophomore and that made
us really really dive into his recruitment much more than
(12:21):
some other guys because we knew that as a point guard,
having played football, he would understand film study much better
than basketball players. He would understand discipline, toughness. Because you know,
the truth of the matter is the football coaches are
the best coaches in the world. They're the most organized coaches.
They have more players they have to deal with. The
(12:43):
way that they structure practice is much more organized, much
more detailed than any other sport that I've ever observed.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
You know, Coach, is so interesting that you're talking about
the point guard and you're talking about toughness and intelligence
and those things. Obviously, in football, the quarterback is the
one that has that. So I want to use your
experiences with point guards in the past to talk about
the ideal characteristics and qualities that you want not only
from that person as a player, but as a leader,
(13:13):
because we are struggling to find quarterbacks and what are
the intangible qualities that separate the good from the great ones.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Yes, so it starts in our recruiting process. We actually
will put up NBA clips and then we'll have the
player walk us through the reads the of where the
ball is. We'll have him actually do reads on cutting. Basically,
it's a you know, it's a small version of like
(13:42):
an IQ test, but only talking about basketball.
Speaker 5 (13:46):
And then once the player leaves, will meet.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
As a staff and kind of rank them one through
ten on basketball field basketball IQ. But I think from
the point guard position, number one is can he lead
your team? Can he be an extension of the head coach?
Does he have unbelievable discipline, unbelievable work ethic? And then
maybe just as important as any of those is will
(14:10):
the locker room respect him? Is a big, big key.
And then how does that player react when things are
not going his way? Because all eyes are going to
go right away to your leader, to your point guard,
to your quarterback, to the pitcher, to the catcher. That's
where eyes are going to. And how can a player
(14:31):
handle those situations when things are not going his way?
Because the last thing you want as a leader, if
you're down in the game to exhibit any characteristics of
not having great will to win, not playing the full clock.
All those things become extremely important from a leadership standpoint
when you're talking about certain positions.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
I know there's buzzwords that get used and you see
him in business books and you hear them from coaches
all the time. But we've talked about a couple things,
and first and foremost, I would say grit is a
word that I love it. I don't think it's cliche.
I think it's real. I think you can see it.
How do you quantify it and how do you continue
to develop it.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Yeah, we use the word because so many people. Obviously
the Detroit Lions have really used that word grid a lot.
We've shown our team clips of their coaching staff talking
about it.
Speaker 5 (15:24):
We use the word sewer rats, and.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
The reason we use that is I was being a
little bit soft to a loose ball when I was
in sixth grade, and after the game, I got in
the car with my dad and my dad said, you
need to play like a sewer rat. We kind of
talked about what a sewer rat really was, and so
(15:50):
for us, it's diving on the floor for loose balls.
It's having the ability to take charges. It's also the
toughness when you're down. You know, as a coach, some
of the some of the greatest things that have ever
happened to me are down twenty five points at New
Mexico with nine minutes to go and knowing that our
(16:11):
team didn't quit and we came back and had one
of the greatest comebacks in the last fifty years of college.
It's playing in the NCAA Tournament to Texas and we're
down ten with like three and a half minutes to go,
and we don't quit and come back and win. It's
being down twenty two points in an NCAA Tournament game
the Cincinnati and that stuff is going to start with
us now because we're going to show those clips of
(16:34):
these comebacks, not just that we've had in the past,
but comebacks and other sports. To talk about the mental
toughness because it's easy, you know, to go through the
motions and to say, oh, we have another game coming,
and so I think the mental toughness you can also
do it in some of your drills.
Speaker 5 (16:52):
In practice.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Sometimes we'll do close out drills where we're actually closing
out with a high hand with weights. You know, my
dad had his and we can't do it in today's world.
But my dad had his starting unit at the University
of Minnesota practice most days with a weighted vest while
the second third team did not practice in a.
Speaker 5 (17:11):
Weight When you're competing.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
In one group has a weighted vest and another team
doesn't have a weighted vest, and my dad used to
call it the overload system, and and and and then
some days he would have the starter's practice. You know,
they used to have the old ankle weights. Ers would
practice with ankle weights the starters and not the backup.
So we're not going to that drastic extreme, but certainly
(17:36):
to try to put your players maybe in certain situations
where you're down ten with X amount of minutes left
and can you overcome that? Or rebounding drills where there's
a where there's a bubble on the rim and you
got to get five rebounds to get out of the drill.
So certainly there are ways, you know, to to try
to create mental toughness, both through film work, through discussions,
(17:58):
and then on floor stuff as well. Well.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
You know, coach, one of the things that i'morrey about
you is your ability to, i would say, continue to
evolve as a coach. After spending time at the pro level,
you make your way to the collegiate game and you've
really grown in blossom. But during your time and way
when you made the decision to leave pro sports in
to go to college, what were you looking for when
you made that decision, and how have you evolved from
(18:23):
your initial years as an NBA coach?
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Yeah, so I think that I've evolved every year, even
while I was in the NBA. Constant learner. I would
much rather learn, grow and evolve through coaches of other sports.
You know, we had two scholarships open last week. The
first phone call that I made after I met with
our own staff was to Michael Lombardi to ask Michael
(18:51):
his thought process on and I told him the player's name,
where is from, and all that, but it was kind
of irrelevant. Phil Nevin, who was a former manager in
the Angels, I asked them all the time questions about
recruiting and building a team. So I hoped to you
know that we're always constantly evolving. But for me, at
(19:11):
that particular time, I did not want to go back
and be an assistant coach at the NBA level. I
had been fired from the Sacramento Kings. I wanted to
be a dad. I was recently divorced, so I wanted
to be around my two sons and be engaged with
them on a daily basis. So I took three years off,
and it gave me time to really evaluate where I
wanted to go in my career. I went spent two
(19:34):
years at Arizona State as an assistant coach. I thought
for sure if I was there one year that as
a two time NBA head coach, that I would get
a college job. I sent resumes, made phone calls to
places like Campbell and San Jose, and I could not
get a job because the lack of respect amongst athletic
(19:54):
directors for the for the pro level went to LSU,
and that helped me get the Nevada job. So perseverance
is certainly super important, and then not just evolving. But
you know, I went in a totally different direction from
the way that I was raised. I was raised by
a coach. I was raised by one of the all
(20:16):
time great disciplinarian coaches. And then I got very active
on social media. I was at University of Nevada. I
wanted to try to take Nevada to a final four,
which is, you know, a little bit unheard of. But
we did get to a sweet six, and we did
get seventeen straight weeks ranked in the top ten. And
in order to do that, social media became a big
platform for us to recruit nationally.
Speaker 5 (20:39):
So I went.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
From being in a super you know, discipline environment to
trying to be super creative and go way outside the box.
And so evolving, becoming better learning from others is certainly
part not just of I don't think just of leadership
or sports, but any walk of life or any field
(21:02):
is to try to get better and improve and learn
from others.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
All right, let's take a quick pause and we'll get
right back to our conversation with USC head coach Eric Musselman.
If we have some football only folks that are listening
or watching right now. By the way, if you haven't
seen coach coach, it is high energy. It is it
is always always on eleven and he gets the most
(21:28):
out of his guys, Which is going to get me
to my next question. Because I haven't been around Andy Reid,
I don't think people would associate Andy with kind of
a little bit of a stoic you know, you know, look,
if you're just watching games on TV. But Andy has
phenomenal energy and he I remember I always have told
the story he said in one of our draft meetings
one year, We're talking about a player and he said, guys, remember,
(21:48):
everybody we bring into this building is going to bring
energy into this building or they are going to suck
energy from this building. So keep that in mind as
we're bringing guys in. And I think of coaches that
are getting their opportunity in the end. Coach, you were
such a young head coach. I think about Ben Johnson,
who's going to get a chance with the Chicago Bears,
who has been creative, has been energetic. I mean, what's
(22:09):
your advice to someone like that? Where I think there
may be is a little pressure to be like, Okay,
well now I'm in the big chair and now I've
got to kind of tone it down and I've got
to kind of be a little bit more of a senator.
What would your advice, not just to him specifically, but
just to any coach as they're getting a step into
that chair for the first time.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Well, this a little bit off subject, but in the
same realm, DJ so, Tom Thibodau and I are very really.
My father brought coach Thibodeau into the NBA and I got,
you know, an opportunity before I was forty years old
with two NBA teams as a head coach. Tom didn't
(22:47):
get his first NBA head job until he was over fifty.
Speaker 4 (22:51):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Nobody realizes that coach Chuck Daily really never got an
opportunity as a head coach until he was after fifty
years old, and he was a Hall of Fame coach coach.
Speaker 5 (23:00):
And I bring that up because when I.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Got my opportunity in my thirties, I did not know
half of what I know now.
Speaker 5 (23:10):
And so.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
I told Tom, I said, when you get your job,
and it became true, when you get your job, watched
you're going to be an NBA head coach longer than
I was because he was more mature, h he had
seen and worked for multiple people. Where I had a
small sample size of who I had worked for. I
(23:33):
had a small sample size of the superstars that I
was around. And so that all becomes a part of
being a great coach. And so, you know, the one
thing that I would say, you know, for any young coaches,
you've got to be super humble.
Speaker 5 (23:48):
You got to.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Understand that that it can be taken away from you
in a in a in a heartbeat. And then I
would say, surround yourself with veteran head coaches. I think
that's really really important. I was surrounded by great coaches.
My assistant coaches in the NBA, David Fizdale who went on.
Speaker 5 (24:07):
To coach three and the us the USD guys, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Guy, Jim Boyling who went on to be an NBA
head coach. Scottie Brooks was a coach obviously in Oklahoma City,
and so I had all these great assistant coaches, but
they were right around my same age.
Speaker 5 (24:27):
And one of.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Our assistant coaches was was Hank Egan, who was my
college coach. But then coach Egan had walked away and retired.
He did the same thing to Mike Brown. He did
the same thing Greg Popovich, and he did the same
thing to me. He would work for a while and
then retire and then come back and be an assistant
with one of his former players. But I think having
(24:51):
an older coach is super important. I watched the Dynamics
this year with Jeff Van Gundy on the bench with
the Clippers and coach tylu and I think that that
stuff is super super important, especially as a young coach,
because the natural thing is to hire people that are
around your same age, but they're going to have the
(25:11):
same thought process.
Speaker 5 (25:13):
I always tell.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
The story Chuck Daily could predict the future, and when
I was young and in my twenties and working for him,
I couldn't figure out how he knew what was coming.
He would know when when we were going to go
on a losing streak. He would know which referees we're
going to have a good whistle on the road, to
which referees we're gonna have a bad whistle on the road.
He could project when our players would be tired. Well,
(25:35):
it was just through experience, and certainly for any young coach,
I think that's super important to have somebody that can
project and predict what's about to come around the corner.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
You know, coach, I'm I'm so curious because you've manned
so many different teams in the NBA and at the
collegiate level. Are you one who believes in I'm going
to build my system around the players. Well, I'm going
to recruit players to fit the system that I want
to run.
Speaker 5 (26:02):
Well, I think Budgye. It's two things.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
One, at the pro level, most times you don't have
the it's not your.
Speaker 4 (26:11):
You get what you get.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
As you say to kids, you get what you get
and you don't throw a fit. That's little kid.
Speaker 5 (26:17):
It was awesome.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
It's great for Greg Pofovitz all those years because kind
of draft and what he wanted and he was you know,
it was kind of his show both as a GM
and and coach. But yeah, I would say that as
a coach in today's professional world, you're going to have
to adapt to the players. It's really all about the
(26:39):
player strength. It's not about you know, your scheme. Certainly,
if if players fit into your scheme, that that that
makes it, you know, easier. But I think you really
got to. You know, you got to whoever you're coaching.
I mean in our sport and basketball. If you're coaching
a basketball team that's got a good interior play and
(27:00):
you're a coach that likes to play a free flowing well,
that's you got to adapt obviously, because you know, coaching
is somewhat overrated, but somewhat underrated.
Speaker 5 (27:11):
What I mean by that is.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
While the game's going on, there's adjustments there's things that
happen at halftime that are super important. But if you
don't have players that are like have this artistic ability
to break schemes, you're not gonna win. No matter how
great your scheme is. It's always about a player who
can make a play outside of the scheme that really
(27:34):
takes you to the next level. We all think it's coaching,
but in reality, it's talent and then how that talent
is meshed together and how you can kind of stay
out of the super talented players way. You know, Like
when I coach Gilbert Arenez, it was always about allowing
him to do what he does and never getting in
(27:55):
his way. And I think that's super super important and
it's kind of under talked about, and I kind of
see that going on in today's NBA world with the
Indiana Pacers. Coach Carlisle is a super disciplined player or coach,
but he's really allowing his teams to play and giving
them freedom with reads and things that are not being
(28:16):
controlled by the sideline coach.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
I want to follow up on that because you took
me to where I want to go with the Indiana Pacers.
So Rick Carlisle obviously watching him in college because he
was a UVA and I'm a Carolina fan.
Speaker 4 (28:27):
But he has always coached a team in a certain way.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
He was always more half quarterly in defensive friendly And
now I'm looking at this Indiana Pacer team that seems
to be a drastic departure from what he's always done
coaching wise. Then they're up tempo, they pressure the ball
ninety four feet, they play fast. As a coach, how
hard is it for you to switch styles or switch
schemes when you've always kind of been reared one way
(28:53):
to didn't think about.
Speaker 4 (28:54):
Approaching the game a different way. How does that happen
for coach? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (28:58):
I think the way it happens is just, you know,
studying other teams. Like right now, a lot of NBA
people are watching, especially for offense. They're watching teams in
Europe because the ball is moving more. And then quite frankly,
if you watch WNBA, the ball moves more, the spacing
is a little bit better. There's not as much isolation play,
(29:19):
there's not as much defensive loading up because the ball
is constantly moving, people are constantly touching it. And what
coach Carlisle's done is he has extended the defense to
pick up and pressure more, which is also what Oklahoma
City Thunder are doing. Now watch what will happen next
year in the NBA in training everybody everybody, because what
(29:44):
happened when Phil Jackson ran the triangle is everybody would
run the triangle. Not everybody, but ten to twelve teams
would run the triangle in training camp and they'd have
to get out of it. And I kind of bucky
when I got the King Sacramento King job. They had
kind of run this elbow action with coach Adelman, and
(30:05):
we got about ten games in and Jeff Petrie, the
general manager, called me in and started diagramming some of
coach coach out of stuff, and I said, hey, man,
I don't know that stuff inside out.
Speaker 5 (30:18):
I can't teach it. I don't feel comfortable.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
I can look at a playbook, but it's got to
be innate where I really believe in it and I
really feel good about teaching it. And so I think
that in order for somebody to adapt like coach Carlisle has,
he's really got to believe in it. He's really got
to buy into it. And then what he's done is
that's what his roster. That's what his talent is suited for.
(30:42):
And he's been willing to adjust because Rick played for
my dad with the Albany Patroons. Rick was a super
disciplined player too. He was all about cutting at the
right time, and he was not a high gambler on
offense or defense. And that's how he coached the first
fifteen And now all of a sudden, it's completely different
(31:03):
than the way he played, and completely different than the
way he's coached prior.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
Yeah, this is all fascinating to me thinking about you know,
one of the things you mentioned earlier was, gosh, only
one returning player two years in a row. Now we've
talked about some of the greatest offenses in NFL history.
If you look at you know, look at the Peyton
Manning Colts and look at what the Patriots grew into
later in Tom's career. One of the benefits was they
just kept stacking. You had the same offense, you know,
(31:28):
the same voice in their ear for the majority of
that time, and they could just keep building and building
and building, and there was so much of a rolodex
of plays and any type they saw a new defense,
they go to the sideline. Okay, we saw this three
years ago. We can go from there and I think
about a brand new team over here. Do you see
it at the end of the year that you're able
to do things you know that you just simply couldn't
(31:49):
do in the early portion of the season because now
you actually have some experience together.
Speaker 5 (31:54):
Yeah, for a show.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
I think one of the teams and we have had,
you know, when I first got to the that it
was how are we going to be different? Like, we're
not going to get a five star at Nevada. We
eventually did get the first McDonald's All American and five
star there, but the first couple of years we had
a lot of transfers, so we were way ahead of
this transfer a game, so to speak, as was Fred
(32:16):
Hoiberg when he was at Iowa State. Interestingly, two coaches
that came from the NBA dove into the portal. It
wasn't even a portal then, but the transfer market. And
I think it's because that's much like free agency and
professional sports, and so the teams that improved towards the
(32:37):
end of the year, I think those are teams oftentimes,
those are teams that have higher changeover in their rosters,
because we know, like in November, even this year coming up,
we certainly should not be the same team in November
that we are in January. A lot of it has
to do with when can you really do the bulk
(32:58):
of important teaching. It's really when your own team's playing.
I mean, you can go through all this stuff in
the summer, but it's you know, the mistakes that are
made in game with your current roster is really when
I believe you can really grab the attention of your players.
And so if you've been together like the Patriots were
(33:19):
a year after year after year, and you have wide
receivers and the same court, it certainly your adjustments become
much easier. And when you don't have that, it becomes
much more challenging. But you certainly need to grow as
the season goes on. And I think that's why we
have had really good March success in the past. We've
(33:40):
actually played better in the postseason.
Speaker 5 (33:42):
Even this year.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
You know, we went to a tournament called the Crown.
I thought we played better there than we did certainly
in November and December.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
You know, Coach, when I was young, I just retired,
I read a book from Brick Patino called success is
a choice, and one of the things he talked about
was the importance of conditions, strength and conditioning and how
important it is to a turnaround. In football, the strength
coach is oftentimes viewed as the most important part of
the program because he touches the players.
Speaker 4 (34:10):
He impacts it.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
In basketball, how important is the strength and conditioning aspect.
Are you able to maybe make up for some talent
deficiencies by having a superior conditioning program that allows you
maybe to play a little differently in those things?
Speaker 5 (34:29):
For sure?
Speaker 1 (34:29):
Like in basketball, you know when you look at like
the best conditioned if you just like looked at the
last twenty years, like the best conditioned team is usually
the Miami Heat. You know, pat Riley had always had
a conditioning test. Doc rivers teams are usually in great
condition because he took that heat test and continued to
(34:51):
use that same conditioning test for US collegiately. Because bodies
are still changing both college football, college basketb ball. Our
strength coach is super super important.
Speaker 5 (35:02):
He is the guy that.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
You know is with our players, especially in the summer,
the same amount of time as I'm with our players.
So his voice, his message becomes just as important as
as as the head coach's voice. And then I do
think you can change. And we've seen the numbers change
jumping not much, but but you can see an increase
in jump. You can see an increase in lateral foot speed.
(35:29):
And then certainly weight, whether it's weight loss or weight gain,
depending on what a player needs. That is is super
important at the collegiate level as well. But when we
went to hire a strength coach, I wanted to get
someone with with pro experience. So our current strength coach
was with three NBA teams. But most importantly, he's always
(35:52):
coming up with something new.
Speaker 5 (35:54):
He's a new wave thinker.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
We don't lift weights like most program is much more
of a pro mentality. How we lift, you know, with
with elastic bands and core stuff, and so I do think.
Speaker 5 (36:10):
That you can.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
You've got that weight Room's got to be super super important.
And then for us, we do a mile test every year.
You've got to pass it under a certain or else
you continue to run it. And so it allows the
guys the eight weeks over the summer to get ready.
Once we get back together in late late August early September, it.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
Is impressive to see how some of these guys are
put together though some of these colleges, I don't know.
I know, I know you're in the Big Ten now, coach,
but you're in the SEC. We Bucky and I was
talking with this turn of the time we get a
turn time. They have a different weight room for SEC
basketball and everybody else in the country, Like just body
type wise, as scouts, we can't get away from it.
We're just looking at body types the whole time. But
it does feel like there is a difference in terms of,
(36:50):
you know, what people in different programs are working with.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
No, the SEC is super athletic, super physical in basketball,
and the Big Ten is very very physical, you know
a little bit uh size is a little bit more important,
meaning sized, you know, height wise, whereas in the SEC,
it's it's reaction to loose balls. It's it's you know,
(37:13):
a faster paced game than what I've seen in the
Big Ten. If you just had to generalize.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Is that is going back to your time in the SEC.
Is the reason for like the SEC's dominant baseball, I
mean they got thing half the tournament field, it seems like,
and then look at basketball to rise over the last
ten years, is this is this is football and origin
there in terms of revenue producing that led to this
or is that totally unrelated? Just so happens that all
these sports have all come up together in that conference
(37:40):
at the same time.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
Well, and so I was in the SEC for five
years in that time, and it started right kind of
right around the time that the first league meetings that
I was part of. Commissioner Sank wanted basketball, uh to
equal football as much as possible, you know, I mean
when he when he made that comment, we knew that
(38:04):
football was always going to be king. That's that goes
without saying. But I think Commissioner Sank, in his own way, however,
he did it let athletic directors know the importance of
bringing in maybe coaches resources to men's basketball and and
and that's what I saw in my time. Every year
(38:26):
there was a league meeting, I really looked forward to
when Commissioner Sankee would come in the room. I thought
that basketball was was was something that that that he
wanted to be really to grow from where it was,
because you know, fifteen years ago SEC basketball was not
anything close to what it is now. And then you
look at what's happened with SEC baseball, they're sold out.
(38:48):
You go to Baseball State sold out, You go to
an LSU baseball game sold out, You go to bumb
Walker Stadium in Arkansas, sold out. And then you look
at legendary coach that are coaching. You know, in the
SEC baseball programs. The Vanderbilt coach is a great baseball
coach to study, Coach Corbin. So that league has done
(39:10):
a great job. The gymnastics, you know, when you look
at gymnastics in the SEC, they've done a great job
with all their sports, as has the Big Ten. I
think those are the two premiere conferences right now when
you look at athletic programs as.
Speaker 3 (39:26):
A whole, your coach, I want to tap into your
experience because you talked about you know so much more
now than you did when you were a younger coach
heading the team, and I want to talk about the
tough moments that you ultimately face in a season where
maybe you have a multiple game losing streak or you're
coming off a disappointing campaign and you're standing in front
of the team trying to turn it around. As an
(39:48):
experience coach, what are the things that you're thinking about
when your team is struggling and you're trying to get
them back on track.
Speaker 4 (39:54):
How do you approach those situations?
Speaker 1 (39:56):
Well, Bucky, I would say, like the importance of you
talked about You made a comment about standing in front
of your team. So when we moved to San Diego,
my dad was the head coach of the Minnesota Gophers.
We moved to San Diego. It's going to be his
first time ever coaching at the professional level, so he's
coaching in the ABA, the San Diego Sales. Well, I
(40:19):
kept come home from school and there's an older gentleman
meeting with my dad and they're having an in depth conversation.
I'm on the couch listening while they're at the kitchen table.
It was Paul Brown, Oh, my dad, And the part
I heard was for about an hour. Paul Brown was
(40:40):
talking to my father about the importance of the very
first team meeting and how there was going to be
a group of professional players sitting there and they were
going to judge and evaluate how much you could help
their careers grow and put money in their pockets based
on your knowledge and the scheme you were going to
put them in that conversation and then to hear my
(41:03):
dad years and years later reiterate that conversation and the
lessons he learned. Every time I go before the team,
I am prepared. Nothing's off the cuff. Obviously, in game,
things are off the cuff because things are happening that
you got to address in the timeout that you got
to address in live time. But if it's a team
meeting pre practice, if it's a team meeting post practice,
(41:26):
that stuff's already been addressed in my own mind or
with the staff because of hearing Paul Brown many many,
many years ago talk to my dad about the importance
of a player's antenna and how they were going to
evaluate everything that comes out of your mouth. So, as
an experienced coach, I think you have a much different lens,
and it's a longer term lens than as a younger coach.
(41:49):
When you're a younger coach trying to prove yourself, you're
so much in the moment that you can't see three
to four games down the road. And Chuck Daly was
phenomenal that Mike Furtella was phenomenal at that about understanding
you know, like, hey, we I mean Chuck Daly put
would put would put a play in for a player
(42:12):
knowing the player was going to fail in a timeout
so that the player wouldn't complain in a future game
about not getting the ball. So wow, he literally would know, like,
all right, this guy's being defended by a great defender.
He's been complaining about not getting the ball in pick
and roll play. I'm going to put him in pick
and roll play against two great pick and roll defenders,
(42:35):
and now I don't have to hear this guy complain.
That's fantastic a lessons that Chuck would deliver on some
of these things. We had a player that he never
wanted to sub out in live ball action because he
felt like that player would let's say that the dead
(42:58):
ball was furthest away from the bench. The player would
would then be subbed out and he could walk all
the way to the bench slowly. He could be verbalizing
with his lips his unhappiness. So Chuck would diagram a
play for this particular player, and then before we broke
the huddle, he would say, Hey, let me give you
(43:19):
a blow right now and put so and so in
for you, because Chuck felt like that player couldn't demonstrate
his displeasure.
Speaker 5 (43:25):
For coming genius.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
It's genius. So he literally would sub this particular player
out in huddles almost every time. He never sent a
guy down on the scores table to sub in for
the guy because he didn't want National TV to see.
You know, he was a genius in every little detail
you could possibly think.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
That is fantastic. By the way, we've got to step
our game up in football. On nicknames, Buck, I'm just
just over the course of this conversation we've got we've
talked about the mayor Fred Hoiberg. In this conversation, we
talked about the bar of the telestrater, Mike Fotello. I
think baket Ball's got us a nickname, and the.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
Player I'm talking about the coach didn't want to sub out.
I don't mind saying it because he's a friend of
mine now, but that was mad Max.
Speaker 4 (44:12):
It's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
I can understand that one. I think I remember seeing
some of those over the years on Vernon Maxwell. Last
one from me, coach, I'll let Bucky hit you at
the final one. But we've talked forever. I know in scouting,
Bucky and I have told the story about seeing Antonio
Gates early in training camp that first year with the
Chargers when we were out scouting preseason games, and we've
seen you know, Tony Gonzalez. There is a long list
(44:36):
of successful basketball players that have crossed over. I feel
like we haven't seen as much of it lately. And
I pose this question to someone on the basketball side,
and they said, because these guys can go to Europe
and make so much money that that's kind of been
the barrier to entry of Like, man, I'm gonna try
you in this NFL thing, but man, I've got this,
this this contract waiting for me overseas. Is there a
way we can get it going again? Can we do
(44:56):
something to get this funnel of these six foot five
post players that have no future in the in the NBA,
get him back over to football.
Speaker 5 (45:03):
I hope.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
So we had actually Simeon Rice's son, Jordan Caroline, played
for me. He was an unbelievable basketball player. Jordan was Uh.
Simeon thinks he's a great basketball player. He still plays,
but Jordan.
Speaker 5 (45:20):
Was a great college player.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
He worked out and played on the Lakers summer league
team and then he went overseas. But he would have
been I think he could have been an Antonio Gates
type player. I think he could have been an All
Pro football player. But he's been playing over in Italy
and Spain. He's actually got a house over there and
live in a great life. But that is why guys
(45:43):
won't do it. Jordan just didn't didn't want to try
the the NFL route. He wanted to try NBA and
then go overseas. But we had a player a couple
of years ago at Arkansas by the name of Trey Wade,
and he actually tried out with two NFL teams. His
knowledge of run past patterns and stuff was just too
far behind.
Speaker 5 (46:03):
But from a at.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
Least the feedback I got from the two NFL teams,
where that is athleticism, strength, toughness, all of that, he
actually could have probably been a starter based on talent,
but he just lacked understanding what the position.
Speaker 5 (46:18):
You know, like, the longer he was.
Speaker 1 (46:20):
There and the more detail oriented the training camp became,
the less impactful he has gained.
Speaker 5 (46:27):
Translated.
Speaker 4 (46:29):
It goes last thing.
Speaker 3 (46:30):
I just would love one nugget of advice that you
would give to any aspiring coach, something that someone passed
along to you that you feel compelled to share with
the next generation of aspiring coaches.
Speaker 1 (46:43):
Well, this probably doesn't this doesn't have to do with
necessarily just being a head coach. But when I was
in elementary school, my mom would pack my lunch in
a brown paper bag. She put the turkey sandwich and
the lazed potato chips and before she you know, finished pack.
And my dad would always write effort, energy, enthusiasm every
(47:05):
single day, you know. And I got the junior high
and I'm like, Dad, I don't want to walk around
with the brown bag that says effort, energy, and enthusiasm.
But he did it all the way until I got
to high school. And then at that point I said,
you know what, I'm gonna buy my lunch instead.
Speaker 5 (47:19):
Of bringing that paper. That's that's the one.
Speaker 1 (47:24):
That's the one thing that we talk to our team about.
I talked to our coaching staff just you know, if
you can bring energy, bring enthusiasm, and bring effort, and
then the fourth E is always execution. Those four e's
are are super impactful to our program and anybody associated.
You know, even in my house, like my wife, she
knows she's got to bring energy every day, bring enthusiasm,
(47:44):
my daughter. That's just kind of how we how we
live our life or try to.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
We both worked with your wife, and we know unbelievable,
unbelievable person with unbelievable energy. By the way, the next
at least from our standpoint, being around her, the next
bad day where she's not smiling will be the first fly.
So fun to be around. She never had a bad day.
Speaker 1 (48:04):
Man.
Speaker 5 (48:05):
Yeah, anyway, and she's my best recruiter.
Speaker 4 (48:07):
Oh, I bet she is.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
And by the way, your daughter, we feel like just
just from keeping up with you guys over the years,
I feel like I've watched her completely grow up, and
I'm like, I don't know how in the world she's
so big now. I feel like I'm five years old.
Speaker 5 (48:19):
I'm one DJ.
Speaker 1 (48:21):
This is super this is this is tough on a coach, right,
Like all these NCAA tournament runs, my daughter gets hired,
you know, to do like some of their social media
some way, shape or form. And so the last two years,
like this year, we get like halfway through the year
and we haven't made the tournament. The last two years,
she goes, Dad, this is January, are we gonna make
(48:41):
the NCAA tournament? All she cares about is getting FaceTime during.
Speaker 4 (48:50):
Well, she's sneaking ahead. Man. She can.
Speaker 2 (48:52):
Hey, she can do whatever the heck she wants to go.
With the experience that she's got growing up, she's gonna
be I'll bet on that one. I'll sign up to
be her agent. Just let me know when that job
will come available. Hey, Coach, this is I mean, this
is one of the things I love about. We've just
got pages and pages and notes here that help us
not only as people in the sports world, but I
think there's some great nuggets in here in life in general.
So we're big fans of yours and we really appreciate
(49:15):
all the time you gave us today.
Speaker 1 (49:16):
Yeah, DJ Bucky, Thanks, it's awesome joining you guys.
Speaker 4 (49:19):
Appreciate it. Man, Thanks Coach.
Speaker 5 (49:21):
Thanks guys,
Hosts And Creators
Daniel Jeremiah
Bucky Brooks
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.