The Basketball Podcast: EP240 with Ted Hotaling on Basketball Solutions

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Ted Hotaling Coach Quotes:

“I think our job as coaches is to evaluate ourselves and try to find better solutions to help our players . . we’re trying to get to the point where we’re helping our players as best as we can.”

“We’re just trying to coach and correct the right things . . I think as you get older as a coach and you evolve, you have to pick and decide what things you are really going to emphasize. For me, it’s always what causes you to lose . . we’re going to try and coach those things every single day and, when we see them, we’re going to try and address and correct them immediately.”

“If you don’t correct things that are important to you, it gives your players an indication that maybe it’s not that important to winning.”

“There has to be some sort of teaching point with the turnovers and not just point out the mistake or error, there has to be a teaching point to it . . there’s no gray area . . this is something that we all need to see, this is how we’re going to correct it.”

“Offense is one thing: two to the ball, make a great decision. That’s it. That’s all you have to do to be a good offensive team. Obviously, the passing, the catching, the layup-making, and the shooting is important, but we’re just trying to bring two to the ball.”

“We don’t have a problem confronting our guys about, ‘This is good for you, but not good for him.’ It’s not the same for everybody. We’re pretty direct with that conversation.”

“If you have a system that you can fall back on, it can serve as your talent . . when we have good talent, we have less sophistication with our offense. When we have lesser talent, it’s more sophisticated with the offense with more play calling.”

“As you evolve as a coach, you’re always trying to do less, and do it at a more effective way.”

“You’re trying to design a system that helps your players play well. You want it to be sophisticated, but not complicated, but not so simple where it’s not useful. We’re always trying to take away.”

“I think you’re constantly trying to receive data to try to help your players play better, and help them win. And when you talk too much, it’s really hard to do that. For me, how I’ve evolved is just letting things happen; watching more, interrupting less, and being really confident in saying we can address it tomorrow, or I can address it with him after practice. Or I can create a drill for that in some way or shape pre practice for this young man.”

“If you ask any player what they want, they want to play more and they want to drill less. Now, it has to be a good balance there . . and I think we can coach out of that more effectively. We get more on film . . It’s hard to film drills because they’re playing the drill. But when you play 5-on-5, we’re also getting a ton more data because we can watch practice film and have more data to show them.”

“You’re trying to find them doing something well. That’s the key to teaching. It’s easy to constantly correct . . you’re trying to find something to give them the belief that they can do this.”

“You want to be great at both [offense and defense], that’s how you win. That’s how you win in the NBA. That’s how you win in college. You have to be a great offensive team and a great defensive team. And you have to try to marry your philosophy together, where you can be efficient in both areas . . We’re trying to be top five in efficiency on both offense and defense.”

“We were trying to minimize our mistakes with recruiting and get the right people in the program. And then we just overhauled the program as far as what we believe in, and what were the behaviors that we were going to attach to those values.”

“What we’re trying to coach every single day is our players’ response to positive and negative events and trying to coach them through that, trying to get them into a place of neutrality where they’re neutral about it and not up and down.”

Ted Hotaling Breakdown:

1:00 – Basketball Solution To Our Questions
5:00 – Silence Condense
8:00 – Skill Execution
10:00 – Connection
13:00 – Three Seconds
15:00 – Clips of Turnover
17:00 – Advance Stats
21:00 – Shot Selection
23:00 – System and Talent
26:00 – Practice
28:00 – Game of Change
27:32 – 28:18 – Membership Sales Ad
30:00 – Time Management
32:00 – Playing More 5-on-5
35:00 – Weak vs Strong Hand Finish
37:30 – Audition
42:00 – Individual Close Outs
43:30 – Offensive Philosophy
47:00 – Book Phrase
49:00 – Learning Language
51:00 – Culture Around The Program

Ted Hotaling Links from the Podcast:

Ted Hotaling

Justin Exum

Kendall McMillan

Tommy Hunt

Quashawn Lane

Victor Olawoye

Davontrey Thomas

Dieter Rams

Fran O’Hanlon

Doc Sauers

Majur Majak

Jay Young

James Jones

Jeff Neubauer

Joe Mantegna

Dave Paulsen

Jeff Adkins

Eric Anderson

Ray Dalio