The Basketball Podcast: EP383 with Kyle Milling on Adaptive Coaching and Strategy

Kyle Milling is a seasoned professional basketball coach with extensive international experience, currently serving as the head coach of the Gunma Crane Thunders in Japan’s B.League. He took over the role in July 2024 after a successful three-year tenure as head coach of the Hiroshima Dragonflies, where he helped elevate the team’s competitive standing.

From 2013 to 2015, he served as Assistant Coach at Hyères-Toulon Var Basket in France’s Pro B division, helping guide the team to the playoffs with the 17th-ranked budget out of 18.

Milling was promoted to Head Coach of Hyères-Toulon from 2015 to 2017. Under his leadership, the team won Pro B in 2016 with the lowest budget in the league, earning promotion to Pro A. In their first year at the top level, he managed to keep the team in France’s first division despite again operating with the league’s lowest budget.

From 2017 to 2019, Milling led Limoges CSP, one of France’s most prestigious clubs. In his first season, Limoges reached the Pro A semi-finals and placed 4th overall. Concurrently, his teams advanced to the Top 16 of the EuroCup in both 2017–2018 and 2018–2019 campaigns.

In 2020, Milling took his coaching expertise to Japan as Head Coach of Yokohama B-Corsairs. There, he guided the club to the most wins in its B.League history. From 2021 to 2024, he led the Hiroshima Dragonflies through a remarkable transformation. Taking over a team that had gone 9–48 in the 2020–21 season, he drove a turnaround that culminated in a B.League Championship in 2023–2024. Under his leadership, Hiroshima posted records of 29–27, 42–22, and 42–26 across three seasons. He was honored as the 2023–2024 B.League Coach of the Year.

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Kyle Milling Quotes:

“The strongest teams are basically 1 through 12 deep, as well as a strong staff. So, I’ve always used a reference that creating my team is almost like managing a restaurant where, if you want the restaurant to survive, you can’t just have one good cook or one good manager. You obviously need a leader, someone to lead the restaurant, but you need the assistant cooks, you need the waiters, you need the busboys. You need a little bit of everyone and then respecting everyone and everyone’s job . . From your first player down to the 12th player, everyone has an important role.”

“One of the most important things is a lot of communication with the individual expressing what their role is. And then, when they’re successful or when they execute their role, not just telling them individually, but in front of a group. I communicate a lot individually, but I like to do a lot of group communication as well, where you’re giving value to an individual in front of the group. I think that helps a person feel good. It’s not just me saying it. It’s them getting recognition from the entire group that they’re important, they’re being successful.”

“If you watch the different leagues around Europe, the French teams have a certain style, Spanish teams have a certain style. So, I think . . the most successful coaches are the ones who can manage the group and the off-court stuff. Tactics, to me, is 20 percent of the job and basically managing the group and trying to get the best out of them is about 80 percent of the job.”

“They put a lot of emphasis on the numbers in Japan. So, [we want to] show the improvements as well as things you want to improve and negative points, too. We are trying to communicate with the management and trying to show progress on the things we’re working on with numbers.”

“When I get to a new team, the first couple of things I really want to work on are rebounding and the defensive end of it because I think that’s something you can control, especially the defensive aspect of the game. So, trying to install a defensive culture with a rebounding culture is something I really try to concentrate on in the beginning, especially with a new team. You don’t maybe always know how you want to put them in place offensively, but I think the defensive and the rebounding aspect is a mindset you can set from the very beginning.”

“A lot of times guys want to work on 10 different moves and it’s always good to progress to get to that point. But if you want to play confidently, you’ve got to be able to do one or two things good or great. And so, talking with the players individually and finding what their true strengths are individually and then giving value to that when they do it right and then putting them in the best positions to be successful is what helps build confidence.”

“When I first get there, I talk about what winning teams do and how they play and the chemistry and everyone being on the same page and everyone striving together and then, making sure everyone feels just as important as the other players.”

“[Winning teams] have incredible team chemistry. They believe in each other, they share the ball, they play hard, they trust each other. ‘Trust’ and ‘belief’ are a couple of words that I use a lot. Not just trusting what the staff wants but trusting their teammates and believing in themselves . .  So, we talk a lot about trusting  each other, believing in each other, and then building those relationships . . I always want to work hard, but I try to make it to where they’re enjoying what they’re doing.”

“We try to work on that a lot and talk about that a lot before games – finding the weakest defender and getting him involved in the action as much as possible and from there creating an early advantage . . then moving the ball from there.”

“My ideal team, especially in Japan because it’s different than in Europe, is . . versatile big men who can create and handle the ball. And then my goal in Japan is to try to get to positionless basketball . . five handlers and a couple guys on the bench – high energy defensive players and dead-eye shooters coming off the bench as well . . the type of basketball where everyone can do many different things on the court.”

“How we start the year compared to how we finish the year can be very different. Because I have an image or a vision of what I want and, what I’ve learned throughout the years is, as the year goes by, this works and this doesn’t work. And I think that makes us a little less predictable because we are doing different stuff. This year in Guma, for example, we had two different types of lineups. When five guys were on I had a sheet of paper and when another five guys were in, I flipped the sheet and had a whole different set.”

“We never want anyone to walk. No walking the ball up and calling a set play. So, we tried to have some type of pace running into things and then we talk about . . analyzing who’s on the court and then who’s in what position, whether it is a guy on the strong side or a guy on the weak side.  We had three or four different kinds of flow offense with different calls behind it.”

“I really enjoy meeting new people, integrating new cultures. And I think in the coaching world, in order to be successful, one of the main things is being able to adapt to different cultures. Because . . every culture is different . . you want to keep your values but you have to be able to adapt to their culture as well. So, finding that balance can be a difficult balance to find.”

Kyle Milling Breakdown:

Kyle Milling Selected Links from the Podcast:

Kyle Milling
Kaleb Tarczewski
Trey Jones
Michael Parker

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