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The Basketball Podcast: EP409 with Matt Van Pelt on Defensive Shift: Packline to Force Left
In this week’s basketball coaching conversation, Vietnam Men’s National Team head coach Matt Van Pelt joins the Basketball Podcast to share his defensive shift from packline to forcing left.
Matt Van Pelt is currently the Head Coach of the Vietnam Men’s National Team, as well as the Hanoi Buffaloes, the reigning champions of the Vietnam Basketball Association. He now has basketball experience in 28 countries, having ran camps and clinics all over the world, and is also the owner of Van Pelt Sports Management and the co-owner of Pro Coaches Academy and The Performance Lab, in addition to being a FIBA Certified Head Coach in Vietnam.
Matt has been in Vietnam on and off since 2017, where he is the winningest coach in the nation’s history with a record of 81 wins and 16 losses between 2 leagues and with 2 organizations. Matt won 3 straight VBA championships & 3 straight Supporter’s Cup Championships with the Saigon Heat, the country’s oldest professional team. Matt also led the Saigon Heat to the 1-seed and a finals appearance in the Asean Basketball League, which formerly hosted 10 teams from 9 countries in Asia, for the first time in the organization’s history in 2023.
In addition to 5v5 ventures, Matt was also the Head Coach of the Vietnam 3×3 Men’s National Team from 2022-24, where he won a VBA 3×3 championship, a silver medal in the 2022 Southeast Asian games, and pushed Vietnam to its best ever finish in the 2025 FIBA Asia.
Matt is a former professional basketball player overseas, where he played as a point guard in 13 countries in 7 years. Before going overseas, Matt was a 4-year starter as a player at Spring Arbor University in Michigan, where he also won the nation’s Pete Maravich Award.
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Matt Van Pelt Quotes:
“We tried to be a little bit more aggressive, a little bit more pressing, denying one pass away on one side of the ball. Our idea was we’re trying to get more deflections so it favors our offense. Not to say you can’t run a pack line and play fast, but the way I was doing it, we were just heavy in the gap and we weren’t nasty enough for how I wanted to play and how I wanted it to complement our offense.”
“I had my best season ever as a coach in Vietnam and we were third in opponents’ points per game instead of first. But we were first in possessions. We forced quicker shots which then complemented our offense a little bit more. We got a lot of deflections which we tracked every game. We were getting steals, we were getting in passing lanes and able to get transition buckets. We were first in fast break points.”
“I just had to be realistic with myself in that I think every coach says now they want to play fast . . We thought maybe we could have been more aggressive or we could have gotten more fast break opportunities. Just trying to find ways to be better ultimately led me to adjusting the defense.”
“I wanted to coach to my personality . . that’s what I love my players to do. So even this offseason, I’m trying to evaluate ways we can just get more pressure, press off makes, press off misses . . and find a way to make it work for us. It’s more fun for our players . . And we were fortunate to have a few of those guys that could really move their feet. It was also my first year with a new team and looking at the personnel, I wanted to take advantage of some of those players that can move their feet, can get up and pressure instead of just sitting those guys in gaps. I wanted to take advantage of their skill set.”
“We’re trying to get the offense to start on the left side of the floor at least 70% of their possessions, because I think 70% of possessions typically start on the right. So even just by doing that, it’s something very small and minute that teams maybe aren’t used to doing. Maybe you can throw them off a little bit just by getting the ball on the left side of the floor.”
“If you’re guarding a quick, shifty guard you take away half his options. You just force him left and that’s where our help is going to be. That’s what we’re going to live with. So, if he’s dancing on the perimeter, just sit on his right hip and then trust the help to do the rest.”
“This is especially effective against coaches that love set plays or motion offenses that need a lot of swing passes or know exactly what screens they need to set where we can blow that up. So, they can’t even get to those screens just by denying those passes away. We get the ball left, we keep it left. It’s a dictating mindset. We dictate where the basketball is going to go. It doesn’t always work that way, but that’s the mindset and the theory of it. And when we’re really locked in, we can be pretty good at it.”
“We do not force the lefties right. This is something we’ve thought about as a coaching staff, ‘How do we want to guard left handers?’ But our defense is we’re getting the ball to go where we want it to go. And we found that left handers want to go left, we want them to go left. So, they are just going to do us a favor and go exactly where we want them to go . . We’ve just got to make sure our wall and our gap are ready.”
“We do post practice reports after every practice, not right away. Guys go home, enjoy their dinner, whatever it is that night. They’ll get just a one-pager of, ‘We put this in. We worked on this.’ It might be four bullet points, three bullet points, just some simple refreshers so when I go to practice and then go home, it doesn’t just go out the window, but it’s something that we have a little bit of a re-emphasis on and we ask guys to read that.”
“We do the same thing with games . . the following morning, we will send a postgame report. I rotate that with my assistant coaches. Usually, I don’t like to meet with the team the following morning or the following day. I like them to get away from the coach, have some time to themselves, just decompress from the game. But we have them read this report, it’s one page – things we did well, things we need to improve on. Did we meet our goals? Before every game we’ve got about three or four goals we put on the whiteboard that highlight the game plan. And then, the last part of the postgame report is just an overall summary of how the game went.”
“At halftime, something I had to improve on was to stop talking so much. Now, I usually get into the locker room and the first question is, ‘Are we winning or are we losing?’ If we’re winning, it means we’re doing something well. So, let’s pick whatever we’re doing well, highlight that, and keep doing that well. Usually there’s always some things you can improve on. So, I try to pick one thing offensively and one thing defensively that we can improve on.”
“One thing I’ve really bought into over the last couple of years is just not being afraid to try things. Of course, everything has to have a rhyme and a reason and there’s got to be thought put into it. But if you believe in it, you’ve got to go for it and just see what happens.”
“A one-on-one workout is a great time to go connect with a player on a relationship level. Maybe there’s something that I feel I need to work on with a guy. So, every now and then I’ll hop in during the vitamins. But I think as a head coach, it’s your responsibility also to give your assistant coaches roles that they can own and they can make their own. And for me, vitamins are a great way to do that. You’re in charge of this. Work on with them whatever you want to work on with them.”
“On my team last year, I had the two fastest guards in the league. I think if you want to play fast, you have to practice fast. It doesn’t make sense to say that and then do half court drills all day. So, we’re really trying to run and trying to keep our drills short because if you’re playing a 10-minute quarter, just human nature, they’re not going to be sprinting down and back every play relentlessly. You might have a couple plays where somebody doesn’t get to half court and now you’re enforcing bad habits. So, we try to keep it to 6-minute games, sometimes 4-minute games, playing with a 12-second or 14-second shot clock to reinforce that pace.”
“I want my practices to be an enjoyable experience . . I want it to be a place where guys want to come into the gym and have fun. And I think certain drills ruin that. But, you have to define fun, right? Fun does not just mean you’re playing games . . fun might be working really hard . . I want guys to come into the gym and yes, we work hard, we compete, but there are certain drills that suck the life out of the gym and I just try to avoid those . . I know players love to play in practice. They love to compete, they love to get up and down.”
Matt Van Pelt Breakdown:
Matt Van Pelt Selected Links from the Podcast:
Matt Van Pelt
Kevin Yurkus
Joe Mazzulla
Erik Spoelstra
Steve Kerr
Ryan Cottingham
Pro Coaches Academy
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