The Basketball Podcast: EP443 with Stella Kaltsidou on Tagging Up and Player-Centric Coaching

Stella Kaltsidou, one of European basketball’s most accomplished female coaches, was just named Greece’s national team’s head coach, joined us to discuss her coaching philosophy centered on making players feel good while being aggressive. She explained how she implemented the tagging up system at Athinaikos which generated 12.9 second chance points per game during the Euro Cup, and detailed her approach to offensive playbooks with multiple options within simple structures to confuse scouts.

She also shared her defensive philosophy including a unique middle pick and roll hedge strategy she learned from Paris Saint-Germain, and emphasized the importance of video analysis and scouting in modern coaching. Stella also reflected on her transition from player to coach, noting how she avoids using drills she found boring as a player and focuses on creating practices that connect to game situations. The conversation concluded with Stella discussing her upcoming speaking engagement at the FIBA Women’s World Cup in Berlin, where she will present on tagging up and scouting processes.

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 Stella Kaltsidou Quotes:

“Basketball is most of all a game, right? So, no matter which level you are playing, you need to love the game, and you need to enjoy the game . . I believe that teams succeed when you combine the hard work with the joy, I think this is where teams have a lot of possibilities for success.”

“Being aggressive in every action of the game, trying to convince your opponent that you’re trying to score is going to create the advantage for you. And it’s the same mentality defensively, most of the time you are reacting to what the offense is doing. So, the key there, is trying to push the offensive team to do what they are not used to do or what they don’t like to do, so you can have the action before the reaction.”

[On tagging up rebounding] “You really need to insist on teaching exactly the rules because players might be reckless and not disciplined, which is going to destroy you. You need to be in excellent physical condition. It requires great physical condition from your players. Then you need time to make it a habit. The simpler it is, the harder it is to make a habit, becauseall players at the moment of the shot have the habit, especially those that they are not really involved in the action or the perimeter players, to start stepping backwards to go back to defense.”

“We would put in a lot of different scoring systems to empower the ability and the habit. Go and tag in the right way every time. We would take away points when we would play in any drill if someone didn’t do it.”

“What I want to do is really insist on the details, like where is exactly the spacing on the side pick and roll? I need it to be on the free throw line extension. It cannot be higher or lower, it has to be there. The other big has to be on the elbow line extension. You cannot be more in the middle because you bring your player and you don’t give the space to play 2-on-2.”

“I want players to play one-on-one when it comes within the team system. Because if anybody will start playing one-on-one without the player next to her knowing it, she will just stand and look because she doesn’t know what to do. But when it comes within the team structure, then everybody knows how to react.”

“If you find the advantage, because you need to be aggressive from the first action, you go for it. But if you don’t, then you need to keep playing . . It’s really awkward for a player to be like, ‘We needed to find that shot, but we didn’t. So now what am I, what am I supposed to do? Should I play one-on-one? Should I look for the shooter? Should I look to pass it back to the point guard?’ There is no gray. You continue playing Euroball. You play Euroball all the time and we’ll find from the first pick and roll. If we don’t, we’ll go to the second, to the third.”

“So from the same formation, you can find different options. So after, it’s up to the players. As a coach, to let your players decide which option they want to use. Or maybe you can give calls, different calls. I like to give some different calls, and there were some options that maybe I would call that they knew that they can choose which one.”

“I really put in my head that I don’t want to forget what I used to like and not like as a player, because to me this is an advantage that I have personally.  Being at a professional level, on the highest level for so many years, and now to go to coaching, it’s something that I think gives me an advantage that not everyone is fortunate to have and I don’t want to lose that.”

“For me, all the parts of the practice need to be connected. You need to have a reason that you decide to put in this drill, because then it’s connected with the second drill, and then all this will translate into your 5-on-5. So, it is important for me to make the players understand that when we are doing, for example, this kind of shooting drill . .  you have to do it 100% because then on 5-on-5, this is the place we are going to use it.”

“I realized those things couldn’t work because these players didn’t know this kind of game. So, if I try to insist in forcing them to play my way, I’m going to expose the players and we are going to fail because it’s not who they are. I need to adjust to their capabilities and try to make their level go one step higher. It was challenging, because I was working for the whole summer, and on the first practice I destroyed everything. I was like, ‘We need to build it from scratch.’ And it was interesting because you see teams and different players who were so willing to learn and improve and do better. And it was really inspiring to me . . The best part was that they struggled a lot, but they really enjoyed the process. And to me, that was a personal victory.”