The 32' Pod
Each episode, former head coach David "Coach V" Vidosic sits down with coaches and program builders to talk culture, Xs and Os, leadership, and the realities of life in the high school game.
Most episodes are long form interviews that dig into how different coaches think: practice design, offensive and defensive philosophy, building buy-in, handling parents, and helping kids grow up the right way.
On weeks without a guest, Coach V shared short solo episodes pulled from his coaching eBook and Substack, breaking down simple, practical ideas you can use with your team tomorrow.
If you love high school hoops and want honest conversations from people who've actually lived it, this is your podcast.
The 32' Pod
An Interview with Coach Kamal Assaf
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Coach V interviews former long time La Jolla HS head coach Kamal Assaf, and discusses the magical '08-'10 run, practice planning, the need for pick-up basketball, and the value of multisport athletes.
Hello, welcome to another episode of 32. Uh, I'm your host, Coach B. Today is one of those episodes that I don't I don't feel like I have to tee up too much. Uh I was fortunate to sit down with a longtime head coach in in here in San Diego uh by the name of Kamal Asof. Uh he coached uh at La Jolla High School for a really long time and coached middle school basketball at Bishops. Um longtime teacher and coach. And you know, I don't wanna I don't want to give too much away. This conversation is fantastic. Um I love the way he sees the game. I love the way he thinks about player development. Um and you know, I'm just gonna I'm just gonna get out of your way and let you guys listen to the conversation. So without any further ado, here's my conversation with Coach Kamal Asof. All right. You know, to today I'm I'm super excited to be to be joined by uh uh a legendary coach in the uh in the San Diego coaching community, uh Coach Kamal Asof. Am I pronouncing that right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's right, David.
SPEAKER_01All right.
SPEAKER_00Uh well, welcome on. How's it going? It's going well. Very nice to see you. Great to be part of this podcast. You do a wonderful job.
SPEAKER_01No, thanks. I appreciate that, man. Um well, you know, uh, you know, coach Coach Nick over at Bishops, he's a good friend of mine, uh, kind of put us in touch and and told me that I would I would definitely be interested in hearing your basketball story. And the the more I the more I read about your your coaching history and the more that we've kind of what we've chatted with. Uh I'm I'm super excited to talk to you today. So why don't we why don't we start out? Can you tell me like kind of briefly your basketball journey and sort of how you ended up where you are today and well where you are today, and then kind of how you ended up there.
SPEAKER_00Sure. You know, I I played at Bishops actually, and I had a wonderful high school coach, Ren Marquette, who really uh ingrained in me the emphasis on defense. He was one of those guys who taught the matchup zone back in the 80s, which of course uh John Cheney did and several other coaches. We we pressed multiple ways, and he just impressed upon me the importance of defense. Um, small school basketball, Bishops Parker Country Day was not what it is today. It was very limited, and players in the Coastal League were very good. And so I was able to start four years, and I was able to be player of the year and all leagues several years and play in college uh at Division III UCSD at that time. But I I was great, grateful to have the opportunity to play and be have such a wonderful experience and have such a wonderful coach who demanded a lot and helped me grow. Uh, when I got to UCSD, the exact opposite happened. I wasn't good enough to play. I injured my knee my first year, I redshirted my second year, I got cut. But it was a great experience in in many ways because it got me into coaching. The year I got cut, I realized that I had to pivot, no pun intended, and I had to pivot to something different. And so I started coaching back with my high school coach. And uh and it was a great experience, but I also left it left me with kind of this desire to transfer and play because UCSD at that time was division three, but it was top 10 in the country. Very, very good teams. And I was I was I was kind of a combo guard. I could shoot the ball a little bit, but not really well enough, and I wasn't dynamic enough at point. Uh, so I transferred to Whittier and I got to start. So I went from not making a team after redshirting uh to starting on a pretty average Division III team. And the year after that, I came off the bench. So I look at my high school and my college as having every possible experience. I got cut, I uh got redshirted, I set out a year for injury, I got to start, I got to come off the bench, and I had a really good high school career where I was one of the better players in the county as a senior. So I I got the whole experience. I I really feel blessed by that. And that's that's really what led me to coaching, just an idea that coaching is like an extension of plan. If you love the game, you're not done with it, even though your eligibility says you're done.
SPEAKER_01Right. I love that. Um yeah, and so so where was your first where was your first coaching stop? Tell me about that.
SPEAKER_00Well, it was bishops. I mean, it was funny that I started bishops and I ended at bishops. I started my my my second year at Bishops. Um I was a junior, excuse me, in college, and I I coached the team and I really loved it. And that's what made me realize I want to be a teacher. And so my uh graduated uh Whittier and I came back to do year student teaching. I coached again, had a great experience. Then I got a chance to go to San Antonio and teach at a boarding school. We had a gym, we had two gyms, air conditioning and a bunch of boarders, and we played all the time, and we had so much fun. So I coached four years there. We we really had great teams, developed great teams, but we really I was 24 to 28. I played a lot, and it helped develop the kids that eventually won the championship the year we left. Uh, because we played, you know, with boarders, we had a 6'8 German kid and a six-foot Puerto Rican point guard, and we played. The other guy and I played against them all the time. So it was just it was gratifying to see uh, you know, kids get better, and it was gratifying to put a program together. I quickly transitioned to bishops after four years, and I started coaching bishops from 94 to excuse me, from 98 to 2004 as an assistant with Fantress Wynne and later with Tom Tarantino, who was just a brilliant coach. Oh, yeah. That was that was important. So my coaching journey started out of kind of you know, not making a team and and getting a sample size in college, and and it just continued, and the love of coaching continued.
SPEAKER_01That's really cool. So so I read um so you've been teaching at bishops for how long now?
SPEAKER_00Uh I taught at Bishops for 28 years. I just retired. I don't know if I told you, I just retired uh two weeks ago. Yeah, I just decided it was time to try something else. But yeah, I tried I I coached and taught there from uh 1998 to 2026, and I I did every level. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Oh my goodness. Yeah, and what did you teach?
SPEAKER_00Taught American history, taught eighth grade American history, ninth grade world history, seventh grade social studies, sophomore year, uh man, yeah, US history, just all that stuff.
SPEAKER_01As a fellow social science teacher slash basketball coach, I gotta gotta extend some kudos to you. Yeah, I've been I've been doing the same teaching world history and uh teaching world history, and I was teaching American government for a long time and then apgov and yeah, coaching and doing the whole the whole nine. So you ended up you ended up coaching at La Jolla High School, correct?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it was a funny situation. Um, you know, Tom Tarantino was hired my third year at Bishops, and right away I saw him. I said, this guy's really good. And I wanted the job in 2000, but I realized how good he was and how much I could learn, and that was a great experience. So I got four years of like Tarantino University. I was his assistant, his right-hand man, and I learned so much from him, his energy, his passion, his skill development, his teaching, the culture he created, his strategy, the way he saw the game. I was so lucky. So for four years, I was his right-hand man, I coached JV. We did summer together. We I was varsity assistant and really were best friends. And then I got a job at Loya High, you know, probably just a couple weeks before the season started because it opened up and I applied. And so I had this funny situation where I was coaching at Loy High, but teaching to bishops. And so it was fun, but it was hard to build a program from scratch without a summer and without any understanding of who the team was. So that first year of 2004, I remember going back to bishops and playing them and playing against Tom's team, who I had all coached in JV for two years, and now get whooped by 19. But it was so fun just to see, you know, that that was such a healthy rivalry because we had such respect for each other and and uh we used to train together. And I think that was one of the things I learned is that you know, your friends, uh your your opponents are your friends, they have a lot in common. They can teach you something, and you have you can get better from having good opponents. So we had a great experience. So I got the job at La Jolla. The first was on the run. It was like a shotgun year, but we just struggled early and then came along and finished this year strong. And then, you know, and then I started you know, really trying to build a program in a similar fashion to what Tom did, which was leverage summer, and we went hard in summer and developed the the the players that way.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, what was it like coaching at a school where you didn't teach? Like I what's that like I I always thought that would be really interesting. Like, I I I don't know. I I don't know if I would think that hard.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's not ideal. There's a couple of things right because I had teaching hours at Bishops till let's say 245 or 250. I had to run it over there. I never was at the gym earlier than three o'clock, which means I met the kids right when practice started. So we could never deal with any problems that inherently came up. I didn't know the teachers on the staff, and then my athletic director was my good buddy Bob Allen, who now is at Bishops as a sub, he would have meetings with me during practice. And so when I had production practice, and he wants to tell me a couple things that he couldn't tell me because I didn't see him during the day. The other part of it that was really hard was I didn't know the kids on the on the team. Um, so I had to learn the kids quickly, and then I wasn't eyeballing students. You know how it is when you're on a school campus and you say, Who's that six foot six inch kid that plays water polo? Who's that big, thick, athletic, defensive tackle that plays football? I didn't have that, so I missed out on a lot of kids or would have had them earlier if I had known about them. And that was one of the hard parts, too, is I'm a big multi-sport guy. So if I'm looking at players, I want to know what other people do. And I want to invite them to join us. And so there were two brothers. There were brothers, you love this. Two guys who were first front picks, one for the Royals, one for the Cleveland Indians at the time, the Zimmer brothers, both 6'3, 6'4. One pitched 98 miles per hour. The other one was one of the fastest guys in Major League Baseball. Both didn't play. The older one quitted after his freshman year, and if I had seen him grow to 6'4, I would have had him out as a sophomore junior. The younger one was just dynamic. So not having that ability to eyeball people and to see them, to put out problems made coaching there harder in many ways. And yeah, it's fun, but harder. Yeah, harder to build that connection.
SPEAKER_01I I love that you touched on multi-sport athletes. That's like a that's uh I have I have a soft spot for those kids. Um the multi-sport guys have always I I always kind of found that they were the most coachable. Um talk to me a little bit about that because I'm I'm going through it. I'm dealing with it kind of on a personal level right now. My my stepson is a multi-sport guy and uh, you know, trying to trying to navigate coaches that are trying to get them to specialize. Um and I I really don't want them to. Uh so tell me, tell me kind of your philosophy on multi-sport guys, like why you why you like them so much.
SPEAKER_00Well, I mean, I think I think the biggest thing with multi-sport athletes is um we're, you know, I kind of look at high schools the way I look at colleges. Not everybody's Duke, not everybody's North Carolina, where you get the blue bloods, you get the top recruits that come in that play basketball for one year and done. You know, a lot of us, and I consider La Jolla High, are kind of like mid-majors. So we we have to do everything we can to create a community of basketball players, knowing that we don't have finished products. We have guys that might have a little bit of a background, but they like other sports. When you're at a medium-sized school or a small school, if you just go for basketball players, you're missing out on athletes. And I always feel like we can teach certain things, but we can't teach size. Like we can't teach speed, we can't teach competitive greatness or competitiveness, whatever you want to call it. We can't teach aggression, we can't teach um, you know, the ability to struggle and fail, the the natural resilience that people have to have, either have it or don't. And and we can't teach that. So if I if I all of a sudden thumb my nose at the football player, because he's 6'1, 280 pounds, and he can't make a layup, but you know, there are things he can do. Uh he can he can defend, he has a physical presence, he can displace, he can block out, he can rebound. I had so much success, or we had so much success taking kids and helping them get better. So, you know, in in at La Jolla, we had football players who would uh you know come to us at the end of football season and they were their bodies were jacked. It took them weeks to get back. So we lost all kinds of games. We had competitive games at the beginning of the year, and I remember one time senior year um uh for my fourth year, it was not my senior, but the fourth year, we had a parent call me and they lost to Valley Center at Valley Center in the rain. And we had a really competitive team come back. We had a team that could win CIF and ultimately did, and those guys came back. We were playing in the 20s and 30s. We were literally scoring 30 some odd points with the crew that we had because we didn't have these football players who were guards. They come back and we're we scored 88 one night against against uh against Escondido. I mean, it was just a different, you know. Now, granted, they had a great night, but the whole dynamic changed. So it was idea, you know, getting athletes and channeling that athleticism into defense, into rebounding, into, into uh being a physical presence, and then and then trying to get them more skilled. You know, our goal, I had a water polo player in 2008 who was the best water polo player in the county and and a remarkable baseball player. And he came out and he couldn't make a layup to save his life in the first uh month because he had never touched ground. Now, he had a huge summer with us, and the way we mitigate the problems is we work out in summer a lot. So there's a history we build. But if you have this guy, if you saw him at the beginning of this 2007 season, we're playing at Francis Parker, we play Parker, we beat him, we win this little tournament, and I give him the most valuable player because he's a defender, he's a rebounder, but he can't make a layup. And the guys on my team, some of the guards are upset. They're saying he didn't even score, but it was his presence. So sometimes, you know, you're just collecting athletes and maturity and aggressiveness and tough guys, and you're you're putting them together and you're realizing that you know, maybe 60 or 70 percent of a high school game is won on the defensive end and on loose balls. And you know, we're not not necessarily going to shoot it the greatest. So it was it was getting those guys that that had qualities that I could not teach, and getting them to buy in, and then helping them get skilled. And that was part of the summer, right? The summer was, you know, three, four, five weeks, six weeks of, if we could, of development, where it's four days of a week of practice and it's games every weekend, it's lifting. And that was what built both the history of it, and that's what built the the skill development, so that if they went away and they played football or basket or or water polo or baseball, whatever, they would come back and they would have something. Uh, and and they'd have a history with each other, right? They would have a base with each other.
SPEAKER_01Um that shared struggle, yeah. I like that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. But I I I don't think I I I'm trying to think. I don't know if he would have won any games uh if we didn't have the multi-sport guys. Um I'm seriously now because the guys that I had that played one sport were what I like to call driveway jump shooters. They could I had two guys who could stroke it. I mean, one guy, Tony Tran, could was 5'9, 145 pounds. He could shoot it better than anybody ever had, but I couldn't play him because he couldn't guard anybody. And if your hedgehog concept, if your big principal is kind of like my mentor, uh, one of my my, I guess you could say I'm not a mentor because he doesn't know me, but Tom is, so I like the way Michigan State plays. If we're gonna be physical and we're gonna be great defensively, which we had to be in our league, then we couldn't play guys that couldn't keep their guide in front of them. And there was another guy, we had a shooter, uh, who was just a great kid. Both these guys are great kids, but they could not um could put it on the deck and create shot, and they couldn't guard their position. So if we're gonna be this team that has to have those qualities, we can't play guys. They just can't get minutes. And so I've always philosophically aired on the side of putting the guy who was gonna compete, who I could trust, who could guard, and who was physical and could be coachable. And a lot of times it was the multi-sport guy. It was the guy coming and you know, he played baseball too. Okay, play baseball, but in summer, give us this volleyball, uh, lacrosse, and then football and waterpole. Those were the five sports. And you're at Lloyd High. Do you really have a chance? You have a chance to go compete. Our league remember was Lincoln with Norman Powell. There was Cathedral with untold players that they had. There was a team called Scripps Ranch with I don't know how many stars they had in 2005, 6, 7. Kent Walker, a bunch of the Division I players run around. You had UC, who had a guy named Tim Island, who was outstanding world coach. Mission Bay had a remarkable team. Every team in our league at one point won CIF, either Division II or Division III. Every team in our league won CIF. We were all, it's, and they're, you know, if you look at them now, they're all open division teams or division one teams. So if we didn't have multi-sport guys who could physically compete, who wanted to struggle, and you know this, David, it is a struggle coaching basketball. You are gonna lose, you're gonna get blitzed, they're gonna put that score up there, and you're gonna look at it and go, wow, this isn't like chemistry class, they're not posting my grade. You know, we lost one year, my first year to Saints by 40 points. And that was such a tough loss. And that Saints was number one in the county and went to the state finals. Uh, and but but it was such a tough loss. We have to find a way to recollect them and then and then play the next game.
SPEAKER_01It's absolutely yeah. Tell me about I'm glad you you brought up kind of 08 and some of those teams because I know that you guys, you guys went on a pretty, a pretty remarkable run. Um, 08, 09, and 10. Uh tell me about tell me about those teams and tell me about the kind of the journey and the story. I know some of some of the people listening to this are might be new to the new to the community and might not know the story.
SPEAKER_00Well, I I just I lucked out. La Jolla was a great job for me because I live a mile away or half a mile away from La Hoya, a mile from Bishops. But you know, I lucked out in the sense that we got all these great kids um as freshmen and sophomores uh when I started that wanted to play. And my big thing with oh the the teams that 07, 08, 09, 010, all those guys love to play. And so the biggest thing I said is we developed a community of playing. And so it kind of goes with development. We had guards and we had we had guys who just love playing. So they all had a basketball background, but they played other sports. And so my thing was how can I get them to love basketball more? And so what I did was I set up open gym at Loyal High and I invited every good player I knew. I invited players from Bishops, I invited players from Francis Parker. My friend, when he went to Army Navy, Tom Taratino, I invited his seven-foot player and all their players. I remember that. I invited probably 35 of my friends who were all in their 20s and 30s. I was in my 30s at that point, and I was a decent player at that point, and I would bring them in the gym. I had parents go, what are all these men doing here? Because we would run basically full court with short court, two games, you know, 20 people playing. And I had guys that were going into eighth grade at Mirlands who come to our camps, they wanted to jump in. I'd say jump in. No age is too young. Because of my whole philosophy is everybody always, we always want people playing. So we had eighth graders coming in, we had ninth graders coming in, we had sophomores coming, we had juniors, we had these guys. One guy played in the NFL, uh, Zach. I mean, he was a 6'8, 250-pound tight end. So he would come sometimes. Had a guy who was a former Major League Baseball player, a bunch of my friends were ex-college players, and we would play all the time, three days a week in the spring, and it was on. I mean, just do a little skill work. We'd start with some shooting, all the guys would come in, and they were playing against grown men. And it was the only thing I could get them to replicate what it would be to play against the league. Because if we had just played ourselves, it would have been this is kind of a boo-boo ball. But so we really pushed that and they loved it, and they got good at it and they got confident at it. And one of my proudest moments was it was the 2009 season where we had four new starters and we had three guys up from JV, and we had lost a tough game to Mission Bay in double overtime, but we lost another one at the buzzer. And it was a Saturday, and I didn't practice on Saturdays. We had a team dinner on Sunday. I remember driving by the Rack Center, just you know, because I wanted to drive by and see the runs. And I look out there and I have like five of my players that had just lost to Mission Bay the night before. And I said to myself, that's it. This team has a chance. And that team that had lost all these close games found a way to come together at the end of the season and win CIF. And that was a new team. That was a team with four new starters, three of whom were up from JV. But it was the bit the belief that look, we can go play against grown men. And there were some good players at the rank. It wasn't a bunch of old guys, there were guys in their 20s and 30s or 40s who would pound people. And so our guys developed the the understanding that you have to play and you have to play up and you have to play hard. And you we didn't call fouls a lot in practice. So we developed that whole mentality. So I felt like open gym, you know, both both initiated uh guys it turned guys into loving the game. You know this. When you play, when you go to college, you love the game. Well, why is that? Because you play all the time. So that was that was something that was really important as far as um, and so what happened was kids got skilled, kids got experienced, basketball IQ went up, and and they started to realize hey, this formula works, you know, because we in in two in 2007, we lost. in the semis to Mission Bay who won it. 2008 we won. 2009 we won it. 2010 we lost at the buzzer. And so we had we had you know some really good teams, but they've started to see that this is this is something they bought into because it worked.
SPEAKER_01That's really cool. I I I wonder because I and I I guess I just I guess I just don't know. Like I don't know in our community if it's happening. I don't I I wonder if kids are playing as much pickup now as they were. Like I don't want to I said this you know last week when I talked to you know Aaron Aaron Bergen and I I'm like I don't want to be the old guy that just yells at clouds and says that the world's not like it used to be but I I feel like the coaching game has changed a little bit. I feel like the kids have changed and like I don't know maybe we've changed I I'm not sure what it is but do you think that do you think you could build up a group today kind of the same way that you did in in 2007 2008?
SPEAKER_00I I think you could I think one of the challenges is gym time. I think what we've seen is an explosion of club sports. I know I myself along with my brother another friend are are coaching a club team a middle school club team junior high middle school club team. So I think you have to deal with but I think it's it's a it's it's just a mindset right it's like what do you value for me I value playing and I also value skill development. I think every time we had an open gym was 20 25 minutes of skill development but what I notice now is a lot of guys working with trainers on moves that they see in the NBA. Yeah and the question is does that work in a game against the best people you play we got so beaten up by Saints my first and second year that that became the measure of excellence. Saints was the number one team in San Diego County for two years, three years in a row hopped had them rolling. And so I'd always say to myself is that going to work against Saints is that going to work against Lincoln with all they had they won state one year they had a ridiculous team I don't know if you remember that 2010 2011 ridiculous 2011 I think it was and 12. But so I think getting back to point it's skill development's key but playing is key. And so if you build it they will come that's my philosophy.
SPEAKER_01All right so uh next question I'm really curious to know because you've been uh you know you coached for a really long time and and you've you've been working in in middle school uh for a while now when did when was your last season coaching high school uh 2012 2012 okay so um do you think uh well first of all uh just what would you do if you were to take over a high school basketball program I won't say today because it's August 28th when we're recording this but let's say you took over a high school basketball program in in June um how would you how would you build it? What would you do?
SPEAKER_00What would be the steps yeah that's a great question first thing is I'd I'd hire as many good competent bright enthusiastic young basketball minds um people that wanted to be part of something I I would try to assemble a really good staff that was enthusiastic that love the game that could teach the game some that could play and maybe could just embody what we were trying to do but I'd create a spirit of of of uh of of community there I would um right away go to the school and and try to reserve as many gym dates as we can because you have to build your team in summer as you know so I would try to uh get if I could get you know the whole month of June uh or into maybe a week of July I would schedule that out and try to get in and do two hour workouts four days a week maybe take Mondays off and and go Tuesday Wednesday Thursday and then play every weekend camp we could play raising money to do that I'm not sure how we would do that ask parents to pay we want to do team camps because we want some competition but we want to focus on the six hours of development in the gym where we build skills talk about how we want to play and and kind of what what our style of play will be. And then I would find a strength and conditioning coach on top of that and see if we could put that into practice. But it's almost like a full court press you have to have um a summer of development because that's going to carry you forward particularly if you're at a school where you're sharing athletes if you have football and waterpole players in the in the fall cross country you're not going to see them. So it's really important you kind of impress upon them the need to plaque play together. If they played club that would be an additional thing but the the time together is the time when you build style of play you communicate how you want to play you teach them skill development you encourage them they fall in love with the game David I I think we're in a marketing game here we're in a recruiting game. There are so many distractions when you live in San Diego California right I was I was in Iowa at a basketball camp called Snow Valley Iowa that every young coach should go work if they can in Waverly Iowa and I asked the the coaches well what's basketball season like well we have two sports. I said what are those wrestling and basketball now I'd love to coach wrestlers who could play but most wrestlers I find cannot play. So can you imagine having every available football player every baseball player every athlete it's cold. Basketball is the ideal sport in Iowa and that's why they produce so many players that's why they have two of the best teams in the nation Iowa and Iowa State uh because they have so much talent Iowa with three million people and so in San Diego we have the beaches we have uh off you know off-road uh biking what do they call that uh I'd never do it the the kind of biking you do uh road biking and and off road uh biking you have uh surfing you have uh great weather you have so many different activities then you have technology you have video games but you have to say hey this is what's most important and we want to build it and the more kids play and I'm not sure about your experience David but the more I play the more I love the game even now in my 50s played yesterday I can't walk but I played with our little group and I covered my brother he covered me and it was just so fun it's exhilarating so you build that culture of hey we play the expectation is you're here you're having fun you're getting skilled we do a little defense but we do a lot of offensive development shooting footwork conditioning strengthening and and then you play in the weekends and again it's process oriented it's not outcome oriented. You win you lose doesn't matter I had so many teams with Tom Tarantino who was the head coach of bishops at the time where we got beaten by 20 by 30 by 40 points. I can't tell you many times my La Jolla teams got beaten by big numbers in summer it's summer it's there to it's there to just give you an opportunity to kind of it's a laboratory. A game is a laboratory see what we're good at see where we have to improve but the game is really played on the court in practice and the workouts are so fun because you're you're you're doing no homework you're just in the gym playing and that's what really happens it's a it's a mindset it's a movement um you have to market it you have to sell it to kids and if you do that you you'll develop a basketball program in time.
SPEAKER_01I like it do you think that anything is changed like do you think that the club culture and the sort of like transfer portal culture do you think that would change anything or do you think that like it's like you said you said earlier that you're a firm believer in the if you build it they will come and so I wonder if I wonder if it's changed or I wonder if we just have to work a little harder.
SPEAKER_00I think we have to work a little harder. I think there are more workout coaches there are guys using ladders I've never seen a ladder on a court guys using ladders you know dribbling through ladders with your quick feet there are guys doing step back moves. I think there are more individual workout guys I think there are more high school teams coached by club coaches who may or may not be educators. So many so many it's just a proliferation because they have access to talent I think there's more movement. You have kids you know trickle down N I L I'm gonna move I'm gonna go to this school or that school so that's more but I think you have to decide how you want to do it. You know the beauty of basketball is everybody has their personal style. You have to live and die with how you play and mine is defense uh ball movement on offense running on offense physical play unselfish play playing hard and competing I mean all those things are things that I think are sorry about that I got a call all those things I think are are things that are examples of winning basketball but you have to decide I'm not in love with 33 three point shots a game I know that is the new style since Steph Curry kind of reinvented the game but I'm in love with scoring in the paint so you we all have a certain style of game and you have to decide that's the beauty of coaching is you get to say this is the culture this is the style of play this is how what we'll expect this is what we won't we won't allow. And I think those are some of the beautiful things that are timeless and that's what you would get in my program in my program you'd you know you'd come in and you'd see that we're physical we're lifting weights we're scoring the paint we're defending we're competing uh you know we're unselfish we love to play I mean what you have to you have to develop that love to play by by talking about it and getting them in the gym and giving them access to gyms and if if they don't have access to gyms they're gonna go and do something that to me isn't isn't as productive as being part of a team. And so you build it they will come and that's that's really what I believe is timeless. Kids want to belong to something special they want to be included they want to be known that was my philosophy in the classroom is I want you to feel like I know you and I want you to belong to whatever class that we're in. If we're in a history class I want you to belong in that class I want you to feel like I know who you are as a young person. I respect you and I want you to you know love basketball and and that's that's that's the name of the game because the game it's not like football where you go here to sled football practice isn't very fun. Let's face it baseball to me is slow moving lacrosse is okay I coached lacrosse for a while in Texas it's okay uh water polo I think it's probably a lot of swimming there's no sport you can tell me maybe soccer is exhilarating to play there's no sport where you can see a ball go in the basket where you can play move in space there's no bad part of basketball practice. I mean every practice you could argue stance and closeouts are boring but how much do we do that? It's it's so fun and if you can then convince them that it's fun to play outside of practice if it's fun to play pickup then all of a sudden you have a program and whether you win or you lose you don't always get to win right and it's you know sports are kind of set up that you're gonna lose but it's that you get to compete.
SPEAKER_01And that's only you know when it boils when it boils down to it right there's what a hundred and I don't know a hundred and twenty five hundred and thirty teams in San Diego and only six of them only six of them get to win. So like that's it. So yeah most of them are gonna lose so it's interesting you talked about practice I wanted to segue into that because I think you and I you and I have similar similar feelings about practice um you know I I I don't I don't know that I ever had kids skipping practice the entire time that I was coaching kind of once I once I kind of figured out how to do it like a way to way to make it fun way to do everything with a basketball. Tell me like walk me through what uh what a what a a practice would look like in your in your program well that's a good question.
SPEAKER_00There's a lot of there's a lot of skill development in the beginning of practice. So we we don't assume particularly because we don't have you know Loy I we didn't have ready made players they weren't they let's say playing club all the time we don't assume they can shoot the ball dribble the ball pass the ball finish on on contact so we're working every day on footwork on catching and attacking we're driving we're kicking we're uh we're finishing off bodies you know we call it man on hip a drill that I learned from Tom Tarantino and Rick Patino uh we're we're finishing on contact we're um doing a lot of skill development that is going to replicate what we can do in a game because we're gonna play inside out we're developing post players like we always had a post player who we featured even on teams that weren't as good later in my career we always worked on so we every day it was guard big breakdown every day if I went back I'd I'd teach everybody how to score in a post because I think that is something nobody guards because it's now five out so it's kind of like saying hey we're gonna get in somebody's practice time how are you gonna do that we're gonna run the wishbone you know we're gonna be Georgia Tech and run the triple wing that is that is hard to defend Air Force used to be famously uh well known for running Princeton that's hard that's hard when you have to defend Princeton and and you're San Diego State and you never see Princeton. Now so what I'm saying is we're gonna play inside out we can develop posts we can develop guards we're gonna work on pressure releases we're gonna work on finishing on contact that's the first part of practice for 30 minutes and there's no running other than with a ball and doing that we're gonna go into defense and we're gonna always remind players hey closeouts are practice. Dick Bennett told me one time when I saw him we close that every single day we tried to close that every single day we did some kind of shell work but we did a lot of live shell so we did cutthroat you have you familiar with cutthroat oh yeah so we did defensive cutthroat offensive cutthroat if we were playing a team that doubled ball screens we would do put that in if we played a team that uh you know had a particular offensive uh aspect we'd do put that in so it was either offense or defensive cutthroat so we do a lot of stuff on the fly not a lot of talking feedback competitive we did something five on four four and five where it was like a full court press and then a press break and you were always focusing on the defense had to rotate because they were down a man and the offense would have to skip it and you it encouraged ball movement, body movement, but no dribble so we would do things daily that were you know again competitive and primal. I don't like things that don't happen in a game. Well why would I ever do something that I saw in a drill that Bobby Knight ran that doesn't happen in a game for us. So we're trying to press and run a two two one so we're practicing that every single day. And so our drills are we work on back tapping. So if we're gonna press we're gonna try to trap you in the front but if the ball goes overhead we're gonna try to back tap you and trap you there. So everything we do is replicate in the game we're gonna do a lot of five on five more five on five than maybe some because breaking down two on two, three on three small side of games are good, but the game is played a five on five so everything's competitive five on five a lot of scrimmaging and practice a lot of up and down practice sometimes we'll do uh time and score uh and it's competitive I don't call a lot of fouls so we kind of dial up the physicality when we played Saints that first year in 2004 five they went undefeated number one team in the county and lost the state championship game uh to Santa Cruz Pete Newell Jr. And they were so physical I said to myself if we can't beat them we we should we got to set our program up to beat them and they were so physical and it reinforced what I believe about the game which is it's an invasion game you know it's displacing people you do it by screening you do it by physical defense and we had to we had to do that when we played Lincoln we played Cathedral we played Scripts Ranch when they had three division one players on their team so we really dialed up the physicality we dialed up the defense that was a real big part of who we were and then we wanted the ball to zip around we never wanted to take contested shots we didn't live on threes there were games we hit 10 threes that was probably a high mark but we played inside out and we had to we had to be physical because we weren't more skilled we didn't have better shooters and we didn't have better quickness so we had to be smarter and tougher uh and it worked for us I mean it worked for us for for a long time we really had a group that bought into that and and played in a in a way that was successful and so that's what practice would look like and it'd be two hours long we'd finish you know and then we would um we would uh we would always take Saturdays off because I wanted them to be away from the game and then Sundays we'd have team meals because I like uh breaking bread together and that was in that concept yeah what uh we talk about we talk about offense uh I'll I'll get I'll go briefly X's and O's with you when you with your teams did you primarily run like was it like a set based offense where you were calling plays from the sideline was it a continuity offense where you kind of pace and space and see what happens like what what was your what's your general kind of offensive philosophy? We taught a five out motion that we liked that was good because the ball zipped around it was hard to scout it was hard for teams that hadn't played in our league to see us we'd pass cut away Randy Wright ran a similar uh offense five out Randy's a brilliant coach who you should interview on this uh Tom Tarantino ran a five out motion but we wanted the ball touch we wanted side to side we wanted paint touches we wanted bigs to get out of the lane and and then we wanted to post at certain times we also ran sets when we had certain players we'd run sets to them we had a big guy who was the the Stanford water polo player and we would run a a set that was called um we called it X but we got it from UCLA that used to run for Kevin Love. So we'd run a small big ball screen uh at at the block and you know we scored and beat you know uh a very good UC high team in the in the CI championship running that play probably 10 times and scoring on it seven times um so we really believed in developing post players and I think that's a part of the game that's changed but I think it's timeless meaning it's because of analytics because of how the NBA plays because of curry and all that stuff we've gone away from it but we were really big into um isolating certain players and trying to get matchups and and you know when we had good players we'd go to them so motion was kind of the concept we wanted to run as much as we could and if I coached again it would be running to corners getting the ball out fast attacking in the first seven seconds but it wouldn't be to pop up a bad shot like I see some teams play and it's like well you're abdicating responsibility your team when you just let them shoot bad threes. A good three to me is a paint touch um a good three is come from a a player where there's floor balance we don't want to shoot threes and not balance the floor and give up layups defensively we were really good at La Jolla in those good years because we we we turn it over too much looking back but we we kept the floor balanced you didn't score in transition and so now you had to play against guys that were physical and that were going to load up to the ball and we were good defensively and that was really the strength of our our team was we couldn't always score we we could we could win in the 60s which you need to be able to do but we could win in the 30s if you can believe it or not we beat a very good sam marcos team in the semifinals in 2008 4238 which is ridiculous it's so low scoring but we guarded and they were good and then we beat a really good cathedral team in the CF championship I think they scored 39 points. Oh my gosh I think we beat them 4339 in to win our second CIF so we were really good defensively because we tried not to take bad shots we tried not to have light ball turnovers and we you know guarded hard and we were physical so it was a you know you have to I think when you're coaching you have to decide how do you want to live and how do you want to die and we were gonna you're gonna have to hit threes on us because we weren't going to give you paint and we were going to you know hammer you sometimes physically displace you and we wanted to be like Michigan State we wanted to be like that buffer team that's bad. We wanted to be really physical you know Purdue there's certain coaches that have a physicality Ben Howland UCLA that yeah we were going to foul we fouled too much I would go back and probably foul less on the perimeter but I wanted to not let you have the paint and when you play athletes you got to choose how you're gonna lose and so linking it 16 threes on us one year beat us by 40 with Norman Powell and the twins the Robinson twins well we live with that one but yeah you have to we're not gonna give them layups we we weren't gonna give you pain stuff and it was going to be hard for you to score if you scored that was our our mantra and was I really appreciate physicality because that's how I play and that's how I like so if you if you didn't defend I couldn't play you that was another hallmark of our teams is I played guys who could defend even if they couldn't shoot because I didn't care about that. I I I figured we're not gonna lose if we have five good defenders on the floor and our players realized that they they weren't going to play I I would not play anybody who couldn't guard if you couldn't guard you wouldn't play finish the game like last seven minutes of the game you weren't playing even if you could shoot you I couldn't trust you on defense you weren't gonna play. And that was kind of the hallmark of that's that's what allowed us to be successful going down towards the playoffs that you we we weren't going to give you easy buckets.
SPEAKER_01No I like that it's it's funny it's funny you bring that up with the scoring and you know winning games in the 30s and 40s um you know I I would say I'm a big I'm a big post guy as well like we we we played we played inside out I was very fortunate to have like an absolute mountain of a human being in the post for for three years uh that really helped. But you traditionally we we ran a lot of stuff out of the high post. We did a lot of I did I did a lot of Princeton stuff because we had small guys. Yeah and so you pull everything away from the basket and burn teams backdoor and towards my last two years or so we were able to flow that Princeton into a ball screen continuity offense that would set empty empty side ball screens that were really difficult for teams to defend and I had I had a really high IQ team and they could bounce from one set to another without me having to call it yeah um but you know my best teams were not the ones that lit the scoreboard up like my teams I I had some teams that scored a lot of points but they also had a tendency to give up a lot of points. Yeah I would say like we beat my last year in the layoffs we played Army Navy um and they they had I want to say seven or eight players taller than six five and we had
SPEAKER_02Tarantino, yeah.
SPEAKER_01No, this was later. This is with Ryan. This is this is in 25. I I'll bring up a I have a I have a Tarantino story about the the huge Army Navy team. Um but uh no, so we were playing them and they were huge. And I had one rotation player that was taller than 6'2. And so I just sat in a in a 1-3-1 and trapped the bejesus out of the ball in the corners. Um, and I think we went to double overtime in that game, and the final score, I think we won 54 to 53. But at the end of regulation, I think it was 39-39 or something like that. And the previous game, we had played them in the season, and I'd gone man against them. Uh, just kind of setting up. I knew that we if we saw them in the playoffs, I was gonna go zone. So I was like, yeah, let's just work on our man-to-man defense against a big team. And it was like a you know, 84 to 60 something game or something crazy like that. And so I I love being able to slow the game down and win those low-scoring games. I I have a I have a lot of respect for uh coach Eric, Eric Mudima at Calvin Christian, who will sit in, he sits in a 2-3 zone and plays a very like very, very disciplined offensive game. Yeah because he has to with his with his league, with his athletes, with the the guys that he's got. And they routinely will win games in the 30s and low 40s. Constantly, it's like Big Ten basketball, right? It's like, you know, Iowa, Iowa, Purdue, you know, 17 to 14 at half. Um that's right. But I I got you know, I got a lot of respect for that, and I think it's really cool. No, the the Tarantino story I was gonna tell you. I was gonna save it for later, but it it's gonna come up now. So my first year coaching high school basketball, I was uh JV coach um here at Charter. Uh I was also an assistant varsity coach, and we brought Army Navy into play at our house. And this Escondido Charter team was not very good. Um, it just in terms of like competitiveness, you know, we were uh it wasn't our strongest, wasn't our strongest group of of athletes that we put out on the floor. Um, and this was the year that Army Navy had the seven-footer, yeah. Um, and then also, you know, six eight and six six, and then Devin Watson playing point guard. Yep. And so uh just an absolutely elite high school basketball team. And we brought them in. Uh, the most crowded our gym had ever been to that point, you know, standing room only. Everybody wanted to see the seven-footer. We're all there. Um, we get started in the game. Uh, Army Navy's kind of, they're kind of coasting a little bit. And one of our guys hits a three uh to go up 13 to 12 in the first quarter, and he does the like three over his eye thing at the big guy from Army Navy and then over at the bench. And Tarantino timeout. Um, and our guys come over to the bench and they're thumping their chests and they're world beaters. And over on the Army Navy timeout, it's just very clinical, it's all business. And they come out and go on like a 37-0 run in like in like a blink of an eye. Watson's throwing alley oops to to the big guy, they're dunking on us left and right.
SPEAKER_00We played that team, we played that team, and we played them in a tournament, and we were um practicing post-doubles because we played a Canadian team before we played them, and we doubled the big guy. He caught it, we doubled him, it was really effective until the end of the game. We had a big lead. The end of the game, they came back, and it was 2011-12. Yeah, we were at the script's ranch, and uh Watson got to the foul line, and he was eight for nine. Uh, they hit a big three to take the lead after we had a lead, and we lost 52-51. We had the last shot to to win it, and you know, he's such a presence. The seven-footer, I think, got deflected. He didn't deflect, he changed last shot. But we had that team that we played, and yeah, that was fun. Yeah, we fouled them 21 times, they fouled us seven times.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, of course.
SPEAKER_00That was it. But yo, no, Tarantino's team was great. That was fun.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah. No, they've the they buried us, and that's what like there's levels to this, right? And that's what you know, we learned kind of coming up. Like we started out, you know, we were in the Pacific League for a long time. And I I I was fortunate to learn from a lot like a masterclass of coaches in that league with with Brooks Barnard and Stan Bickley, and just phenomenal coaches that I got to learn from uh every day. And then we were we got promoted up to the Coastal League four years ago. Um, and we were feeling pretty good about ourselves. And you know, that was a year we beat, we we beat Nick at Bishop's once, and he was he was he's still salty about it. But we only we only got them because their big guy was hurt and he didn't play the game. But I I'll I'll take we'll we'll take all the credit for that one. Um, but that was when I realized like the the true difference in levels because I watched Santa Fe Christian and La Jolla Country Day and Francis Parker on film, and that's three open division teams that year. And I'd watched them on film and I was like, oh, I think we can, I can, we can play with these guys. But we got there in person and it was just it was a different sport. It was a different sport. They were so much faster and so much cleaner, and just they didn't miss. And so I was like, okay, yeah, there's levels. Yeah, um, I wanted to talk again. So I wanted to kind of briefly touch on briefly touch on this, and then um, and then I could can can wrap up and let you go. Um so that 2000, that 2009 team we had talked about a little bit. Um I I did some I did some research on it and I looked up uh because you had talked about how your team had lost a bunch of close games. That that 2009 team was 9 and 13 and then went on like a crazy run to win the championship. Um, I want to I I have a couple questions about that team, and I'm just gonna ask them all now and you can talk about it. Um I want to know, was there like a was there a turning point in that season, something that changed, or was it kind of like we're gonna continue working at this thing because we know it's the right thing, and then eventually you just broke through? Was it was it that? Um, and then I I also want to know, like, when you think back on those three championship teams, um there are, as we said before, right? There's 125 teams in San Diego County that don't win a championship every year. And sometimes it's it's like just a pure talent thing, but a lot of times there's an intangible there. Like, what did those teams have that had nothing to do with talent, had nothing to do with shooting ability or uh, you know, a six however foot tall Stanford water polo recruit? Like, what was it outside of that? So, so I know that's a lot of questions, and so I just kind of want to tee you up to talk about those championship teams again from the from that perspective.
SPEAKER_00No, to clarify, we won two championships in 08, 09, and 10. We lost at the buzzer. So we're a caliber team, but Mount Miguel beat us. But going to your first point, um, what was the question again? You yeah, I should have written it down.
SPEAKER_01What was it that changed in that season? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Well, first thing that happened in that season was uh we played Hoover and lost in double, uh lost in overtime. They were number one in the city, and that was the second game, I think, our first home game. And that's what told me that this team with four new starters was going to be pretty good. We had a transfer come in as a senior, he was a La Jolla kid whose mom lived here, he was 6'6. We had a returner who's 6'6, 6'7, one of the best volleyball players in the country, uh, who didn't start as a junior but was a late bloomer. And then we had a returning uh uh kind of one returner and these other guys up from JB. So we had these four new starters, and it took a while for them to gel. But right away, when you play Hoover at your place and you lose an overtime with Angelo Chole, who's one of the great shop blockers in San Diego County history, right? Um, you got a decent group. So they showed me something early. That was the first thing. Um, we had injuries, so the big six seven kid who was our best player got injured against Carlsbad, and so he was out for 10 games. So now your team changes. And that what we were able to do successfully was not make excuses. Like we lost every which way. We lost in overtime numerous times. We lost by one, by two. We lost one time with 0.8 seconds in a tournament game uh where the the player caught a dribble twice and shot a length of the court. Um he shot a uh 50, 40-foot shot that went in. Two dribbles, 0.8 seconds. So obviously the clock was mismanaged. So we found ways to lose and not blame anybody. Um, we talked about ourselves. We talked about what we can do to get better. We turned it over too much. The the juniors that were up from JV weren't ready yet to win close games, and so we focused on what we could do. The one thing I think that was great is kids bought in because they had a great JV experience. I had a fantastic coach, Luke Stuckey, who went up to San Dieguito Academy, but he went up coach in the NBA for two years at the Atlanta Magic. So he won a lot of games with this group and they were a tight group. They had played club for Luke, they played freshman sophomore year. So we had continuity, we had a togetherness, a spirit. We had we went the summer before to Santa Barbara, and they all did uh I'll put gave each other Mohawks. They weren't on the team that won in 08, they were on the team in 09, but the summer they were they wore they cut their hair, and so there was a a common thread of teamness. And so when we went through the trials and travails of the Coastal League, and you get hammered in the Coastal League, like there's no bad team, it's like being the ACC or the Big Ten or SEC. There's no bad team, there's no bad coach. So we were getting hammered, and we just found ways to kind of continue. We beat Saints twice that year, Saints was the two seed in Division III later, and I so I knew we could play. We love playing Saints. We made Saints kind of like the Raiders, you know, Chargers Raiders. We made them the big team. So I knew we could play, but we just hadn't put it all the pieces together. And so as the big guy, the six-seven guy comes back from his injury, as the team goes through loss after loss, doesn't blame anybody, but looks inside. And as these kids who really trusted me and trusted each other kind of come together, we become a tough out. So we're a 10 seed, we're 14 and 15. We had been eight and 13 or 9 and 13 or something ridiculous like that. We were a tough out. We were winning games at the end. And so I always feel like when you coach multi-sport athletes, it's a blessing and a curse. The blessing is they bring other things to the table: toughness, uh competitiveness, they love to compete, they can be coached, they're coachable. But the downside is your team doesn't look good in November, it doesn't look good in December, and it's only January and February when it looks good. So all that stuff was because deceiving the record. But as we beat Saints twice, as we you know got a 10 seed, we went on the road and beat San Marcos. That gave us a lot of confidence. San Marcos was good. They had a 6'7, a 6'6, they were really good. We pressed them, we we we beat them 52-47. It was close, but it was low-scoring, kind of way we like. We then had to play Saints at Saints, and we played our best game of the year. We beat him by 17, and we had an amazing game from the 6'7 kid who played poorly coming back from ankle injuries, and all of a sudden he was healthy. The 6'6 kid was we played inside out. We just we played our best game of the year to beat Saints as the 10th seed, and then we traveled to Valley Center, beat a talented team there with a really good football player, basketball player, and then we beat Cathedral in the championship. So it was all the above. It was it's almost like that famous uh Popovich thing. You've seen it. He translates it into 10 languages about the stone cutter. The stone cutter hits the stone a hundred times, and on the 101st one, it breaks. Was it the the 101st break, or was it all the ones that preceded it? Popovich had so many players with different languages that he put it in like 10 different languages because that's who they have. That's who we wanted to be. We wanted to be the stonemason who was hitting the rock, pounding it, and hopefully, as the year progressed, taking all the all the excuses and eliminating them and looking internally and saying, How do we get better? And that's what we did. Everybody came of age, the juniors who were up from JV made the adjustment. The the the league just scorched us, but gave us, you know, heat that helped us get better because we looked at our flaws, and then the big boy came back and he played really well. And you know, for him to have 20 points against Saints, to have seven rebounds and seven block shots, that's that's pretty special. So all those things came together. And I think it was the fact that they bought in. These are juniors that were just happened to be on varsity. They had a winning team the year before, but not a lot of continuity because those guys were on JV. But they were just they bought in. There was no posturing, there was nobody who said, This is my team. We had this this 6'7 kid, Tyler Heap, who was a great leader, understated, but a great leader. And everybody fit a role and realized this is how we're gonna win. We're gonna defend, we're gonna be an ensemble cast. We I think we had a maybe a second team all league guy on that team, but it was just the fact that they they really bought in. And and they they you you can't in high school, you can't allow uh people to blame other factors. If you blame the refs, and we had people love to blame the refs, I'd say, hey, we had 20 turnovers and missed uh 10 free throws. So the refs might have missed the call, but we had 20 turnovers, right? So when you blame the refs, that's a caba. When you blame a player, when you blame the coach, so Parcell's taught me that one. It's like you don't blame anybody but yourself. And once you do that, you realize the only person, my my friend and mentor Herb Lives, he said, you know, you lost all these close games. What's the comma denominator? And I said, Well, I don't know. He said, It's you. So even my friend and and mentor Herb said, You got to get better, you know, don't blame anybody else. And so it was not pointing fingers, it was staying together. It's amazing what things can happen when that happens. And that's yeah.
SPEAKER_01I love that stone cutter analogy. And I also like, I don't know. I I was always a proponent. And when I when I first started coaching, I I uh I coached football with a with a good friend of mine, and his philosophy was always that when you win, the players get 100% of the credit, and when you lose, the coach gets 100% of the credit, and it always has to be that way. And the second that you shift away from that, you lose the credibility of all of your players. Like they're not gonna or you lose, you lose credibility from your players, is what is what I meant to say. Like they, it's just it doesn't work. Um, coach, we're we're running running out of time on my free Zoom meeting. So, hey, it's this has been awesome. Um, I've really enjoyed chatting with you, and I'm absolutely going to do it again. Um, you know, once we once we get into the high school season, I'd love to love to chat with you again about some of the stuff you're seeing and or just talk X's and O's and talk defense. I think um I wish that I had had this conversation with you when I was still coaching because uh it would have been it would have been super helpful.
SPEAKER_00You can still do it, David. You can still do it at any time. It sounds like you have a real passion for it, and you can always jump in and you can be somebody's assistant. I hope to be an assistant at Miramar College this year, and you know, there's always room for people who love the game who can teach it and want to be part of a team. So uh give yourself up right now. You got big fish to fry with the family, and just keep uh and you know, the only thing I would add, if I could add one thing, is that uh you know, if you're a young coach, listen to this podcast, that we stand on people's shoulders. So any success I had was because I learned it from other people. I I took other principles. We're not reinventing the wheel here. And so I would tell any coach that wanted to be better is there are so many people around you. There are so many retired coaches, Cleede Attleman, uh Herb Livsey, um, you know, there's so many people in my life, Tom Tarantino, Randy Wright, who have poured into me, who are available at the moment's notice. So if you foster relationships with coaches, if you see them as not competitors, but almost allies. I loved every coach I coached against, even the ones that might have been a little bit, you know, sneaky on the side with players, because I figured, you know, if they're teaching kids, that's a worthwhile endeavor. I respect that. But there are so many resources available. You can you have great coaches in San Diego, the coach at San Diego State, the coach at USD who's from Iowa State, the amazing coaches at UCSD, the point loma coaches. We have four great programs in San Diego. You can go to every practice. There are so many resources that if you don't have a mentor, if you don't have someone to talk to, think about things, challenge yourself. There are coaches in other disciplines that are very similar. Football is very similar to volleyball. Right. There's so many different opportunities. That's what I would encourage coaches to do is go to clinics, learn, and and open yourself up. And if you do that, you will continue to grow. There are camps to work. Snowball Iowa is a great camp. And you will you will become a better coach and you will enjoy what you and I have decided is great. The the collegiality, right? The community of coaches.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. No, I love that. All right. Thanks, coach. Uh, I will talk to you. I'll talk to you soon, man. This has been great.
SPEAKER_00Great to meet you. Thanks so much. This has been a pleasure. You do a great job, David. Have a good day. Thanks, buddy. Thanks, man.
SPEAKER_01All right, that'll do it. Um you know, it's it's pretty funny. Uh that episode um ended up being longer than some of the others because my uh during the first attempt at the interview, my uh Wi-Fi went out. And so my uh I had to record a second Zoom interview, and it ended up being great because it gave us more time. Um you know, a conversation like that I could have done for hours. And and that's sort of the that's sort of the fun of all of this. Um it's really just an opportunity for me to be able to chat with coaches and still talk basketball. But I hope that you were able to find some of this conversation instructive. I hope you're able to follow kind of some of his advice. Um, if if you are a coach and you're listening to this and I haven't reached out to you, or you haven't reached out to me yet, please do. Um I'd love to have you on. Uh, I'd love to chat. Oops. Um it's a lot of fun, man. It's the the best part of coaching high school basketball, I think, is the coaching community. And so this is sort of my way to stay involved with that as I'm no longer prowling the sidelines for now. Um so remember to check out the Substack at um if you just look up the 32 uh on Substack. If you're reaching this from Instagram, if it's linked from Instagram, the uh the link to the Substack's on there. I'm putting out an article every week. Um I'm still working on the ebook. I'm not done yet, um, because that takes a really long time. But uh until next time, you know, it's been uh it's it's been awesome uh having you listen, and I truly appreciate you. Uh right, I'll talk to you later.