JONATHAN YU – INTERNATIONAL BASKETBALL COACH – EPISODE 966

Website – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-yu-65001bba/?originalSubdomain=vn

Email – jonathanyu@outlook.com

Twitter – @J_Yu08

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Jonathan Yu is from British Columbia, Canada and coached this past year in Vietnam for the Saigon Heat and also worked as a player development coach for The Performance Lab. Prior to moving to Vietnam, Yu held the same role for College Prep Italy under Alex Sarama from Transforming Basketball.  Jonathan is passionate about teaching the game through a Constraints-Led Approach and using Differentiated Learning to improve a player’s shooting.  Yu also has coached high school and AAU basketball in Canada.

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What We Discuss with Jonathan Yu

• Not thinking about coaching as a kid – “When you’re a player, you just want to hoop.”
• Getting his first opportunity to coach back at his high school in Canada as a 21 year old
• Impacting players with the words you speak
• “I want to give those kids the same type of experience, those same positive memories I have looking back.”
• How Covid and online clinics led to his connection with Alex Sarama
• His first experience using CLA and conceptual offense with Vancouver Sports Club AAU
• Getting players into a flow state in practice
• Thinking and teaching the game through advantages
• Starting his teaching career in Canada before working at College Prep in Italy for Alex Sarama and the freedom there to try new things
• Using differentiated learning to teach shooting
• Returning from Italy and coaching AAU back in Vancouver
• Traveling to Vietnam to work with the Saigon Heat
• “The secret is just add a defender”
• “What do you see more commonly in the games your team plays and what are those scenarios or situations and how can we work on those?”
• Changing speeds, locations, and stances while shooting using DL
• “I’m thinking as a coach, it doesn’t matter how many kids I have. It’s okay. How can I scale my activity or do it so that everyone’s involved or there’s minimal way to wait time?”
• “How can I just build this into something that we’re going to do anyways?”
• Giving players the freedom to experiment and try new things
• “Learning is messy.”
• “I’ll never get mad at you for trying, but I will get frustrated if you’re stuck in a box and you’re scared to try.”
  
  

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THANKS, JONATHAN YU

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TRANSCRIPT FOR JONATHAN YU – INTERNATIONAL BASKETBALL COACH – EPISODE 966

[00:00:00] Mike Klinzing: Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here with my co-host Jason Sunkle tonight and we are pleased to be joined by Jonathan Yu, international basketball coach. We were struggling with figuring out exactly what the best title was and that’s when we settled on Jonathan. Welcome man.

[00:00:18] Jonathan Yu: Thank you guys for having me. Super excited to be here and like we mentioned before definitely surreal to have that title but yeah just super lucky and excited to chop it up with you guys.

[00:00:27] Mike Klinzing: All right, let’s start by going back to when you were a kid. Tell me how you got into the game of basketball when you were younger.  What made you fall in love with it?

[00:00:34] Jonathan Yu: I got into the game. My dad had a little concrete patch out back. I got an older brother about three and a half, four years older than me. So we spent a lot of time out there. Actually, my earliest memory is playing PlayStation one. I’m probably four years old playing NBA shootout 97.

And it was crazy. Cause at that time I remembered every roster, every player in the game. And I just loved basketball. I loved it all. So from the day I can even remember, think back to is it was basketball.

[00:01:04] Mike Klinzing: Who’s your favorite player growing up?

[00:01:06] Jonathan Yu: Growing up back then, my brother and I, we used to play basketball.  We used to play in the same, we used to be the Jazz, so I was Karl Malone and he was John Stockton. Now we’re not those guys anymore, but yeah, that was that was our team growing up.

[00:01:27] Mike Klinzing: So growing up…Did you compete against your brother? Were you two killing each other in the backyard or what was going on there?

[00:01:33] Jonathan Yu: Yeah, we were competitive for sure. I will say that it was usually me and my dad versus my brother just cause size advantage for him, puberty hit. And puberty did not hit for me for a while after that.

So definitely some good two on one battles between me and my dad versus my brother, and then as I got older, my brother took more of a mentor role and in terms of helping build me. So I appreciate everything he’s done for me.

[00:01:57] Mike Klinzing: As a player. How’d you go about working on your game and getting better when you were a kid?

[00:02:04] Jonathan Yu: So that’s the part where I’ve completely like going into coaching and stuff. It’s like everything I did growing up, I’m looking back, I’m like, wow, I would never have my players do that. And it’s not even like my coaches, but it’s like even stuff that I thought was getting me better. I grew up kind of in like the 2K era.

So playing a lot of 2K in the downtime. And I’m thinking back then, like, I don’t know, I played my GM mode. So to get better, you send your guys in the off season to like these little camps to get them better. And I honestly thought it was the same thing for, as a player where it’s like, Oh yeah, you’re just putting in time or you’re doing all these things.

And it’s just linear, right? You’re putting in time, you’re getting a thousand shots a day and you’re going to come out a sharpshooter. So we had access to a shooting machine growing up at my high school, my school was a small school, elementary, like kindergarten to grade 12, we had a shooting machine.

So I spent a lot of time on the gun. A lot of time doing the stationary ball handling, the cone stuff. And I’ll be the first to admit I am by no means a good player. I was a mediocre or decent player back in the day, but I didn’t play past high school tore my ACL in men’s league pretty quick after that.

So kind of had to pivot my love for the game and figure out another way to keep it going. So yeah,

[00:03:21] Mike Klinzing: Did you think about coaching while you were playing?

[00:03:24] Jonathan Yu: Never, never, never. You just think about playing. You just want to hoop, compete. I didn’t get into coaching until I was 21.

I think I just moved back home from I was living in Calgary, going to university out there. And my old high school coach that was a mentor to me. He’s like, you want to come coach? And I was like, yeah, I mean, I guess so. Yeah, I’d love to, but I had no idea what I was doing or where it would take me.

But no, when you’re a player, you just want to hoop.

[00:03:53] Mike Klinzing: That’s how I felt too. But it’s funny, Jonathan, when we talk to people on the podcast, there’s two distinct categories. The category one is what you just described where. I’m a player. I just want to play. That’s how I was. I never once at any point in my playing career, did I ever think that I wanted to get in coaching.

Never even crossed my mind because I was just so focused on, I wanted to be the best player that I possibly could be. And so I looked at everything through a player’s lens. And yet there’s other people that we talked to on the podcast that Mike. Even when they were playing, they might’ve been in second grade, third grade, fourth grade, and they’re drawing plays up in their notebook at school.

And they’re trying to diagram stuff for their teammates. And they’re thinking about the game from a coaching perspective. And they always knew that, Hey, when I’m done playing, I know I wanted to get into coaching. And most people fit pretty neatly into one of those two categories of either I’m a player, also am I playing currents, Man, I got to do something to stay involved in the game.

[00:04:58] Jason Sunkle: I think more people fall into the category of, Oh, they’ve been thinking about coaching for or at least they say they’ve been thinking about coaching since they were playing. I completely agree. I, with John, I never thought I would coach. I never thought I’d be coaching.

I don’t know. I mean, other than working camps and whatnot, I just loved playing the game, man, I just really loved playing.

[00:05:18] Mike Klinzing: But I think once that’s taken away from you, then your mindset sort of shifts and it is interesting that I guess I would agree with you, Jay, probably if we think back across the course of the podcast, that probably there are more people that at least thought about coaching at some point during their playing career.

Maybe somebody, somebody who was their coach saw something in them and said, Hey, someday you’re going to coach, or maybe they’re in college and somebody mentions to them, Hey, what are you going to do when you’re done playing? And have you ever thought about coaching? And even if they hadn’t thought about it, maybe that gets them sort of on that mindset.

But, it’s just so interesting to me that people fall into one of those two accounts. So when you get to coaching and you have your first experience as a coach, what do you remember about it? What did you like about it, Jonathan? What made you think like, hey, I’m not going to walk away from this. This is something that I think maybe I can have a passion for too, just like I did for playing.

[00:06:16] Jonathan Yu: Well, the lucky part was we had kind of a generational year that year where we’re, we’re a small school. We got about 30 boys per grade. So pretty small school. We won the AAA championship. So the second highest tier. So competing with schools that each grade, they got five, six, 700 boys to pull from.

So we were just neighborhood kids. It was my first year assisting. We ended up winning our provincial championship or what you guys would call the state championship. And so I fell in love with it. A big thing I remember that year, we used to start, or we started five seniors up until about January.

We kind of hit a rough spot. We lost a couple of games that maybe we shouldn’t have lost. And we inserted a grade 11. So a junior into the starting lineup. We took out one of the seniors and he was just not a basketball player. I remember he showed up to tryouts, no shoes. But he’s a pure athlete and he actually ended up running university track and, and he actually got pulled for team Canada bobsled.

So he’s just an athlete. And we put him in cause we were like, we need someone to rebound, do some dirty work. And my goal or my assignment was working with him, helping build them up. And so the cool part is we had a lot of conversations back and forth through texting and I’ll never forget when he moved off to university and started running track, he hit me up again and was like, even before I’m running nationals at track or whatever, like I still read the text messages you sent me when I was 11th grade about to play basketball and like about to start.

He said, and I’ll be honest, I’ve never gone back and read those conversations. I’ve never, I don’t even know what I said to him. But it means a lot that a few years later, he’s competing at a high level and still appreciates kind of whatever 21 year old me gave, whatever advice I had back then for him.

[00:07:59] Mike Klinzing: That reminds me of something that I’ve talked to people about, and I think it’ll resonate with you when I, when I share this, that you oftentimes as a coach, the things that you say that sometimes for you as the coach, You don’t necessarily remember him the same way you don’t remember what you said to him.

Players have a way of remembering things and the things we say as coaches have a way of sticking and there can be things that are positive and unfortunately sometimes it can be things that are negative and that the lesson that I always take from that story that you just told is that as a coach you’ve got to be really mindful of what you say how you say it and who you say it because you can have a huge impact.

Like, here’s some things that you said that you don’t even recall what they were, and yet he’s still citing those things five, six years after you said them. And I mean, that’s the power, I think, of coaching that sometimes is those words. I mean, I know that I still have things. I’m 54 years old. I still have things that I’m carrying with me that my dad said to me when I was in fifth grade, that my high school coach said to me 35 years ago, that my college coach said to me 30 years ago.

And I still carry those things with me. They’re still impacting me today. And I’m sure if I talked to any of those people, they would have no recollection whatsoever of saying those things to me. And yet they’ve had a big impact on my life. And I think that’s where the power of coaching really lies.

[00:09:31] Jonathan Yu: Exactly. I agree for sure. And that’s a big thing. I mean, jumping forward a bit, but being in Vietnam and working with these kids where English isn’t even their first language and just trying to connect in the big, the big, I guess, theme I coach with a really, really good guy out there, Andy White, who approaches basketball and life in a completely way, a new way I’ve never, never experienced, but he’s all about building people up and just understanding, like you said, like the power of words and the power of positivity and things like that.

And so like you say, like, The stuff that you say or the words that you have with these kids, like when I was leaving Vietnam a couple of weeks ago, like, I didn’t realize how much love would be shown and all these kids and these people that I connected with that I was only there maybe on the ground for six, six months or six and a half months.

But just the things that people are saying and players are saying you help build confidence or give me confidence. And like you said, it’s like, I have no idea what I did. I don’t even remember. Right. But it goes a long way and we’re really in a fortunate position to be able to impact people like that.

Like you said, positive or negative, but as long as we’re trying to keep it as positive in the moment that we can or try to build them up. The theme is that good things will always come from that. And it’s just cool, man. It’s such a cool opportunity and position to be in.  That’s all I can really say.

[00:10:51] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. No, no, it’s so true. I mean, the opportunity again to impact people, I say it all the time that you get to use something that you love, the game of basketball, to be able to have a positive impact on people. And there’s not, A lot of people that get an opportunity to do it that way.

They get to use something they love to have an impact on people. And I just think from a basketball coaching standpoint, that is such a special thing to be able to do. So let’s go back to the start of your coaching journey and you go back to your high school and start working with your high school coach.

What’s that like, kind of the dynamic going from a player coach relationship to a coach coach relationship, even though I’m sure you’re probably still calling them coach, but what’s that relationship look like? What’s that first experience as a coach? What is that like for you?

[00:11:46] Jonathan Yu: I’ll bring it back a little bit.  So going back to my history, and like you say, I call him coach. He started working with me when I was in third grade. So about eight years old. He was my homeroom teacher in fifth grade. He’s an elementary school teacher. But he always coached varsity. So he was my fifth grade homeroom teacher.

He coached my brother when I was in seventh and eighth grade. And then I played for him when I was 10, 11, and 12th grade. So he literally saw me from eight until 18. And he helped guide me in basketball. Now going back and working with him was awesome. He was a great leader. He never was like authoritative and trying to yell and be one of those type of coaches.

So we always had a good rapport. Everyone loved playing for him. Everyone still loves him and I’m actually getting married next month. And I didn’t take any of my friends from high school. I didn’t invite them. I mean, we’re still friends, but we try to keep it small. But I was like, I got to have coach there.

He’s my one invite that I know that he is going to get a reserve spot at my wedding. So he’s someone that I wouldn’t be anywhere near who I am or, or love the game as much as I do, if it wasn’t for him. But going back and working with him, was so much fun. Cause he gave us autonomy.

He gave us opportunity to grow. He gave us opportunity to lead. But he played junior national. He was a NAIA American at Simon Fraser out here which is now the only NCAA school in Canada. He had a successful playing career. And then he just became a teacher and he coached varsity at that school or at my school for at least almost 20 years.

So yeah, going back, working with someone that I’ve always looked up to and still continue to look up to. And it was just a dream and to learn from him and just life lessons and basketball and everything. I can’t thank him enough. So hopefully he listens to this someday.

[00:13:40] Mike Klinzing: What are one or two things that you took from him as his assistant coach that you feel like are going to stick with you throughout your entire coaching career? A lesson, a characteristic, a trait, a way he handled something, however you want to approach that question. Something that you took from him that is going to stay with you for the rest of your coaching career.

[00:14:07] Jonathan Yu: I think the big thing with coach, he was always about the team, it didn’t matter if you played from his first year coaching or his last year coaching our team. I guess breakout chant or whatever it was just he would say or the captain would say one and we would just be team. I say one team and so every guy that played from over 20 years We all are kind of in that brotherhood of like, oh, we’re coach’s players.

We’re all one team and so we actually have our alumni tournament coming up this weekend and I’m one of the only guys that knows guys from 20 years ago till now because we’ve all played under him. We’re all still a part of one team, but we try to stay involved and stay in touch with him.

So definitely just being with the team and understanding, like I said, he was never like yelling. He would always say, I should never want this more than you as a player or you guys as a team. Right. And I think that kind of always stuck with me. Cause it’s like, yeah, it’s true, and it stuck with me as a coach. Cause it’s like, why am I, or why do I need to yell or motivate in a certain way, maybe through fear or whatever. If these kids don’t want it like that, right. And so everyone plays for different reasons. Like I was talking to, like I said, that guy, Andy, when I was in Vietnam and we were comparing our experiences with basketball and mine was always positive.

I have so many like positive memories, but for Andy, he was talking, he’s like, a lot of it was negative for him. And I think the big thing, the reason why I was positive was because I had coach there, right. From the time you’re eight years old to 18, which is obviously huge, formative years, you’re having someone build you up.

You’re having someone that you can talk to. And they’re not just your coach or a leader or a teacher, right. But it’s like someone that’s actually genuinely looking out for you. So he looked out for all of us as players, but as people, and he always said, he’s like, once your coach, always your coach.

And that’s, I think that’s why all of us come back for this alumni tournament. All of us come back really just to give him a hug and to see him. It’s that culture and that kind of, I don’t know, brotherhood and just the values that he kind of instilled in all of us working together as a team. I definitely took that with me forward. Take that into my life for sure.

[00:16:25] Mike Klinzing: One thing that I think the coaching profession has continued to improve upon, not that it hasn’t always existed in terms of that connection between a coach and player, but that positive experience that you’ve been able to take part in compared to what your friend Andy got to take part in.

I think if you go back in time, there were a lot more people that had that. negative sort of experience, even if they had what from the outside might look like a positive experience and they had success at the high school level, or maybe they became a college player or whatever it might be. But there was so much more in terms of the style of coaching 20, 30 years ago, how different it was in terms of the my way or the highway or the Bob Knight school of coaching, or the, again, that yelled or belittled or whatever it might be.

It was just a much more common way of coaching then than it is now. And I think we’re continuing to move coaching in a positive direction when it comes to that. And it is interesting to have a conversation like you did where, okay, we both had these basketball experiences and mine was positive and yours was negative.

And obviously that can have an effect on how you approach coaching, right? Like your experience is probably. I want to give kids the same thing that I got, right? Like I want to, I want to give them that same positive experience with a coach and get them feeling good about the game, feeling good about themselves and being a part of something.

And then conversely, your friend Andy’s probably like, man, I want to give them the exact opposite of what I got in some of my experiences. I don’t want any kids or players to, you know. experience those same things that I did. I want to give them something different. So I think it’s just interesting when you start looking at how different coaches approach things.

And to your point, your high school coach obviously approached it in such a way that you come back and be a part of his staff. You got tons and tons of guys coming back for the alumni event that you mentioned. That really, I think, speaks to the impact that your coach’s head. And I’m sure that that’s what you feel every single day.

And you’re going to, you’re going to feel that 30 years from now, I’m guessing as well.

[00:18:45] Jonathan Yu: Yeah. You hit the nail on the head. The whole reason I really started enjoying coaching was, and I would actually say it’s like, I want to give, I want to be like coach. I want to give those kids the same type of experience, like those same positive memories I have looking back.

And this is like 12, 15, 20 years now. But yeah. And like you said with Andy too, it’s like for him, it’s like he played junior college in the States and went prep school and all that. And like you said, he’s like, I don’t want kids to go through that same anxiety and that nervousness and that pressure and all of that negativity that I did, right?

And so you feel it too, like we talked about from the top, we’re lucky to be in a position that we can make that type of impact, whether positive or negative, right? But as long as our intentions are positive and as long as we’re trying to build them up as people and do the right thing, then good things will come out of it.

And basketball is just on the side of that whole thing, right? The side of that whole experience.

[00:19:45] Mike Klinzing: So you are at your high school, you’re coaching with your former head coach, and COVID hits and things get shut down. And like a lot of other coaches, you go online and you take part in a lot of online coaching clinics.

You’re watching them, you’re participating, you’re asking questions, you’re seeing what’s out there just like many, many other coaches were during that time because we couldn’t get on the court, we couldn’t impact players directly. So had to figure out the way to keep working on your craft and stay involved in the game.

And so that’s the direction that many of us took, yourself included. And during that time, you come across Alex Sarama. So just talk a little bit about your first time being introduced to what Alex was doing and then how you two built a personal connection that ended up leading to some of the things that we’re going to talk about as we move forward here.

[00:20:42] Jonathan Yu: Yeah. So yeah, virtual coaches clinics. We’re all every hour on the hour we’re all watching them and just trying to learn. And I remember watching Alex’s and he was comparing basketball and jazz music. And I’m not into Jazz. I mean, I like Jazz. I can’t say I listen to it very much, but I didn’t know what he was talking about.

And I actually had to watch this clinic like three times back, but I remember thinking like there’s something here, right? Like I kind of vibe with what he’s saying, like trying to teach players. Like how to play and the ways that the methods that he’s kind of using. So I kind of started diving into all that.

And that’s kind of when he partnered up with Chris Oliver at Basketball Immersion. So I was like right away, I’m like, yeah, I’m getting a Basketball Immersion membership. I’m just trying to learn as much as I can from those guys. And then I guess that’s when he came out with this conceptual offense course.

I bought it the first day it came out and right away I started trying to implement or think about how to implement I ended up working. It’s 2021 now. I got hired at a small club out here, Vancouver sports club, which we’re small, but it’s pretty good club there on the Under Armour Rise circuit right now. So they do pretty well. So I started doing U11, U12, U13. And just trying to put in a conceptual offense and just try to build players using CLA and looking back, like, I was terrible at it. But that’s part of the whole learning experience and trying to figure this stuff out.

Cause we’re not going to come out just watching a clinic and all of a sudden you’re not the greatest coach in the world or whatever at this stuff. But luckily I kind of had the freedom to try new things. I will say there was maybe a little bit of pushback from whoever, but I was like, Hey, if you come to my practice, I promise you, these kids will be more engaged than like what you’re used to.

I never have to get on a kid to try harder or work harder, which thinking back and I’m sure you, same thing for you guys, where it’s like when you were playing, how many times were you coached? Like, Oh, we need to work harder or we need to compete harder. But it’s like, okay, but what were we doing to compete?

Right. Like what’s the incentive right now to. And like, obviously, yes, you want to work as hard as you can every time, whatever, blah, blah, blah. But like, Hey, if I have you going against someone else, automatically you’re ready to go, or you’re going to be engaged in this. So that was the big thing was just these kids were having fun.

And so the big thing for me as a coach, and especially back then my favorite thing, I still, my favorite thing is, is getting these kids in the flow state, right. Where, and I don’t coach with a whistle. So it’s like, I’ll bring them in at the end and I’ll be like, And then I’ll hear, what do you mean practice is over?

And I’m like, well, no. That’s like our hour and a half. Like that’s all the time we’ve got, but we want to keep going. Like, what do you mean? Like that went so fast. And that’s how I know I did my job. Right. Whether we win, whether we lose, whatever. But if these kids are just. losing themselves, right?

And losing track of time and being fully engaged in where they are, right? Especially in this day and age where phones and all that. And, but it’s like, no, these kids were here for an hour and a half. They were working, they’re sweating, they’re having fun with their friends and they’re 11, 12, 13 years old.

So this is stuff that they’ll remember forever, right? I still remember being their age, hooping with my friends and doing all that. But that was on our own time. Cause when we went to practice, it was the, the normal five on 0. You know, perfect layups or defensive slides. And yeah, I was okay and I was good at it, but man, I wish I got to compete like these kids.

I wish I got to play that way too, but yeah, I mean, anytime we can get kids engaged in the flow state, I think we’re on the right track.

[00:24:29] Mike Klinzing: All right. So go back to that first couple experiences coaching that 11, 12, 13 year old age bracket. What are some of the things that you tried that were new concepts to you, that you were using then that you felt like worked right out of the gate. Obviously, it’s a work in progress. As you said, you’re not a finished product, not then and certainly not now as a coach, but what did you do well with some of those things right away? What were some of the activities or ways you designed things that the kids really liked that you felt worked back in those early days of trying this stuff out?

[00:25:09] Jonathan Yu: Yeah they always loved high fives. Yeah. That’s like I got it from an Alex video before, but pretty much instead of like, let’s say you’re playing FIBA 3×3 rules, right? Where you just clear the ball rather than clear it outside the three point line. You’re actually going to find a coach and pass it to them.

They’ll hold the ball out. Your check has to go and high five them their other hand before you’re there. That’s by defense. So as a coach I can kind of give them an advantage or like a big advantage or a small advantage or no advantage. And the kids love that. So they were the big highlight or the big thing for those kids was learning it.

Advantages? I’d never even thought of the game through advantages. I was never taught like that. It was never, the word advantage was never even used growing up. I’d never heard of it in terms of basketball and thinking that way. So as soon as he started talking about advantages and I was like, okay, I want my kids to understand, we’re just trying to create an advantage.

We’re trying to leverage it, right? Create it. How, how can we create a closeout? How can we create dominoes, right? Things like that. So I remember like There’s my U 12s, they’re playing in a tournament, and I have a coach. And it happened a couple times, which I think is crazy, but like These coaches are coming up to me and they’re like, Oh, I have  my U16 team over there.

I was like, I tell them to watch your team play because you guys just move the ball. You guys are playing the right way. You guys share it. You guys look like you’re having so much fun. And it’s like, I wasn’t running sets. I wasn’t doing the normal stuff that I grew up doing, but it was just me experimenting and these kids were loving it.

And they were playing in a way that it was so Fun. Just having them run, having them share the ball. I look back at those days and like you said, it’s like, yeah, I would, I wouldn’t do probably 85 percent of the things I was doing with them back then. But the product that we saw on the court was like, those kids love playing with each other.

They love hanging out with each other and they all went to different schools. So they didn’t know each other before this team. But I hope that the environment that was created at practice kind of helped them develop those friendships, develop those relationships and those personal memories and life skills and whatever you can get from that time.

But I hope that a bit of that came from just trying new things and letting them play and letting them take control of their own learning. I think that’s a big thing, especially at that age, just self exploration, exploring as many different things as you can at that age, because I would love to be as creative as I was back then.

Same imagination and all that, but things kind of get a little dull as you get older. So to see the, the light bulb go off for these kids and try new things and seeing the smiles and the laughter, like I’ll always, I’ll always cherish that. And I’ll always have a lot of love for those guys for sure.

[00:27:51] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. It’s interesting to hear you talk about those experiences. And as you’re describing your practices and how you guys play the game and what it looks like, in a game in terms of sharing a ball and playing together and looking like you’re having fun. What I, what went through my head as you were talking, Jonathan, is that you so often hear coaches talk about getting their team or getting individual players to buy in, right?

And oftentimes that’s framed in a standpoint of, I got to get guys to buy in, or I got guys to buy in, or we got guys to buy into what we were trying to do. And. When I heard you talking, what came to my mind was that it wasn’t Jonathan per se. It wasn’t your personality as a coach that got them to buy in.

You weren’t like the Pied Piper of leaders. It was more a case of The environment that you created made it almost impossible for the players on your team not to quote buy in because as you said, they’re having fun, they’re learning, they’re competitive, all those things that make the game of basketball fun, you were generating through not the force of your personality or your quote in practice coaching.

It was more of the environment that you designed. Is that kind of a good summary of what you were saying?

[00:29:17] Jonathan Yu: That sums it up better than I could have done it. That’s exactly it. It was just creating such a fun and positive and uplifting environment that it was so fun. And it’s like, I love working with that age group because they have so many hopes and dreams, but they’re just hooping with their friends.

Right. And yeah, it was so fun, man. So like you said, design the environment, let it see what happens and just them grow as little adults just running around having fun. And now they’re all in my high school now, which is crazy.

[00:29:56] Mike Klinzing: Trust me, man, that happens. That happens real fast. So I’m at 54 and it’s amazing when you see people that have either a come to the bat, my basketball camp at some point. So Jason came to my basketball camp when I was an adult and he was a kid. And now he and I. Mike Klinzing. Worked together on the podcast.

He works with me at camp. So that’s strange. And then as a teacher, I’ll run into kids and people that, Hey, Mr. Klinzing, I had you back in fifth grade 20 years ago or 25 years ago, and you’re trying to put the faces together and you remember them as these, whatever, 11 and 12 year olds. And then you’re seeing them in front of you as a 30, 35 year old adult.

That’s, I don’t know if it makes me feel old. It makes you feel. in some ways, I guess, appreciated that people remember you and recognize you and, and want to come and, and, and talk to you. But in another frame, it does make you feel a little bit, a little bit old, but again, it goes back to that impact part of it.

And so by designing the environment, you’re able to create that kind of impact that you want to have. And so I’m thinking about you discovering the stuff that Alex was talking about, you starting to follow what he and Chris are doing at the time at Basketball Immersion. How are you diving into that more and then how do you actually get an opportunity to connect directly with Alex?

[00:31:23] Jonathan Yu: Yeah, I spent about a year coaching that club, doing that stuff and working those kids, which was awesome. At that time I guess that spring or whatever, I think it might’ve been May. So May, what is that? 2022. I think Alex put out a tweet saying he’s looking for assistance at college prep in Italy.

I’m like, man, that’d be cool. So I’m working on my teaching degree. I’m just about to finish it, about to start my real life career, be an adult. I decided to throw my name into the hat. Unfortunately, things didn’t go the way I wanted it to. So I didn’t get a position off the bat, which is fine. So I started teaching.

But just still continue to learn. So continue to just try to get better and still coaching and stuff. And then that’s September. So September, 2022, I start my teaching job. I get my first teaching contract in October. And then two weeks after I signed the contract, Alex sends me a text. He’s like, Hey I got a spot for someone for three months starting in January in Italy.

You’re probably busy, but I just thought I would offer it to you and see what you think. Right away, I’m talking to my fiance or my girlfriend at the time. I’m like, how do I say no to this? And so I ended up having to quit the school district. I worked up to Christmas break, quit the school district, resigned from my position.

Told my students, I was like, Hey, I’m moving to Italy to coach basketball for a bit. So maybe I’ll see you. Maybe I won’t. We’ll see. No, but they were good kids and they understood and they supported me kind of trying to chase my dream a little bit. So yeah, January, 2023. Get a chance to move to Italy for three months, go to prep. And sorry, the whole reason that I connected with Alex, I started doing a bit of video work for him which was awesome cause it’s free learning for me. So cutting some film and, and cutting some of his practice videos and then getting some of that ready. But I’m watching everything I’m watching how he’s doing everything.

And yeah, so that led to me going to Italy. And just, it was so cool to be in that type of environment where. Nothing is too crazy or, no, it’s just everyone is like, be as creative as you can be. And like, let’s learn, let’s dialogue, let’s all learn from each other, let’s talk and to be around like minded people and people that are just trying to see if there’s another way to do things.

And just all those guys, I still am in contact with the other coaches, Jonas, Danny Giacomo, all those guys, Adam, Kareem. It’s been great. I’ve never met Adam and Kareem, but I’m sure, like, Adam and I will text and he’ll send me some articles and I’m sure Kareem would be happy to help if I need anything, but all those guys, like, we have such a close bond.

Just being with those guys and being together and, yeah, and like I said, it’s surreal for me to look back on because I guess it’s like I didn’t play high level. I didn’t do anything and coaching was just something I did for fun. So to move to Italy for three months and live in a small town an hour outside of Milan, so like 18, 20,000 people town and you’re just walking around and it was so fun.

And yeah, the guys were awesome. They were so open minded to things and they were super welcoming to me. So it was just a lot of learning and a lot of character building in that three months. And so luckily I was able to do that for the three months. And then I moved home got back into teaching and I was kind of just figuring out what I wanted to do. And then, sorry, should I keep going into like the Vietnam stuff or?

[00:34:55] Mike Klinzing: Let me ask you one question about Italy and then we’ll jump to Vietnam. So when you go over there, what level of player are you working with and what’s the language barrier that you’re working with? In terms of being able to work with players and I’m sure there was coaches from all over the world.

So just how did you handle the language piece of it? And what level of player were you working with?

[00:35:15] Jonathan Yu: Yeah. I think there were 13 different countries represented by the 20 players. So luckily the coaching was in English. We were affiliated with college basket, which is like the Italian side.

We were a prep team that had no Italians cause we weren’t allowed to play in the Italian league. So we had to play in the EYBL. So just flying around to the different stages and stuff. So all those guys that it was like, they were 16 to I think about 19. Their goal was to try to get scholarships to go to the States or if not pursue pro careers over in Europe or overseas somewhere.

I think it ended up being eight or nine of the guys got scholarships to go to the States, which was kind of cool. Which is obviously hard for Europeans and non North Americans. It’s not something that a lot of guys come up dreaming about or getting a chance to fulfill that.

So, yeah, it was high level guys right off the bat. I was in player development. So the big focus for me out there was shooting and trying to develop shooting using the CLA, using differential learning. So. I was running, I think it was three player development sessions per week in the mornings for about an hour.

And then just being at every team practice in the afternoons wherever they needed me. But the player dev stuff was so fun and it made me fall in love with doing that kind of stuff. I love working with guys, trying to get them better. Just doing what I can. And yeah, like I said, Alex was, was great in terms of giving me freedom and autonomy and creativity, just.

Whatever you think, like, let’s try it. We never shot an idea down. He never said anything was weird or nothing. He was like, let’s try it. So like, even some of the DL stuff, like looking back, it’s like, we had guys jumping off the wall, doing all this crazy stuff, like just trying new things. But it was just such a cool environment to grow and to learn and to coming out of Italy.

Like my confidence as a coach, it just skyrocketed in it and it just gave me, yeah, I guess the confidence to, hey, I can, maybe I can do this. Cause at that time it’s imposter syndrome. It’s, I’m about to fly to Italy. I’m about to leave my girlfriend. I quit my job. My mom’s mad at me.

[00:37:34] Mike Klinzing: Right. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:37:38] Jonathan Yu: So yeah, after that, I got to coach in Italy. I got to work with some pretty high character guys and it definitely made me move a little bit more confidently for sure.

[00:37:51] Mike Klinzing: All right. So to go along with that, to the building confidence piece, and you talked about you had the freedom to kind of try anything.

So what’s something that you tried that you felt like worked really well to accomplish again, whatever the goal is that you were trying to accomplish, whether it was something related to shooting, whether it’s a team thing, whether it’s a skill development thing, just give me something that you tried that was a little bit out of the ordinary that worked.

[00:38:21] Jonathan Yu: Yeah, so with shooting, like the DL stuff, like we were doing, like I said, it was like we were just trying as many different things I had the opportunity to work with a guy, Oscar, who rolled his ankle pretty early on into me getting there, so I got to do a lot of DL stuff in terms of like using it to recover coming back from his injury, so rather than just kind of having form shoot or shoot from a chair or whatever, we were kind of playing around with DL.

What can we do with differential learning with your action capabilities at that point in time in your recovery? So getting them sitting in a chair doing roll ups, doing as many different, you repetition without repetition things as I could different, as many different types of movements that we could on one bad ankle.

I have a video from my time up there where it’s a game I thought up of Saturn, Saturn’s rings are an activity called Saturn’s rings shooting. It’s just a defender kind of orbiting and you can kind of take it in a million different directions. With what you want to do with the Defender that’s orbiting.

But I still use it to this day. I’ve obviously adapted it and I look back at the first version of it. It’s quite different now, obviously, but. The video is up on my Twitter or X or whatever, but it’s, it’s fun for me to look back on yeah, just trying to figure out how can I build rep without rep a contest or a decision or whatever as creatively, but as representatively as well as, as I could.

[00:39:45] Mike Klinzing: The approach that you were taking, and obviously you were trying new things, but was that approach something that the players that you guys were working with, had they seen things that were similar to that or was this all completely new to them as well? In other words, did you have to sort of expose them to it, get them to see it, get them to experience it 11, 12, 13U teams, where.

You’re not having to really generate buy in because it’s so engaging and it’s working. How would you describe sort of the reaction of the players that you were working with to some of the things that you were trying to put together for them?

[00:40:32] Jonathan Yu: Yeah, I mean I got there in January, so they started out I think in September, so luckily Alex and Jonas and Danny and Jack and Kareem and Adam kind of had them settled into the ideas.

It was definitely new for all of them. I think all of them came from traditional backgrounds. Or traditional kind of basketball coaching upbringing. I remember for some of the DL, like, I remember I had a pair of those little like dollar store black gloves that you buy in the winter when you’re cold.

And so I remember I had a pair of those because it was cold at the time in Italy. And I’m like, well, with DL, like, let’s try shooting with these gloves on. And so they were too small for the players. I guess they got bigger hands than me, I guess. And they ended up ripping, ripping a hole in my gloves.

But, It was cool because they all wanted to try it. They were like, I wonder what it’s like to shoot with maybe only being able to feel one fingertip on the ball or whatever, right? So. Yeah, luckily there was buy in, they understood kind of what we’re trying to do. But if not, they’re pretty open to dialogue and they’re awesome.

They’re just awesome guys to work with and, and I look back at that fondly for sure.

[00:41:36] Mike Klinzing: So when you come back from Italy, what’s your mindset at that point in terms of career wise? You’re still thinking at that point, Hey, this was a neat kind of one off experience. I’m going to go back and resume my teaching career and sort of settle into getting a more sort of mainstream, for lack of a better way of saying it, coaching job.

Is that kind of what your mindset was at that point?

[00:41:59] Jonathan Yu: Yeah, for sure. I moved home. I went right into the AAU season. So I was assisting for the same club, our U16 team, which was a pretty interesting situation. We had 10 players, five of them were on Vancouver Island, which is about two and a half, three hours away.

And then five of them were on the mainland with me. And so the head coach was also on the island. So he had his five guys and him. And then I was on the mainland with our five guys. We’d come together on weekends or a random week in the summer for practices. And then it was like, all right, we’ll see you at the games or whatever.

So it was trying to, and luckily the head coach was awesome. And Chris Franklin out of Oak Bay. And he gave me some freedom to, to help kind of run the offense and put a bit of conceptual offense stuff in. And he was super open to it and the players were open to it. And it was a lot of fun cause you’re just playing basketball.

And when we’d come together, it was teaching them pretty simple. We’re trying to keep it obviously quite simple. A couple of triggers, a couple of actions, things like that. But it was a good group of kids. They all worked hard and we were fortunate enough to go down to Vegas and they won the Las Vegas live platinum division.

So I guess that’s the highest division for their age group. Beating all American teams. I remember they beat, I think it was the Oakland Soldiers maybe, or something like that. But it was cool to be a part of that. I didn’t get to go to Vegas at the time, but. Obviously keeping track with those guys and seeing kind of what they were doing down there It was pretty exciting for us and as a small club But also I would say just Canadian basketball to go down there I remember going to Vegas as a kid entering those same tournaments and getting our butts kicked by you guys so the fact that we got a little bit of revenge oh, it tasted sweet for sure.

[00:43:35] Mike Klinzing: There you go. Oh, I’m sure. Absolutely. All right. So as that experience is going on, how does the Vietnam opportunity get in front of you?

[00:43:49] Jonathan Yu: Yeah. So that was purely on Instagram. Matt Van Pelt was the head coach of the Saigon Heat and he, I guess he runs a side business trying to help coaches find jobs. So a couple of the assistants from college prep.

He helped place them. Danny went to Luxembourg and Jonas went to Germany. And he put a Instagram post out there looking for a player development coach in Southeast Asia. I didn’t even know it was Vietnam. But it was, yeah, looking for a player development coach starting in September in Southeast Asia.

And I was like, well, might as well just throw my name in the hat. Why not? Got an interview with him and Connor Winn, who’s the, I call him the godfather of basketball in Vietnam. That guy started everything. He owns a Saigon. He started the VBA. Part of the Vietnam, the National Federation for Basketball.

So got on a call with both of those guys and I guess they liked what I was talking about. And I remember Connor saying, he’s like, we got to do something different. Cause in Southeast Asia, I guess they beat the same teams, but then they get stomped by 40 by the same teams.

So they’re about fourth or fifth in Southeast Asia typically at like C games or whatever. So he’s like, well, it’s making us realize like, maybe we got to do something different. We’ve got to try something different. So I guess luckily they. They liked what I was talking about or some of the ideas I was sharing and took a bit of back and forth, but within two weeks of signing my contract, I was on a plane to Vietnam.

Never been there in my life. My parents are from Hong Kong, so everyone says I look Vietnamese and they try to speak to me in Vietnamese, but I have zero language skills. So yeah, so I got on the plane, had no idea what I was walking into. But it was a dream. Vietnamers. Awesome. The people I work with were great.

The kids are awesome. I was coaching U16 and U12. So age groups that I’ve worked with. And, but now I’m moving, like I said, with a little more confidence. So trying to do the conceptual offense stuff. I’m doing player development as well. I was running some morning sessions, especially before Christmas.

Working with youth all the way up to a lot of the pros and national team guys and, and all that. So I was able to kind of try new things, but also experiment with just different skill levels or player abilities. The pros and stuff, they bought in, they were having fun in the activities.

And a lot of them really like DL shooting, which is kind of funny. So I guess apparently they call me the DL king in Vietnam or whatever. Something like that. But it’s kind of funny that out of everything that those guys enjoyed that the most yeah. But no, it was just cool to be somewhere new and try new culture and just see where basketball can take me.

Yeah, like I said, it’s surreal. It’s surreal to say that I’ve lived in Italy. We traveled to Hungary to play in the EYBL when I was there, and now Vietnam, and it’s. I mean, I love teaching and I, but hey, if basketball can kind of be my life or take me around the world a little bit, then it’s a dream that I want to kind of chase for a little bit longer.

Yeah, so I just got back from Vietnam about three, three or four weeks ago. I’m actually getting married in July, so less than a month. So I moved home to substitute teach the last month of high school out here and get married and then kind of reevaluate and see what opportunities or options I have kind of moving forward, or who knows, maybe I teach and grow up and be an adult or maybe I keep trying to chase the dream and who knows, maybe move back to Vietnam or something. So yeah, that’s kind of been my journey.

[00:47:16] Mike Klinzing: Your fiance stuck with you even when you took off to Italy, huh?

[00:47:20] Jonathan Yu: Yeah, we got engaged. I mean, right as I found out I was moving to Italy, I bought a ring. I started doing research on the ring.

I got engaged. She came in to visit me for about eight days. So I learned how to ask her to marry me in Italian, which she had no idea what I was saying. So that didn’t really go as planned. But yeah, she stuck with me and she lived with me out in Vietnam for a while. For seven weeks. And so it was cool.

And when she was coming out to visit me, we were on vacation in Thailand. It was back in February this year, start of February. And I got a call when I was in, in Thailand and six days later, another club from Vietnam, one that is close to us, and I guess they’re not rivals, but competitors. They’re going to the Asian youth basketball super cup in Hong Cheon, South Korea but they needed a replacement coach.

I guess their coach couldn’t get a visa. So. They’re like, we need a coach from Canada, America, or Australia. And then they’re like, well, we thought of you, would you want to come to Korea instead? I was like, well, it’s up to my fiance. And so luckily she gave the green light. We were able to kind of make a little detour from Thailand, go to Korea for the weekend.

I coached, I think it was like 13 or 14 games in 48 hours across like three age groups. I had just met the kids. I barely even knew their names. I had 30 minute practice with them before. And all of a sudden we’re in this tournament. So it was. It was a lot of fun. Obviously super tiring and super draining, but what an experience.

And like I said, it’s now basketball is taking me to Korea. Like it’s crazy. It’s crazy.

[00:48:52] Mike Klinzing: All right. So let’s look at where you are as a coach, when it comes to CLA, when it comes to DL, what are some things that you’ve learned through your experiences that you could share with coaches who are maybe just starting to look at this as an alternative way to the traditional methods of coaching?

What are some things that you could share with coaches who are just kind of starting out on this path?

[00:49:25] Jonathan Yu: Yeah, I think, I mean, Chris Oliver and Alex have said it in the past, but it’s pretty much the secret is just add a defender, right? And then it’s understanding as a coach, it’s okay. And if I need to scale the challenge, right, extend it or scale it or whatever.

So let’s say I’m struggling to guard you. Well, maybe as a coach or whatever, I see that. And it’s like, okay, well, maybe I limit the offense or. Or let’s say you’re killing sorry, or I’m too good on defense. And so it’s like, okay, rather than giving you both hands, maybe get one hand, maybe get no hands.

Just being able to understand as a coach, I’m watching always, I’m observing, I’m seeing, okay, is this the right challenge point I’m looking for this activity, for this player? I was running my Saturday mornings, 8am. I had two beginners, except one was, I mean, they’re 12 years old. So one is like five foot eight, maybe so fairly big kid.

And one is no four foot five. Right. And so it’s, I had these guys, they’re training partners and it’s, it’s understanding how to scale the challenge. So for the big kid, it was like, okay, you get no hands in any finishing Joe, you’re not allowed to block. You can use your head to block. Like I would say it as a joke and he would kind of try it.

He never got a block in his head, but it’s just understanding, okay, where is the optimal challenge? What, how can I scale this? How can I play around with, yes, I’ve added an defender, but how can I make it appropriate? Another thing with CLA, just understanding advantages, it helped me massively, right?

Like, if I want to have a two on one or a one on one or a one on one plus one, so maybe I include a passer. Just designing activities or thinking about, okay, these are the triggers I want to run, or this is the type of offense, or this is what I want my offense to look like. So then it’s figuring out, okay, how can I design the activity to kind of give them maybe a closeout read from the corner, because we emphasize drive and kicks to the corner or something, right?

And so it’s just, what do you see more commonly in the games your team plays and what are those scenarios or situations and how can we work on those? Cause yeah, it’s, I would say that those are the two big ones for me as I kind of started developing myself into this stuff with DL, the fun part about DL is there really is nothing too crazy.

So the common one always changing your stance stagger, wide, narrow, one foot, whatever, but just playing with as many different ways of DL as you can I’ve told this story before now, it’s this podcast, but. When I was on the island working with those U 16s last summer, there was another kid that wasn’t even a part of our team.

But he had a hitch in his shot and he was going to the same school that the head coach was, was coaching at the high school there. And then the head coach was telling me oh, he’s got a hitch in his shot. So I was like, okay, let me, let me take him to the side here. Let me just try a couple of things with him.

And so I ended up spending like an hour doing DL shooting, but and I learned this from Francisco Nani, but he talks about if we’re shooting and he’s got a hitch, then I’ll say, okay, maybe position one you’re shooting as fast as you can position or speed one, sorry, speed one, you’re shooting as fast as you can.

Speed three, you’re as slow as you can. And speed two is somewhere in the middle and speed two is probably going to be his hitch or where he’s most comfortable in. And so I’m telling him, I want you to always change range, change location. So I talk about X and Y axis cause these are kids and I’m a teacher.

So I don’t know, it just makes sense to me, but I always want you to change your X and Y axis. So shooting from different locations and then I want you to shoot at different speeds and you’re not allowed to use the same speed more than two times in a row. And I would start with them saying, okay speed one.

So, right. That’s as fast as they can. Right. So I’m able to see, okay, this is their speed. One, this is their speed. Two, this is their speed. Three. We go for a bit and then it’s like, Hey, we stopped. It’s like, pause for a sec. What is the least comfortable for you? And they’re like, Oh, probably speed three, right?

Super slow. It’s like, okay, let’s, let’s get rid of speed three for a sec here. That’s Let’s just shoot on one and two. Again, you can’t shoot, now let’s say you can’t shoot more than three in a row. Always changing X and Y axis or range and location or whatever and just shoot, shoot, shoot for a bit. And then, and I don’t even give him the choice and it’s like, okay, I actually want to eliminate speed two for us for a bit here.

I only want you to shoot in speed one. And what I noticed is like, he was able to shoot and we’re always aiming for Brad. Brad or a swish. So back rim and down as our external cue. And so what I’m noticing is like, he didn’t have a hitch and he, and I’m filming him and he started to understand like, Oh, like I can shoot like that.

Cause the whole time maybe he’s been hearing it from all his coaches. Like, Oh, you have a hitch, you have a hitch, you have a hitch, stop your hitch. Well, it’s not that easy, right? He doesn’t feel, he doesn’t understand it, but within an hour, he was able to shoot without a hitch. And I’ve done that exact same thing with a kid in Vietnam as well.

That had a hitch and he was able to feel it. And it was the same result of like in one session. And I’m not saying that this is magic or whatever, but It’s just getting a new experience and feel rather than just direct instruction of telling, Hey, stop your hitch or shoot faster or whatever it’s, how can I get the new experience?

How can I get them to feel? How can I bring video in? And how can we learn through this together? So DL is one of my most favorite activities to use or to do with players. Cause it allows you to connect with them. It allows you to show, Hey, I’m on your side here. This is going to be crazy.

And it’s like, that’s what I tell them. It’s like, you’re going to think I’m crazy. Right. But I promise you that there is value in this. And you’re going to see results if we do this, if we stick with this for a bit. And so when I show them the video of it, Hey, where’s that hitch in your shot now?

And then if I’m talking to them, it’s like, are you still shooting in speed one? And they’ll be able to think like, Oh yeah, I have her. Oh no, I haven’t. Right. But it’s now they understand, Hey, I can shoot fast. I can shoot without a hitch. I can, I understand the feeling of that speed one. And so yeah, that definitely opened my eyes to the power of DL and being able to use that to kind of help our shooters out a little bit.

[00:55:13] Mike Klinzing:  I think it translates sort of across skills. When Alex was on a couple of weeks ago, he and I talked a little bit about just the way that you acquire a skill and how you go about making that happen. And he explained, which made complete sense to me at the time, and continues to make sense to me, that when you’re learning a new skill and you’re trying to actually make that skill transferable to a game, that you don’t talk to someone about, put your foot here, put your next step here, put your hand here, put the ball over there, because There’s no way that that can be transferable because nobody has enough time in the dynamic environment of a game to be able to do those things and to consciously think about each one of those subsets of what you have to do to actually execute the skill. And the term that you used was you have to develop that feel for your shot. And so it’s not about, Hey, let’s eliminate the hitch. It’s about how do we get you to feel what a good shot feels like? And what feels like a good shot for you, Jonathan might feel awkward to me.

And what feels like a good shot for me might feel awkward because there’s slight variations with our body mechanics with our, again, just who we are as people, how we’re built and, As a result of that, it’s very, very difficult, I think, to sort of use that old school traditional method of, Hey, you’ve got to do it this way.

And if you don’t, it’s wrong. This approach, this DL of differentiated learning and being allowed to experiment and try different things, I can totally see where it accelerates the learning. And it accelerates more importantly, the transfer into a dynamic environment, because You’re getting the player to develop a feel as opposed to giving them a prescription of do this, do this, do this, do this, do this, do this.

And then that will happen instead. It’s like, let’s put them in these different types of environments. Let’s give them these different ways of going about things and get their mind off of maybe whatever it is that we’re trying to fix in the case of that you described the hitch. And instead, we’re just trying to develop that feel.

And to me, it’s super interesting and I’ll be continuing to watch. And I’m sure you have some experience with this of seeing the results of, Hey, I’m working with the player and this is what I’m doing with them. And then actually seeing them succeed in a game situation, which is obviously the ultimate goal.

If you’re a great practice shooter, okay, great. I mean, that’s fantastic. But most of us are trying to get somewhere where we can actually make shots in a game. And I think that’s where DL really, I think, can excel. And I’ll be interested to see as more and more of this comes. into the coaching community and more and more players get exposed to it, how it impacts players ability to shoot the ball.

[00:58:34] Jonathan Yu: Exactly. Yeah. A couple things on that. So the one thing I love about CLA and DL and all that, like you said, it’s individualized instruction, but you’re seeing them as an individual, right. And the approach that we all had growing up, whatever, like the one size fit all, like, like you said, everyone’s different based on biomechanics, anatomy, flexibility, whatever.

Right. But we’re using CLA. It’s now I’m thinking as a coach, it’s like, I’m looking at him as an individual. I’m looking at him as, okay, what are your strengths? What are you good at already? And how can I constrain or how can I design my activity or my environment to maybe work on some things that you’re not good at, or maybe work on reads that you might see in the game, right.

Rather than everyone go through the same drill or same movement or whatever, like it’s a lot more me or as a coach, it’s critically thinking like, okay, this is. Bob. How can I put Bob in the best position if Bob is good at XYZ but maybe not good at ABC, right? And so it’s allowing me to think about everyone more so as an individual to fit into kind of our team or what we’re trying to do. Another thing with the DL stuff like Linus was the captain in Italy and that’s I guess Alex’s guy. He’s worked with him I think two or three years and I’ve never seen someone been able to get their shot off it. In as many different ways and at crazy angles and out of so many different movements as Linus and he’s done a bunch of DL with Alex. And I remember talking to him and him saying it does help. Like being able to understand how your body moves and being able to generate power and figuring out how can I score that breath. Right. And so that’s what I would say is any coaches out there that want to see it, like look up Linus Holmström.

I think he just committed to Virginia Military Institute. And he was playing at Colorado Prep this past year. But watching, he’s on the Swedish national team and all that, but just watching him shoot.

He’s the type of shooter I’ve never seen someone like that, especially at his age and his ability to understand basketball IQ and read the game and understand coverages and cover solutions. I would say to any coach, go check out some film of Linus or go listen to his podcast that he did with Alex on the transforming basketball one.

You’ll hear a kid that sounds like he’s a 20 year coach and not a 19 year old player, right? So yeah, it’s pretty cool. It’s pretty cool. And like you said, I’m definitely excited to see kind of where players go or where basketball kind of moves to if more people kind of try to do this stuff and just see the results.

And yeah. Just hear stories of the enjoyment and how fun it is. Cause like we talked about from the start, like basketball for me is always positive. So anytime  I’m in a gym with someone or it could be a kid, it could be a pro or it could be anyone, but I just want it to be fun. I never considered my time in Vietnam or Italy.  Like that was never a job to me. Never felt like a job. And it’s that’s what everyone says. It’s like, Oh, that means you, you found what you wanted to do. You want to do it, your passion or whatever, right? Like, that’s my goal. How can I make this process fun for them?

[01:01:58] Mike Klinzing: It should be fun, right?

It’s a game. I mean, ultimately, I think that’s one of the things that we sometimes forget as coaches. I know that sometimes I forget that as a parent. I know that players sometimes can even forget that. It’s the reason why we all picked up the ball in the first place. is because the game is fun. And I think that’s one of the things that when I look back on my experiences as a basketball player, and I guess I would say I had probably a mixed bag of experiences and sometimes there was multiple experiences within one greater experience, if that makes any sense, where they’re the game, high school basketball, for me, I don’t remember one second of it ever not being fun.

Like not one second. I never remember not enjoying practice. I don’t remember not enjoying games. I just remember loving every single second of it. And then conversely at the college level, a much different experience. There were obviously lots of positives and there was lots of fun moments and games and things, but there were lots of days that practice was not fun.

That when it was time for me to head to the gym to go to practice, I was not excited. I was not looking forward to it. And I was a kid who loved basketball as much as anybody I’ve ever known directly in my life. So for me not to, to love what I was doing in relation to basketball, was kind of. I mean, you had to be doing something pretty extreme to, to get me to not love it.

And so I just think about this approach and how we can make it so that more kids can a access the game, more kids can be put into positions where they can have success. They can still be growing and learning the game and they can do it in an environment that. is fun. And I go back to what you said at the beginning when you were talking about your 11, 12, 13 year olds that practice would end and they’d look around and be like, what do you mean practice over?

Like we want to, we want to keep going. It’s like, that’s, that’s the dream, right? You want, you want everybody to feel that way. And you said, obviously you felt it as a coach. And when you feel that, As a coach and your players feel it as players, man, I mean, you’re talking about that’s doesn’t get much better than that.

And obviously if that’s the way everybody feels, I know one of the things that people always talk about in relationship to coaching is that ultimately you want to be able to win basketball games. And I just always come back to, I think if you can make it fun, then you make people want to practice more, want to continue to improve, want to continue to get better.

And usually when that’s the case, that translates to winning and winning is usually fun. People enjoy winning more than they enjoy losing typically. So if we can combine all those things, I just feel like to me that this is the direction that. As we get more and more research and more and more coaches get exposed to it, I just think that it’s a direction that, that coaching is going to go.

And I’m sure that in your discussions that you’ve had with your colleagues who are using it and with Alex, I’m sure that’s what you guys are talking about is, hey, this is, this is the future of where basketball coaching is headed.

[01:05:44] Jonathan Yu: That’s exactly it, right? I truly believe that. I truly believe that.

And it’s not that you have to dive in a hundred percent. Cause obviously everyone’s going to be comfortable with different levels of trying this stuff. But I think if you just try it for a little bit, see the result. Right. But I don’t mean the result in like, Oh, are they winning games or whatever, but it’s just, are they engaged, right?

Like I tell coaches, if you come to my practice and it’s open to anyone and anyone can come watch, I’d love to dialogue and share, but it’s like, you’ll rarely ever see kids standing in lines. You’ll rarely ever see kids not. involved because every time I’m thinking as a coach, it doesn’t matter how many kids I have.

It’s okay. How can I scale my activity or, or do it so that everyone’s involved or, or there’s minimal way to wait time? How can I get more time on task? How can I get everyone? Cause we only get an hour and a half, right? So it was like, how can I maximize this hour and a half? And right away, if kids are playing for an hour and a half, right, they’re going to have fun, right?

And if they’re competing, if there’s a defender and. If you’re like, if I’m using the CLA and trying to scale challenges or design whatever activity or environment to highlight whatever I’m trying to highlight, as long as it’s done thoughtfully and I guess in a way that it’s fun and that’s where learning occurs, right?

And my favorite saying these kids, it’s like learning is messy. So I’ll tell them like, I’ll never get mad at you for making a mistake. Like I never get mad at a kid for missing a layup or whatever. And even in like my practice activities, I tell them every pass, most passes, I want you to throw and I want them to develop motor skills and I want them to develop understanding.

Like, Hey, if we can get good at passing, cause you’re, you’ll have coaches in your life that’ll tell you to throw two hands or you’ll do a bunch of two hand passing or whatever. But Hey, if we can get good at throwing a one hand, maybe off the bounce or something, like think about how much faster we can play.

And so I’ve got a couple, a couple of clips on my Twitter from the last few weekends. I’m still watching all my kids play in Vietnam. Luckily they stream it. So I’ve highlighted a couple of the passes and things that I’m seeing and it’s, it’s not something like, especially for passing, it’s like, it’s not something I have to build into my practice plan or my, I don’t even really do it.

To be honest, I don’t even really do a crazy practice plan or anything. But anyways, like in most of my shooting activities, it’s okay, I want you to pass the shooter, but I want you to pass in as many different ways as you can off the bounce one hand, right? So it could be behind the back, could be a hook, could be no look, could be whatever, right?

But it’s getting these kids to just try as many different things and then just talk to them and they’re like, oh, it’s only been three weeks and I feel like so much more comfortable passing with my left hand. And it’s like, okay, but how many minutes did we spend on passing? And they’re like, well, none, like specifically.

It’s like, yeah, so how can we be efficient in trying to develop ourselves as basketball players? How can I challenge myself or push myself to try as many different movements or passes or, or whatever, right? You don’t need to make it a full theme or activity or whatever. It’s not, how can I just build this into something that we’re going to do anyways?

I tell my kids, it’s like, I want you to do something like, show me something cool. Like if you’re out there and you’re playing and you see a pass opportunity, like if you want to try something cool, try it. It’s interesting for these kids. Cause especially in Vietnam where I would say coaches and teachers and just they’re held more in kind of an authority kind of way, right?

So kids sometimes are getting nervous making a mistake, turning it over. But it’s like, no, no, no, like get creative, do something cool, see what you can do. Push the limits of what you think you can do. Right. And so it’s just allowing them the freedom to explore and learning is messy.

So. We’re going to make mistakes. We’re going to mess up, whatever. Right. But the only way to learn is to make those mistakes. And I promise you, I’ll never get mad at you for trying, but I will get frustrated if you’re stuck in a box and you’re scared to try, right? So it’s kind of breaking some of those players out of that habit of like, Oh, I’m not used to this, or I’ve never been encouraged to try something different or, or try something that the coach isn’t telling me exactly what it should be. But I think it’s quite powerful. And you see the switch kind of flip pretty quickly with those kids. In terms of just, wow, I can do more than I thought. Right. Or I can do some pretty cool stuff with a basketball. It’s like, yeah, you all can.

[01:10:15] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. If you can unlock that in a kid, I mean, that’s, you’re talking about unlocking joy for the game.

And to me, man, if you can do that as a coach, then you’ve really, you’ve really, really done something. And I think that CLA DL are both things that can start to unlock. that joy by again, teaching the player how to play using feel and getting them to be able to experience it rather than have the coach just dictating down to them, Hey, this is what you have to do.

This is how you have to do it. This is the right way. It’s a step by step by step by step approach. And clearly we can all see why that is not as fun and why doing it through DL or CLA allows kids to be able to experience the game in a different way, in an environment that is challenging and yet at the same time, not overwhelming where they get lost.

And it’s that old, like getting to the edge of your comfort zone, right? You don’t want to be too far away from it because things are too easy. You don’t want to go way beyond it and try to work on things that the player isn’t capable of. So how do you give them things that they can work on that can challenge them, that can push them, that can take them out of their comfort zone, but not too far out of it where it’s beyond their capability.

And I think that’s where CLA and DL really, really have an opportunity to be. And exciting development or exciting developments for coaching the game of basketball. And so Jonathan, before we wrap up, I want to just talk to you a little bit about where you think you’re headed next. So let’s frame it in the form of a two part question.

When you look ahead over the next year or two, what do you think is going to be your biggest challenge? and where do you think you’re gonna be if you had to guess a year or two from now? So your biggest challenge and then the second part of the question is when you think about what you get to do and it’s Anybody who’s listened to this can feel the joy coming through the mic from your voice about what you get to do, but what brings you the most joy about what you get to do?

So your biggest challenge and then your biggest joy.

[01:12:43] Jonathan Yu: All right. Biggest challenge now It’s going to come from the personal side. So like I mentioned, I’m getting married to my beautiful wife, Michelle. We’ve been apart obviously with me moving kind of around and being international and stuff. We’ve been apart on and off for the last year and a half.

So trying to balance obviously a marriage and all that, but I’m trying to chase the dream too, right? So. I think just trying to figure out and prioritize and figure out my next steps. That’s going to be a big challenge. There’s so much I still want to get better. I like, I’ll be honest, I’ll be the first to admit I’m not a great exercise coach.

Like that’s something I want to get better at for sure. Yeah, building myself up as a coach there. Like, and obviously continuing to learn, continue to grow as much as I can. Like you’ve said, like I’m nowhere or like we’re all nowhere near where we want to be. Right. As coaches, as people, as, as whatever.

But just understanding, how can we build every day a little bit, or how can we get better? So yeah, my challenges, I guess, yeah, figuring out what I should, what I can do or, or how I can kind of balance everything. Cause I know I do like, obviously I’m prioritizing my wife and our future and she means the world to me.

But basketball has been there since day one. So if I could keep doing this international, then that’s kind of the goal. So that’s moving into your next question. In one or two years, ideally I want to keep doing basketball. Not sure where I love being able to kind of move around a little bit and, and kind of experience things that I never would have imagined in my life.

So if I were to say ideally, it’d be one or two years. I live in somewhere international doing this stuff. I love the coach education side. I love working with coaches and trying to help kind of expand their, their horizons and their minds a bit with this stuff. Love working with players. I love working with youth. So ideally, yeah, one to two years, who knows? Somewhere international, somewhere I love working with youth. So somewhere with youth and somewhere with my beautiful wife. That’s the goal. But if not, then I’m teaching in Vancouver or somewhere around here. And living the dream as well that way too, so I don’t think I can lose.

[01:14:51] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. All right. Biggest joy.

[01:14:54] Jonathan Yu: Biggest joy. I think it’s just the people, man. Everywhere I’ve gone, like, small town Italy, and it’s kind of funny, but when I was in Italy working there, my internet was bad. My Wi Fi was bad. So there was a bar that I went to almost every night. They had wifi and they have aperitivo.

So that’s like, if you order a drink, you get free food. So I was spending a lot of time just doing video stuff with a glass of wine and a charcuterie board. And just meeting all the locals in the town and just people that we don’t speak the same language in Italy and Vietnam. I don’t speak the same language as these people, but.

Just so much, just genuine love with these people. I have so many, I guess, friends or family now in different parts of the world that you’re in a foreign country and you meet these locals. And like I said, you may not speak the same language you’re talking through Google translate the whole time. But just being able to connect with so many different people from all ages, all walks of life, all backgrounds. All because of basketball, like surreal, man. What a dream that is

[01:16:03] Mike Klinzing: Awesome. Well said. It’s like we talked about off the top, to be able to kind of walk into the experiences that you’ve had without really any intent of doing so, and to be able to have the kind of cool experiences in other places throughout the world is just amazing. And it’s something that no matter which track your career takes, whether you continue to travel internationally and coach all over the world, or whether you end up getting a teaching job near home and coaching at the high school level for the rest of your career. Either way, man, the experiences that you’ve had to this point and what you’ve learned and what it’s done to your mindset is only going to serve you extremely well.

And I think that the things that you shared tonight for any coach that’s sort of starting to dabble in CLA or DL or is more interested in it or wants to learn more about it, I think you gave them enough of a taste to be able to kind of intrigue people who are listening who maybe haven’t gotten as involved in it, haven’t tried it.

To, to step out of their comfort zone and to be able to get into it and do that. So for that, Jonathan, I think I say thanks to you. Really appreciate it. And to everyone out there, thanks for listening. Oh, I want, before we do that, please share how people can get in touch. Do you share your Twitter? You mentioned it a couple of times that some of the videos you referenced.

So please share how people can get in touch with you, email, social media, whatever you feel comfortable with. And then I’ll wrap things up.

[01:17:36] Jonathan Yu: Yeah. Twitter. Hit me up @J_Yu08 Anything I can do to help I’m there for, I know coaches like Alex and just other people I’ve connected with through all that stuff.

And even yourself, Mike, like you guys have all helped me. And so just anything I can do to help anyone that’s looking to dive into this stuff or anything like that, reach out. That’s probably the best way to get at me is would be on Twitter and then we can connect from there and get on a call or whatever.

I’m always down to talk hoops. I’m always down to talk CLA and DL and all of this stuff. And yeah, anything I can do to help anyone, or if I’m ever running a practice or whatever, and someone wants to come out. I’d love to have anyone there and connect with them. So that’s the best way to do it.

[01:18:25] Mike Klinzing: Awesome. Jonathan, can’t thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule tonight to join us. Truly appreciate it. And to everyone out there, thanks for listening and we will catch you on our next episode. Thanks.