IDO SINGER – CREATOR OF THE BLOBINHOOD NEWSLETTER & BLOG – EPISODE 971

Website – https://idobasketball.gumroad.com/l/BLOBAcademyMember

Email – blobinhoodnewsletter@gmail.com

Twitter – @idobasketball

FREE GIVEAWAY FROM IDO SINGER – https://bit.ly/BLOBinHOODHoopHeads

If you listen to and love the Hoop Heads Podcast, please consider giving us a small tip that will help in our quest to become the #1 basketball coaching podcast.

Ido Singer is the creator of the BLOBinhood blog and newsletter which deliver a constantly evolving library of sideline and baseline out-of-bounds plays, plus special situation strategies.

Ido previously served as an assistant coach for UNC Greensboro women’s basketball for four seasons. Singer also worked at Fisher College as a Head Coach, as well as UMass Lowell, Gordon College and Nicholls College as an Assistant Coach.

Singer played professional basketball from 1996 until 2003 for several teams including Maccabi Tel-Aviv in Israel.

If you’re looking to improve your coaching please consider joining the Hoop Heads Mentorship Program.  We believe that having a mentor is the best way to maximize your potential and become a transformational coach. By matching you up with one of our experienced mentors you’ll develop a one on one relationship that will help your coaching, your team, your program, and your mindset.  The Hoop Heads Mentorship Program delivers mentoring services to basketball coaches at all levels through our team of experienced Head Coaches. Find out more at hoopheadspod.com or shoot me an email directly mike@hoopheadspod.com

Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Instagram @hoopheadspod for the latest updates on episodes, guests, and events from the Hoop Heads Pod.

Make sure you’re subscribed to the Hoop Heads Pod on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts and while you’re there please leave us a 5 star rating and review.  Your ratings help your friends and coaching colleagues find the show. If you really love what you’re hearing recommend the Hoop Heads Pod to someone and get them to join you as a part of Hoop Heads Nation.

Grab your notebook before you listen to this episode with Ido Singer, creator of the BLOBinhood blog and newsletter.

What We Discuss with Ido Singer

• FREE Giveaway from Ido! – https://bit.ly/BLOBinHOODHoopHeads
• His decision to leave coaching at UNC Greensboro to spend more time with family
• “You never really walk away from basketball. If you ever fell in love with this game at any capacity, you can’t really walk away.”
• Asking himself, “Was family really first while he was coaching?”
• Getting a job in executive search
• The ability for a coach to have some control over baseline out of bounds plays
• “Try and find a way to sneak up baseline out of bounds reps on them. Don’t just do it at the end of practice when mentality and focus is down. Do it in times where you just blow the whistle and all of a sudden you’re running special situations for five minutes and you’re competing live and it’s chaotic.”
• Special situations cards that Ido adapted from Mike Neighbors
• Coach Wes Miller‘s Mind Bombs for practicing special situations
• Having your best decision maker as your inbounder
• “I need my players to be able to do two things. If you’re on the floor, you need to be able to set screens and you need to be able to read defense.”
• Developing plays that start the same, but end differently
• “I’ll never put a play in that is a standalone play. that just doesn’t look like anything else I run.”
• “If a play won you a game, put it out to rest, bring it out later.”
• Adding slips and ghosts to your plays to make them less predictable both in games and in practice
• “If the defense is having an easy day, I look at the offense. Are we challenging them enough?”
• “I pride myself in probably being the account that gives you the most free baseline out of bounds or special situation plays in the world.”
  
  

Like this show? Please leave us a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!

We’re excited to partner with Dr. Dish, the world’s best shooting machine! Mention the Hoop Heads Podcast when you place your order and get $300 off a brand new state of the art Dr. Dish Shooting Machine!

Prepare like the pros with the all new FastDraw and FastScout. FastDraw has been the number one play diagramming software for coaches for years, and now with it’s integrated web platform, coaches have the ability to add video to plays and share them directly to their players Android and iPhones via their mobile app. Coaches can also create customized scouting reports,  upload and send game and practice film straight to the mobile app. Your players and staff have never been as prepared for games as they will after using FastDraw & FastScout. You’ll see quickly why FastModel Sports has the most compelling and intuitive basketball software out there! In addition to a great product, they also provide basketball coaching content and resources through their blog and playbank, which features over 8,000 free plays and drills from their online coaching community. For access to these plays and more information, visit fastmodelsports.com or follow them on Twitter @FastModel.  Use Promo code HHP15 to save 15%

Your first impression is everything when applying for a new coaching job.  A professional coaching portfolio is the tool that highlights your coaching achievements and philosophies and, most of all, helps separate you and your abilities from the other applicants.

The key to landing a new coaching job is to demonstrate to the hiring committee your attention to detail, level of preparedness, and your professionalism.  Not only does a coaching portfolio allow you to exhibit these qualities, it also allows you to present your personal philosophies on coaching, leadership, and program development in an organized manner.

The Coaching Portfolio Guide is an instructional, membership-based website that helps you develop a personalized portfolio.  Each section of the portfolio guide provides detailed instructions on how to organize your portfolio in a professional manner.  The guide also provides sample documents for each section of your portfolio that you can copy, modify, and add to your personal portfolio.

Hey, coach! Want to take your team to the next level this season? Introducing GameChanger, the ultimate game-day assistant with tools to give you a winning advantage. With GameChanger, you can track stats, keep score, and even live stream games, all for free! Get the stats and crucial game video you need to lead your team to victory, all from the palm of your hand. Coach smarter this season with GameChanger. Download GameChanger today on iOS or Android and make this season one to remember. GameChanger. Stream. Score. Connect. Learn more at GC.com/HoopHeads

THANKS, IDO SINGER

If you enjoyed this episode with Ido Singer let him know by clicking on the link below and thanking him via Twitter.

Click here to thank Ido Singer via Twitter

Click here to let Mike & Jason know about your number one takeaway from this episode!

And if you want us to answer your questions on one of our upcoming weekly NBA episodes, drop us a line at mike@hoopheadspod.com.

TRANSCRIPT FOR IDO SINGER – CREATOR OF THE BLOBINHOOD NEWSLETTER & BLOG – EPISODE 970

[00:00:00] Mike Klinzing: Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here tonight without my co-host Jason Sunkle, but I am pleased to be joined for a second time back to the Hoop Heads Pod, Ido Singer, the author of Blobbinhood and the creator of a website by the same name. Ido, welcome back to the Hoop Heads Pod.

[00:00:22] Ido Singer: Thank you, Mike. Thank you so much for having me back.

[00:00:24] Mike Klinzing: Thrilled to have you back on and looking forward to A, getting an update on kind of where you’ve been, but two, Also learning more about some of the baseline out of bounds, sideline out of bounds, special situations, some of the things that you have a real passion for.

And we’re going to start right off the top with giving people some access to some of the content that you’ve created. So why don’t you go ahead and share that and then we’ll dive more into kind of where you’ve been and what you’ve been up to since the last time we talked.

[00:00:55] Ido Singer: Sounds good. So yeah, I was excited when we got together again and talked about having this second time around.

And I thought, what can I do to really give back to your audience and I came up with something I hope is really special. A lot of people give promotional stuff. I definitely like to give a free playbook here and there and I’m definitely going to do that as well. But for your audience, for everyone who’s listening to this, there’s going to be a link in the show notes and I’m going to give you the link right now.

It’s really easy to remember. It’s https://bit.ly/BLOBinHOODHoopHeads In that link is going to be a free playbook. So feel free to check that out. But there’s a little bit more there. So something that I don’t want to talk too much about, you will see it when you go there.

It’s literally one of the, if not the biggest thing I’ve ever given to anyone really for that kind of promotion. So I’m excited to share that with everyone. So find that in the show notes and everything else that Mike is going to put out there.

[00:02:05] Mike Klinzing: Fantastic. And please, if you are in our audience and you haven’t checked out Ido’s stuff, You are going to, A, want to first of all, check out what he’s offering here, but then check out all the things that you can have access to through his Blobinhood website.

And we’ll talk a little bit more about that as we go through. So let’s start, you know, by going back to when we last talked and you were at UNC Greensboro. Tell me a little bit about just kind of where your career path has taken you since then.

[00:02:35] Ido Singer: So UNC Greensboro has been a tremendous opportunity for me.  I’ve always dreamed about coaching at the D1 level. And for those who don’t know, which is probably a lot of folks on this podcast, I have started at the very, very grassroots of basketball. So I’ve coached anywhere from people’s backyards all the way to middle school and high school, AAU, travel.

You name it, I’ve done, I’ve done pretty much all of it. And when I first broke into college, I always wanted to be in division one. That’s something I wanted to check off my list. So when UNC Greensboro called, I was humbled. I was appreciative and I was fortunate enough to spend four years there under coach Trina Patterson, whose pedigree is incredible.

So last time we talked, Mike, I was there now I felt that it was time for me to either get out of the rat race a little bit or really put all the chips on that. And I’ve decided for me and my family, it was time to get off the road and probably stay a little bit closer to home base.

And so I’ve pivoted out of coaching, but coaching has stayed really close to my heart through everything I do on Twitter and now through the blog as well.

[00:03:48] Mike Klinzing: So as you make that decision to step away, that’s obviously a dilemma that many coaches face. I mean, I don’t care what the level is, but clearly At the division one college level, when you think about the access that the coaching staff has to the players and vice versa that the players have to the coaching staff, and it’s become even more than it ever was a year round business and around the clock business and spending so much time in the office, on the road, coaching, working in the off season, doing all of the things administratively.

that a division one coaching staff has to do. Can you kind of walk me through the conversations that you had, both with your family and with yourself as you were kind of trying to make that decision? Because I’m guessing that there’s coaches out there that are sort of in that same position. Mike Klinzing that you are, where they love coaching, they wish they could continue to do it.

And yet at the same time, they have their family at home and they don’t get to see them very much because of the responsibilities of the job. And I know that I was even at the high school level, there was a point where when my son was born, who was my second child, and I was living about 40 minutes away from my teaching and coaching job, that I had to have some of those conversations too, and just look at it and say, okay, I’m spending all this time with my.

basketball family, but my, I don’t want to say real family is the right way to say it, but my family at home was without me and I was without them. And so it’s a conversation that I think I can sort of relate to because I went through the same sort of experience myself. And I ended up at that point kind of walking away and then just like you tried to find other avenues.

To satisfy my basketball Jones. So give us an idea of what those conversations sounded like, both with your family and kind of inside your own head.

[00:05:45] Ido Singer: Yeah, well, you hit the nerve there. It’s a very loaded question and you never really walk away from basketball. If you ever fell in love with this game at any capacity, you can’t really walk away.

So it’s always going to be there at some capacity and I don’t want to come off sounding privileged. I’ve had the privilege of coaching in division one. So I understand the gratitude, the magnitude of that opportunity. Walking away from it did not, was not a momentary decision. This was something I’ve agonized over for an entire year.

My last year at UNCG was a constant conversation, like you said, with myself as well as with my family, trying to understand what is most important. And I’ve chased this dream of coaching basketball ever since I was retired from basketball, way too young. We can talk about that. I was a tweener that didn’t really find his place in basketball.

So ever since I’ve decided to start coaching, that was the end goal for me is to get to that level. And once I got there, I wanted to be the best at that level. So it wasn’t something I took lightly, but the conversations I’ve had with myself. were secondary to the ones I’ve had with family. And I think the moment that I realized that I’m going to have to walk away from something that I’ve struggled my entire life to build.

And by struggle, I mean one of my favorite stories is before I got hired at UNCG, I was out of a job. I was a head coach in division two, NAIA, lost my job four games into my second season after breaking the winning record at that school. And at that point I was kind of helping my friend who was a head coach in division three.

I was just volunteering just to stay around the game. Following that was about nine months of unemployment and really trying to get out of it any kind of position to get into the game and to continue the momentum. And so getting to UNCG was a miracle in and of itself. But at the end of the day, the conversation that I had with my wife was the deciding point.

I kept saying throughout my career, family first, family first. I was going on podcasts and talking about how important family is to me, and it is. But at the end of the day, my wife asked me one question. She said, Is it really family first? Is it really family first when we haven’t had you around for an entire weekend in months?

Is it really family first when you’re signing on for another year where we can’t take a family vacation because you only get three weeks off between, you know, May and, and June? Is it really family first when you’re on the road all the time? Is it really family first? When we haven’t seen you for Thanksgiving in four years or on your birthday, because my birthday is in the summer.

So I sat with that for a little bit and try not to be defensive. And I really said, is it really going to be family first? If I’m going to be long for this profession, I’m going to have to relocate. And I’ve decided that in there, I’m going to step away from the thing that I’ve worked my entire career to build, to actually stand behind my words of family first.

So that was a very agonizing decision. And you’re right. A lot of coaches are dealing with that at all levels of the game.

[00:09:13] Mike Klinzing: While you were agonizing with the decision, were you also thinking, about an alternative pathway to stay involved in basketball if you were to step away from coaching at that level?

Or was that something that you had to wrestle with after you made the decision, Hey, I’m going to leave coaching. And then you started thinking about, okay, what other avenues might I have to stay involved in the game? Or was the thought process as you were considering both alternatives, you’re like, well, if I leave coaching, then maybe I can do this.

What was sort of the timeline of, of when you made the decision about what you might want to do next?

[00:09:54] Ido Singer: Yeah, Mike, to tell you the truth, I was fighting for my marriage at that point. And so I took it very seriously. To me, it was a decision of, are you going to stick around coaching and try and tough it out, or are you going to fight for your marriage, for your kids, for your family?

And so staying connected to the game as important as it is to me, and still is of course, it wasn’t something I was thinking about at that time. It was survival. It was really putting all my chips down and I was pushing everything on, bet everything on black. The one thing that was most important to me was to make sure that I doubled down on being here for a family.

And so I was having conversations with the company that I work with right now. It’s called Charles Aris Executive Search. I stayed around recruiting. I do that with executives now, which is similar to recruiting student athletes, it’s just talking to people who are C level executives, but it was a long conversation with this company, trying to get to know them a little bit better and really understand, is this something that I can take on while fighting for my marriage and stepping away from coaching?

So, I wasn’t trying to stay connected to the game. I started posting Baseline Out of Bounds on my Twitter, which had a small following of about 3, 000 people on it just for fun because I enjoy it. And when it blew up to where it is now, I realized this is my avenue of staying connected to the game, to the coaches, to the athletes and giving back a little bit and being able to do that.

[00:11:37] Mike Klinzing: Tell me where your love for baseline out of bounds, special situations, where does that come from?

[00:11:45] Ido Singer: So we’re all competitive, right? And I think I take that to a whole other level. We all say basketball is kind of like a game of chess. You always try to outmaneuver, outsmart or out coach the other coach, however you want to do it.

You’re trying to put your team in the best position to win. And to me, We’re privileged in the sense that we have timeouts, we can regroup our people and we can kind of get them maybe refocused or re energized or, Hey, let’s go out there and run this. I think I’m a bit of a control freak and I think Baseline Out of Bounds allow me to have full control, at least over how we approach the next five to 10 seconds and what kind of scheme I want out of it.

So I’m able to hopefully try and strategize how you’re going to defend what I’m doing and try and outsmart you or put my players in a position to be successful. And so that’s one small area of the game where I felt like the coach could have a tremendous impact on how things are going. And so that’s kind of what I’ve always focused on is offense in general, but special situations were always the part of the game that I really got excited about.

[00:13:07] Mike Klinzing: When I really first started thinking about this from sort of that same perspective is after I had a conversation on the podcast and then also off with former NBA coach, Butch Carter. And Butch talked a lot about how trying to win that point differential battle and out of bounds plays. And I can’t remember the statistics off the top of my head, but he had some pretty convincing statistics that if you’re winning that out of bounds battle game in and game out, that your opportunity to win games increases tremendously.

And then his other point was that So many coaches practice their out of bounds plays in ways that don’t necessarily equate to what that looks like in a game. So maybe they’re running the same play over and over again, 10 times in a row, or maybe they’re doing it where, okay, we’re going to call the play and then Everybody walks and gets set up and coach puts this person here and there, where we know in a game that ball goes out of bounds and the ref’s ready to hand it to the player almost immediately.

And so your players have to be on it. So you have to practice sort of, again, not anything new, but the more you practice, like you play, the more the learning is going to transfer. So I think that that’s really an area, like you said, where so much of basketball is such a dynamic game that. In the out of bounds play, the coach does have more control.

It really is an opportunity for you to almost, it’s almost like a football scenario, right? Where you can diagram, Hey, this guy, this is what this guy’s job is and this guy’s job and this guy’s job. And then here, boom, now we can create the shot that we want. So tell me a little bit about your philosophy.

What are some things that you think are important surrounding out of bounds plays. And again, you could take that question, kind of whatever direction you want.

[00:15:07] Ido Singer: Yeah. No, I think it’s actually a really good point that you just made. It is like football, both teams are, it’s a dead ball situation.

Both teams are at the line of scrimmage. It’s my scheme against yours. Are you prepared for what I’m about to do? Did I prepare my players to read what you’re about to do? I think that’s one part of the game that gets me really excited because one of the competitive nature of it to the creative nature.

I love trying to find creative ways to win. And I haven’t. I didn’t run the numbers, but if you’re a competitive team in your conference, you can go back to last year and look at how many games you have lost by five points or less. If you had three scoring out of bounds plays, you would have won those games.

Maybe there’s a chance you would have rescued one, maybe two wins out of those situations. I’m just speculating here, but my point is games are decided by four points or less all the time. If you had a really good baseline out of bounds playbook, the players that can execute it and the situations to get there.

I think that’s a big part of the game. As small as it is, it’s a big part of the game in terms of how it translates to success. So my approach with it is, I’m not, I’m probably not going to break ground on anything. Coaches know you have to fit to what your personnel is. So it doesn’t matter if you’re a coach that runs a certain formation or likes to run a certain action.

Out of all kinds of different formations. Let’s say you have a really good shooter and you’d like to run a screen the screener action out of all kinds of formations, that’s great. Figure out what works for your team and run these plays for your scores, for your decision makers. I think put the ball in the hands of your best decision makers, whether it’s a pass or a shot, and run with that. I think that’s successful. For me particularly, if I had to, if I was given a team right now and had to run a certain baseline out of bounds playbook, if I have the players who can make decisions and can make reads, I’m probably going to go with things that I’ve seen from the EuroLeague.

I think those are some of the most creative innovative plays, but there’s a lot to be said for the goodies, for the flex out of bounds, for the box screen, the screener that every team in the country runs. These plays are scoring plays for a reason because they’re hard to guard.

So find whatever works for your team, drill the fundamentals. And like you said earlier, try and find a way to sneak up baseline out of bounds reps on them. Don’t just do it at the end of practice when mentality and focus is down. Do it in times where you just blow the whistle and all of a sudden you’re running special situations for five minutes and you’re competing live and it’s chaotic and it’s, you’re handing the ball before the team is out of the huddle, just making them feel like it’s real game.

I think that’s a way to be successful there.

[00:18:11] Mike Klinzing: And I know you talked about that in one of the editions of your newsletter that you stole the cards idea, the special situation cards idea from Coach Mike Neighbors at the University of Arkansas. So just tell people a little bit about that because I have obviously heard the idea of what we just talked about where, hey, we’re going to throw special situations in at this particular point in practice.

And I just had a conversation with Rob Brost on one of our episodes. He’s a boys head varsity basketball coach at Bolingbrook high school in, in Illinois. And he talked about basically just that same concept that you just discussed, which is he just likes to, at random moments in practice, throw in a special situation or throw in, Hey, we’re going to run this out of bounds play right here.

And his whole thing was It needs to be random. So just tell people how the Mike Neighbors sort of special situations cards, how that could help them to sort of create this randomness for special situations.

[00:19:12] Ido Singer: Mike Neighbors, we can talk about him for a two hour podcast, easy and not really scratch the surface.

I love coach Neighbors because he’s such a giver. He just gives to the game. He’s such an out of the box thinker, very, very detail oriented and very creative. And I think nine out of 10 coaches at any level steal from him and what he does, whether they know it or not. So I think the impact is incredible.

And I was one of them. I was we’re going to nerd out a little bit, but if you go back to that newsletter that I released that week it really gives you a link to his cards back from his Washington days. I took that and worked for hours to change it to the font of my team and to the color scheme of my team at the time, and make that special for them and laminate them and cut them and put them in a little ring binder, worked really hard on it, and I wanted to make that special. And it did come across as that we, we literally worked on special situations, every practice. And when I pulled that deck of cards out, they would run to ask to be the one pulling the card out of the deck. They would absolutely love it. They would get super competitive with it.

I later on in the season learned that if you pull out a deck of cards, then you might, you might practice a special situation that wouldn’t really be. You know, pertinent to your team. It doesn’t really matter, but they really enjoyed it. It gave them that boost of energy. And I did that in the middle of practice at a random time, because some, you have those highs and lows in energy, so that was an energy shot for my team every time.

So if you were to use that as a coach, I would say. Look at the deck. Those are incredible ideas of where the ball is. What’s the foul situation? Who’s in the bonus? Who’s on the free throw line? What’s the score? These are all really good ideas that you don’t have to really spend time thinking about because Coach Neighbors has collected all these for us.

So use that, but narrow it down to what your team has in their playbook. If there are certain plays if you needed two, Then take all the cards where you need it to, and after you install a few actions for needed to, then have them pick from these cards. So they have the variety, but it also translates to what you have in your playbook.

So I think there’s a really good balance there. I’ve used so many things in special situations just to get them excited. This one has been incredibly successful and I’m, you know, they were really excited every time I did that. So this is really from, from experience. Yes.

[00:21:50] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, very cool. I mean, again, I could see where as a player on a team and all of a sudden, boom, we’re in this special situation.

What I also thought was interesting as I kind of looked through the cards was there were situations, usually I guess when I think of special situations, at least I think of the a minute left or 10 seconds left or 30 seconds left or whatever. But there were situations in those cards where It was 12 minutes left and one team is up by 15.

And so obviously that’s not something that you’re going to be able to accomplish in two minutes, but it is something that clearly could be valuable. So maybe you do that longer special situation once a week or something to that effect. But I did think it was interesting because I didn’t necessarily equate when I started looking through the cards, those weren’t the situations that I expected to see.

I expected to see the Down to 25 seconds left. Both teams are in the bonus. That kind of thing as opposed to those longer situations.

[00:22:48] Ido Singer: And they are there. They’re both there. And I love that about the deck because you can split up to longer situations, medium kind of length situations, and special situations, like you’re saying, two minutes left, 3 points or whatever it is. I think the longer the longer cards, the longer time cards, you can use that within the scheme of what you’re doing. So if the special situation says 5 minutes left, team A is up by 12 points, Let your team A be your B squad and let your starters fight to get back or put them in a certain, situation where they’re in they’re in the bonus so they can’t foul your B squad.

So it really, you can do that as injecting the special situations or you can make that instead of just scrimmaging at the end, make that more competitive. And I think these cards accomplish that. One more thing on special situations that I love, and I had the privilege of again being at UNCG and watching Wes Miller on the men’s side when he was there, now he’s in Cincinnati he used to run something called mind bombs.

And I talked about that in another edition of the newsletter. He used to come in with his staff. They used to have two or three different things they wanted to accomplish. And it could be anything from you know, two minutes left. The other team is pressing full court, but trapping and the offensive team didn’t know it.

He used to just put two or three scenarios on the practice plan, and he would literally, I love Wes, he would literally yell, mind bomb. And everyone had to huddle with their coach. They gave them the scenario and off they go. And it, when I asked him, why is it mind bomb? And what’s the signature? Why do you do it?

When you do it, he goes, because they never expect when it comes and they have to be locked in. If they’re not locked in, I’m going to expose them. And he keeps them he keeps them really accountable and it shows. So his teams, if you watch his teams, they execute really well out of special situations.  You can’t really throw a lot at them because they practice that all the time.

[00:25:00] Mike Klinzing: Part of that is poise, right? I mean, by putting kids in situations in practice, and there was a phrase that I heard recently that a guy, Gray Thomas, he works with Alex Sarama at Transforming Basketball. And the phrase he used, which I thought was a really good one was, micro-dosing adversity.

And that’s kind of what you’re talking about there with Wes Miller, where it’s, okay, here’s this mind bomb. Boom. All of a sudden it comes out of nowhere and everybody has to be on their toes, ready to react, which is the same way that you get in a situation in a game and whatever you’re playing defense, the other team scores.

You were winning, now all of a sudden you’re down two and there’s eight seconds to go. We don’t have 15 minutes to watch the film and talk it over and figure out what we’re going to do. Everybody has to very, very quickly get on the same page and we all have to understand the same message so we know how to execute that and clearly if you have put your team Your coaching staff and yourself in those situations, you’re going to react to them better if you’ve seen them before.

And again, not every scenario is going to be exactly like the scenarios you practice, but it’s more a case of, I’m used to having to make these kinds of decisions in the moment very quickly because I’ve seen them in practice. And even though the decision may not be exactly the same scenario, I am practicing that decision making skill.

[00:26:25] Ido Singer: You stand a chance. If you don’t practice it, I don’t believe you stand a chance. If you do, you stand a chance.

[00:26:32] Mike Klinzing: Let me ask you this. This is one thing that I’m always kind of interested in when it comes to out of bounds plays, because in all honesty, and I think when you get to the college level, maybe this isn’t true, but I do feel like in high school, and especially if you go even younger than that, and I’ve coached a lot of AAU basketball with kids who are younger than high school level, it always feels to me like if you just had a kid or a player who can take the ball out of bounds, who knows what they’re doing and can read situations, and you have one other player in the play that can read situations, that you almost can just run almost anything if those two players have a high basketball IQ and can kind of read the situation and know how to play off of the different scoring options.

So I guess my question to you is how do you as a coach try to Identify or think about who you want to take the ball. What are the characteristics you’re looking for in your inbounder? Because sometimes coaches want to score there, right? Because that guy can step in or that girl can step in and be able to score because sometimes the defense falls asleep.

Sometimes coaches want their best passer. Sometimes they want somebody with size that can see over the defense. So what’s your, Thought process and it may be different for each team, but just who are you looking for in terms of an inbound or what are some of the characteristics that they should have?

[00:27:56] Ido Singer: It depends on what you’re looking to accomplish, right?

So I think nine out of 10 times, if I had to put someone on the not on the ball, but inbounding the ball, I would put a decision maker there. Usually it’s your point guard. I struggle with putting my shooting guard there. I think I want a shooter, not inbounding the ball, unless the play is for a pitch back or someone just pitches right back to them.

So like I said, it depends, but for the most part, I’d say a decision maker needs to be the one inbounding the ball, whether it’s your one or your three. Those are the ones. I want inbounding the ball. It also depends on how your opponent is guarding it that day. If they like to put a big center on the inbounder, it may change from a one to a three and you need to be able to anticipate that through scouting a little bit, for the most part, you won’t have to change who you’re inbounding with.

But sometimes teams will try and get you out of what you’re doing, especially if you’re very effective. So a decision maker for me has to inbound the ball. I need my players to be able to do two things. If you’re on the floor, you need to be able to set screens and you need to be able to read defense. I think having a good shooter that has gravity is a privilege.

It’s great to have most teams have one. Some teams don’t, but if you set good screens and you can read the defense, I think a good screen makes the defense communicate and make a decision. And if you train your players to read and understand how the defense is going to react to a certain screen or certain scheme.

You can train them to make reads. So if you have a good decision maker passing the ball inside, you’ve got good screeners making the defense communicate and make decisions, your readers should be able to see something.

[00:29:41] Mike Klinzing: And I think the key there is when you think about being able to make reads off of screens in an out of bounds situation, you’re also talking about players who are able to make those same reads in live action when they’re running your offense, your sets, whatever it is that you do, the triggers that you have in your offense.

And so it leads me to my next question, which we just discussed a minute ago about how, hey, let’s throw in some special situations or let’s not just run our out of bounds play 10 times in a row. Let’s throw it in when players don’t expect it. In order to get to that point, obviously the players have to have known and practiced and understand the play in order for it to just be thrown in randomly into practice.

So Walk me through what it would look like if you were going to introduce a brand new out of bounds play to your team. Now, maybe I know one of the things that you talk about is having multiple plays out of the same set. Like let’s run everything out of the box set or whatever it may be, but just let’s say you want to put in a new play brand new.

I’m a high school coach. I’m a college coach. I want to put in a brand new out of bounds play. What’s the sequencing that you would go through? To teach your team that play, to get them to the point where you could just throw it in randomly to a practice at any point.

[00:31:00] Ido Singer: I think three things I would always keep in mind.

I want my plays to be and coach Patterson calls them to have a family. So not necessarily just the same formation. To me, it has to be the same formation. But I’ll have exceptions on that. And then we can talk about that, but generally the same formation and they have to be in a family. So every play will have to have the basic action, the secondary read, and maybe the counter or the compound action to the read.

So for example there could be a basic Screen to screener action out of a box set, and it’s really hard to explain in an audio form, so just bear with me, I’m going to try and be very general, but a box set with a screen to screener, we’ve all seen this where the player comes up diagonally and sets a back screen and then gets a screen themselves to get a shot.

If you take that play, and you let’s say you bottom out the player who is supposed to set a screen. Now you kind of hit a new action into the play. So, the defense doesn’t know what to anticipate. Now, it looks the same. It may start the same, but it ends differently. So, it does two things. It keeps your players excited because they can read the situation.

If the defense is guarding you a certain way, you don’t have to fight to set the first screen. Maybe you can exit out of the play and go into the secondary. And, in practice, it makes your players Not really know what to expect, what to anticipate. I always like to have my teams kind of huddle real quick and say what they’re going to run.

Everything looks the same. The defense never knows. And to me that makes it interesting. And if you can throw a third wrinkle into it, and I like to sometimes make things look the same for the first one, or maybe even two actions of this, of the play, and then all of a sudden something happens, I think that makes it interesting, really hard to guard.

So having a family is important. I never liked my plays to be on an island. I’ll never put a play in that is a standalone play. that just doesn’t look like anything else I run. If I’m a box baseline out of bounds person, you won’t see me do a diamond set or something like that. It’s just really easy to scout and teams will anticipate that.

So those are the two things. And then the last thing I’d say is really try and take, if you use the certain play and let’s say you won a game with it, take it out, put something else in there and really keep that play on for maybe five or six games later. When teams don’t scout past maybe two or three games.

So if you’ve done it five games ago, it may be forgotten, who knows, or maybe even use it in the playoffs. So whatever’s been incredibly successful, if you’ve won a game with a certain set, take it out. Let it sit, put a new one into that mix and bring that winning play out a little bit later on. So yeah, never stand alone, nothing on an island, families to your play.

And if something won you a game, put it out to rest, bring it out later.

[00:34:24] Mike Klinzing: I like that. I like that because too often, I think, And I know I’ve probably been guilty of this in the past is you have your pet play, right? The one that you really like and you go to it over and over and over and again. And now look, most of the time I was coaching AAU basketball, so I’m not really being scouted too heavily in AAU basketball.

So you can get away with some of that stuff that you can’t obviously get away with the higher level of the game that How do you deal with or think about, and I think I already know the answer to this, but I think it’s worth asking the question. One of the things that I know that sometimes can be frustrating for teams, players, coaches is, okay, we’re trying to work on our out of bounds play.

Obviously, in practice, our defense knows what all those options are because we’re teaching them also the same thing. So how do you work against that? The ability of the defense to kind of play the play for lack of a better way of saying it.

[00:35:24] Ido Singer: Teach your players to slip and ghost and build that into your plays.

Every play should have a slip read. Every play should have a ghost read. I’m not saying run a slip for every play. I’m not saying run a ghost for every play, but teach your players to take advantage of how the defense defends them. And if your defense in practice feels that they can defend everything because it’s second nature.

then I would challenge your offensive players to make them pay for it. I don’t care what I tell you to run. If I’m telling you to go here and set a screen there but your defender is top blocking you and not allowing you to set the screen, go back door. And you may not get the pass, but we’ve all played basketball.

I’m going to guard you differently if I know you’re going to go back door on me. So it keeps the defense honest. It teaches your players to be more creative and take ownership of the play. And once you score off of that once or twice, I think it makes them feel a lot more free, a lot more loose. Another thing I would say is utilize your inbounder as a scorer.

So many times the player guarding the inbounder takes a breather. And I think there are a lot of opportunities to score with the inbounder, whether it’s the pitch back we talked about, or the inbounder quickly going and setting a screen kind of like a flex screen to come off and get a shot.

You can run a flex with the inbounder into a zoom action and all of a sudden they’re coming off a handoff and they got space to shoot or drive or create something. There are ways to get everyone involved and get everyone to read and make those reads. And I think the last thing, Mike, if I’m thinking about it right now, and again, I’m going back to EuroLeague, play with pace, go hard, cut hard, pass, move the ball.

If you watch these guys go, there’s the pace in those out of bounds and how they execute is just amazing. And so if the defense feels comfortable, it’s because the offense isn’t challenging them enough. Even in practice, when they know what’s coming, you can make this a lot more challenging.

[00:37:33] Mike Klinzing: And I do think.  As we talked about a minute ago, that when you can teach your players how to, again, slip, ghost, whatever you want to work on, counters, triggers, that they’re working on in other situations outside of out of bounds. Now when you get to those out of bounds situations and the players have those skills and the ability to make those reads, now to your point, you become a lot less predictable in terms of what you’re going to do pattern wise.

That’s both when you’re going against your own team and more importantly. When you’re going against another team, I think that only makes a ton of sense.

[00:38:10] Ido Singer: I used to get really frustrated as a young coach because we have the curse of knowledge those of us who played and now we’re coaching.

And we say, why can’t you guys execute this? Why is it so hard to make this read? It’s hard because a lot of players don’t go hard. And I think if you, if the defense thinks they can guard you, then they can guard you. If you don’t go hard and things don’t open up for you, it’s because you’re not cutting hard.

You’re not setting good screens. You’re not doing the fundamentals right. So I always try and challenge my teams. Cut hard. Is that the hardest you can cut? Because one time, if you, if you face cut someone and score, if you go back door and score, then the defense is tighter. Then when you go set a screen, you’re way more successful in creating space for your teammate.

Everything becomes easier when you are being more aggressive, when you are cutting hard and, and executing like that. And I think as coaches, we want our teams to go hard not just on defense, but on offense as well. If the defense is having an easy day, I look at the offense. Are we challenging them enough?

[00:39:19] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, it makes total sense. And I think, again, that’s sort of a standard that you set throughout your practices in all aspects of it. And then it should translate. You shouldn’t slow the pace down. When you’re going out of bounds plays in special situations, you should obviously continue to pay, accept and demand that same pace from your team.

When you get into these situations where, okay, we’re going to throw the random out of bounds plan. We got to be going at this full speed. Everybody’s got to be locked in and doing what they’re supposed to do. So I think that makes a ton of sense. Tell me a little bit about getting started with the blog and what The thought process was when you started it and has it evolved into something different than what your original vision was?

Is it true to your original thought? Just give me an idea of kind of where it is in its evolution.

[00:40:11] Ido Singer: Yeah. So it is in its infancy. So I just started it. I think I just released it. Issue number eight of the newsletter. So it’s been maybe a couple of months. It’s been great.

I love that it’s an extension of what I do on on Twitter. I will not call it X. I can’t.

[00:40:33] Mike Klinzing: I can’t either. I can’t do it. I can’t, I can’t do it.

[00:40:37] Ido Singer: I know. And he keeps teasing us. Should we go back to X or Twitter? It’s Twitter, Elon. It’s not going to be X, but it’s an extension of Twitter for me.

And on Twitter, what I do is I pride myself in probably being the account that gives you the most free baseline out of bounds or special situation plays in the world. I used to post about eight a day. Now I’m a little down to maybe four or five, but you can go back to the archives and find thousands of plays.

No exaggeration there. And you can find things that are just standalone plays or family of plays and threads of what I found. So a lot of great free resources, but I thought this is my platform. And how can I maybe get all of these great ideas that I keep finding from other coaches and share them with my audience, which is now just over 24,000, which I cannot believe 24,000 people care about what I want to put out there sometimes.

I’m sure they don’t, but it’s humbling that people come to the account for some strategy. And so I want to give them that. So I thought the newsletter could be an extension of that, but it can’t be exactly the same. So what I do in the newsletter is every Saturday I usually shoot that out in the morning or in the early afternoon, but every Saturday I send out my favorite baseline out of bounds, sideline out of bounds, ATO after timeout, end of game and a set that I found on Twitter from last week, and probably 8 out of the 10 plays, or 9 out of the 10 plays you know, not 10 plays, Probably five or six or seven of them, but 90 percent of them are not mine. I want to highlight other creators. I want to make sure that I give credit and share the wealth of knowledge that is out there with my audience.

So just a way for me to, to kind of curate some really good stuff that I found and I thought was useful. To my audience, but still keep it in, in a base, in a special situations kind of under that umbrella, because I think that’s what the people who end up on my account are looking for is, is just a way to grow there and grow their playbook and understanding.

So that’s the focus of the newsletter and I’ve loved doing it just a way to share ideas and share the wealth.

[00:42:59] Mike Klinzing: When you sit down to actually put it together, how much time does it take you on average to put it together?

[00:43:06] Ido Singer: Oh, that’s a good question. It takes me about two hours to put it together. I want to sit there and I collect these plays that I see throughout the week.

I have a really good list. My X’s and O’s list on Twitter is an open list, so you can always join it. And I think it’s somewhere on one of my newsletters. So you’ll be able to find the link, but it’s an open list. So anybody can go on there and find the creators that I follow, but I collect these throughout the week.

So they’re kind of ready, but I’ll sit down on a Friday night or Saturday morning and go through these plays and really think about, Hey, this is creative, this is something that my readers will enjoy, but the part that takes me the longest is my thought and my question. I want to be really thoughtful about my thought.

Like that’s overkill here, but what is it that I can give in terms of my expertise, my knowledge, just my, my random thoughts on special situations that can actually bring value. So you mentioned the Mike Neighbors piece I wrote about Wes Miller and his mind bombs. Just different things that I’ve seen throughout my career.

So that takes a good portion of the time because I’m trying to really give value here and resources. And then I want it to be interactive. So the last part of the, the newsletter is always a question. I want to know about your struggles or what is it that you’re going through or what’s something that’s been successful for you so we can share with the rest of the people reading this.

So, This is why it takes two hours. I love that. I love sitting there and really nerding out on basketball. I do that all week, but Saturday is my morning of all basketball. And yeah, I guess it’s something I really enjoy and it helps me stay connected.

[00:44:55] Mike Klinzing: Tell me right now, what’s your favorite YouTube channel that you’re going to to look for. You mentioned a lot of Euroleague stuff that you’re taking a look at. What are some of your favorite, your favorite, or maybe one or two of the places that you’re going right now to, to find creative, innovative things in the game?

[00:45:11] Ido Singer: Wow. So you said YouTube. I will say there, there, Phenomenal account. Baskethead is absolutely, to me, it’s number one in terms of breaking down Euro League. Baskethead is an incredible account. They’ll do in depth stuff. One thing I really like that they do, and I think they’re based out of Spain or something like that.

It’s pretty much an enigma. This person and I will talk, but they won’t say what their name is. I don’t think anyone has seen their picture. It’s pretty cool. So I respect that. I’ll let them have their space, but they’ll even post timeouts where they’ll show you a short clip.

It’s a three minute clip of a coach running a timeout. The mic is there. They’re talking to their team and then they’ll run the video of the play and how it actually broke down with the audio again over the play. So really a great look of how a coach runs a timeout, what they’re trying to accomplish, and showing you the play being run according to that, so the execution of it.

So, I love that account. There are so many. I think Slapping Glass does great work on YouTube. And Jordan Sperbar, I think it’s HoopVision he just got hired at Mississippi State, so, Good job to Jordan and congratulations. So these are some of the accounts that I really enjoy on YouTube specifically.

[00:46:33] Mike Klinzing: Got it. All right. Tell people where they can subscribe to the newsletter, share your website, and then give us again where our audience can go for the freebie and how they can get signed up for all the stuff that you’re putting out there. Cause it’s great stuff. And I’m sure anybody who’s listened, we’re only scratching the surface of, of Ido’s knowledge and what he’s sharing.

[00:46:57] Ido Singer: Absolutely. So everything is really Twitter central. So you can find the link to the newsletter on my Twitter page, which is @IdoBasketball. I think if you search on Twitter for the word Blobinhood, which I thought it was really clever, Robin Hood, I steal plays from the rich and give them to the poor.

So, that’s where that came from. So if you search Blobinhood on Twitter, you’ll find me. If you search  Ido Basketball, you’ll find me on that page. is my newsletter. So, anybody that signs up to the newsletter will get a free playbook. So, check that out. Use that link and join the newsletter. I think you’ll love it.

Comes out once a week. There’s no paywall. There’s no anything like that. It’s all free. I will do some shameless plugs to the, the playbooks that I work really hard on, but everything is free. And I think you can create a plethora of playbooks on your own just by looking at my free stuff on Twitter.

And for the promotion for, for this particular audience, for your audience, it’s https://bit.ly/BLOBinHOODHoopHeads

[00:48:05] Mike Klinzing: It will be in the show notes. We will have it on our Twitter when we send it out to everyone when the episode goes live. So Ido, this has been awesome. Again, kudos to you for, I know how much time it takes to create content.

And I know that what you put out there every week when I get the newsletter, I go through and there’s always at least one thing in there that makes me think, that makes me go, Hmm, all right, let me take a look at that. Think about how maybe I can incorporate that into Something that I’m doing. And I know that that doesn’t happen by accident.

That’s something that you’re taking the time, as you said, to curate it, to create, to put it all together into a package that is designed to serve the audience of coaches who are subscribing. So if you are part of the WhoPeds audience, please subscribe to Ido’s newsletter, it is tremendously well done. I guarantee.

every edition of it, you’re going to pick up some little tidbit, some little nugget that will help make you a better coach and help make your team better. So, Ito, thank you for all that you’re doing for the basketball community. Congratulations on creating a tremendously valuable resource. We appreciate you allowing our audience to get a giveaway, please. If you’re part of our audience, go and jump on that, grab it. You won’t regret being a part of what Ido has put together. So again, Ido, thank you so much for your time tonight. Truly appreciate it. And to everyone out there, thanks for listening and we will catch you on our next episode. Thanks.