LIAM JEFFERSON – OAKLANDS WOLVES ENGLISH BASKETBALL CLUB MEN’S HEAD COACH – EPISODE 1006

Website – https://www.oaklandsbasketball.com/

Email – coach.jefferson11@gmail.com

Twitter/X – @coachljefferson

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Liam Jefferson is the Head Coach of the Oaklands Wolves Basketball Club in the U.K. He also serves as a coaching clinician for Transforming Basketball working camps and clinics all over the world teaching a conceptual style of play utilizing the Constraints-Led Approach and underpinned by ecological dynamics.

Liam previously served one season as the Head Coach of the London Lions in U.K.  Prior to his time with the Lions he spent 11 years working for Loughborough Sport in various coaching positions at a variety of levels.

In the summer of 2023 Liam was an assistant coach with Great Britain U20 Men’s National Team in the FIBA European Championships Division B held in North Macedonia.

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Get ready to take some notes as you listen to this episode with Liam Jefferson, Head Coach of the Oaklands Wolves Basketball Club in the U.K.

What We Discuss with Liam Jefferson

• Playing basketball at a young age in England
• Utilizing small sided games significantly accelerates player development by replicating game-like scenarios in training
• The constraints led approach emphasizes player decision-making, making every practice relevant to actual game situations
• Building a basketball culture within a club involves aligning values and philosophies across all age groups
• Creating a positive, enjoyable environment is crucial for player engagement and long-term development
• The relationship between winning and individual player development is critical for attracting talent to your club
• Maintaining connections with players through informal check-ins fosters a supportive and understanding team culture
• The importance of evaluating practice outcomes through quick debriefs and video analysis is crucial for improvement
• Effective coaching requires balancing control and autonomy, allowing players to make decisions during practice
• Coaching philosophy evolves from control to empowerment
• “Basketball is not a traditional sport in England.”
• “Coaching is about handing over control to the players

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THANKS, LIAM JEFFERSON

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TRANSCRIPT FOR LIAM JEFFERSON – OAKLANDS WOLVES ENGLISH BASKETBALL CLUB MEN’S HEAD COACH – EPISODE 1006

[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 Liam Jefferson, head coach of the Oakland Wolves across the pond in England. Liam, welcome to the Hoop Heads Pod, man.

[00:00:15] Liam Jefferson: Appreciate you guys having me on. I know we’ve been looking at trying to do this for a little while now.

It’s a pleasure to be able to join the both of you and looking forward to talking tonight about some of what we’ve got going over the pond in England, but also just hoops in general.

[00:00:32] Mike Klinzing: Liam is putting us to shame. It’s 1:30 AM where he is. So even by Jason and I’s standards, he is staying up really late.

So we really appreciate that, Liam. Let’s start by going back in time to when you were a kid. Tell me a little bit about some of your first experiences with the game growing up in England.

[00:00:49] Liam Jefferson: Yeah, I mean, it’s not a traditional sport in England in, in the slightest. I actually started playing the game when my parents bought me a basketball at eight years old, and that was kind of my first interaction with it, playing out in the, out in the garden with a hoop and a ball and just trying to, explore this new world.

I ended up playing, fortunately, junior hoops for a good 10 years in this country, which took me and led me to, to university at Sheffield Hallam University, where I studied for three or four years. But I always kind of had a calling for coaching whilst I was playing. So I’m at a very young age realized that just because of the opportunities that didn’t present themselves in, in this country, that I kind of had to create some of them myself.

So as a 12, 13 year old, I was banging on the door of my physical education teachers saying, why don’t we have a basketball club at our school? And I got involved with, with coaching and leading that, that way. And then when I moved on to high school per se, as it would be in the US, I had a teacher there called John Heathcote, who introduced me to sports leadership and a sports leadership qualification.

Where I would essentially volunteer and get involved in, in supporting coaching at the high school and that’s what’s kind of led me down this path to coaching. So it all started with a ball and a hoop in a garden at eight years old. And here I am at 27 years later and starting to make a career for it in the coaching space.

[00:02:22] Mike Klinzing: As you were playing, what does coaching hold for you? In other words, what made coaching interesting to you while you were still playing, what about that aspect of it sort of attracted you to say, Hey, maybe when I’m done playing, maybe coaching’s the way that I want to go.

[00:02:44] Liam Jefferson: It’s such a great question. It’s, it’s one that’s evolved over time and I think at first it was that real desire to be able to impact every part of the game as a coach.

So as a young coach, I really enjoyed the control that I got from coaching and I felt like I could impact offense and defense and areas of the game that I wasn’t used to. Perhaps I couldn’t do when I was a player, but actually the, the longer and the deeper I’ve gone into my coaching career, which is still relatively early in, in normal terms, I’ve actually realized that I need to strip back some of that control.

And actually it’s about me handing over control to the players. And so that’s been a real interesting change just in my philosophy from being a young coach and then transitioning now into a coach who started to just understand a little bit more of myself and how I want to coach and what my environment needs to look like.

[00:03:39] Mike Klinzing: Talk to me a little bit about the difference between when you first started and you’re working with players who are very, very young versus the players who are a little bit older and more developed that you work with now. How do you kind of compare or look at maybe how you coached when you first started to how you, how you’re coaching now?

[00:03:59] Liam Jefferson: Yeah, I mean, when, when I first got involved in coaching and, and sports leadership as the, as it was termed over here in, in the uk, the, the biggest thing is, is just about making the environment fun and enjoyable for anybody that wants to come and, and try the game of basketball. And that’s something that’s kind of stuck with me throughout my career.

It’s one of my five core values as a coach is still to have joy in everything that we do because. All of us, fortunately, are able to work within and have involvement in a game. It’s not life or death, it’s a game that we all have this passion for, and at the root of it needs to be fun and enjoyment, and that’s something that has really gone through my coaching career from that youth age all the way up to now, working with elite academy age players and senior men.

So that, that’s probably the biggest piece for me. Yeah, for sure.

[00:04:58] Mike Klinzing: When you think back to getting your start and you jump on and begin working with the players that you had an opportunity to coach, what were some of the things that initially right out of the gate that you were pretty good at as a coach that you felt confident?

Hey, I know what I’m doing here. And then we’ll kind of ask the reverse question of what were some areas where you feel like. Over the course of time that you’ve really improved now, but let’s start with what you were good at kind of naturally out of the gate.

[00:05:32] Liam Jefferson: Yeah. I mean, I, I will strip it right back to where I would say I first started my coaching career and that was at Loughborough university in just outside of, of Leicester, which is where I grew up.

I graduated Sheffield Hallam and went back home as, as some kids do and was lucky enough to be able to. Reach out to the school and get what was at the time a volunteer assistant coaching position. I ended up actually spending 12 years there which was a a great time working with some real great coaches.

At first, I, I was volunteering whilst working full time in another role, as a lot of coaches do, that are looking to try and get their break in the industry at first. And I was 21, 22 years old, but having just finished my playing career, the biggest thing for me was the ability to relate to the players and what they were going through.

I’ve actually been able to be that, that go between, between the head coach, the players, the other assistant coaches, as someone who was relatively new to the, the sector and to the profession. And again, that’s, that’s something that the older you get, I think it’s harder to continue to relate to players and now I’ve got players coming into my program in the academy side of the program that are 16, 17 years old, and I’m finding it more and more of a challenge the older I get to continue to be able to relate to them.

But it, again, it has to form part of my core values as a coach and that’s that I want to be player focused, not player centered, but player focused. So every decision that I’m making has the players, their development and their direction at the heart of it. And so it’s something that I think at the start of my, to kind of answer both questions in, in one, at the start of my coaching career, it was one where.

I felt like that was a skillset was a strength. And then as we’ve developed over time, it’s become more and more of a challenge to continually relate to players, especially in this social media age as well.

[00:07:39] Mike Klinzing: But when you talk about relating to players, explain to me a little bit about how that connection is made and where you think as you get older, cause I can completely relate.

So I’ll give you a story, Liam. When I was a young teacher, and so I’m talking my first or second year, teaching. I was probably 24 or 25 years old, maybe. And I had my students who were in, at that time, I was teaching third grade. So those kids were maybe eight going on nine. And I remember that they would be singing songs and I would sing the lyrics right along with them.

And I can still remember I had two girls that, They were lining up to leave the classroom and they were singing this song. And I started singing it with them and I still can remember their faces. Like they looked up at me like, Mr. Klinzing, how do you, how do you know these, how do you know those songs?

And he said, they were just, and to your point. That was a connection that I made with those two kids that probably there was no other way I could have sort of looked cool in their eyes and been a way for me to relate to them. And then obviously now I’m 54 and I go and I don’t know any of the music that the kids that I’m teaching are listening to.

And so I think from your perspective and what you’re saying, I can completely relate to it. So how do you, what do you do to try to stay connected to them? How do you go about trying to learn more about social media? Do you have a process or just, is it something that you’re just continuously trying to look for opportunities to connect with them, look for opportunities to learn more Klinzing the culture that they’re living in.

How do you approach that side of it?

[00:09:19] Liam Jefferson: Yeah. I mean, you, you have to be able to appreciate, appreciate like the majority of the academy age athletes that I’m working with at the moment. And everybody that I was working with when I was at Loughborough University, they are student athletes and there’s a real demand on them as both a student and an athlete.

And an athlete and when you sat in class all day long, the last thing that they wanna do when they get to basketball practice or to the game or to to traveling with the team is to have. Some sort of formal sit down with me so that I can understand them and learn a little bit more about them. So a lot of what I try to do with players just to stay current and connected and relevant to them is, is just those off the cuff moments and conversations and check ins.

And I would try and have a check in with every single player every two or three days, and even a little bit just to like when they’re stretching or when they’re in the warm up at the start of practice. Just asking them questions about their life, about their background, about their family, checking in to see how are mom and dad doing?

Are they dealing okay with you not being at home? And just little questions like that allow me to continue to build those relationships with them so that I can understand where they’re at at this point in time and what is it I need to be able to do to help them. And we’ll still do some formal work where we’ll be in a classroom as a team and we start to look at that.

We do what we call Hot Seat, where, and we’ve just started it with a new group this year, where we put a seat at the front of the classroom once we finish with film. And each of the players takes it in turns to sit on the hot seat for five minutes. And the rest of the team, and the coaches, and the staff, and everybody in the room, We can ask any questions within reason, but we can ask any questions that we want to know about that individual athlete and you’d be amazed how much some of them are willing to share in an environment that feels very safe to them around their peers and around others that they’re going to battle with on a daily basis.

We found little things like that have allowed us to get a snapshot into their world and that helps me to then navigate their world as much as my own as well.

[00:11:36] Mike Klinzing: Do the coaches go first on the hot seat?

[00:11:39] Liam Jefferson: So we were going to I wasn’t expecting anybody to step forward. And actually we had three or four volunteers from within the team, which was amazing because that’s awesome.

Already at 17, 18 years old. And we had some of our senior men in the room as well. And actually it was, it was the academy age athletes that were stepping forward before the senior men to

[00:11:58] Mike Klinzing: be like, yeah, I’d love to do that.

[00:12:00] Liam Jefferson: I’d love to jump on the hot seat and, and almost get grilled by my teammates. For me, they’re the pieces that the players remember afterwards, is those conversations on the bus ride, it’s the, what were you doing when you arrived to the game.

They’re not remembering in 20, 30 years time, the X’s and O’s and what we achieved. They’ll remember, yeah, if we won something and if we had a deep tournament run, but they’ll remember those moments and the relationships that they build with their teammates. And so, We really try and prioritize those, especially so early on in the preseason, but also so early on in, in my tenure as head coach at Oakland’s is only being two months into it now is we have to all get on the same page.

And that’s one of the ways that we try to do that.

[00:12:46] Mike Klinzing: What’s a little bit about just the setup for a basketball club, like the wolves in terms of. The age group teams, the progression from one level to another, kind of what your role is overseeing that whole thing. Just for those of us who maybe aren’t as familiar with how the setup is for an English basketball club.

What does that look like? And what then your role as the head coach?

[00:13:12] Liam Jefferson: Yeah. So it, it’s, it’s very different in Europe as it is to, to in the US. So for us in the UK, we have the professional league, which is just rebranded to super league basketball. And within that are 10 Super League teams. Then beneath that you have a National League pyramid.

So that, that league is franchised and then beneath that are four tiers of leagues that have promotion and relegation within them. Now a lot of those clubs, ours being one of them, that sit within that, that pyramid structure, will have a academy attached and junior club attached. So theoretically a player could join our club at U12 and stay with us all the way through to being a senior men’s player.

Some other clubs within the UK will also have a university partner attached to them. So, whereas in the US you’re bound by NCAA regulations and are you an amateur or a professional, you could be a professional athlete in the UK while still getting full education and work your way up from juniors all the way up to senior mens.

So for us at Oakland Wolves, we have both a senior mens and senior womens team. Then beneath that, an academy team, which is 16 to 19. We don’t actually have a university partner at the moment. So a lot of our athletes will go. Elsewhere, once they graduate from the academy at 19, but beneath that, we have U16, U14, U12, and then mini ballers, which is where under 10, they’re coming in and they’re just having fun with the game of basketball and, and building that relationship with the game.

And my role as head coach is to have oversight of the entire men’s side of the program. And then my equivalent is a coach, a really good friend of mine called Lee Ryan. Who has oversight over the women’s side. So we are both the head coaches of the senior teams. We have interaction and head coach, the academy teams, and then we set the philosophy and direction for the junior clubs that sit within that.

And that’s something new that we’ve introduced this year to the Wolves. And so we’ve spent the summer developing a culture and a philosophy that we expect to as like our overarching, almost code of conduct for all of our players and coaches that are within our program. But now we have one consistent philosophy that runs from senior men’s all the way down to under 12.

So you could walk into any session within our club and you’re going to hear the same language. You’re going to see coaches using similar activities and small sided games, similar concepts. And the great thing about that is, and we’re starting to see it already, 14 year olds within our club that are coming to watch our senior men play on a weekend.

are seeing and hearing the same things in the games that they’re working on on a weekly basis in their own practices and in their own games. And that’s been really, really powerful for developing that kind of one club. And one one club feel around what we’re trying to achieve.

[00:16:14] Mike Klinzing: When you come in as the head coach, is the staff already in place?

Do you have some say in who is the head coach of those other levels or just how does the staff get put together after you’re in place?

[00:16:31] Liam Jefferson: Yeah, it’s a good one. A lot of our staff are volunteers. So we’re working with, within the local community, whether that be parents, whether that be young coaches that are graduating from nearby universities that are looking for opportunities to step into the game.

But we are, we’re always up against it. Those, those coaches within our program, so where we’re at right now, are, are always giving back to the community. So I’ll be honest, like a lot of the time we’ll take anybody that we can get and we’ll try and work with them to help develop them as coaches. So a lot of the time it’s the first step on the ladder for them or it’s they’re coming back to the game later in life after they’ve had kids and they have a little bit more free time to get back involved in the game.

And that, that’s a challenge, but that’s also part of my role as head coach and having oversight of the program is how do I work with those coaches to upskill them and develop them so that they’re in turn passing that on to the players that we have within our program. But also bearing in mind that a lot of these coaches will have full time jobs, they’ll have family, they’ll have a social life and they’ll, they’ll have other demands that they’ve got to balance.

So whilst this is a full time role for me and it’s my passion and I can be up at 1. 30 in the, in the morning doing a podcast I do, not everybody else can give it that same amount of time. And so that’s why for us, it’s been great to introduce. a consistent style of play and philosophy throughout because anytime we do get together as a group of coaches, which we do once a month for two hours on a Thursday evening, is we’re then sharing ways to help enhance our entire program and not just one team within it.

[00:18:17] Mike Klinzing: So in terms of the training for those coaches who are coming in, who are volunteering, who are the people that you just described, so you have the monthly meetings on Thursdays in order to, again, share the culture, to be able to Get the common vocabulary so that there’s that continuity between levels.

Are you getting out on the court with them and running, for lack of a better way of saying it, coaching clinics? Or again, what other ways besides those Thursday meetings do you have of showing the coaches what it looks like in terms of, hey, this is how we teach this particular concept, or Here’s a way that you can institute this that we’re trying to do with our senior team.

Just how does it work in terms of trying to make sure, again, with the limited time and resources to be able to get that philosophy to those coaches so that they can better teach and coach the athletes that they’re working with all the time?

[00:19:17] Liam Jefferson: Yeah, it’s, it’s twofold for us. So each of those age group teams gets one session a week with me on court.

And they’re primarily around skills and concepts and not delivered as a team practice. So for an hour, an hour, 30 a week, they will get some sort of time with me where I’m leading the session and those coaches are supporting and understanding what it is that we’re doing and how it fits into our bigger picture.

The hope is that by the end of the season that much more of a dual delivery between me and the head coach of each of the relevant age groups within our program. But then the other piece that we are doing is, I was very fortunate last year to have a role within the academy at London Lions, working with Alex Sarama and Will Twigg, who I know both have been on the pod and Alex obviously is the founder of Transforming Basketball, and a lot of what we’re trying to achieve with Oaklands is very, very aligned to transforming and the work that we did at London Lions last year and the philosophy and direction that Alex is taking transforming basketball.

And so we found a way for all of our coaches to become members of transforming basketball and that’s huge for their own development because They have access to the membership and the platform, all of the small sided games, the drill library that exists within there, that they’re seeing and hearing it in various different places, so our coach development meetings that we have, in the conversations that they’re having between practices with the other coaches, in the sessions where I’m on court leading, and then in their own time when they’re able to review it.

All of the, the content that sits on the Transforming Basketball Podcast. And I’ve lapsed forward.

[00:21:01] Mike Klinzing: Well, that makes a lot of sense. Again, they’re getting an opportunity to work hand in hand with you, start to slowly take over. They get some homework assignments, for lack of a better way of saying it, to be able to go and study the, some of the stuff that you guys were doing with Transforming Basketball.

Let’s work backwards. Tell me how you first got connected to Alex and Transforming Basketball. And then how you develop that relationship.

[00:21:26] Liam Jefferson: Yeah. So I, as I was saying before, spent 12 years coaching at Loughborough university, which is the number one university in the UK for sport. And for the last six or seven years has been the number one university for basketball in the UK.

And I was very lucky that my time at Loughborough, we won four national championships. We won and almost a national invitational tournament championship as well, where I was head coaching and, and I had a great time there. But as I was saying earlier on in our conversation, that role was voluntary and then it gradually developed into a part time role.

So I had a full time job the whole time that I was there. And the last two or three years that I spent at Loughborough, I was starting to get to that point where I think many coaches do where they’re, they’re. Am I going to go all in on this or am I going to continue to hold down a full time job and just enjoy the opportunities to coach that I get in my free time and build it around?

And my partner at the time had moved down to London and she was working on the staff at the London Lions professional women’s team. And I just started to have a couple of conversations with the staff down there around, Hey, look, I’m thinking about stepping into this world full time and wanting to coach full time.

And Any opportunities that present themselves, I would love to get involved. And I was very fortunate that Vanya Sernovich, who was the women’s GM at the time and also had responsibility for the academy, reached out and said, we’re bringing in a couple of coaches. We’re going to bring in Alex Sarama and we want to do something very different with an academy structure in the UK that’s never been done before.

And so I kind of jumped all in and went for it left my, left my role, moved from the middle of the country to down south to the capital and was living in London for the first time. And, and it was great for me to be able to spend such quality time around such like minded coaches. And I’d likened it to almost going to a basketball coaching university, just being able to be around coaches that are Utilizing the CLA in practice, but why in the same way for continuous growth and spending a lot of time talking to Alex, soaking up his knowledge and, and almost co creating some of the content that I’m now able to use at Oakland’s.

Because a lot of it was founded in what we were trying to achieve at the London Eye.

[00:23:59] Mike Klinzing: Tell me what it is about the CLA that got you to believe that it was the best way, or it is the best way, to be able to teach the game, to be able to impact players from a development standpoint. As you got introduced to it, as you started to study it more deeply, as you started to really get into it, what part of it did you feel like, hey, there is no question in my mind that this is the direction that basketball is going to be going?

[00:24:28] Liam Jefferson: Yeah, it’s I’ve always said to Alex, I think I started out when I was a young coach, very traditional. And towards the end of my time at Loughborough, I was becoming much more of a games based coach and I was using constraints without really understanding how and why I was using them. And then in the first conversation that I sat down with Alex and he started to share some of the CLA and A lot of time coaches can be put off by the sciencey terminology that’s flying at you and understanding what ecological dynamics is and what unaffordance is and what perception action coupling is and all these different words and terminologies were flying at me and I was like, Whoa, this, this is a completely different world.

And I don’t think I, I don’t think I’m ready to understand it. I don’t think I’m ready to unpack it. But then actually, once we started to get onto the floor and we were able to work with the athletes that we had, and for those that don’t understand the, the kind of demographic that we have in London is, is very different from a player’s perspective, players are.

Very often longer, taller, more athletic, but oftentimes the level of coaching that they receive in the inner city areas isn’t up to scratch. And I think from day one of having our kids at London Lions Academy, just seeing how much more utilizing the CLA and, and very intentional constraints in our practice environment, enhanced development within four weeks.

The growth that those players had had was huge because essentially what we are putting them in utilizing those small sided games in the CLA is a representative environment in every single, so everything that we’re doing relates back to the game. There’s nothing where there isn’t a decision, there’s nothing where there isn’t defense, and just that sheer volume of work that we were putting in, their growth over that period of time was massive, and If you were to look at where the team was when we went to our first international tournament, we went to Poland, we played four games, we won one, but the three that we lost, we lost by 50 points, because we were just so far behind some of these other European teams that had been in that culture and that system for so long, but by the time we finished our final window within that tournament, we were winning all four games.

And players all of a sudden were aware of the environment around them. We were playing conceptually, so they were aware of the affordances that were presenting themselves. We’re playing through triggers, looking at coverage solutions, and It was the CLA and I, I would hang my hat on it. It was the CLA that got us to that point because of how intentional our practice environment was for the players.

[00:27:16] Mike Klinzing: Right. So talk about that intentionality in terms of your process for planning, let’s say an individual skill development session where you’re working with a team, but you’re working on their individual skills. And then also translate that maybe to what it looks like when you’re planning a practice for, that’s more team based, like with, again, the, with as the head coach.

So the planning process for a player development style practice, and then the planning process for more of a team setting of a practice. And I think what what I’m getting at here is, and this is something that I talked with Alex about, I talked about it with Twig as well. Is the amount of time that goes into thinking about designing, planning the practice.

And then once you get into the practice, everything has been designed and you’re facilitating what’s happening. But just tell us about the planning process and how you go through that.

[00:28:18] Liam Jefferson: Yeah, so it starts with identifying. What within the theory and the literature is called a rate limiter. So identifying within your team, what is it that’s, that’s holding us back?

And that can be individually and on a team basis. So what is the area that we need to work on? What’s stopping us from getting to the ultimate potential that we think we have or that that individual, we think that they have. And so those rate limiters will then inform what it is that we need to work on in practice.

And I think the biggest thing for the CLA, and at least with practice design as well, is it’s allowed me to be so much more creative as a coach, because I’m identifying a problem and then coming up with a small side of game and the constraints that I think will work to solve that problem, not utilizing a bank of 10 to 15 drills that I would use every single practice, but try and give them a different focus when they may not present them.

the affordances and the opportunities for action that we would want to see. So identifying those rate limiters is, I would say, even more crucial for the individual skill development sessions. The piece with the, and this is where sometimes it, it, it gets misunderstood with the CLA is because we are saying that there must always be a decision and there must always be a defense that everything is always at 100%.

Or that everything is always completely random and that’s just not the case. And so a lot of the time in my individual skill development sessions that I’m planning out. We’ll use a menu of opportunities to get to a certain affordance. So, we could constrain defense that they’ve got to give three different reads for an offense.

So the easiest one to talk about is the Nash dribble. So when you’re attacking the basket and the lane is put off at the last moment, you want to keep your dribble alive and Nash dribble from one side of the paint to the other side of the paint under the basket. And you can easily constrain offense to be on the three point line, defense to give three different reads.

So one, I have to give an open layup straight away. The second one is as they Nash Dribble round, I’m going to jump I side to force them to reverse pivot and finish at the rim. The third one is that I’m going to chase them on that Nash Dribble to force them to finish at the front of the rim. But we can say to that individual athlete, in this small sided game, you have to give option A, B, and C, but in a random order, so that the offense doesn’t know what’s coming.

And that’s one way that we can introduce constraints in a small sided game in practice to get to a very specific and intentional goal. Outcome within the team environment. It’s a lot more around constraining space time, the rules, the defense. And for me the, the very common kind of coaching framework is plan, do, review.

Right? And I think when you are utilizing the constraints approach. You can plan for the small sided games that you want to deliver and look at these are the individual constraints that I actually want to implement in order to get me to where we need to get to and for the players to perceive a certain affordance, a certain opportunity for action.

But that plan do review needs to be constantly happening once you’re in the practice. So I actually listened to the episode where you spoke with Alex and you were talking about a lot of the coaches work will happen in that that planning phase and developing the practice plan and the small sided games and the constraints that you want to introduce that then and In practice, it’s more of taking a step back, but for me, it’s not just taking that step back, it’s constantly reviewing, are we achieving, and being very intentional, are we achieving the outcomes that we want within this small sided game?

Because if not, I probably need to look at how do I change the constraints. So continue to get us to where we need to get.

[00:32:17] Mike Klinzing: So does that planning process, how does it change? So for example, right now you’re new, right? You haven’t coached the team in any games. Obviously you can go back and watch film on the players and the teams.

But once you get into the season and you have film from your actual team, how does the process work for you like right now when you haven’t seen the team play a game versus once you get into the season and they’ve started playing games and then you can sort of evaluate what you see? them doing in the course of an actual competition versus now you’re kind of seeing what they can do in practice and in workouts and that kind of thing.

I don’t know if that question makes sense, but just what’s the difference between sort of the preseason planning process and, and what you might do in season, like what you did last year with the Lions.

[00:33:09] Liam Jefferson: Yeah, no, it makes a lot of sense. So for me, I mean, we’re very lucky within two weeks of preseason We were straight into preseason games.

So I was able to get a lot of Intel and information straight away from from those early games So we’re already five games into our preseason schedule with our first Official game coming this Sunday at least for the start of that process for the first week or two Practices revolved heavily just around our offensive and defensive principles.

So we’re very clear and, and again, heavily aligned with transforming basketball principles around. For us, on the offensive end, we’re going to play conceptually and everything is about us creating some form of advantage, whether that be spatial, whether that be match up. Whether that be numbers. And in order to do that, we have three very clear rules.

So zero second decisions, one plant guard two, and then into and out to space on the offensive end. On the defensive end, we’re no strong. So a force weak or a lock left if you will, but no strong is our terminology. We want to send teams so that we can, we want to shrink in the gaps, almost like a pack line.

And so. Those principles formed very much the first two weeks and we didn’t deviate or explore anything further from there, so that going into our first game, that was then the barometer for me as to where we were up to. Now as we start to build, we’re introducing some of our triggers, we’re introducing some of our coverage solutions, and it’s great because in practice, I can constrain the defense for different coverages, so I’m teaching the coverage at the same time.

As exploring the coverage solutions, which is allowing us to build both our offensive and defensive principles at the same time, but I would say the first two weeks of practice for us were very heavily principle based and we didn’t really get into it. Anything other than the, than the outline for those.

[00:35:16] Mike Klinzing: As you design the different drills, the constraints that you’re going to put in place with your team, go into a little bit more detail about the evaluation process of what’s working, maybe what’s not working as well as you thought it might, how do you evaluate the. Success or failure of a particular drill, for lack of a better way of saying, but a particular constraint, a particular way of teaching something.

What’s your process for evaluating how and how well it’s working?

[00:35:53] Liam Jefferson: So we have a couple of ways that we’re using as a, as a staff this year. The first one is just regular and debriefs after practice as a staff for us all to get together and just quickly hot review in 15 minute period. Each of the small sided games that we’ve delivered, has it got to the outcome that we wanted?

We then track all of that on a, an Excel spreadsheet, on a Google spreadsheet that lists, and it goes for about 200 rows, this spreadsheet, but every, every term that we have, every concept that we have, everything that we do on the offensive and defensive end, Is listed on there, and then we, we rag rate it, so red, amber, green, and it’s very much just the eye test for us, as to, is this something that we feel like at this stage of the season we’re happy with, and it’ll be green, is it something that we continue to work on because we’re not quite there yet, we rate it as amber.

Or is it something that we’re, we’re still really struggling with and we wait, we would break it as red. And also on that spreadsheet for us is each of the different weeks within our season and when we’re going to add something, when we’re going to revisit something and that becomes almost an organic document.

So for us as a staff, we’ll quickly get together at the end of practice. Quick debrief. Hey, we did a small sided game today, looking at. How do we punish the switch in the pick and roll? And we looked at it 2 on 2 and then we built it to 3 on 3. How did that achieve the aims that we wanted to? Then at the end of that practice, once we’ve had that, that debrief, that review, I would sit and just quickly add a note to that spreadsheet and change the color if we needed it to be changed.

And then that allows us, when we’re again going back to that practice planning process, to check in on all of those different conversations that we’ve had. To make sure that we’re always coming back to how can we improve? How can we get better? The other way that we would do it is, and this is something that I picked up from, from Alex is I’ll now film every single practice and I do it on an iPhone that has no SIM card in it.

I stick on a tripod from Amazon that cost me 20 pounds. And at the end of every practice, I wipe the iPhone again. I upload the video to my, to my laptop, and then I get, I wipe it again. And I’m filming every single practice using equipment that probably cost me 50 pounds total. But what that allows me to do is to go back as we’re planning that process.

So we did the hot review. Now I can go back to it, remove the emotion from it and have the eye test with, with no emotion and see. Actually, that small sided game achieved what we wanted it to achieve, and I think the big thing with the CLA and with small sided games, when you’re using them in practice, is Thanks, guys.

You have to not be striving for perfection because it isn’t going to look perfect. And so oftentimes when I go back and review the video, in the moment and in the practice, all coaches have been there. You look at the small side of the game, you look at what the players are doing in front of you and you think, Oh my goodness, this, this isn’t what I wanted to achieve, we’re getting nowhere near what I wanted to do, the affordances that I wanted to present themselves aren’t happening, but then when you go back to watch the video, you actually go, you know what, this looks like the game, this looks like the situations that they will see in game, it’s not a perfect pick and roll.

But how often do we get a perfect pick and roll in practice? And so that video for me has been really, really powerful to just go back and revisit where are we at and get that sense check to then identify what our rate limiters will be going into the next week of practice. What do we need to work on?

[00:39:43] Mike Klinzing: Are you spending as much time reviewing that film as you are actually doing the live practice?

[00:39:49] Liam Jefferson: Probably at this stage of the season, yes. And, and that’s where at this stage of the season, I don’t have film on other teams and anybody else. And also with me being so new into my role, like we’re two months into me being in this role, I’m trying to get as much information as on my own team and the guys that I have as I possibly can do.

And so, yeah, I’m probably. If we’re on court for an hour 30, I’m probably watching back that whole hour 30 practice again the next day before planning the next one.

[00:40:22] Mike Klinzing: How many of your current guys were familiar with the CLA and this methodology of coaching prior to your arrival?

[00:40:33] Liam Jefferson: So we have 17 players within our Elite Academy team, so the 16 19 team.

And then we have, at the moment, 4 senior men. We’re working on trying to sign a couple more as we get towards the first game. So you’re looking at around 23 24 players that are within our program, and only 2 of them have had a Some form of interaction with the CLA before, and they were two of the academy players that came over from London Lions with me.

And it’s interesting because the feedback from the players is that they just enjoy practice so much more. At the end of the day, players want to play. And our job is, as coaches, is to put them in those situations that they can play and they can have that enjoyment, but they’re also growing and developing at the same time.

And sometimes when we’ve all been guilty of it, myself included, when you strip things back and you go one on zero or two on zero or it’s five on zero reps and It doesn’t look and feel like the game and it becomes very repetitive and very monotonous and players feedback has been how different utilizing the CLA in small sided games is to a traditional practice and that they enjoy coming to practice and sometimes now my job is actually to To hold them back and to say, okay guys, today, today we’re going to have a low intensity day.

So yes, we’re going to use some of the small sided games, but it’s going to look like the menu of opportunity, small sided game that I was explaining before. So actually I want you to dial it back a little bit, but still give a decision because. They’re just wanting to compete more and more and more. And I think that the beauty of it is as well that because it is so game like and because we are very intentional with what we’re trying to achieve, the players pick up a lot of Similarities, so they start to understand the why behind it as much as we do as coaches trying to deliver it.

[00:42:35] Mike Klinzing: Players or coaches who maybe aren’t as familiar with the CLA, how do you balance out the competitive nature of a small sided game? Because I think when I first initially heard, okay, constraints, when I think of constraints before I kind of learned the science behind it and figured this out, My initial thought was, well, if I’m constraining one side or the other in some way, maybe that also constrains the competitiveness of that small sided game.

So just maybe for somebody who’s not as familiar with it, explain how you keep the competitive level high, even though there are constraints within the situation or the drill that you’ve developed.

[00:43:25] Liam Jefferson: Yeah. And so, I mean, the first bit for me is it strips all the way back to What are our core values within our program before we even get into the CLA and keeping it competitive?

So one of our three core values within our program is Kaizen, which I know is very, it’s, it’s one now that’s cliche because a lot of programs have it as a value within that program, but. We are continuously seeking growth within everything that we do and so for me, once I was able to get players on the floor and explain why we were using small sided games in the CLA, because it enhances their growth and it speeds up that growth process, they understand that they are small If I’m constraining them as defense, that’s happening to make the offense better.

If I’m constraining the offense, it’s to make the defense better. The other simple way for me is just how we score some of those small sided games in practice. So, for us, we can look at, yes, we can score twos and threes, yes, we can score one point for a start, but actually, if there’s certain affordances that we want to present themselves, maybe it’s one of our coverage solutions in one of our triggers, actually, I can add something like, well, this one’s worth five, or Alex uses the, the The idea of the golden snitch from Harry Potter.

So if you catch the golden snitch in Quidditch in Harry Potter, you immediately win the game. And so you can introduce that as a constraint within one of the small sided games. So again, it has that element of competitiveness to it. It isn’t just, we’re going twos and threes, first team to 11. So there’s a, there’s a load of different ways that we would do it.

The other thing that we would, we would sometimes look at is how do we introduce lives into our small sided games. So we might say, actually, we’re constraining the defense that you’ve always got to switch within maybe a three on three or a four on four. But if they don’t switch or if they don’t communicate the switch properly, they lose their lives.

And us as coaches are looking for that. If they lose all three lives, their score goes back to zero because we want them to become attuned to how do we communicate, how do we create contact on the switch and all of the things that we’re looking for to teach on a on a detailed basis. The different ways that we can use that scoring system in practice still maintain some of that competitiveness, but at the same time is a constraint to some of what we’re wanting to achieve to address some of those rate limiters.

[00:45:58] Mike Klinzing: Now let’s shift gears and talk a little bit about player acquisition and how you attract players to the club, both at the senior academy and then also at the younger levels. How do you get players to enroll to become a part of the program?

[00:46:15] Liam Jefferson: It’s a great one because for us, it’s what has probably been, and this is just speaking candidly, probably been one of the problems for the program over the last three or four years is that it just hasn’t been attracting the talent that a program of its stature should be.

So a big piece for me is looking at how do I build that relationship with those individual players? What am I doing? Whether that’s getting out to view games at the U16 level, the U15 level, am I going to tournaments, am I around national team camps and events just to be seen, and then start to be able to build relationships with coaches and players and parents in order to start to sell the environment that we have at Oakland and what it is that we want to achieve.

And what that is for me, and I think this is what really resonates, especially with that academy age that we’re looking to recruit, is can you create an environment where winning and development go hand in hand? And oftentimes a program will be a winning program, but it will be at the expense of individual player development.

Sometimes there will be a development environment where, especially at the younger age group, development is prioritized over winning. So can we find everybody 20 minutes a game or 15 minutes a game? Can everybody see the floor? And at various different levels within our club, there are arguments for it being more development focused and more competitive focused.

But for me, especially within our academy group, that’s 16 to 19 is how can I sell this environment that we can compete and we can win things, but you’re also going to develop at the same time. And part of that comes back to the CLA and small sided games and explaining to these, these kids that are exploring different academies and different programs throughout the UK.

is how does the CLA and how does small sided games help us to be able to compete and develop players at the same time. So all of it comes back to that route. I’m lucky in that my, my previous role and when I was at Loughborough University, my full time role whilst I was, whilst I was coaching there was athlete recruitment across all of the sport programs.

So I worked with all of the head coaches across every program to look at athlete recruitment and help them to develop plans of action for their social media. How are they selling their program? What does that look like? How are they interacting with players? What do individual visit days look like? And so I’m, I’m extremely fortunate that over two or three years of working with other sports, I’ve been able to take all of the best bits from each of the sports, even looking at what does some U.

S. colleges and universities do. With regards to on an official visit and you’re getting photographed and all the gear and your parents are there with you and all those little things that make you feel like you’re a part of the family and and so we’re trying to introduce as much of that into our recruitment for the academy as possible now on the men’s side it’s slightly different because.

A lot of our, a lot of our roster for our men’s team is going to always be made up of academy age athletes that are ready to compete at that level. And so when you’re trying to recruit senior men’s players to be able to be in that environment, they have to be, they have to be the right sort of mindset and the right sort of character to be able to help continue that development of those players.

So on a typical game day, if we’re, if we’re suiting up 12 players, six of them are going to be senior men and six of them are going to be academy players from our elite academy. And so that recruitment process is much more individualized. It’s reaching out to coaches to get almost a background check on players.

Are they the right fit? Are they going to deal with the frustration of sometimes playing with 16, 17, 18 year olds, because. At that age group, they can be super inconsistent. They can have a high ceiling and high potential, but they, there will be a lot of inconsistency that’s there. And so that recruitment process looks slightly different for the senior men.

[00:50:33] Mike Klinzing: With the younger players, do you guys have a residential option? So players who are 12U or 14U, do those players have the option of staying and sort of going full time and going to school in association with the academy at a local school? Or is it The players travel in for all the basketball stuff.

[00:50:54] Liam Jefferson: Yeah.

So all of our players will travel in up until you 16. So you 12, you 14, you 16, we are pretty much just recruiting from our local area. So players will go to different schools in the area and then come into their basketball with us on two practices a week and a game on a weekend. Sometimes free practices as they move up through those age groups.

It’s only when they hit the 16 to 19 age group that we would offer accommodation on site and that’s where you then see a huge jump in their development because then they are, they are in it 24 seven. So they wake up at 6. 30 in the morning and they can be in a morning shoot at 7am and the gym is open for them for two hours to be able to do that before they head to class.

As soon as they’re done with class, they head into the weight room. As soon as they’re done with the weight room, we’re down on the floor for practice. As soon as they’re done with that, they can go back to the dorms, they can eat, they can get a nap in, they can carry on with their studies. And so it’s only when they hit the academy age, which for us is that 16 to 19, that I would say it, it starts to resemble what you would expect an elite academy environment to look like.

[00:52:04] Mike Klinzing: What’s the hardest administrative part of being a head coach of a club in the UK?

[00:52:14] Liam Jefferson: I feel like we could do a whole podcast on, on this one. We could, we could probably get an hour 30 on this one. Oh

[00:52:21] Mike Klinzing: man, I, I, I hit on a good question. That’s good. I think

[00:52:25] Liam Jefferson: the, the biggest piece Right now, for me, the biggest administrative piece is, is coming back to that, that coach development aspect is how can I create all of the processes, all of the information, all of the content.

That’s needed for those volunteer coaches and part time coaches to be able to pick up what essentially is my philosophy and what I want to achieve with a program and then be able to deliver it at a high enough level. So the learning videos that I’ve got to produce of my own practices to be able to share to show some of the concepts that we want to play with.

The one page of documents on we’re a team that tags up and sends all five to the offensive glass. But actually there’s, there’s so many niche and detail points within that. That I can’t just expect another coach to pick up a couple of sentences that say, we are a team that tags up. And so for me this year, the administrative side of it has been developing all of that content that I can send out to our coaches.

Now, the hope is that that gradually evolves over time each year, that it’s not going to be As time exhaustive as it probably has been this summer

[00:53:41] Mike Klinzing: for

[00:53:41] Liam Jefferson: us, but then the other piece is just around changing perception of the sport in the UK. And it’s, it’s one of those where we are constantly battling with your traditional sports.

So football, rugby, cricket, netball on the women’s side. We’re constantly battling with them for facility access, for resource, for, especially for, for those that are based within colleges and schools with their academies, for just an understanding from the senior leadership team within those, those colleges and schools as to what a basketball academy is, what does basketball in the UK look like, and that can take a lot of time and a lot of energy and effort in building relationships with people that Whilst it’s not administrative, it has a huge impact on how successful you can be within your program.

And I’m sure it’s no different in the U S with, with maybe an athletic director or a head teacher at a high school, if they value the football program more, for example, than, than basketball. But that, that for us is, is a real challenge over here. And like, we’re exploring just different ways that. How can we get them down to a game?

How can we get them into a practice? Even if it’s just coming in and speaking to the team for two minutes and saying, hey, I’m the head teacher of the college, it’s great to meet you all, really pleased with what you’re doing in, in the, in the space within the academy and having them there for five minutes to watch us practice to start to understand it a little bit more.

There’s definitely that that constant battle within the sport and landscape in the UK to change perception.

[00:55:16] Mike Klinzing: I want to come back to that point in just a second, but I don’t want to just have you answer the question about what’s the hardest part. What’s the most fun part of being the head coach? of club in the UK.

What do you enjoy the most about it? And again, obviously there’s the on the floor stuff and the basketball piece, but maybe something that is off the basketball floor that you get to do a part of it, a part of the job that you really enjoy.

[00:55:43] Liam Jefferson: The biggest piece for me is the sense of community that we have within the club structure.

So as, as the head of a program, I’m responsible for U10 all the way up to senior men. That means that I get so many different touch points and interactions with players, with parents, with other coaches, that my job at the end of the day, especially with where we’re at at Oakland, is I have to create an environment and a program that sets them up for life after Oakland.

So they could leave us after U12 or they could stay with us all the way through to senior men, but my job is to make sure that when they leave our program, they’re better for it as both a person and a player. And I get so many touch points with them throughout the week, within the individual skill sessions, even the conversations in the corridor as teams are changing between practices, parents coming in and saying, we brought our kids to the game at the weekend, they had such an enjoyable experience that they want to bring two friends next weekend.

Little moments like that, being in such a club environment where you all feel like you’re part of one big family, like our, our club is, is, is huge. It’s massive. We’re probably looking at 400 young people a week are engaging within our club on the boy’s side alone. That, that’s so rewarding for me. That, that’s the bit that I think oftentimes is missed from a coaching perspective in the UK.

Is it? That club model does really create a sense of family and a bond that I guess you don’t really get as much in the U. S. You might get it with a college or a high school environment if you feel like you’re a part of the mascot and the program. But the club feel for me feels much more family orientated rather than being attached to something.

[00:57:33] Mike Klinzing: And it’s a much longer process, right? If a kid joins you at U12 and progresses and eventually makes it up and is able to play for. The Academy team and who knows, eventually sticks around as a senior man. I mean, there’s the potential for it to be a six, eight, 10 year relationship, which obviously is much longer than anything you’re going to get.

Here in the U. S. under our system. So

[00:57:56] Liam Jefferson: yeah, for sure. You mentioned earlier. Sorry.

[00:57:58] Mike Klinzing: Go ahead. No, I was just

[00:57:59] Liam Jefferson: going to say my, my, my goal and aspiration for our program is that especially within the U. K. We can be almost at that beacon for what happens on the continent in Europe as well. So, my plan is to be at Oakland’s for, for quite some time, where I would love for us to have a kid join us at U12 and really do go all the way through with us to senior men.

And the hope is that our senior men’s team gets promoted through the leagues over the next year or two so that we’re at the highest league we possibly can do. And we can show that there is a pathway for kids in our local area to be able to join and make a career from basketball in the UK, which it’s a struggle for kids that want to be able to do that.

Oftentimes you have to leave and go to the US or leave and go to Europe in order to continue your development. And if we can find a way to be able to really do that in the UK, then we’re That’s how we start to enhance the game and start to be taken a little bit more seriously as a basketball nation as well.

[00:58:57] Mike Klinzing: Okay, so this goes back to what you just said there and also what you said five minutes ago in terms of getting basketball to be more of a mainstream popular sport in the UK. And you had an opportunity in the summer of 2023 to work with the U 20 men’s national team. Tell me a little bit about that experience and what national team basketball, what the national team program looks and feels like.

Yeah,

[00:59:35] Liam Jefferson: it’s, it’s one that is definitely on the up and for the first time in a little while as well. And that experience for me with, with the U 20s last summer was amazing. That was the, the first opportunity to represent my country. I’d never got the opportunity as a player. And so to be able to do it as a, as a coach at the U 20 level was a, was a real privilege and a real honor.

I think we’re, we’re now as a country starting to Work together as a federation. So for those that those that I guess don’t quite understand the UK landscape, we compete internationally as Great Britain, but within Great Britain, you have England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. So there are four countries that essentially come together to be able to compete as Great Britain.

And I don’t know any other country in the world that does that. It would almost be as if like the U. S. and Canada became North America and competed in the Olympics and the World Cup. Like it uses. It’s a little bit bizarre in the way that it works, but I think historically we’ve struggled to get alignment across our home nations that then make up Great Britain or the United Kingdom for us to be able to compete in international competition.

And for the first time in a while, it feels like we’re slowly starting to get to that point where we have direction and starting to develop what does a Great Britain style of play look like? What do we expect each of our age group teams to do? To show when they’re on the floor, what would the players expect in that environment?

What’s our values? What’s similar to what I’m trying to do at Oakland’s now, but on a, on a national team scale. And I think my, my, my interaction with that tournament and with that experience last summer is the countries and the nations that have success are the ones that have that from top to bottom.

They have a style of play that you know that if you’re seeing a Spain, if you’re seeing a Serbia, you Even down to like some of the Nordic countries now. So I recently was out in Norway with transforming basketball, delivering some clinics there for, for transforming. And I’ve seen it with Sweden and with Finland too, like.

The countries that have a philosophy that runs from top to bottom, where all of the coaches are working in a similar way towards a similar goal, it starts with the development in their, their regional academies and their clubs that then feeds international teams are the ones that are having the most success.

And that for us is the next hurdle to jump over in order for us to start to be able to compete in some of those competitions as well. And we’ve got some really exciting age group teams coming through. So our under 16 girls team is probably one of the most exciting at the moment as they just got promoted this summer to Division A.

And that’s the first time that one of our teams has been promoted back into Division A for the first time in five or six years. So I think it was pre COVID the last time that we were competing in Division A. And for a country like ours that has such a great reputation within sport in a general sense, and with the just pool of athletes that we have available to us, there’s no excuse for us not to be in Division A competing with some of these countries.

But in order to do that, We have to be working together more as a federation and as the clubs that feed into that federation in order to achieve it.

[01:02:54] Mike Klinzing: How long do you think based on where you are right now, how long do you think it will take realistically to kind of get where you can be at the level where you want the UK to be?

[01:03:08] Liam Jefferson: That is the million dollar question. I think that the biggest, the biggest piece for me is all of these, all of these countries and federations that are having success.

have a almost a national team’s director or technical director that’s setting the direction. And then from there, it’s probably a three to four year process. And so that’s the next step for us is the last time we had success, we had Warwick Kahn in position and Vladan Dragovic, who both were in those technical director positions that set direction for, Each of the programs, each of the age groups, and we’ve not had that position for a little while.

So I think once we get that back into our federation and that’s, that’s set the direction of travel, then we’re probably two to three, maybe four years away from being able to get to a point where I think hopefully all of our age group teams can be back in Division A and compete at the highest possible level.

[01:04:09] Mike Klinzing: What do you think is the biggest obstacle to getting there?

[01:04:14] Liam Jefferson: So, I mean, the biggest obstacle for us is we are, like I was saying before, we’re always fighting for resource with other sports. So historically, Great Britain basketball is, is underfunded. And each of the national team experiences over the summers are, they, they operate on a skeleton budget in order for us to put team on the floor.

We don’t get a huge amount of, of prep time before heading to tournaments. We don’t get to see the players throughout the year. So they only really come together during the summer months. So the biggest barrier for us, and it’s a lot of time, the easy answer, right, is to say we would all love more money.

We would all love to find that magic money tree where it’s growing and we can fund our program. But that really is the challenge for us is how can we, how can we maximize the sport? Because in the UK, basketball is the second most participated sport. It’s the most popular sport in inner city areas after football.

There are so many kids playing the game in this country, but no corporate businesses want to get involved really with sponsoring it. And there’s a magnitude of different reasons to that. Our, our top level professional league has just gone through a bit of a restructure over the summer with new ownership and a rebrand.

And so until we start to have a product that companies and businesses want to get involved in. That money isn’t going to trickle into our national teams and our federations. And, and that will be when we start to be able to, to see some of the kind of the, the change for us really.

[01:05:56] Mike Klinzing: Right. New part question to wrap things up.

And you’re now Almost two months into your job with Oakland’s. So when you look ahead over the next year or two, what do you see as being your biggest challenge? And then the second part of the question, when you think about what you get to do every single day, what brings you the most joy? So first part, your biggest challenge, second part, your biggest joy.

[01:06:24] Liam Jefferson: Biggest challenge, just the, the ability to retain talent in the UK. So, post COVID, we, we’ve seen a huge number of athletes head to high school at 16 rather than stay within our academy structure and leave at 18 to do a prep year before going to either a Division 1 or a Division 2 school. Until we change the perception of the academies and the structure within the UK, it will continue to be a challenge to recruit and keep some of Our talent in the country.

And this isn’t me saying we should keep everybody in the UK because we’re an island. Let’s close the walls. Let’s not let them out. Let’s not let them go. That’s that’s not what I’m that’s not what I want to achieve. But I think there’s a way for players to be able to really soak up everything that elite academies in our country have to offer and then go off to another experience in a different country and maybe do a year at a prep school before going.

And so how we change that perception Both individually at Oakland with our academy team, but also across the wider network as well, it is going to be probably one of the top challenges on my list, if I’m honest, going over the next year or two. What brings me most joy on a day to day basis is just seeing the sheer amount of growth and enjoyment that players are getting from our environment.

And it, I touched on it at the start, but. One of, well, two of my five core values as a coach, one of them is joy and the other one is growth. And if I can create an environment that I’m having fun and I’m getting better, but every player that comes into our environment is doing the same, then I’ve done my job and that gives me even more joy.

And the CLA plays a part in that. Our style of play plays a part in that. The coaches, the staff, and how we interact and how we develop this, this one club and a philosophy and feel plays a huge part in that. But there’s nothing for me that tops that feeling of teaching something, a kid getting it and you seeing that look on their face when they light up to be like, they’ve just done something that they haven’t done or that they didn’t think that they could do.

And it brings them so much joy as well. And I think that’s something that we’re really trying to achieve with our whole club at Oaklands.

[01:08:51] Mike Klinzing: Makes sense. And very well said. Before we get out, I want to give you a chance to share how people can connect with you, find out more about what you’re doing with the Oaklands Wolves website, email, social media, whatever you feel comfortable with.

And then after you do that, I’ll jump back in and wrap things up.

[01:09:07] Liam Jefferson: Yeah, I’m more than happy to have a conversation, to reach out to people. My Instagram handle is just @coachjefferson11 and my email address, best one to get me at is coach.jefferson11@gmail.com. More than happy to have any conversations with coaches, whether that be about the CLA, whether it be about what we’re trying to achieve at Oaklands.

Or whether it’s some of the work that I’m doing with transforming basketball as a clinician for Alex and transforming the DMs are open. The email address is open. I love connecting with coaches and anything that can come from it. I’d be more than happy to have those sorts of conversations.

[01:09:47] Mike Klinzing: Liam, I can’t thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule tonight, staying up late with us.

Truly appreciate it. And to everyone out there, thanks for listening and we will catch you on our next episode. Thanks.