MARC HART – FOUNDER OF SYSTEM BASKETBALL – EPISODE 925

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

Email – coachmarchart@gmail.com

Twitter – @systemhoops @CoachMarcHart

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Marc Hart is the founder of System Basketball. a community for basketball coaches to dive deeper into the latest trends in the game.

System Basketball specializes in Virtual Online Clinics, Online Courses, Playbooks, and X and O Video Breakdowns.

Marc founded the company in March 2020 and has conducted over 160 Online Coaching Clinics with Coaches all around the World, from all levels of the game from youth to professional.

Marc also has over 20 years of experience as a high school coach in California coaching both boys’ and girls’ teams during his career.

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Take some notes as you listen to this episode with Marc Hart, founder of System Basketball.

What We Discuss with Marc Hart

• His first experience coaching golf and how that led to him coaching basketball
• “I still try to understand that it’s a game to have fun. Obviously, we want to win at the higher levels we go up, but when it comes down to it, it’s a game.”
• Attending Nike Coaches Clinics early in his career
• Two challenges when becoming a first time head coach – putting together a staff and dealing with parents
• “I don’t think the kids have changed too much. I think they still want. structure. They still want discipline. They still want to be coached. It’s the parent’s expectations of what they allow their kids to do. That’s what’s changed.”
• “There is hardly any free play and getting kids out of our company, getting them to explore and just be free. Every aspect of what they do is pretty much coached and controlled.”
• How AAU basketball erodes competitiveness
• “Typically I’ll have two to three real serious players and then the rest of them are just doing it to do it or their friend’s on the team, something fun to do.”
• The influence of the highlight culture on social media
• “I want my best player going against my other best player. And that’s the only way they’re going to get better in practice.”
• “Can your best player take the kids that are not perceived to be very good, but can they take that group and win the drills for the day?”
• The importance of the first two minutes and the last two minutes of every quarter
• Having a variety of drills that work on the same skills to avoid monotony
• Building a video drill library
• “I really only want to teach one to two new things in a practice.”
• Being adaptable with your practice plans
• “Once we put the ball on the floor and attack the whole offense is still the same. It’s just who we have at the point of attack.”
• Identifying what type of close-out opposing players require (Westbrook, Klay, Durant)
• The role of high school coaches and AAU basketball in college recruiting
• The origin story of System Basketball
• “Finding topics that will resonate with high school coaches and that they need to help their programs.”
• The popularity of his Dribble Drive and 5 Out courses
• System Basketball is an on demand online library access with a Netflix type subscription with over 170 clinics

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THANKS, MARC HART

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TRANSCRIPT FOR MARC HART – FOUNDER OF SYSTEM BASKETBALL – EPISODE 925

[00:00:00] Mike Klinzing: Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here without my co-host Jason Sunkle tonight. But I am pleased to be joined by Marc Hart from System Basketball. Marc, welcome to the Hoop Heads Pod.

[00:00:11] Marc Hart: Hey, thanks for having me today. Happy to do this. Looking forward to it.

[00:00:16] Mike Klinzing: Excited to have you on, Marc.  Looking forward to diving into all the interesting things that you’ve been able to do in your coaching career. 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 of basketball and what you remember about sort of your introduction to the game.

[00:00:33] Marc Hart: Really started basketball late. I was more of a baseball player. and started playing basketball in like 7th or 8th grade at the rec level I was big growth spurt from 7th grade to 8th grade went from 5’3 to like 5’9 so I was the center because we weren’t very big in junior high and then when I went to high school I grew one more inch and became a point guard.

So really only played at the high junior high and high school level. I was more of a baseball. I would play two sports went on to play briefly in junior college baseball until I tore my rotator cuff. And that’s kind of how the journey. Kind of got into coaching. It’s kind of bizarre to be honest with you.

I played golf too in college. I actually signed up for a class thinking it was just a class, but it was the advanced golf class at a junior college and shot like a 78 and the coach goes, Hey, you’re pretty good. Do you want to play golf? So I played golf and then I went to the local high school near me while I was in college.

They needed a JV golf coach. And I was there to do JV golf and the basketball coach walked by and goes, Hey, did you play basketball? I’m all, yeah, I went to the rival school. Against you, do you want to coach basketball? And that’s kind of how the basketball coaching got started actually after coaching golf.

So and then been doing high school coaching for 28 years since then.

[00:02:08] Mike Klinzing: So before that golf experience, was there any thought As you’re going to school of coaching, teaching, being your career or kind of what career path were you on before you kind of accidentally stumbled into coaching?

[00:02:22] Marc Hart: I thought I was going to do computer work.  So probably not still, still never been a teacher. Been an entrepreneur, different jobs, different professions along the way. Until I found the, the passion of running the System Basketball operation. So done. Cybersecurity, I’ve done health and life insurance.

So pretty much been self employed pretty much got a degree in kinesiology, but never, never, even though when I was coaching, never went and did the teaching aspect of it.

[00:02:58] Mike Klinzing: Gotcha. Totally understand. So when you get those first couple experiences, coaching, what was it about coaching that kind of hooked you and said, Hey, I want to keep doing this?

Because clearly you kind of stumbled into it a little bit backwards. And so what did you like about it right away?

[00:03:17] Marc Hart: Competition, always played sports, like competing. I was usually a leader or captain on one of the teams I was on. So it kind of came naturally to lead young men for the 25 years that I did the boys.

And just my dad coached me when I was little on the baseball side of things. So my true love was always basketball. I liked basketball more because I had to work harder at it. And my dad really didn’t know anything about it. If that makes, that sounds funny. But so when I coached it, he would still call me and go, why didn’t you put this kid in?  Why didn’t you put that kid out? So he still had his. He had his opinions anyway, even if he still had his opinions anyways, but he didn’t know the game as well as he knew baseball. So it was kind of like, Hey, this is my game. Baseball was your game type of thing.

[00:04:09] Mike Klinzing: What qualities of your dad, obviously coaching a different sport, but when you think about yourself as a coach and you think about your experience as a kid playing for your dad, are there.

Any things you can point out to that might be similarities between how your dad coached and how you’ve coached over the years?

[00:04:28] Marc Hart: Well, my dad did it more at the youth level, so I still try to understand that it’s a game to have fun. Obviously we want to win at the higher levels we go up, but when it comes down to it, it’s a game.

And you want your kids to have at least a memorable experience on the court, so I try my best to not make it always just basketball, basketball. We tried to do some things like team dinners, family nights, stuff like that to make it fun and take some of the pressure off the kids. I mean, he did it.

He was a little league youth coach, so he didn’t coach at the high school level. So it was eight to 12 year olds that he would coach for baseball.

[00:05:07] Mike Klinzing: The experience coaching that level versus coaching at the high school level. In those early years of your coaching career, as you’re kind of getting your feet wet, where did you go?

How did you go about learning the game? Because obviously things like System Basketball and all the other things digital resources that we have today and just the willingness of coaches to be able to get on and create communities and talk to one another. A lot of that stuff, when you’re talking 25, 30 years ago, that stuff didn’t exist in the same way.  So how’d you go about improving yourself as a coach early on in your career?

[00:05:39] Marc Hart: I was fortunate that the man who hired me, his name’s Gary Prestesator of San Dimas High School Hall of Fame coach here in California and learned a lot from him. But I went to the Nike clinic in Vegas being a young coach, having, figuring out that I wanted to become a varsity coach.

And so back in the day you were allowed to record. So I would go set up my tripod up the top, big old long extension cord at the valleys in Vegas. And, and basically tape every speaker and try to form ideas and learn everything I could. Like I said. Didn’t have it back then, but like the speakers were Bobby Knight, Mike Krzyzewski, Hubie Brown, Mike Jarvis, Bobby Huggins and they would just speak and it was a fun weekend where he made a lot of different coaches and it’s, I don’t know if it still is or not, but it used to be the world’s largest.  Probably wasn’t hard to get coaches to come out to Vegas.

[00:06:46] Mike Klinzing: That’s a good place to go. They used to have one here. I’m based in Cleveland and they used to have one here in Independence at the Holiday Inn here in Independence. They would have a big Nike clinic here as well. And so I went to that a few times and…

[00:06:59] Marc Hart: They still have them.  I think it’s now underneath the championship productions umbrella. Ed Janka used to run them all back in the day.

[00:07:08] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. So it was a different, I mean, again, different era. When you talk to coaches who are of the age that you and I are, I think most of those coaches at some point passed through one of those Nike clinics at some point, whether it was again, here in Cleveland or the Vegas one or wherever it might’ve been.

So yeah, definitely a great learning experience to be able to do that. When you finally get an opportunity to take over What do you remember about the transition from being an assistant to being a head coach? What was the most challenging part of making that transition for you, if you can think back to that time?

[00:07:48] Marc Hart: Well, I went from being a freshman coach one year to five years of being a JV coach, head coach. So really, other than helping out on varsity, like varsity games, I was really never an assistant, if you will. So the hardest thing I think was putting a staff together, finding people to coach.

And now you’re not just worried about your one team. You’re worried about three teams. And now more of the parent dynamic starts to come into things. Sure. Hearing or getting the why are they not playing and all that, all that good stuff. Where at the lower level, I don’t think that really happens too much to the lower level coaches.

Maybe it does, but just when I was that, during those five, six years, I didn’t really experience it. So maybe it was being said to the head coach, but not to me.

[00:08:42] Mike Klinzing: When you think about, let’s talk about the parent side of it, because I know that in my conversations, and I’m sure in conversations that you have with high school coaches, one of the biggest things that drives coaches out of the coaching profession is And I think that parents today, because of the investment that they make in their kids, both financially and from a time standpoint, when it comes to the way that the youth basketball system is today, which we can get into a debate and talk a little bit about that, but whole other topic, which we can dive into in a second, but when you just think about, again, the investment that parents make in their kids, they are very, very involved in their kids sporting lives.

So what have you done? What have you learned over the course of your career to help you to turn those parents into a group of people who are supportive and positive? influences for your program as opposed to somebody that, they’re adversarial and creating problems for your program? What have you learned over the years?

And obviously it never, it’s never perfect, but what, what, what things have you picked up that maybe you could share with some other coaches?

[00:09:57] Marc Hart: That’s a tough question to be honest with you because last couple of head jobs, that’s why I walked away. But early on just try to get them be an advocate for you and realize that you’re a non perfect human and the parents also need to understand that you make mistakes and there’s a right and wrong time to approach things. So, something early on that helped me, and I’m sure a lot of coaches use it as like a 24 hour rule because me not being a teacher, but you’ve done this, you’ve seen this.

So and so doesn’t play, they don’t like a situation, they come storming out of the bleachers after a game and come right to you. Well, if their son or daughter fails a test, they don’t run right into the teacher’s classroom. So, that’s one thing that helped having parent meetings, having, maybe having times to, and I’ve done it, open practices so that they could see what’s going on in practices, see what their kid’s doing.

That still might not help. But they get to see certain aspects of what’s going on because they’re just worried about their one kid. Like you said, you’re worried about 14, 15 kids. So those are some things. But the one thing that makes me cringe and we hear it is people say kids have changed.

I don’t think the kids have changed too much. I think they still want. structure. They still want discipline. They still want to be coached. It’s the parent’s expectations of what they allow their kids to do. That’s what’s changed. I think we allow everybody to get away with way more than what me and you used to get away with.

Because we do want our kids to have better than what we had. And I get all that, but I think more, the adults have changed more than the kids have changed.

[00:12:02] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. I think when you start talking about just how we parent today, and how kids are parented. They certainly don’t have, it’s strange because on the one hand, I would say kids have less freedom than they had when you or I were kids.

Like my kids don’t just go run around the neighborhood with nobody knowing where they are the way, the way I did. But yet at the same time, there’s also such a, I’m trying to think of the right way to say it, but you just feel like the parents today are so connected to everything. that their kid does that that just puts it in a situation where kids don’t have an opportunity to kind of grow and learn on their own because an adult is always there watching.

And I think that’s one of the challenges with the youth basketball system that we have today is kids, they don’t get an opportunity for that free play. They don’t get an opportunity to just experiment and say, okay, I’m going to try this or, hey, me and my buddies are playing in this game over here and I don’t have anybody watching me and there’s not a scoreboard and I don’t have to worry about the officials or mom and dad in the stands critiquing me or somebody recording.

It’s just, I’m out there playing. And I wonder sometimes, and again, I don’t know that you can ever measure it, but I wonder sometimes what we’ve lost in the game as a result of the fact that kids Really only play with mom and dad in the stands with a coach on the sideline with referees on the court and a scoreboard.

And I don’t know if you can quantify it, but I do think it’s definitely different the way kids grow up today in the game the way you or I grew up 25, 30, 40 years ago.

[00:13:44] Marc Hart: I don’t know how you do it either, but I agree with you. There is hardly any free play and getting them out of our company, getting them to explore and then just be free.

Every aspect of what they do is pretty much coached and controlled.

[00:14:00] Mike Klinzing: And I wonder, this is the thing that I always come back to, Mark, when this topic comes up is, I feel like, for me personally, that I had a pretty good basketball career and played in high school and played college basketball. And I have a lot of great memories and experiences from doing that, but I always say that I have equally as many great experiences from driving around with my friends to different parks and finding places to play and showing up at this open gym or just riding my bike up to the local playground and playing games.

I have such good memories of all of that. Kids today just don’t have that experience. Now they have a lot more access to gyms and AAU and all that kind of stuff. And they clearly have more resources at their fingertips. Like we talked about earlier in terms of learning, right? A kid can go on YouTube and good luck trying to curate all that stuff, but there’s certainly way more out there than when you were out with kids trying to figure out the game.

But I just feel like, kids miss out on that playground basketball, that pickup basketball aspect. And like I said, I don’t know how you quantify what the difference is and how players develop today versus how they developed in the past, but I do know that the fun quotient, it, it has to be lower. I just, I just don’t know how it can be, can be the same when you look at the way that the system is today.

[00:15:21] Marc Hart: There’s lots of things. And like you said, you can go into it. It’s they’re playing so many games on the weekends that the competition part of it too, goes out the window where, Oh, I lost, but I get to play again at two o’clock, four o’clock, six o’clock. I mean, they just keep getting games. Where in the summers for us, it’d be pickup games, right?

You’d be on the court, you lose. Now you’re sitting for an hour until your group gets to get back on. It’s tough to watch. It’s tough to see it. I think things need to be changed, but I don’t know how you do it. It’s too big of a business.

[00:16:01] Mike Klinzing: That’s a hundred percent right.  I think that’s ultimately what it comes down to is I think there’s a lot of people in basketball that. understand that things need to change, but I also think that the behemoth of a system that’s been created and the amount of money that has been created in youth sports leads me to believe that it’s probably never ever going back to what it was.

So I think those of us in the basketball community, what you try to do is you try to figure out, Hey, how can I try to impact the game? How can I try to make it better within the confines of the system that we’re in? And we were talking about, and you mentioned competitiveness. Have you seen from a standpoint of the players that you coach, have you noticed a decline in competitiveness from when you started to how kids are now?

Or do you think that it’s something that you as a coach. You’re able to sort of reinstill that or put it back into what you do in your program, through your practices and kind of how you run things. How do you look at competitiveness with your players?

[00:17:11] Marc Hart: Well, I’ve coached only really at the ordinary public high school.  So a lot of the coaches may hopefully that listen to this will. Resemble or what’s the word I’m looking for? Understand where I’m coming from because typically I’ll have two to three real serious players and then the rest of them are just doing it to do it or their friends on the team, something fun to do.

And the other ones are maybe wanting to pursue it and play in college. So hard for me to judge the competitiveness. I hopefully bring it out of them because I hate to lose. I want to win. So hopefully I’ve ingrained that into them. But the competitiveness and the things where they have so many other options of what to do because of an iPhone.

I mean, we were at an eighth grade, I was on an eighth grade information meeting and my wife, they put up what’s available for the kids. And it’s sanctioned at the school. It’s a sport, e sports.

[00:18:22] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, crazy.

[00:18:24] Marc Hart: I guess what the principal was saying is because they did the same presentation to the students during the day earlier, the eighth graders traveled over there and they did the same presentations with the student and the parents there, and that one had the most response. Kids were fired up about e sports. I mean, that’s great. I mean, we didn’t have eSports so competition I would say maybe it is a little bit down because I think the fear of possibly being a highlight, being on Twitter, being on Instagram, being on TikTok kids are afraid to look silly. I mean, we didn’t have that growing up.

We didn’t have to worry about being put on YouTube or whatever. So, I mean, it’s all social. So it’s a different world we live in.

[00:19:25] Mike Klinzing: It really is. I mean, from that social media standpoint, those are things that you and I and our generation didn’t even consider. How do you get the competitive level up to where you’d like it to be so that you can get the maximum out of your time on the practice floor every day?

What are some things that you’ve done over the years to, to help build competitiveness? Are you tracking stuff? Are you team against team and keeping score? What are some things that you do to really elevate the competitiveness?

[00:20:00] Marc Hart: Everything is pretty much, whether it is a shooting drill, it’s either tying with a goal consequence if they don’t get it, or trying to beat a record, charted the team aspect of things.

Learned this when I started running the Dribble Drive Motion Offense System from Lance Wahlberg, his practice, the way he did it. Ran his practices with the drills that he would use. You split up your teams typically evenly. I mean, I know a lot of programs might end up going like starters versus subs type of situation.

And they’re doing, but I’m doing like best versus best and kind of like splitting it up. So to try to make it as fair and equitable as possible. And then I would look at it this way. I want my best player going against my other best player. And that’s the only way they’re going to get better in practice.

They’re always going against the 10th, the 8th kid, the 9th kid, the 10th kid with the other five best players, they’re probably not going to get that much better. When you’re at a typical public school and you’re not very deep, you need to make it as competitive. So for example, we would do like a full court drill to like eight points.

So if the red team wins, the red team goes to the sideline, claps it up, or no, they have to make a free throw. So we put a pressure situation. If they make the free throw, they win the drill. The losing team has to do an up and back. At the end of practice, if a team won like five to zero, there’s more like running for that team.

And then depending on how you are as a coach, you might want to run it back the next day with the same teams or you’re mixing teams up. So what I started doing is I would, I’d keep a sheet and be like, okay, this player’s winning all the drills. Now he’s my best player. Sometimes I might not give them all the good players and find out who your really good players are and what they can do and become leaders.

Can they take the kids that are not perceived to be very good, but can they take that group and win the drills for the day? So, and that comes down to when I talk in games, Where I usually break it down and say this, the first two minutes of every quarter is the most important and the last two minutes, the four in between, we just got to be good.

But if we can win the first two minutes and the last two minutes of every quarter, it sets the first two minutes, sets the tone for the whole quarter. The last two minutes set the tone for the next quarter. So we’re trying to like make it like boxing matches, if you will, like little rounds to maintain their focus.

And we know how the focus world is right now. What is it? Three seconds to get someone’s attention. Nowadays when we were already talking about the social media world and you’re scrolling to the next one, so or the next podcast or whatever. So I have a bucket of drills, so I can work, I’ll say, Hey, we’re going to do one on ones today, but I might have like a list of 12.

It’s accomplishing the same thing. But it’s not the same drill. So it’s not monotony because kids get bored.

[00:23:00] Mike Klinzing: Where do you keep your bank of drills? Do you have that in video form? Do you have it paper and pencil, old fashioned free ring binder, Google drive? What’s your system for kind of keeping things together for yourself as a head coach?

[00:23:15] Marc Hart: A little bit of all of that still, to be honest with you, but it’s pretty much more online now.

I’ve used like most people, majority of my stuff’s in Fast Model. And then since I started System Basketball started doing film, started recording practices, stuff like that, and then attaching like video clips or whatever to like the diagram and, and setting up something. So like, if we can’t always meet with our lower level coaches, right.

So, but you can set up like a Google drive or something for your team and say, Hey, this is what I want. I really want you to teach this drill today. How you have the diagram, you have a video of it because sometimes your lower level is not going the same time as you are and so forth and so on. So it’s kind of what I’m starting to do is trying to get it all into a drill library.

[00:24:11] Mike Klinzing: I think that as the technology has continued to get better and improve, it obviously gives you the ability to be able to do that and to be able to record and film and then store it and put it into places where it needs to be. And then I love that idea of being able to share. of drills with, as you said, your lower level coaches, because so often as a varsity coach, right, you’re, you’re dialed into your season, your team, and you’ve got those other teams that are playing.

And some programs sometimes practice their JV and varsity together, depending upon numbers and how that works, but a lot of programs don’t. And so to be able to share Those drills to be able to share. And so those lower level coaches can not only see the drill, but they also hear your terminology and they hear the teaching points that you’re making as you’re going through those drills.

Like to me, I think that’s one of the things when, when I really think about what it takes to build a good high school program at a public school, I think what you need is a connection between those kids all the way down to elementary school. All the way up through the varsity. And there’s a number of ways that you can do that.

But I think one of them is what you just described, which is making sure that all your coaches are on the same page. And that’s not to say that they can’t have a little bit of autonomy in what they do, but you want those. Those coaches teaching the things that they’re going to eventually need to have when they come up to the varsity level.

And I think if you can do that, you end up with a much more cohesive program from the elementary school on up to the varsity. And look, you and I both know the amount of time it takes to get together and to be able to do that and run an entire program. Man, it’s I think about just, again, from a parent standpoint and looking at the amount of time that a coach has to put in just to, just to be average anymore, you’ve got to put in so much time.

And then if you talk about wanting to excel, it’s, it’s even greater. So I just think there’s so much that goes into that. When you’re sitting down to plan a practice, what’s your process for planning a day’s practice? How do you go about where, where are you doing it? Are you sitting down? How long does it take you?

Just what’s your process for putting together a practice?

[00:26:32] Marc Hart: Are we talking early season or what are we talking during season? You know where I’m going with that question…

[00:26:40] Mike Klinzing: I know exactly where you’re going with your question.

So let’s start with, let’s say it’s the first week of practice. You’re just getting things started. You haven’t played any games, so it’s the opening week or two of practice before you’ve played.

[00:26:55] Marc Hart: Okay. So opening week or so we’re starting still putting in stuff. So typically for me. I usually have a theme early on.

Like if we’re in the installation for the season and putting in our stuff, it’s what are we going to do today? And something I learned from a speaker that I had on sometimes we try to do too damn much. We want to have that perfect practice. And we’re like, Oh, I got to do all these drills.

I got to do all this. So I really only want to teach one to two new things in a practice. And the rest would be my core set of drills. And the attack style and the aggressive style that I like to play. So we’re still going to do our basic stuff. We’re still going to do our attack drills.

We’re still going to do our, what we would refer to as daily 45s. It’s a set of things that we do to that we go through. And I would teach maybe more than likely if it’s like first day, second day, we’re teaching our transition. We’re teaching our made and miss break, and then we’re moving on from that.

And then we might do that for two days. Then we’re going to teach a trigger or whatever, if that doesn’t work, how we flow right into our offense and we’re off and running and I try to keep it as simple as I can.

[00:28:17] Mike Klinzing: Do you typically share the practice plan with the players, like do you post it in a locker room or is that something that you keep, you keep to yourself and your coaching staff?

Cause I know there’s different philosophies on that. Some coaches like to post it. So the players have an idea of what they’re going to see. And then other coaches are like, well, they’re going to find out when we get there. So how do you think about that?

[00:28:38] Marc Hart: Well, the last three years I’ve coached, I’ve had a practice plan.  But, say practice is at 3:30, you start getting those text messages at 3:20. I can’t make it today here, I can’t make it there, da da da da da. So you, practice plans sometimes get adapted real fast once you’ve done it for a while. So a lot of times I might not be able to stick to my script. Sounds silly, sounds absurd maybe to some people, but if what you were going to teach is kind of applied to three, four people and half of them aren’t there, you’re just going to get frustrated and, and whatever.

So when you ask, how do I do practices? It might be, I walk in the gym. Who do I have here today? And what do they need for, and what do I need to get out of them to help team succeed later on down the road? If that makes sense.

[00:29:37] Mike Klinzing: No, that makes total sense. I mean, I think that ability to adapt, right, is something that all good coaches do.

And I could follow up on sort of the practice adaptation with, when you think about year to year, And obviously at a public high school, you’re not recruiting kids that fit your system. It’s not like you’re at the college level where you can say, Hey, we want to play this style. So we’re going to bring this particular type of player in and they’re going to fit our style exactly because we’re able to recruit them.

You kind of have to go with the hand you’re dealt. So as you’re approaching a season and you’re thinking about the personnel that you have coming back, obviously you have. a certain way that you like to play, you have a philosophy as a head coach. How do you adapt that to your personnel or how do you think about that type of preparation to make sure that you’re taking advantage of the personnel that you have?  How do you approach that in the off-season?

[00:30:31] Marc Hart: So off season for us, see, there is no real off season in California to be honest with you. There’s no rules here other than a dead period. Which is three weeks. Other than that, you can coach year round in California. So, I mean, you get burned out real fast if you do that.

But so, sure. People playing spring ball, summer ball. So people know what they’re gonna, they already have their stuff here in, pretty much, in the summer. So, once school starts, you’re just mainly making tweaks. So, I would evaluate how I did in the summer and say, Hey, okay, here’s our base. This is what we normally run.

Okay, so and so is our best player. So, now most of our sets or most of our actions, we’re going to start teaching how we’re going to get it through that spot on the floor. As opposed to maybe the year before was, so let’s say it was a corner player. The year before it was a slot player up at the top. Our options might change, but once we put the ball on the floor and attack the whole offense is still the same. It’s just who we have at the point of attack.

[00:31:46] Mike Klinzing: Makes sense. That makes complete sense. Okay, as you get into the season and you’re now getting into practices where you’re preparing and prepping for games, how much film are you watching of the opposing team and then of that film and what you learned from it, how much do you share with your players, whether that’s directly in film or through a scouting report?

Because I know that different teams can obviously handle different amounts of, whether it’s film or scouting reports or whatever, but just what’s your process for going through and preparing your team for an opponent?

[00:32:26] Marc Hart: I would typically pre-season. We don’t really watch much of our opponents because a lot of times it might be tournament week, or we’re playing four games in five days.

So we don’t have time to watch it. So typically it’s league opponents our 10 conference games, if you will that we’ll watch the film for. And pretty much scouting for me, because we’re usually pressing type team. So it’s more like, who are their ball handlers? How do they like to break the press?

And who are their shooters? And then based upon that, then other stuff is if there are just a driver, if they’re this, we kind of play probably know the colors, like red light, green light, yellow light, or Curry, Thompson, Russell Westbrook closeout rules. Russell Westbrook would mean they’re not really a great shooter.

So you’re going to stay off of them and say, you’re not beating me. If it’s Klay Thompson, you’re basically saying you are running up that player, not allowing them to shoot threes. They have to dribble to score. And then say it’s Klay or Kevin Durant, whoever you want to call it, you are playing defense and you’re praying.

Not praying, but you’re closing out thinking they’re going to shoot it, but they also have the ability to go to, to put it on the floor. They’re a three level score. So, I mean, I’m high school, the public school. And depending on the resources that I have at the school, and it’s been, being an off campus coach is tougher.

I don’t usually have a classroom where I can go take them, so I have to figure out things where I’ve brought in TVs myself, a laptop, and put it in the gym and watch film with the kids. I’ve even done now with the aspect of when we had COVID and everybody knows Zoom, where sometimes, We’ll do a zoom session and I’ll show the video up on zoom with them.

But to answer your question about how much it’s maybe clips. I’m not going to sit through a whole game. They don’t look at the game the way we look at it. They just look at how they, you’ve probably been in one, Ooh, ah, look at you. And it’s the serious ones will watch it on their own with the aspect of huddle and synergy and vid swap, whatever different platforms there are that people use.  Your serious kids are watching it on their own too.

[00:34:58] Mike Klinzing: That is definitely true. I mean, I think you find that, and at least in my experience back when I was coaching, that the kids that want more film, they’re going to seek that out, whether they ask their coaches or again, obviously now the technology, as you said, is so much better that they can go on and be able to go through and look and find that to prepare themselves.

[00:35:18] Marc Hart: We’ll typically do a scouting report on paper, a simple one sheet scouting report. Done that, but then I’ve also seen it sitting in the opposing team’s locker room after games, or left on the bus. We want to still give them the opportunity, preparing them to play college and give them aspects of what they’re going to do.

But you’re limited to what you have. And at certain high schools, certain public high schools I’ve been in, I have more resources than others.

[00:35:52] Mike Klinzing: As a high school coach, what do you think of, you mentioned that some of your players have aspirations of playing college basketball. How do you think of your role as a high school coach in one of your players recruitment because obviously as time has gone on the AAU side of it has become bigger.

And I don’t want to say more important than high school coaching, but it’s definitely become a bigger piece of the recruiting than it used to be. So how do you view your role as a high school coach when it comes to helping your players who want to have an opportunity to play college basketball?

[00:36:29] Marc Hart: Typically we’ll meet with them and discuss it. Usually we start trying to evaluate early on kids that have aspirations. And as a high school coach, we try to go to summer tournaments at colleges. Here in California now we’re fortunate. They have, you familiar with section seven? Yes. Okay.

They have Cali live in California now, which is our version of section seven. So you’re allowed to take high school teams to events that college coaches are at, where five years ago, three years ago, we didn’t have that. So they’re starting to give a little bit more control back to the high school coaches with that because we’re all under, because what’s the AAU aspect of it is they go to one place. It’s all underneath one umbrella. I don’t blame them.

[00:37:22] Mike Klinzing: Right.

[00:37:23] Marc Hart: So I try to figure out where they’re interested in, some contacts and have people, contact coaches send out like a form letter saying, Hey, this is our practice schedule. This is our game schedule. I’d like to have you come out and watch practices if you’re available.

Over the years of doing it, feel it eventually, hopefully you’re building up some relationships with the local schools in your area. So that when they do call up and say, Hey Mark, who do you have? And you tell them they respect your opinion. So, I think high school coaches still play a huge role in it.

I think college coaches respect what we do, but the aspect, like I told you, of having one location and it is perception out there that, hey, you have a daughter, I have a daughter, and it’s even worse on the girl’s side. A lot of sports out there, people feel they only have to play high school, just play club and you can get scholarships for girls.  Yeah, for sure. Even worse on the girls side.

[00:38:31] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, exactly. I know there’s a couple here, here in our community, soccer’s big here on the girls side, and there’s a number of girls that never played, yeah, never played high school soccer. ended up getting division one soccer scholarships as a result of that.

Yeah. So it’s definitely, like you said, you can completely understand why. And at least with the college coaches that I’ve talked to, Marc, one of the things that a lot of them have said is, I think they respect both venues. They respect the people who do a good job on the AAU side, the same way they respect the guys, females on the high school coaching side of it.

I do think that because of what you said in terms of AAU, being able to see all those players in one spot underneath one roof, I think what they do is a lot of times they’ll use that to start to identify, or maybe somebody mentions, Hey, you should take a look at this kid. And then they’re able to see that kid for the first time, or maybe they start They use that to generate their list.

And then once they have their list generated, now they can go back and dive deeper. And I think that’s when they really get into talking to the high school coaches and getting a chance to go out and watch high school games and see kids. It’s really almost impossible to say, I’m going to put together a list of my own creation based off of high school basketball.

When you just think about the logistics of it, it’s during their season and trying to get to all those high school games. And that’s where I think if the two are done right, If you have a good AAU coach and a good AAU program, and you have a good high school coach and a good high school program, those two can work side by side to really help a player to get an opportunity to play at the college level.

And that’s what I’ve seen with, again, the high school coaches that do a great job and the AAU programs that do a great job. Both of those sides are working as advocates for their players to try to help them to get an opportunity to play college basketball. I’m pretty sure that’s probably what you’re seeing too.

Yes. Let’s talk a little bit about System Basketball. Start with where’d the idea come from? When did it start to kind of percolate in your mind that you wanted to put this thing together? And then after you tell us kind of where the idea came from, give our audience just a quick synopsis of what it’s all about, and then we’ll dive into some more of the details.

[00:40:50] Marc Hart: I was exploring the run and gun style of basketball, Grinnell style, Olivette style, and I was on a message board and we were talking during COVID on this message board. And when I’m saying message board, talking old school message board, you’re typing, waiting for response. And I was like, Why don’t we meet on zoom?

So it was a group of us that started meeting on zoom talking during COVID and then we were just talking about different aspects of the Grinnell style and stuff like that and then people started saying hey I’ll do a Presentation on it. And so over the course of like COVID had about 30 different people come on and discuss different aspects of running like LMU and stuff like that.

And that’s kind of how it, then I started getting people going, Hey, can you get this topic? Can you get that topic? Can you get this topic? And then I’d be like, Getting people going, Hey, can I get a replay of that and a replay of that? And I’m like, Oh, I’m spending all this time and all this energy. I was an essential worker at the time, so I’m working a job and then coming home and then doing this for like another eight hours.

Cause I was hosting them like one a day like five a week. So, and then eventually just said, I’m done with my other job. Had a bad day and said, I’m out of here. And rest this history with it. It’s kind of blown up from there.

[00:42:12] Mike Klinzing: So okay, let’s forget about the basketball side of it.  Let’s take it from the tech side. You said earlier that you had worked in IT and you’d worked at tech. So how much of kind of the tech backend of putting this thing together, how much of it. Is your work, how much of it did you have, did you have to hire out for anybody to sort of build out the back end of the website or just from a tech standpoint, how’d you put it all together?

[00:42:37] Marc Hart: I’ve been a solopreneur basically the whole time. So I found a platform that I’m using that hosts it behind a paywall. Use zoom to record it. Download it to this download it to the program and basically Zoom and that platform is pretty much what I’ve used. No real high end tech.

[00:43:01] Mike Klinzing: Got you.  So from the idea and the concept of during COVID, which we’ve talked to a number of different people that, Hey, I started this during COVID and I got this going during COVID. This is what was happening. So that’s a similar story to what other people have shared with us. So, yeah. Really kind of from idea of, Hey, I’m doing this eight hours a day for free.  Maybe I can put it together and create it and put some money together and make something out of it.

[00:43:32] Marc Hart: Yeah. So it was like January, 2021, where I walked away from my nine to five. So I had done it for about six months. And then I basically said, I’m going to bet on myself and see if this will work.

[00:43:46] Mike Klinzing: What is the hardest part of doing what you do?  What’s the hardest part? Is it creating the content? Is it the sales and marketing? Which aspect on the business side of it, is the most difficult?

[00:44:02] Marc Hart: For me, probably marketing because I’m not really a person that really wants to put myself out there. I mean, I’ve shared numerous things personally, but I’ve also had other coaches come on.

By far I’ve done the most clinics on it because after a while COVID goes away, people have lives, they’re not as willing to come on and, and share. They’re back to their normal lives, if you will. So just. Just finding relevant topics, I think, for, my audience is mainly the high school coach.  So, finding things that will resonate with them and that they need to help their programs.

[00:44:45] Mike Klinzing: What’s been the most surprising course topic? Something that you thought, I’m not sure if this is really going to be much, and then it turned out to be way more popular or way more valuable to coaches than maybe what you thought originally.

[00:45:01] Marc Hart: Probably two things. During the COVID time, I met Kurt Gelsdorf from Clackamas Junior College, and we created a online dribble drive motion offense course. And basically it was a live six week course where we had coaches come and we presented on 12 different topics over, so two a week and had them come and attend.

And we’re like, can we get like 50 people to attend this? Well, we had a hundred people sign up for it originally, and then we turned it into a evergreen like course that people can still purchase today. And we’ve helped over, I’m getting close to a thousand coaches that we’ve helped. It’s awesome. So and then a five out series I did last year where five outs blowing up, like kind of the two sided break five out, if you will, if you’re familiar with the two sided break.

And so if they couldn’t get the initial actions, various things that they can do out of that, those are the two that wasn’t sure. I knew they were popular, but I didn’t know I would have the response that I would, that I got off of those.

[00:46:11] Mike Klinzing: What do you like about when you do it, as you mentioned, when you’re doing it live and you have people there with you as you’re kind of going through and they’re able to ask you questions?

What aspect of that do you like and what aspect of that could be? Challenging at times, because I’m sure that there’s, I’m sure there’s good questions. I’m sure there’s good questions and bad questions.

[00:46:32] Marc Hart: So when I present, it’s a lot harder because I’m hosting as well. So I’m trying to moderate, seeing if there’s an idiot, if you will, being stupid in there.

So you’ve had to learn the security functions, if you will, so someone’s not unmuting themselves and saying stuff or showing stuff that they should be showing on a Zoom call. We all know about those horse stories, probably. For sure. And then making sure your internet connections work right.

I think on the tech side of things is, I used some animation software, if you will. So I think it was. When you got, when you said people want to see video and it’s great to have that, that’s the biggest thing that people want to see. They want to see people running it and whatever, but if you have a animated diagram, like a thing moving so they can see the timing of it, it’s okay, but they still want to see video as opposed to just the static two dimensional drawing.

[00:47:38] Mike Klinzing: Sure. Yeah, that’s absolutely true. One of the things that, that I’ve found on the podcast is that a lot of times we’ll have coaches on and there’s times where we’ll dive into a little bit of X and O stuff. But to your point, when you’re talking about, an audio format, or even in your case, when you’re talking about, they can see it, but ultimately they still want to see that video.

And so a lot of times I know here on the podcast, like we’ll steer away from diving into really in depth conversations about X’s and O’s because I just feel like it’s hard for that to translate without, as you said, whether you want to use fast model, whether you want to use video coaches want to be able to see that.

And I think it’s completely understandable. I know that. Just for me, and I don’t know how you are, but one of the things that I feel like as a coach was always one of my strengths is that I could be out on the basketball court and I could visualize things while I was on the court and put together a drill or get something that I want to do this and do it in this way.

And when I’m out on the court, I can do it. But if I try to sit down with a piece of paper and a pencil, at least for me, anyway, I’m not nearly as good or as creative with. Coming up with ideas and drills when I’m just sitting at my kitchen table with a piece of paper and a pencil. And so I can completely relate to what you’re saying that coaches want to be able to see that stuff because sometimes, especially in an audio format, it’s really hard to be able to visualize it.  So I think that’s what you’re getting at there.

[00:49:10] Marc Hart: And obviously they want to see the drill on the court. Right. To help them line it up, whatever. I mean, sometimes the diagrams don’t do things justice. I mean, so it’s hard sometimes to get video of things.

[00:49:23] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, when you start talking about, again, as you’re breaking it down and you’re trying to get every little aspect of it right, you’re trying to find a perfect clip.

And yeah, maybe that clip exists to go through and be able to find it and then be able to splice it in right where it needs to be spliced in and all that kind of stuff. That’s a challenge.

[00:49:43] Marc Hart: I’m fortunate that I use Synergy, so they have filters and stuff to make it easier for me when I put my presentations together.

So I mean, if I was doing a presentation of, like, just recording Alabama off TV and then having to cut all that up, that’d just be So much intensive and take me way longer than some of these do that I do.

[00:50:07] Mike Klinzing: What’s your favorite clinic that somebody else has done under System Basketball?

What’s your favorite? You have a favorite or two? I mean, I won’t make you narrow it down to one, but maybe you got a couple that you really like that you really enjoy.

[00:50:20] Marc Hart: Two guys that I met through it that really have helped shape different ways that I teach what I was teaching. Our Doc Schepler from Pinewood High School talking about shooting his style of shooting.

He calls it hop shooting. And then Doug Novak. He was at Bethel, then he went to Mississippi state women. And then he went to army. And now I think he’s at a Northern. He’s at Northern Kentucky on the women’s side. So he added some new things to my driving kick concepts that I like to use.

And he was just, I mean, brilliant. Hardly anyone knew who he was. His finishing aspects and his spacing, his cuts that were new to me that I’ve ended up using with my dribble drive stuff.

[00:51:07] Mike Klinzing: I really love, we had Doug on the podcast and he was great. He and I, We probably had on our pre podcast call, he and I probably talked for a half hour.

He was telling me about different things. And at that point he was actually in between jobs. And so he was sort of on the job hunt and looking for his next opportunity. And then eventually he got that opportunity with the women at Northern Kentucky. But you could tell in every conversation that I had with him, both pre podcast, during the podcast, and then after, there’s some guys you just tell are sharp when it comes to what they’re doing and when it comes to X’s and O’s and when it comes to running a program and understanding what it takes in order to be successful as a coach. And he was somebody that after I talked to him for five minutes, I knew like this guy, if I was trying to put together a staff and he’d be right at the top of the list just because how sharp he was and what he was able to, the way he was able to articulate what he was trying to say, the points that he was trying to make to get across to me.

I said, I think that was you know, that was really something that I enjoyed when I had that conversation with. with him. I want to ask you one final two part question. And part one is 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 is when you think about what you get to do every day, what brings you the most joy?

So your biggest challenge and then your biggest joy.

[00:52:33] Marc Hart: Biggest challenge right now is deciding on the coaching aspect, what I want to do. Presently I’m not coaching. I’m just enjoying watching my daughter play, eighth grader, and then deciding what she’s going to be doing. Biggest challenge is to just keep trying to figure out how I can serve my community, how I can help them different ways. Keep growing the business.

Keep people interested in finding new and exciting topics for people that that they’ll enjoy and hopefully help them with their coaching careers.

[00:53:08] Mike Klinzing: And your biggest joy?

[00:53:10] Marc Hart: Biggest joy is just being able to talk basketball with coaches every day. I mean, so I work in a real job. I don’t feel I’m working to be quite honest.

I mean, my wife laughs at me. She’s like, well, do you see us living in California? I’m like, Honey, my job’s mobile. I can go anywhere. All I need is an internet connection. There you go. You have the brick and mortar store. I don’t work from home and schedules flexible to be able to go pick up my daughter, take my daughter to school, take her to practice, take her to the park, take her to practices, watch her grow and develop.

I mean, biggest joy was 14 months ago, sitting on a bench while I was coaching all these years. I mean she’s 13 so she was, she was 12. I said, Daddy, I want to start playing. Finally, I never forced it on her. I mean so, biggest joy right now honestly is I’ve given so much to other kids’ Children’s now trying to do the best I can to find with what I know or others that are in the profession with me to help my daughter.

She’s five foot four. Will she get a college scholarship? I don’t know, but I’m gonna do my best to give her every opportunity to go pursue, proceed, to have a chance to do that.

[00:54:31] Mike Klinzing: That’s awesome, Marc. I mean, it’s really well said, and I think that anybody who’s a parent, especially somebody who’s a parent and a coach can relate to those sentiments that you just shared before you get out. I want to give you a chance to share how people can find out more about system basketball. How can they get in touch with you? Where can they go to get the courses that you offer. Just go through the whole sales pitch of where they can find everything.

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

[00:54:59] Marc Hart: It’s very simple. You can go to systembasketball.com. Find me on any of the social media channels. Me personally @coachmarchart. Share something free there, have a System Basketball YouTube channel. So you can like sample what I do and stuff like that, but System Basketball is an on demand online library access where have like a Netflix type subscription thing where over 170 clinics in their monthly $9.99 a month or $99 a year. I mean, think about that. 170 clinics for $9.99. I mean, that’s going to keep you occupied for a while and each month it grows. And I have not changed that price since I started it.

[00:55:50] Mike Klinzing: It’s a great resource. And if you haven’t checked out any of Marc’s stuff on System Basketball, please make sure you get out and do that. There is a ton of great resources, no matter what kind of offense you want to run, no matter what you’re looking to grow yourself as a coach, just a ton of great things out there.

Mark, I cannot thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule to jump on and join us tonight. Really appreciate it. And to everyone out there, thanks for listening and we will catch you on our next episode. Thanks.