MATT SAYMAN – GRAPEVINE FAITH (TX) HIGH SCHOOL BOYS’ BASKETBALL HEAD COACH – EPISODE 655

Website – https://grapevinefaith.rankonesport.com/Website/Sports/9ea39d14-a461-43bb-8b07-f2e70172fddc/7

Email – sayman.matt@gmail.com

Twitter – @Matt_Sayman

Matt Sayman is the head boys basketball coach at Grapevine Faith High School. Matt recently released his book titled, The Leftovers: Basketball, Betrayal, Baylor & Beyond, describing his journey to college athletics. The book is a remarkable story of personal loss, tragedy and perseverance through his senior season at Baylor University.

Matt’s teams at Grapevine Faith High School have become well known for their offensive accomplishments, including leading the nation in 3-point field goals made each of the last two years.

Matt was a three-year letterman at The Colony High School in The Colony, Texas, where he played under head coach Tommy Thomas. He was also a two-year Team MVP, elected Honorable Mention All-USA by USA Today, and a McDonald’s All-American nominee as a senior.

After his high school career, Matt signed a scholarship with Baylor University where he played all four years. While playing at Baylor, he set the record for the most games played in Baylor history – 118 games.

After college, Matt played professionally in Iceland.

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Get ready to take some notes as you listen to this episode with Matt Sayman, Boys’ Basketball Head Coach at Grapevine Faith High School in the state of Texas.

What We Discuss with Matt Sayman

• The fear of being left out as a parent or a player that so often drives youth sports decisions
• Youth sports specialization
• “Can you make that place better? Do you feel valued by them? And I think those are really good questions to answer.”
• The cooperation between AAU coaches and high school coaches
• “I think that through simplicity comes a lot of confidence in your players.”
• His Jamodi skill rating system
• “Better ball handlers are better shooters because they have control over the ball.”
• “I’m always searching for ways to keep the names of our greatest players alive in our program.”
• “Shot selection is the number one reason why people lose games.”
• Keys to playing a run – n – gun style of offense
• The importance of role identification
• “If you want to invest in shooting and you want your players to do that, then you have to have a style of play that they believe it’ll actually happen.”
• Why tracking your players’ shooting is so important
• “There has to be this almost like a marriage between the skill work that you want the guys to do, but what they’re actually going to be allowed to do when they play.”
• “If you train your role players like they’re your star players they’ll surprise you.”
• The ins and outs of podcasting
• “Don’t try to eliminate your failures, learn from them.”

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THANKS, MATT SAYMAN

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TRANSCRIPT FOR MATT SAYMAN – GRAPEVINE FAITH (TX) HIGH SCHOOL BOYS’ BASKETBALL HEAD COACH – EPISODE 655

[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 Matt Sayman the head boys basketball coach at Grapevine Faith High School, Matt, welcome to the Hoop Heads Pod.

[00:00:13] Matt Sayman: Hey Mike, thanks so much for having me on man.

[00:00:17] Mike Klinzing: Excited to have you on looking forward to being able to dive into all of the interesting things that you’ve been able to do throughout your basketball life.

From your time as a player, coach, an author, a podcast host, man, there was a ton of different directions. We’re going to go with you tonight, Matt. So let’s start though, by going back in time to when you were a kid, tell us a little bit about your earliest memories of a game of basketball.

[00:00:40] Matt Sayman: I grew up in Northeastern PA and played all a bunch of sports as a young kid.

I think I was nine years old though. When I went to a individual skill session in the Pocono mountains with a guy named Coach John. Coach John had this, you would’ve loved it, man. It was this little Oasis up in the mountains asphalt slab with six goals on it. And he just ran camps and did skills up there in that area.

And he was the first one. Playing basketball as a young kid. I was more on the floor than on my feet and more of a hustler, but no skill. And at nine years old though, I was very fortunate to meet him. He taught me more of a step by step process to acquire new skills and to improve as a player. And he would give me homework, which I thought that’s something I’ve carried on with me, even if I ever do skills or with coaching, I always want to make sure I’m giving players things that they can actually take home and do or else it’s I’m it’s not magic.

And the 30, 40 minutes they spend with me isn’t enough. And Coach John understood that. And so he would give me things to do from the workout that we had and I’d had came back and I had to have those things mastered before we could move on. And he also helped me with my goal setting too. So that nine years old is really when basketball became the main thing, even as I continue to play some other sports, which I think kids should do, especially through elementary school and junior high.

Not sure we want to go down that rabbit hole though.

[00:02:21] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, we can, we can go down. We can go down that quick. It’s a topic that we talk about a lot on here. When you think about multiple sports and you think about the way the system is set up today, that in so many ways it discourages kids, unfortunately from playing multiple sports, because you just have this drive from one, I think private business that drives because of money and people needing to get kids into their program.

So you have that piece of it. And then I think you also have the, the pressure on the other side with parents who see. Other families, other kids doing things are like, oh man, we have to do that. Or we just can’t make it. Or you have those parents that are having those conversations. Yeah. Like, well, if you want to play on the high school team, you have to be doing this and you have to be on this club team.

You have to be playing here and doing this. And I think people I’ve said over and over again on the podcast, and to me, one of the most important things that I think we need to do a better job of is just educating our parents on what the youth sports landscape should look like and what they should be trying to experience as they go through that process.

Because to me, it always feels like people are so focused on what’s next that they forget about the joy of what’s right in front of ’em. And that to me is the biggest danger.

[00:03:33] Matt Sayman: Yeah. The big danger is the, the kids forgetting why they started to play in the first place. I mean, we all started to play because it was just so much fun to throw that round ball through that hoop.

And we felt that joy when that happened and then we learned how to compete with others. And you, you nailed it though, man. It’s that fear of, I see it as a high school coach and teacher, the fear of being left out. It’s real for our kids. I, but I think it’s real for parents too. And when they hear what other people are doing, they start to have that conversation, man, is this something that we should be doing?

I feel like it takes a really strong parent nowadays to pump the breaks and say, you know what? I know that’s what you all are doing, but that’s not what we’re going to do. We’re going to allow him or her to play everything and have fun. I don’t know. I know a little bit about your playing background. It seemed like you were a pretty darn good player in high school and college, but you know, guys like us maybe were rare.

I knew at nine, what I wanted to do. And even though I was playing other sports, I was never putting basketball down. And it really, what it allowed me to do was just solidify that feeling of want to what I played baseball, I couldn’t hit, I was horrible at hitting. And, and so I’m going to let that one go, played football, got hit in the head.

What hard one time. And I thought, you know what? This isn’t for me anymore. Seventh grade, I can still remember the moment swam, swam all the way up through eighth grade. When I realized this Speedo doesn’t fit the way that I wanted to. And I hate this, but you know, my parents would never let me quit, but I got to experience that.

And like I said, solidify more, that basketball is the way for me. And it’s what I love to do. And I just think so many kids now, it’s almost like they’re not even having the chance to truly choose. The one that they love to do and want to do because the other options are almost taken away.

[00:05:39] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. If you want to get quote unquote serious with one sport, those other ones really have to fall away. Not because like you experienced those seminal moments that drove you away from those other sports. And I had a couple of those myself. I remember baseball played baseball until I was maybe 11 or 12 and the year they were going to curve balls, I’m like, I’m done.

I’m out. No curve balls going right for me. Yeah. I’m like, I do not, I do not want to hit the curve ball. And then the last sport I gave up before I, before I went exclusively, all basketball was tennis and I was a pretty decent tennis player. And I played with some pretty decent players. And I remember one day I went to my tennis lesson and the tennis instructors had built this for lack of a better way of saying it looked like a doorway.

And it had been built out of like PVC pipe. And you had to stand in this doorway in your ready position at the net. So you were going to VO and you had to step forward and make sure that your racket was going forward. You couldn’t take your racket back. Because it would hit the doorway. It would hit that PVC pipe.

Like that was like the frame of a doorway. And I remember after that lesson I went home and I told my mom and dad and I said, I don’t want to hit tennis balls out of a doorway. I’m done. Like I like tennis. I like playing. Yeah. But I don’t want. I don’t want this as a tennis career. I’m not interested in doing this in order to be a good tennis player, or as with basketball, you could’ve thrown whatever you could build doorways around me or whatever you wanted to do.

And I would’ve said, yeah, let’s do more of that. Whatever you tell me, it’s going to help me with my basketball. I would’ve done it. And I didn’t feel that way about those other sports. And I think kids today, unfortunately, they’re oftentimes not making that choice for themselves or often kind of being dictated to whether it’s by their travel coach or organization saying, Hey, if you don’t join us year round, or you’re not playing here or there, then you can’t participate in this way.

Or it’s the parent saying, look, little Johnny over here, down the street is doing that. And if you want to play on the high school team eventually, then you have to try to keep up with little Johnny and the kids end up not being at the center of that decision making process. And I think that’s where we get into a lot of trouble.

[00:07:49] Matt Sayman: Yeah. And even though I feel like I’m a product of specialization. Like I’m not anti that. I’m just for it at the right time. And I think, I think that’s what’s happening now is that, that they’re focusing so early on that by the time that it would be appropriate for them to specialize, they’re kind of done they’re over it.

Right. And, and, and then now what, and, and then another whole part of this too, What is the main thing, I mean, are, is, are sports the main thing, or is it just a vehicle to maybe get what you want in life? For me, it was a college scholarship and, but it can’t be what your foundation is in. And it ended up getting me in trouble kind of later on in life.

[00:08:42] Mike Klinzing: I think it’s easy to look at the situation with a lot of kids and think to yourself that where they are in a given moment in their sports career is not being driven by the kid, but it’s being driven by the parent. And I always say, that’s where you get in trouble when it’s driven by the kid. If the kid says at age eight or nine, I only want to play basketball and I love basketball, and this is what I want to do, or I love soccer.

I love the violin or whatever it is then if it’s kid driven, great, the problem becomes when it’s adult driven and the adults are the one making those decisions. I think that’s when we really, we really get into trouble and then we’re not doing a great service to our kids. So sounds like you and I were pretty similar in that respect.

Yeah. That you got to a certain point that, Hey, you’re playing everything and you’re in the backyard or you’re on the playground or you’re out in the driveway, whatever. And you’re trying all these different sports and eventually you settle on basketball. So once you settle on basketball, you’re working with coach John, what’s your process like let’s, let’s fast forward, sort of to high school.

What’s your process like for becoming a better player? How are you balancing out. Playing pickup games versus I’m working on my game by myself. Just what is your routine? What does your practice routine look like for trying to improve as a player?

[00:09:59] Matt Sayman: Yeah, that’s really good. And, and just one thing you said about the players driving the decision making.

I think then it’s really a fun opportunity for parents to be able to fully get behind their child who has a dream and not just saying it, but actually doing it and and showing them and having those habits. So that’s what happened for me as a young age. And thankfully, because of the parents I had and the coaches that I was able to be around at a young age I had a realistic plan.  I wanted to coach John helped me with three goals.

This was all as a nine and 10 year old. I wanted to make my freshman a team. I wanted to make varsity as a sophomore and I wanted to get division one scholarship. Whenever I talk with players, that’s the one that I wish I could go back and maybe have some guidance in. I wouldn’t just have that D one word there.

I would just college scholarship. And then, then I would be okay at any level that happening I want to there’s a DIII DII NAIA. There’s just great programs out there. And I think maybe because I had that label on that goal, I maybe had some blinders on because I realized. You know, later on getting too Baylor, that, that probably wasn’t the right level for me.

They were too big, too athletic and, and I just had to scrap and scrape, but, but by the same token,

[00:11:25] Mike Klinzing: Let me ask you this, because I think this is something that I’m guessing that want to you’re obviously playing, you’re a Baylor’s one step up from the level that, that I played at a mid-major at Kent State, but I felt like I wanted to, I was sort of a division one or bust kid and I’ve tried to do a really good job on the podcast of making sure that people understand that the path that I took, I was kind of lucky because really I was pretty naive about what I was doing and whatever, but I felt like, so the offer that I got at Kent was the only one that I had and that probably should have told me something that, Hey man, most people out there don’t most college coaches don’t think that you’re a division one player, but of course, as a kid, you have it in your mind that you are a division one player.

And I saw guys that I played against all the time that I thought I was as good or better then that were signing and going different places. And so you kind of had this stubborn streak in your head of, Hey, I’m going to do it. And I think it’s, I guess my point is is that I would have a really, really hard time telling a kid that, Hey man, if you have a dream of playing division one, you get one offer.

I would’ve a hard time telling that kid. Turn it down. If that’s what your dream has been. And yet at the same time, I also have had many conversations with coaches where I think this is the point that you were about to get to, which is you have to find the right fit. And obviously we get to what happened to you at Baylor and all, I mean, just the craziness that went on while you were there, but you just think about the, how it all, if you get the right fit, you get the right coach, you get the right teammates, you get the right school, it can all come together and it can be great, no matter what level it is, because ultimately the reality is no one really cares what level you play at except maybe you and one or two of your buddies and maybe your mom and dad beyond that.

Nobody, nobody cares. Nobody

[00:13:27] Matt Sayman: Yeah. That’s a good point. I think we all want to, I don’t care what we’re talking about or what we’re doing. We all want to feel valued. And we also want to feel like we’re bringing value that we’re enhancing this place and, and, and I think you’re right. Like I, it doesn’t matter what level of play that you’re at.

Can you make that place better? Do you feel valued by them? And I think those are really good questions to answer. Why you’re there, why you’re having those meetings with coaches when you’re seeing the types of teams and players in the system that they runwant to can you, do you like that university?

You’re not just blinded by, this is the biggest school, the most prestigious, playing in the biggest league that I can get to. So I think it’s a good point that you had.

[00:14:18] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, it’s a challenge because as a 17 or 18 year old, we don’t always have the wisdom that we have when we get older. And I know that a lot of kids, although I think it’s different today in that there’s more information certainly out there today.

Definitely more that kids can access in terms of what’s realistic for you and you can get more feedback and there’s, it’s a lot easier. Whereas I was a junior and I’ve told this story a couple times on the podcast, but Kent state asked me in my summer, in my junior year, Hey, why don’t you come down for an official visit?

We want to take you out, do all the things that you get to do on an official visit. And I told him, nahwant to I only get five of these and I, I’m pretty sure that Ohio state and duke and Carolina are going to want to have me come inwant to after my senior year. So I think I’m going to pass on that official visit.

And my mom and I drove down andwant to paid for our own Wendy’s lunch and walked around the campus with the coaches and let’s put it this way, looking back on it, they. Less than enthusiastic to have me down there as an unofficial visit there. Like, man, you are a borderline kid who, I don’t even know if we would offer you a scholarship anyway.

Now you’re

[00:15:24] Matt Sayman: I think he is

[00:15:26] Mike Klinzing: Exactly. So it’s just want to you look at it, but I, but I didn’t know. My parents didn’t know my high school coach had never had a kid that kind of was at my level. So he didn’t know. And as a result, you just kind of do goofy things. I think it’s easier to avoid that today.

Although maybe it’s, maybe it’s worse because maybe you have so many people that aren’t telling you the truth that just are poking you up to keep you around or whatever. So I don’t know. It’s, it’s interesting. It’s hard to, hard to know how to look at that.

[00:15:54] Matt Sayman: I definitely think even though there’s advantages today in all the information that you can have and how easy it is to talk to people and, and because when you and I went through, I mean, texting really wasn’t even a thing like you weren’t right.

You weren’t going to receive a text. Definitely wasn’t social media. So it just, it just I’m guessing for you, I’m not that sure of you about your age, but I’m guessing. And so I think those parts make it easier, but then there’s, it’s also harder now because I just don’t know how many people are telling the truth, are willing to tell someone exactly the level or places where they need to go or where they don’t need to go.

Because that’s just not a popular thing to do. It’s easier to sugarcoat. It’s easier not to hurt or crush feelings. And, and, but if you’re speaking in truth and love to somebody it may be a difficult conversation. So I think it, I don’t know, it might have been easier when we went through, because you would know pretty quick if, if nobody’s calling me want to that that’s just, that’s it that’s it now it’s just, there’s so many places, so many ways where, I mean, there’s literally websites that, that claim that they’ll find you a place, you know?

Yeah. And so it is just harder now.

[00:17:15] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. It’s funny. My son, he’s a sophomore this year. He was a sophomore this past year. He’ll be a junior next year and he’s always been a very average player. And in the last year and a half, he’s kind of caught the bug and he’s gotten a lot better and he’s improved. And we had never kind of gone out on the travel AAU circuit.

We had always, he had been stuck playing for his dad and we played locally and our team was okay, not great, not terrible, just okay. And it couldn’t have been a team couldn’t have been much better than, okay. Because he wouldn’t have played on it. And now he’s getting to the point where he is a little bit better.

He’s six, five, almost six, six, and doing some good things out on the basketball floor. So we played with a better AAU team this year and we go out, we’re traveling go to a couple different places and we’re based here outta Cleveland, Ohio, and turned out that the group that we got connected to with Mac basketball, really good program, really good coach, really great kids on this team.

And we’ve had quite a bit of success and my son, I wasn’t with him at this tournament cause I was coaching my sixth grade daughter and my wife was with him and they played in the tournament in Fort Wayne, Indiana. And so I talked to him, talked to him a couple times while he was there and he’s like, damn, I’m justwant to I’m just not playing very well things.

Aren’t things aren’t going the waywant to the way I’d hoped. I’m just, I’m just not playing as well as you know, I think I’m capable of, and then he came home and to your point, there was somebody had seen him in one gamewant to one of these, whatever scouting services and got him a little nice little write up or paragraphwant to talked about as kid’s got a high motor and he is a really good offensive rebounder and all these things and I’m like, Hey, I don’t know what you were judging yourself on, but this one game, somebody saw something that, yeah, you liked. And here, here was the kid who said, he thought he’s like, dad, this is the worst. You know, this is the worst I played. He was like, oh, why, why are they writing about me? I’m like,

I don’t know. But somebody saw I’m like somebody saw something they liked.  So you just have to take it with a grain of salt. And it’s just, it’s interesting. Just the way all of this kind of fits together. When you think about the process of AAU basketball and scouting and making decisions about where you’re going to go to school and if you’re going to get an opportunity and it’s man, it’s, it’s really, you have to be, you have to be very vigilant.

I think as a parent, I’m sure you, as a high school coach, you have to be very vigilant about helping your players decipher. What’s the truth. And what’s not the truth.

[00:19:36] Matt Sayman: Yeah. Cause if not, you’re just hoping to be lucky. You’re hoping that I just luck out and have the right people looking out for being in my ear and man hope is just a horrible plan.

Yeah. And, I think so many people are hoping that this person that I’m paying is telling me the truth and, and that’s where I do still see value in the high school coach. Yeah. As them being a part of the process. Not, not, we don’t have to be in control of the whole thing. I think select ball definitely has just such a huge piece to it now.

And, and there are some great coaches out there that do that. But the high school coach still has value in, you know what? Listen, I, I just love you as a player, as a person. And I want the best for you. I have no other agenda involved here. You don’t pay me to, to tell you these things. And, and so I think that there’s value where I, hopefully parents are starting to, as they’re playing out here, they’re using these other services.

They’re circling back almost like a a true north want to their high school coach for help.

[00:20:51] Mike Klinzing: How do you look at your relationship with those AAU select team coaches? If you could design that relationship, or you think about where your players go to play when they’re not with you in an ideal world, what would that look like to you?

[00:21:06] Matt Sayman: Well, to me, it’s a partnership and, and I’ve, this is, this is 40 year old, me talking not 25 year old. Me who used to unfortunately say things like I have to reteach you. After playing summer ball after playing select ball, after I have to break you of all of your bad habits now, I mean, I just, and it was more, it was so territorial of like, you’re my player, not theirs.

And they can’t claim you. And, and, and to, so getting past all of that garbage it really needs to be a partnership. I think the worst thing that would can happen is that the player ends up feeling any some type of friction or pressure from either of us in, in, so I’ve taken steps with my spring at Grapevine Faith.

My belief is that on our last game of the season, faith basketball ends for all these players and they have their new season begins and it’s select ball season, which means I’m going to become a supplement to whatever those select coaches are doing. As far as my, what do my players need right now?

They don’t need to be working on our defense. For an 11 month away season, they don’t need to do that. They don’t need to run more to get in shape for a season. That’s 11 months away at great find faith. They’re running a ton right now. So what do they need? They probably need skill work. They probably need to get a ton of purposeful shots up at the right speed with the right mentality.

They probably need to stay strong. So we’ll get in the weight room for sure. And flexible. So we’ll do yoga. And then on Mondays and Fridays, they may be either coming off of a tournament where they played eight games or they may be going to one . So I’m not going to kill them either. So we’re going to have an open environment where, what do you need?

You need to get on the gun. You want, you want to make sure your free throws are great for this. You feel right. Or maybe you missed a ton. So you want to get on the gun and shoot 500 of them. This is your time to do that. Oh, you’re worn out. You’re a little banged up and let’s foam roll. Let me get you some ice.

And so I’ve kind of taken that approach to. And also not doing anything with my high school team. And this is there. You, you may get some high school coaches that click off right here, but we don’t do summer league. We don’t do spring league. Because I used to do that, but my players would say, well, coach, we’ve got select practice.

What do we do? That’s friction that I don’t want them to feel. So I, and also spring league’s frustrating for me. I can’t coach ’em, we’re not really practicing it. It’s a bunch of guys that really haven’t played together, but yet I’m trying to hold them to some unrealistic standard of what Faith basketball is.

And, and so I let, and then I ask myself, why am I even doing this? Well, it’s because my high school coach did it. We did it. And every other coach does it. It’s just like those parents that we talked about at the beginning that are, oh, what about look what they’re doing? What do I, no, no, no. What’s best for my players.

What I feel like it is creating a program where all right, you need to go be playing select ball because if, if one to be a good high school player now, because it’s not really select anymore, like you and I played where you were selected from a group, right. To play on a team, everybody plays. And if you’re not, you’re, you’re running the risk of not getting as many trips up and down the floor, which can lead to experience, which can lead to more skill.

And so you need to be doing that. If you want to play college, I just don’t know how you do it without select ball these days. So all that being said, the more kids I have at my small private school playing spring and summer ball the better, but they won’t do it with the academic pressures at Faith and all the other things that because I still want them to be high school kids.

They won’t do it if they feel like there are expectations at grapevine faith. So I apologize for just going, ranting and raving right there, but I don’t know, it just struck a nerve.

[00:25:14] Mike Klinzing: Well, I think it’s interesting to hear you talk about that because I think that’s a dilemma that here in the state of Ohio, the rules used to be, you would get 10 days of off season coaching and those 10 days pretty much came in June and then otherwise you could open up the gym and just have the kids playing in an open gym setting where you couldn’t coach.

You could really only coach for 10 days. And the rules when the pandemic hit, it basically opened up where it went from. You could do 10 days to in June and July, you could pretty much do 24 7want to every, every, every day of the week, if you wanted to. And so I think a lot of coaches struggled with, well, what’s the right amount to do during those times.

When you have this unfettered access to your players, to your point, how much do you do? And I’ve talked to. Lots of different coaches that a lot of times they’re running something for their high school program. And yet some of their players have AAU practice or they have AAU games or there’s this kind of back and forth during the springtime.

And then here in Ohio, at least June is kind of dedicated mostly to there’s some AAU stuff going on, but it’s mostly dedicated to high school play and being with your high school team and then July it shifts back to AAU. Although the high schools are still doing things because now they’re allowed to, it’s just, it’s an interesting dilemma.

And to hear your perspective of, Hey, what I’m there now to do is supplement those select coaches and what they’re doing and trying to give the kids what they need. I think that goes back to what we talked about earlier, right? That your job as the high school coach is to do what’s best for your kids and to try, obviously you want to help your program and that’s important to you…

[00:26:56] Matt Sayman: Yeah, but to me goes hand in hand.

Yeah, it goes hand in hand because during the… what’s happening now in Texas is some of the select programs are racing to field teams and create teams. They’re starting to creep into February and January now where want to you’ll see, I follow a lot of ’em on social media.

You’ll see a post, Hey open tryouts right this Sunday. And I’m like, man, it’s, it’s late January. We’re in district play you know, so they’re, they’re creeping in on our time. And that does, that does just fire me up. And, and so I’ll let my guys know I don’t want you doing these things, but there, and there are some programs that they do it in a good way of, we’re just going to do skill work want to and, and we’re not going to go against each other, which I feel like that might be a little lip service.

Like they’re just telling me that, because one of the odds, you get all these dudes in the gym, they don’t play, but right, right. You know, I feel like that. So that feeling I get when they do that, because, and we want them to stay away from our player. This is school season. This is sacred. Don’t you do well then during their time, what do we do?

We say, listen, I know you’ve got all this stuff, but we’re going to do open gyms after school every day. And we’re going to play spring league. So you make it work with your schedule, fit everything else. Like, I don’t know. It just seems like how can we have it both ways when, when I think we can, all, most people can acknowledge.

I mean, select ball, there, there there’s a lot of good to it. And there’s a lot of, I mean, it’s where players, it’s where I got seen. Right. I played at the Colony high school for Tommy Thomas and DFW, Darren Williams played there. He was a sophomore and I was a senior. And so we had a lot of fun, but like, I didn’t get seen at the colony.

I got seen for the Fort worth lions at N T at the Gaso down here. You know, I, I threw it behind the neck pass and thankfully a Baylor coach was sitting there watching one of my teammates and started watching me a little bit. So, if that happened back in the day, it’s still the same now. And so I think we need to, and I mean, mental health is such a big thing.

Like let’s just, I’m not, I don’t, I think we need to make it hard on our players when it’s necessary and, and for the right reasons, like I need to hold my guys’ feet to the fire during my, our season. Other than that, I don’t need to put negative pressure on them. That’s unnecessary and I don’t need to use coach speak or passive aggressive talk to get them to do things that I feel like I want to that I would’ve done, or maybe they should do because I want them playing and I want them to enjoy it.

And if they have those dreams and goals, I want to be there to help them achieve it. And I’m such a believer in skill work that I think that I will send the best version of my player to those select teams if I do it right.

[00:30:04] Mike Klinzing: if you’re doing whatever it is that you’re doing as a high school coach, as a select coach, as an AAU coach, to look out for the best interest of the player, that you’re going to end up making a lot of good decisions.

If you think about it from the player perspective and how you can help the player ultimately get better and let’s face it, we all like to put a ton of importance on. Coaching and X’s and O’s and drawing things up and practice design and which kind of drills we do and how competitive we are. We use small side of games, but ultimately if you have more skilled players, that’s usually what wins and yeah, coaching makes a difference, but ultimately you can talk to lots and lots of coaches and the more talented team gives you a better chance than a team that’s less talented.

And so if you can work with your players and if that’s what you’re doing in the off season, and you’re doing that skill development, you’re working, you’re getting a better and yeah, maybe you’re not working on your offensive sets. Maybe you’re not working on your full core press together in a team setting.

But if you’re making your players individually better, then come back in the fall, your team’s going to be infinitely better, because they’re more skilled. And then you can implement all the team stuff that I was just talking about.

[00:31:22] Matt Sayman: Yep. I mean, when in February, when it’s playoff time, you’re not going to want a few more good players.

You’re going to want a few more good players. Right. But that’s, those are that time’s built. And I just, I’m always, I think respectful when I hear coaches talking about their aggressive Springs and, and, and how they were working on closeouts and, and zigzag and all that. block out drills, all this stuff in, in the spring.

And I just think, okay,  I’ll hit that real hard. Before we start playing games, But I’m going to really focus on the hard part of the game, which is what they can do with the ball in their hands and, and, and how efficient and how, how great a shooter they can become, what their preparation is like mentally.

Are they shooting unconsciously? I’m going to focus on those things in the spring, in the summer and even in the fall, because I believe, and then also too, it goes to the what type of style that you run and are you trying to have eight different continuities and eight different defenses and be good at all of them?

Are you trying to be great at just a few things? Yeah, I think through that simplicity comes a lot of confidence in your players, but then also, maybe even in how you can put together your yearly plan, because I can just start to do more of what I would consider. And, and also Mike, I’m also blessed to be at a school where basketball is probably third on the majority of these guys list.

Hopefully it’s the environment that Faith brings. It’s the academics that faith brings and then basketball is the third thing. I have a couple guys where it’s a little bit more like I want to mean for what, what it was for being you, but right, right. And not all of ’em. And so there’s also this idea of it needs to be fun.

And I just don’t know. I, I mean, I know how I felt in the spring when it was a defensive day, that just wasn’t as much fun as when it was an offensive day or we were going to play pickup. And, and so just thinking of that idea too, like, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with fun. And then, and then getting creative with your skill work and bringing in some ideas that kind of open up their minds and maybe connect some dots a little bit.

[00:33:42] Mike Klinzing: When do you feel like, as a head coach, you got a handle on your philosophy in terms of the off season, just in terms of the way that you wanted to play, how long did it take you into your head coaching career to feel like, and again, not that we all, we always are adapting and evolving yeah. And growing.

So there’s always that, but where you felt like you were comfortable in your own skin with kind of, Hey, this is the way that I’m going to do things and it was no longer kind of like, okay, I got a piece of, from this coach over here and this piece is over here and it’s kind of just all mixed up. When did it kind of coalesce to, Hey, this is Matt’s philosophy.

[00:34:22] Matt Sayman: Yeah. yeah. You’re right. Because I think especially early on we’re a combination of all of those voices that poured into us. Right. And one thing I hate sometimes I don’t have it all figured. And I know that, and there are dudes that are way better, smarter, have more wins. Like I don’t want to state championship I’ve, I’ve not that that’s the only marker for success, but you know, there’s just dudes that they, they just know so much more, but I do feel comfortable now.

And I think in, in, in where we’re at in the style of play and the plan, and it really, it Rick Torbett, I had him on and, and we were talking and he saidwant to it takes you 10 years to figure out really who you are as a coach. And, and I, it kind of, I kind of feels like that because I, I started out as a varsity assistant at name and forest it’s in Garland.

And for, for now a friend of mine and really good friend of mine, Jeff Clarkson, I was with him for a year then went right to McKinney high school with a guy named Wes Watson and we had a, a really good team my first year. And then we bottomed out, we went eight and 21 and I’ll tell you, man, we were scouting hard.

We were a good solid man to man team knew everything the other team was going to do and, and coached Watson wanted to run this Bobby Knight style motion that when I was like 26 or 27, he would throw me in practice. And I’d say, coach, this is good stuff, man. I’m I can see it all. And, but my players couldn’t see it.

So it doesn’t mean Jack. If I could see it and they can’t see it. And so we ended up being 8-21, just hitting our heads against the wall. And we were coming back with a smaller team, but they had some skill dribble drive motion was, was just coming really out with, or becoming popular with Calapari at Memphis.

And I got this packet want to advanced Walburg packet. And I just said I want to coach Watson, will you let me take this? And I, I really think we could be great at it. And he wanted to press on the other side of it. So together it was really a really cool thing for me as a young coach to see a older coach, he had already been there 15, almost 20 years allow me to, to take full control of the offense.

And man, we went from averaging like 48 points, a game to 68, hit a bunch of threes and went 25 and 10. And, but just, I, I it’s, whenever you go kind of running a gun in fast. It helps one when it works. And there was always those moments early on where we looked at each other, like, do we need to change? Do we need to get out of this?

And thankfully we just kept our foot to the pedal and kept going when you see it work and you see the joy and the fun, it’s just hard to go back to anything else. And so we, I, I just took that running and gunning style. We kept playing with it for a few years. And then when I got to Faith that was my first head coaching job.

I’ve been there nine years now that I kind of had a, a feeling, especially offensively of how I wanted us to play. But as far as the off season stuff that took, that took me a few years and it was really, I had a really good player. His name’s Tyler Lulades at TCU right now. And Tyler was just a different kind of guy than we had had at faith before six five could handle it and shoot.

Big strong, strong kid dad played in college and he was playing on a high level select team where it was dominating a lot of his time. And so I just went to Tyler and I, and I said to Tyler, what would be the best for you this spring? Like, would it be to do these things or would you feel like to do we need to create a better plan?

And, and we just kind of mapped it out a little bit together. And then I saw the other guys really enjoying it. Like, I don’t know if you feel the same way, but guys just don’t play unorganized, pick up any unorganized pickup anymore where it’s like, it’s a laboratory where they get to try things out and make mistakes.

Like if I’m on the sideline and we’re doing a controlled scrimmage, that’s not pickup pick is what you and I used to do. We go to the wreck and we’d play against some random people and a couple dudes that can hoop. Andwant to if it kind of sucked that day, I’m going to play left-handed. So I can work on that.

You know, you just try things out, they don’t get to do that anymore. And so all of this kind of put together, created this plan about three or four years ago that it’s just a ton of fun. And thenwant to we end up the spring with, we, we play some games that really have nothing to do or very little to do with basketball, some team building games.

And I do a skills rating system that I, I put together about 15 years ago that. That it, it, it’s not the, I don’t know if it’s the best way to do it. It’s kind of like, I think it was pat Riley said it’s it’s not the only way to do it, but it’s our way. And I think that’s kind of where we’ve gotten right now in faith.

[00:39:34] Mike Klinzing: All right. Explain that to me. I’m curious as to why you go about putting together that rating system.

[00:39:35] Matt Sayman: Oh, the skill rating. Oh man. I, I’m excited to share this with you. I, I did. I shared it with a coach for the first time ever. I can’t remember who I was listening to. They said that as coaches, we just need to, we need to hold on to nothing.

Meaning don’t hide anything from anybody. Like let it all out there, share everything. Yeah. And I typically do that. I mean, OB, I mean, we’ve been talking for about 45 minutes and I don’t, I, I, I, it’s easy to talk, but the skill rating is something, man. I just don’t, I haven’t shared much. So because I, I, I have to have a good vibe with you and I’ve already, I think I think you, and I would enjoy just sitting and talking hoops for hours.

So I’ll share it with you today. All right.

[00:40:25] Mike Klinzing: Don’t give away the whole, don’t give away the whole secret. You can just gimme a piece of it.

[00:40:28] Matt Sayman: I don’t mind out there. It’s out. There’s I’m in, I’m in my first year at Naman forest, I’m in the portable teaching ESL reading to to some kids. And you know, the great thing about the portable as a public school teacher is nobody El nobody comes, checks and checks on you there.

Like you never get. You never get evaluated and the portable. And so because a hundred degrees, you just close your door, you do whatever you can do whatever you want. And these kids, these kids are doing silent, sustained reading for 45 minutes a day. So I’m sitting around and the Nike spark number was out. And, and, and then I knew the NBA combine that they did a number and I was like to the Nike spark number, that’s really intriguing.

You go to a combine, you get this number, you get to compare yourself to you know, kids from all over the place. And I said, and even the NBA combine is cool, but it’s not basketball. It’s just athleticism. And I mean, I, as a player, I knew, thankfully that’s just not our game. It’s not completely our game or else.

I would’ve never made a team. And so. It’s, it’s more than that. And, and I started to write down some drills. What are some things that I would like to incorporate? So the, the test became three categories, one ball handling, one shooting, and one athleticism within those categories. There were four drills that they had to do so 12 total, and I wanted to do it to make it to where, if I was a coach, I could take 30 to 35 guys through it in about a 40 to 45 minute range.

And we could stay in the gym. You wouldn’t have to go outside. You wouldn’t have to have anything to like, like even in NBA combine, they bench, well, that means you have to go somewhere or they do a vertical test. You have to go somewhere or you have to have fancy timing equipment. Like, I didn’t want anything like that.

And so with all the ball handling and shooting and stuff that I had already been doing and then just with four athletic pieces to it I had a math teacher at the school put together an Excel sheet where you, you basically, you create a standard for every test and the player’s number you put against that standard.

And it spits out a percentage point. And then you take those four percentage points and you get your shooting score. You take your three scores, athleticism shooting in, and your your ball handling score. And it gives you the Gemo skill rating. And you, you look at that number against all the other guys in your team.

And I’ve told players over the years and parents, this isn’t how I base our teams, but it doesn’t hurt. It gives me a really realistic look because it’s like a game day, you might be a great shooter, but you don’t shoot well under pressure or maybe you had a great day and you just performed your tail off.

And or what also it helps is those three categories. To me, it’s like ball handling. And I just told our campers this today it’s ball handling helps with not just your dribbling. It helps with your passing. It helps you through rebounding ability. I actually think better ball handlers are better shooters because they have control over the ball.

They can literally tell it what to do and it’ll do it. And then the shooting piece is the hardest part of the test. So maybe their ball handling strong and their athletic kid, if their shooting is low, that gives me a really a unique, when we have our end of year conversations, our 25 50 100% goal talks, it gives me a realist, a, a good view of where they’re at as a player and, and what direction they need to go this summer and how I can help them hold them accountable.

And also too, if a parent was to come in and wanted to talk about their son, I mean, I’ve got data and here’s the fun thing is if they come as a freshman, we do it four times a year. By the time they graduate, they’ve done it 12 to 16 times. So to me, as a coach, it can validate, like I can mathematically show you that they’ve improved over the years.

I can show myself that what I’m doing is working or golly, we just went a whole season and he didn’t improve at all in any test, any category, I’ve have to adjust some things, or I bring that player in and we can have the talk thatwant to what is it? My, is it what we’re doing? Or were you really bringing it were, did you really take advantage of your time?

And I think those conversations, like a player knows I coach, I was, I didn’t miss a day. I gave great effort. It’s probably going to show the way that you want. And so that, that test to me and over the years, I’ve fine tuned it. And I’ve changed some things. And I think it’s at a place right now where I really love where it’s at.

And, and I tell the guys this too, and I’m sorry. I mean, you can cut me off at any moment if I’m rambling, you’re keep going. No, you’re not. You’re good. You’re good. I tell the guys too, it’s like, this test is meaningless if you don’t care, If you don’t care about your number, if you don’t care about beating your previous score or beating your teammates.

So like there, because there’s a part of the test for it is objective, but then there’s a part of it too. Like what about the intangibles? If a kid who is in the eighties, in the score, which that’s a, that’s a good level to be at the eighties are typically your elite high school players that could play in college, nineties and above they’re definitely college players, but you know, once they get to that level, they’ll know early on by their scores, if they can hit that number or not.

Cause it’s just like, if you’re trying to go for a hundred, you can’t miss many questions on the test or if you’re not sure about a couple, you, you might have already messed up. And so in that point, I get to see how competitive are you. Can you continue to work hard in the face of defeat? Sure. Defeat, which those that’s you’re down 12 with 30 seconds left it’s you’re probably not going to win, but can you continue to fight and work hard?

I see that part in the test as well. And so at the end of the day, and then there’s another part of it that I love is we get to, I I’m always searching for ways to keep the, the names of our greatest players alive in our program. And so we have a record board out in our hallway. And most of them are just statistical categories.

Most three’s made, to most charges in a career, all of those things, but one category up there is Jamodi skill rating, and it’s all of our best scores of all time. And so the guys know now like to get on that board, you have to have an 86 or above, which means you’re, you’re really having to have a good score to make that happen.

So it’s been, it’s been a really fun thing over the years to, and it’s, I mean, it’s the only thing I feel like I’ve ever actually done myself that I haven’t borrowed from somebody else besides Nike spark and NBA combine. It’s cool.

[00:47:42] Mike Klinzing: Because it’s something that is unique to your program. It’s something that regardless of you could probably argue the, exactly where it is and what the levels are, but the reality is after you’ve done it enough that now you have comparative data.

So maybe the one off data you could argue and say, oh, I’m not sure how relevant that is or not relevant. It is, but you’ve done it now enough thatwant to like you look at, you say, Hey guys in the eighties is going to have a shot maybe at playing college basketball guys in the nineties. Pretty sure that the track record, the history shows that those kids have a really good chance of being college basketball players.

And it gives the kids, your program, something to shoot for something to aim for. And as you said, When you talk about competing and you talk about getting better, there’s ways that you as a coach, want your guys to compete against each other. But I think more importantly, you want guys competing against themselves when it comes to their skill development and their shooting.

And I think there’s, there’s no way you and I both know that you can improve something that you don’t measure, and if you’re not measuring it, then how do you know if you’re getting better? And it’s so important, I think to, well, I was going to say, write things down, although that may be a little antiquated, but don’t measure.

[00:49:02] Matt Sayman: Yeah. You can measure in a bunch of ways. Like I, I talk shooting with, with, get to talk, shooting with a lot of people and, and I talk about tracking. Like if you’re not actively tracking to me, tracking with shooting really helps with role identification. If you want to play a style where it opens up and you have, you have a lot of three point attempts throughout the game and from multiple people, it can’t just be a free for all where they don’t understand the pecking order.

Or they don’t understand that I’m kind of open, but man, that green light is really open and that should be a one more hero pass to that player. They need to know that they, they can’t wait for the moment that I tell them that it’s passed and, and, or they’ve already made a mistake. And so when you, when we’re talking about tracking, like the Jamon skill running helps because I had this Excel sheet, but for some games we write things down on a board in our gym, like literally write it down.

So I think you’re right on the money with that. But then also tracking can be all right, guys, we just finished rail and shooting. Raise your hand if you had one completed ladder or more. All right, keep your hand up. If you had two or more. And so hands start to drop. That’s tracking. That’s measuring because they get to look around and they get to constantly see every day whose hand is always up, whose scores are super high.

And then as a, if we want to have a culture of celebration in our team, when we hear a personal best, we snap I was a director for PGC for five years. So snapping has become just a part of what I do. I, I can’t stop it. And sometimes it annoys my wife and it’s okay. But like we snap. Well, as soon as we hear a, a score that man, I know you, that’s a high score for you.

That’s awesome. Let’s go. But that’s tracking. And so I think you’re right on the money. If we’re not actively doing that, then, then how in the world. Can’t beside, we’ve have to get past just the I’m a coach. I can see your improvement. We’ve have to get past that. We’ve have to be able to show them, show them through sometimes film, like, look what you just did.

Like that’s incredible. You couldn’t do that. But even that we have to show them through data and letting them see through shooting games, through skill work, or any other metrics that you use.

[00:51:23] Mike Klinzing: Well, and nowadays you think back to, I look at the eye test and I think this is what I see. And it’s so easy now to watch film.

And it’s so easy to gather that empirical data than it used to be and what we sometimes perceive as coaches. And you could think about this, I’m sure you watch a game and you think that one thing happened or you remember it this way. And then you go back and you watch in the film and it happened a completely different way.

And then I think of it when you start talking about individual players, there’s players that have played for me at various times that you look at them and you think, man, this kid’s a really good shooter because they have beautiful form and everything looks good. But then when it actually comes time for a game, the ball just, it just doesn’t go in.

But yet you still have this perception of this player as being a really good shooter. Maybe their first impression they made on you was that they are a good shooter and maybe their form looks really good. And I think in the past, a lot of times we would just stick with that idea of it’s the eye test.

Yeah. And now, because we have access to so much data and because we track and do a lot of the things that coaches at all levels are able to do, I just think it makes it so much easier to be able to have that conversation. As you said, I love the idea of a pecking order, right? When you’re shooting, like yeah, we’re a team that gets up and down and we shoot a lot of threes, but look, man, guy X over here shoots 52% and you should shoot 31%.

So my 52% shooter over here needs to get more shots than you as the 31% shooter. And that’s something that it’s, it’s a lot easier to point to hard numbers, whether that’s shooting from PR, just shooting records from practice and from the spring and from the summer, or that’s actual the game statistics, you can look at all that stuff.

And if you have the data that you can show to a player, Hey, this is why, or this is how it’s going to go. Or Hey, if you want to. Even more of a green light, you’ve have to get up to X percentage in practice before you’re going to get that same level of green light that the guy next to you has. So there’s so much that you can do with that.

I think at, at all levels, I think the challenge, and this is something that I’m curious about with you. I think one of the challenges that high school coaches sometimes faces, they’d like to be able to track and have all that data, but a lot of times in practice, if you’re trying to coach and you got your staff and they’re trying to coach, and a lot of people don’t have managers or people justwant to you think about it division one program, and sure you got seven managers or eight guys, and then you have, the practice is filmed and you got 5, 6, 7, 8 coaches who can go break it down and chart percentages and all that.

But as a high school, you may not have that. So how do you go about tracking the things that you do track from a logistical standpoint? How do you actually get those numbers down in the spreadsheet or on a piece of paper? What’s the process for that, man?

[00:54:25] Matt Sayman: I love that. That, that’s such a great question. I’m smiling the whole time as you’re talking about that and asking it because I thought about there, I don’t take really anything from game stats, meaning I don’t judge on who should be shooting or not shooting based on that because who’s shooting in games better be the people that we’ve already discussed or.

Now in my program varsity, especially anyone who’s open and we discuss, so we have a shooting scale that in my opinion is one of the best things that we use to help with role identification and, and any coach listening. If that, that needs to be day one day, one of the fall, when you bring your guys into the school and you can work with ’em, it’s not defense, it’s not rebounding.

It’s a shot selection, scale shot selection is the number one reason why people lose games. It’s, it’s more important than any other, because if you’ve lost by eight points, that’s one bag shot or, or less that’s one bag shot a quarter that you, and, and I mean, and that’s really in your control, you can block out great, but sometimes a bigger dude is just going to snatch it, you know?

And, and sometimes a kid just dribbles off his foot. So turnovers matter efforts matter all, all those, those things matter, but shot selections. That’s number one. And also too, just for the way that things flow and how guys train. There has to be a common language that we’re talking about. So if, if what, going back to the film, if we don’t, haven’t already discussed those things and guys are shooting shots in games that they shouldn’t.

I’ve already screwed up. It has nothing to do with what happened in that game. And so how do we create that? Or how do we as a, because youwant to I think hopefully some coaches will appreciate this. It is hard at times to listen to guys that have five assistants, because there’s some big high schools in Texas and I’m not at one of them, I’m at a small school.

All my other guys are part-time. And so I’m the only full-time guy at the school for basket boys basketball. And at during second period, when our, we have an athletic period it’s me and 35 guys by myself. But, but it, but it works. So what we do is because shooting is what we do and we want to let our guys know where they are.

We want to have that good role identification. We just shoot, we do shooting games on top of some, what I call braces for their shot or unbroken habits. Some things to braces. I like that analogy because one it’s it’s high school, junior high kids that are going through that time. And you know, braces are slowly tightened.

Your teeth are slowly straight and it’s not overnight. And so we’re going to do things that just day by day by day, get your shot to where you want it to be. But then also I’m, I’m not a big fan of messing with form. I think it’s 90% in between your ears, 10%. Unless you’re Lonzo ball, then that’s, that’s bigger but or old Lonzo ball when he is like, but the rest, I mean.

I don’t care about those little things. I care more about your speed, your preparation, and then what you’re thinking about. So with all of that, it’s about shooting games and, and bringing them in, tell them a game. They go out Jim wide with their partner, bring them in, tell them we, we, and when I say record it’s, if we do be shooting it’s five spots, them and a partner to ball, make two at each spot to, to make two at a spot to conquer that spot.

You get two points. If you conquer all five spots, you have 10 and you shoot bonus shots for all worth one. I mean, just an example. That’s, that’s a game we like to play, but all I have to do is come in and say, raise your hand. If you had 10 or more, and most, most the hands will shoot up. And, and there’s times where if we have we’ll have our records written down on the board for just those games, we don’t, I don’t track individually everything they do, but it’s, it’s them acknowledging it.

They have to own their scores and their teammates hearing that and seeing that. And then there’s some games where we do write every score down and they are held to a higher standard. And I do pull a lot like a green, yellow, red. I do pull a lot from that, but that’s every day for 187 days give or take that we’re because I, in, in our athletic period, it’s all skill development.

So by the time it’s school or after school team practice, well shot selection and role identification is taken care of. And so now it’s more of just helping them through that shot selection scale, asking them, will you rate that shot? What do you think that was? Well, it was a six. Well, yeah, I agree with you.

Let’s be a little bit more patient for a seven it’s those kind of conversations. Instead of we just finished a game, man, that guy shot like crap. Let’s bring him in and show him all of the misses that he had. And if, if that’s happening, if a guy that shouldn’t be shooting a ton is that’s on me. Or if a guy that should be shooting a ton, if he misses, the only thing I tell him is you’re about to get hot.

Don’t worry about it.

[01:00:03] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. That’s a good point. And I think that it speaks well to the fact that you have to be prepared in practice to do what it is that you’re going to do in games and the things that happen in games. Shouldn’t be a surprise to you as a coach, and shouldn’t be a surprise to your players.

It’s not like all of a sudden, a guy who isn’t a good shooter suddenly is jacking up 10 or

[01:00:27] Matt Sayman: 12 or whatever. Yeah. You shouldn’t be some outside the. Right.

[01:00:33] Mike Klinzing: Exactly. Shouldn’t be surprised because you’ve done the prep work and you’ve helped the kids to understand what the role is and how they go about fulfilling that role.

And I’m sure those are conversations that you’re having with them. Yeah. Constantly on a daily basis. Is that something, do you do that formally or is it more informally or is it more at a group setting? How do you, how do you help players to define their roles on your team? What does that look like for you?

[01:00:55] Matt Sayman: Oh, I really do think like green, yellow, red is a game. We do it’s three guys, two basketballs nine spots, shoot 10 shots at a spot and you’ve have to get those 90 shots in those four minutes. We do that at least 10 times before our season so that we can get a really good average and we celebrate 45 and above as a green light.

And you start to get those 40 fives or above when some guys are in the sixties or above. I mean, again, it’s role identification every single day and or, and it’s the building of confidence and some of the guys, when they’re starting to see those numbers grow and, and you know, when guys start to trust them a little bit more you know, but, but it is, it’s going to be one more one-on-one conversations.

I can’t remember the time I’ve ever told a guy that’s a BA we don’t use that language. Like that’s a bad shot or don’t shoot that shot. Again, they should be shooting the shots that they know that come out of our offense or out of our flow. But those are conversations where it’s more of the selection.

And that scale of is that, is that the best that we could have had that possession and I, and I help them come to it and, and really find out what they see. Because one of my buddies says, players have to do what they see. And so if they see that they were open for a seven, which is an uncontested jump shot within their range, that within their range part comes from, I don’t want them to choose what that is.

They need to know what that is. That comes from our training and our shooting games that we do. But those conversations are quick and easy and the shooting scale also takes it takes the emotion out of it because if you want players playing free and, and, and with courage shooting 30 to 40 threes, a game you can’t worry about shooting percentage and you can’t worry about you don’t want them worrying about makes and misses.  What does a miss mean?

It means the next one’s probably going in and, and those types of conversations and phrases, man, when that, when that’s just swirling around the gym, you asked a little bit,  how do we train it’s we have six baskets. We only have one gym at the high school. We have one in our junior high, six baskets, me and them with partners.

And we just get as many of those games in as we can in a 37 to 42 minute time. But it you’d be surprised if you train like a wild animal not a zoo animal, how much you can really get done in that time.

[01:03:33] Mike Klinzing: I love that analogy. And I’ve heard that one before. And when you think about how the game of basketball’s played, right, it’s a dynamic game.

It’s not a game where you, as a coach can say, okay, we’re going to go out there. And player X is going to go to the right four steps and player Y and this wide, receiver’s going to run this play. You can’t join this pattern. Yeah. Right. You can’t joy, Stickum at all. And unfortunately, in a lot of cases, and I think we’re doing a better job in the coaching profession of getting away from some of that block practice and putting our kids in more dynamic situations.

And you hear a lot about small sided games now, and the number of coaches that are teaching teaching out of that and the games based approach. And just the way that we’ve evolved as coaches to put kids in better positions, to be able to make our practices more like the games. And that’s what I hear you saying is that, look, my guys, by the time we get to a game they’ve already been in these situations, they understand what it is that’s expected of them.

And that’s not to say that you can be prepared for every eventuality. But what you’re trying to do in practice is give them as many reps and let them see as many situations and things that they’re actually going to see when they get out of the floor on Friday night. And they’re playing in front of a crowd.

You want them to be familiar with those decisions and not have something come up like, oh, now suddenly I don’t, I don’t know what a good shot is. Cause I’ve never been put in this situation. No. Yeah. We’ve been in this situation over and over and over again, and that’s what helps us to train and to be able to have a better understanding of how we actually attack the game when it comes to live action, because basketball, like I said, is such a dynamic sport that, that you have to, you have to learn the game by playing the game.

And there’s obviously a fundamental base that you need to have, but you, you also have to just be able to read and understand situations and have a feel for the game. And that’s something that you can’t teach that through a static drill. You have to teach that through, through the game and through, through patterns and, and drills and things that look like the game, as opposed to, Hey man, go up against this cone and just work on this skill in isolation.

[01:05:42] Matt Sayman: But then yeah. And to your point too, that’s why skill work sometimes in, in season. And I felt that as a player and maybe early on as an assistant coach, and if I’m not careful, I’ll fall into it as well of allowing individual skill work to fade away because it’s team time team concept, we have to.

Prepare for this next opponent. And, and thankfully, and maybe just because I’m not smart enough, we play such a simple style that on both sides of the floor we just don’t really. And not that not arrogance, we don’t have to prepare for them. That’s not it at all. We, we get beat plenty, but it’s, we just, we’re going to do only a few things and that skill work.

It needs to be, or for us, it it’s the most important part of our practice. Like our, thankfully our offense creates mainly paint finishes or kick catch threes or catch threes. So because of that, it can really give me tunnel vision on what type of skill work we need. Like my guys just need to shoot a ton of catch threes and they need to shoot ’em fast and they need to shoot ’em from distance, because, and then because of that, like we get to have those good conversations with guys, like guys, why do most players miss in games?

I don’t think that’s discussed a lot. You know, we, we, we talk about low shooting percentages or we acknowledge that guys missing games, but we don’t really talk about why. And, and the, in my opinion, the reason is, is because they train too slow and they train without pressure. Those two things. So I could tell them guys, listenwant to When you are practicing on your own, you need to train fast and you need to train with pressure.

Like, okay, that’s just not going to happen. I mean, I didn’t even do that. Like training by myself. I got to a level, but not to gain that, that type of pressure. And so we have to create that environment in practice, in skill development times of our games because of a time component in arose something that you’re trying to beat.

There’s a consequence for losing because of all that, I feel the shots that they’re taking in practice are actually, like you said, a second ago, it’s actually what they’re doing in games, because of that, that’s where our confidence comes from. That’s where confidence comes from is that is actually preparing you can’t look in the mirror and lie yourself and say that I’m prepared for these shots and games.

When I don’t really know what they feel like, or I’ve never done them. But I, I, I think early on, I was one of those coaches that said, man, if we only had better shooters, if we only had better shooters, we could do this and that. Well, at some point I, I think it’s, I think it like hope isn’t a plan. I, I think it’s, it’s tough.

It’s tough to keep saying that. And unless they move in, which they’ve never move really moved in, we have to start creating some shooters, which means. I’m not going to say, Hey, great practice guys. Go home. Do your schoolwork. Oh yeah. And before you go to bed, shoot a hundred threes. That’s not going to happen. I’m going to sacrifice defense time, rebounding time or whatever time for shooting.

And because ultimately that’s what our, we want our guys to do really well. We want to give ourselves always a puncher’s chance because we shoot the ball so much. And, and also too, at, at, at the school that I’m at with the kids, I have, what’s the most fun thing to do, fellas, oh, coach it’s shooting. You know what?

Let’s start practice that way. Like let’s start practice shooting a hundred threes instead of, well, what about defensive slides first? You know what, that’s important. No doubt, but let’s shoot a hundred threes before we get there. It’s just that, that type of thinking has helped us to do some of the things with shooting that we’ve done.

[01:09:59] Mike Klinzing: It’s a great point. And it’s one that I can remember at times when I was a varsity assistant coach and be going through drills and be doing a shooting drill, and you’d see a kid kind of moping their way through that drill. And you might pull ’em aside and say to the kid, Hey man, if you’re not going to work hard at a shooting drill.

What are you going to do when we get to, when we get to a defensive trail like this, I mean, this is the reason why anybody picks up a basketball, right? We don’t pick up a basketball so that we can work on our passing or so we can get in our defensive stance, you pick up a basketball so you can shoot it and put it through the basket and hear that sound.

And so I, I feel like that if anything, as a coach, when you think about how important the skill level is in terms of shooting, and I look at it, I’ve had a bunch of conversations with my co Jason and I, we talk, do our weekly NBA show. And we’ve been talking a lot here during the playoffs about just how a lot of these games have come down to whether or not role players make threes or not.

And so much of these, so many of these games have just come down to, it’s not likewant to the stars are going to come through and play well. And yeah, there might be a little variance, but it’s like, if you’re, if your secondary players are going to shoot 45% from three, yeah. You’re either going to, you’re either going to win that game, or if you’re not winning it it’s because the other team’s role players did the exact same thing. And if you’re going to shoot 25% from three, you’re probably going to lose that game. And it just shooting in today’s game is at such a premium. And I think that ultimately you can watch, you can watch youth basketball games and you can see teams that do beautiful things.

And then the ball just doesn’t go in. And when the ball doesn’t go in, you don’t get two points. And so shooting, shooting, shooting is a great equalizer. It really is. It really is

[01:12:00] Matt Sayman: Like, what’s the ultimate goal. We have to score one more point than them fellas, like one more point. Yeah. And I mean, some guys would love to see those scores be in the forties or thirties.

I typically like for them to be in the seventies, eighties or nineties, it’s just more enjoyable. Right. I know if I have to sit there on the bench, because I can’t play anymore. If I have to sit there on the bench and I’m not allowed to shoot it myself, I want to at least watch something that is enjoyable.

I told my assistant coach a couple years ago, like we, we put in this zone that has really helped our program and it’s aggressive zone. So the people that are anti zone, like I used to be, I get it. But it’s, it’s a really nice three, two zone that’s given our guys. It’s made our guys appear more athletic, which I think that’s something where if you take a lot of decision making away or, or, or, or the amount of decisions that they would have to make defensively like in a man to man, he’s have to guard so much and it can really slow guys down.

And so in the zone, it makes us, it makes us more athletic. But we were just guarding so well, the possession was like 45. We don’t have a shot clock. It was like 45 seconds long. And I looked at him, I said, golly, this we’re just playing too good. A defense right now. Like we’re, we’re stopping them from doing things and we can’t get the ball back.

And, and so there’s, to me, there’s a way that the game should be played. But to your point, I was just a tangent. But when, to your point of the shooting, you’re, you’re right on the money with you’re. Everybody has at least one or two dudes that perform relatively well, you know each night.

But when, so when I look, I don’t look at shooting percentage, I couldn’t tell you what our three point percentage was. I know that we led the nation in attempts, which I’m very thankful for that, but I don’t know about the percentage. I look and I see, okay, my main guys, they both, they made three or four threes, but man, we’re at we’re at 16, makes like where all this comes from it’s he had one, he had two, he had one, he had a crazy three out of nowhere, but, and those adding up, and then when, like, to me, if you want to invest in shooting and you want your players to do that, then you have to have a style of play that they believe it’ll actually happen.

I mean, I ran flex in college and. That was brutal at times when you’re running flex against Kansas and they’re pressuring you up at half court, because you’re trying to make this stupid reversal pass 30 feet from, from the goal and Heinrich is in your job. You’re like, this is what the only thing I can do right now is this pass.

It, it just, and the great part

[01:14:52] Mike Klinzing: is right. Matt is, is no players from Kansas had ever seen the flex before. So they had no idea what was coming. Right. They had

[01:14:58] Matt Sayman: no clue. Right. So yeah,

[01:15:00] Mike Klinzing: I used to say it about our…at Kent, we would, our coach, Jim McDonald, he had previously been an assistant at Toledo and they had run.

So he was, by the time I got to Kent, he was in, I don’t know, it was maybe his eighth, ninth year at Ken. And then he had been an assistant at Toledo for another 5, 6, 7, 8 years, something like that. And so basically this offense that we ran had been being run in our league for 15 years. And so we call out our play and you’d make the cut and the guys on the other team be like, Hey, all right, I’ll, I’ll reach down here.

I know exactly where you’re going to go. And to your point, like, you’re trying to make those passes. You’re just like, oh my gosh, like, can we get a little bit of creativity here on what we’re doing? And just man it’s yeah. Today’s game is the way it’s opened up is just it’s it’s incredible. Compared to the system.

That I played in. It sounds like the same system that you played in.

[01:15:54] Matt Sayman: It’s just crazy. Yeah. Let’s just say that you, you run, you have 18 quick hitters. That’s what you run is 18 quick hitters. Those are most likely for the same guy or, or two. Why in the world would three through eight or 10 stay after practice and working on their shot.

You could say, well, to become one of those guys, that’s hard. That’s hard to, yeah. It’s hard to overcome the guy that’s already in that spot who is getting more of the reps. More of the experience more of the time has more confidence instilled from their coach. I it’s hard for players three through 10 to do that.

If you have a guy that he’s just a screener, all I do is I sit there and the ball never, it never come. Why would that guy work on shooting? So again, I think it does go to, there has to be this almost like a marriage between the skill work that you want the guys to do, but what they’re actually going to be allowed to do when they play.

And so because of a, a free flowing offense, where if you are open you truly allowed to shoot that three, but the beauty of the pecking order and them understanding each other and where they’re at in that lineup, It just saved the ball and we celebrate ball moon. We celebrate one more.

They still get acknowledged for making those hero passes. It’s like, I could shoot it. Great. But even if I won more, it it’s just, it’s just as good. Like that’s a special place to be. And it is hard. I mean, next year’s team at Faith. We have a lot of returners. Like we’ve got two or three guys that have the ability to make over a hundred threes next year, each man, will they be unselfish enough?

Like, will that me monster? Will they be able to push that down? That’s why humility is such a huge piece to, I feel should be part of any culture is like, just remember guys, it’s not about you, but even though our, our system sometimes seems like it’s all about you because it’s about your skill work, your shot, man.

It’s all for you to take what you can do. And just like any good family or any, any a member of society take what you do really well. And let’s fit it into this thing now, but it just happens to be more fun when they all really think they can. They’re allowed to shoot it.

[01:18:20] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, it’s a great point. I think it’s really difficult sometimes to be a kid who is quote unquote, a role player where, Hey, I’m doing this and this is all I get to do.

And the coach yells at me as soon as I dribble, or if I even think about taking a shot, that’s anything other than a layup and even a layup, I might get a sideways glance from the coach like that. Can’t be any fun for a kid to be in that environment. And to your point about just the game and the way that we play it today, everybody, regardless of your size players are more skilled now than they’ve ever been.

And as a result of that, you just get kids that are playing all over the floor. It’s a fun system. It enables you to continue to motivate guys all up and down your roster. So guy 11, guy, 12 who maybe 20 years ago, 25 years ago, all that kid’s getting to do is maybe subs in on the scout team and sets some screens and goes in and tries to rebound and the star player.

Now that kid’s getting opportunities to get shots up and be able to do some of the fun things that are part of the game because of the system that you’re playing. And it’s the fact that it’s free flowing just allows everybody to get involved. And to me, that makes a lot of sense because the game, as you said, it’s supposed to be fun.

And yet what you’re doing is going to help you win games as well. If you execute it correctly, but ultimately. It’s a lot more fun to play the style of basketball that you’re describing than it is to play Norman Dale,

[01:19:49] Matt Sayman: Hoosier basketball. I love that movie. Can’t stand that quote, five passes until you score.

Heck no, if it’s a seven off a or a wide open jump shot within the range off of no passes, that’s just as good as a seven after five passes. So, and, and then I there’s some other phrases we could get into too, that I don’t appreciate. Like all we’ve just shot three threes in a row, do something different.

No, if they’re the, if they’re the right shot, that possession, we have to disconnect possession from possession, from possession. We ask our players to do that. Like don’t Hey, you just made a mistake. Let that go defend. Now  lock in here. Don’t think about the past, but then as coaches offensively or whatever, we will, we just shot three, three.

We just shot five threes in a row and they haven’t gone in. We need to do something different. Why, if, if they’re the right now, if you’re taking bad shots, of course coach have those discussions. Like guys, we’re taking sixes right now. Those contested jump shots are going to get us beat. We need to make the ball work.

We need to hunt the world. We need to drive. We need to kick. And, and we need, once that happens, we get our, our flow going. You’ll see the ball go through no doubt, but if those are great shots. The only thing I do, we do is clap. And we say next, next again, again. And, but that’s where you get to see incredible runs.

And to your point about the role players having a little bit more buy-in or, or I think if you train your role players, like they’re your star players they’ll surprise you because I’ve just seen it happen where my, maybe my quote, unquote star players are a little bit off and man, that role player that typically doesn’t shoot as many.

He’s the spark, he’s the one that gets us going. And I can think about on it was, it was senior night this year in district. And I put a kid in that. I mean, I gave him the line award, which that line award is dear to my heart. It’s like Mr. Hustle. That was the only award I ever got in college from my team.

And at the time I thought that’s the only award that you give. That’s an award you give to the guy that you can’t think of anything else to give him . But that’s what I thought at the time. But now I look back and it’s like, I’m very proud of that. Like I did hustle. I did create that type of role for myself, but this kid was great leader.

I mean just what a, to me, what a Faith student is all about, but I just couldn’t find him a lot of time senior night. I always, I always start the seniors and, and he comes out, I kid you not 18 points in the first quarter, he had four threes. It was like our gym’s not huge. It was incredible. But even it was a special moment.

Like I got choked up a couple times, standing there watching him and his parents and grandparents just love that moment. But at the same time too, he trains that way every day it’s not like he doesn’t shoot or we don’t, he doesn’t pro like where did that come? Hooper? Where’d that come from? No, I’ve seen him shoot every day.

There just happens to be other guys that are farther ahead. But I like that your idea we have to make sure those role players are training for because I think we give that lip service sometimes as coaches of you never know, you have to be ready for your moment. Your moment will come well, will it really right?

Like really as a former, as a former player, you know that it rarely comes. Yeah. Yeah. Coach bliss would come down. Oh man. I can remember him coming down to practice. And I mean over my four years of Baylor, I played every game, but I didn’t play every game the same. He would come down and he’d see me. And he’d say, Matt, tell me what you think about this.

And the moment he said that I thought, oh crap, he’s going to put me on scout team today. And he would do, he’d say, tell me what you think about this. And he’d talk about this shift or this new thing in flex that he wanted to try to do, because we weren’t smart enough to run anything else. And, and, and I said, yeah, coach, that, that makes sense.

That makes sense. Like, all right, well, since you got it, I want you to be on the white team, which was our scout team today went to white jerseys, not anything else. And went to I want you to be on that team today. And, and just like, it would hurt every single time because I knew he wasn’t looking at me.

He only, he was only looking at the green team, the guys in those jerseys, I was going to get coached by the assistant coach that didn’t even know our plays. Because he was scouting most of the time, like would roll into practice, Vic, what, what do you run? Yeah, just do that. Right? Like, so I don’t want to be that guy where I’m just telling guys work hard because you never know when your time is, but I really know they probably won’t have one.

I mean, injuries happen sickness, especially now more than ever happens to where you just never know when this football guy that you really weren’t expecting much out of has 22 points in a district game hitting three threes that if you would’ve told me at the beginning of the season, I said, you’re nuts.

I think it’s fun to have those type of surprises throughout the year.

[01:25:17] Mike Klinzing: It really is. And it gives those kids an incentive. It gives them a motivation and it makes ’em feel like they’re more a part of it when they’re getting to do similar things to the things that the starters that the star players are getting to do.

And let’s face it. If you don’t have buy-in from the back end of your roster, I don’t care if it’s a high school team. I don’t care if it’s a college team. I don’t care if it’s a pro team. If the guys at the back end of your roster are unhappy and they start sniping and they start complaining and they start doing and saying things, we’ve all been around environments where that can go south really, really fast.

And if you can find ways as a coach to keep those kids engaged and to keep ’em working and to keep ’em competitive, man, you’ve just, you’ve done such a great service to those kids, but also you’ve done a great service for your team and the success that you’re going to have because you’re going to have better practices.

You’re going to have better attitudes. You’re going to spend less time as a coach dealing with problems. And to me, those are, those are the kinds of solutions that I think everyone as a coach is searching for all the time.

[01:26:33] Mike Klinzing: All right. Let’s jump into, let’s talk. We’re about to blow by an hour and a half here.

So I want to make sure we talk

[01:26:38] Matt Sayman: a little and I want to let you know, like, I I’m good with that, because this has been tons of fun. So I’m all for keeping going if, if you are, but at any point, if you’re like, Hey, this is enough, I’ve heard from this guy from a small school in Texas enough. You, you cut it. Okay.

[01:26:55] Mike Klinzing: Well, well I think what we’re I think what we’re going to have to do is I think it’s, I think we’re going to have to have a part two because we’re I definitely let’s go let’s I definitely want to, I definitely want to talk. I definitely want to talk player stuff and talk, talk about your time at Baylor and talk about your book and, and dive into that.

But let’s, let’s sort of meander towards the end here by talking podcasting. Tell me a little bit about the idea behind your podcast when you got it started, why you got it started, what your process looked like, and then we can kind of trade notes and compare ideas.

[01:27:30] Matt Sayman: Okay. Yeah, it really started two reasons at PGC.

I got the direct for them and a lot of the things we’ve even talked tonight, like learning from those they’re they’re just geniuses, Dick Devenzio the founder of PGC. I got to. I was an athlete at two of his sessions. You know, he died in 2000, in 2001, but he was just an incredible teacher of the game.

And PGC has always had such a big influence on me and then getting to direct for them for five years, that helped a to too. And, and then, but at the end of those sessions as, as a director at the end of each night, I would bring the observing coaches together and we were supposed to have like a five to 10 minute debrief on you know, just what, what they saw today, what they liked, how were they going to implement some things back home?

And, but it ended up like they would go two or three hours. and I, I just found myself just loving this time with these coaches that, and, and I do think, I mean, it’s, it’s a unique style of play. I mean that we, we run and I, I’m not running out there with McDonald’s all Americans and so they wanted to talk about those things, because I would, it’s hard not to mention that when I was maybe teaching throughout the day or something.

So it was just so much fun to talk about hoops and shooting and coaching and culture and all those things. So I loved that and then pandemic hit and I, I waswant to sitting around the house like everybody else. And a lady wanted to talk about shooting from a high school in DFW and I had never met her before we got on a zoom and we’re talking and then somehow it just shifted to culture.

And she talked about this. Activity that she had where she would take her kids off to a cabin before the season. I thought, well, that’s not, I mean, trips, that’s not unique. Like a lot of people do that, but then she talked about this talk that she would have with their players and, andwant to the way it would lead them to getting to know each other and to build these, found this foundation.

And I just, I listened. I said, will you share that with me? Like, that’s just so good. And I thought this is a girls coach at a high school that, I mean, I’m not really near that. There probably never be a chance for me and her to interact outside of this, but this was so impactful. And I thought, how many other, like most of the time on these podcasts, that’s why I’m honored that you’d have me on they’re famous people.

I mean, they’re guys that, that you, you just, you watch them or you hear from them a ton, but there’s just so many great high school coaches out there that right down the road from us are doing incredible things tha I joke, I tell guys T a C is a big organization in, in Texas, Texas association of basketball coaches and they have high school coaches speak at the clinic every year, but you only get asked to speak if you went.

And so like that’s a small amount, small number of guys, like the odds are, I’ll never get asked to speak there. want to I hope I do, but you know, if we, if we shoot it well enough, I will. But see, notice, I didn’t say defend well enough because that’s not it, but if we shoot well enough, we’ll we’ll get there.

But I, that was kind of where it came from. I’ve always enjoyed talking with coaches and, and then zoom became such a, a, a common thing. And in the DFW area, there just wasn’t a lot of people there wasn’t really anybody trying to highlight high school coaches. It’s been fun to talk with some college guys and learn from them.

But I’ve, I just feel like I’ve had these one on one clinics with guys and I get to ask them the questions that I really want to know. Like what would you do if you could start over, what would you do differently? You know, what I, what are the standards in your program? You know, how do you teach or, or help players with confidence?

Like those are the things that just, whenever I hear somebody talking about, I lean in and you know, and then, thenwant to getting to, it’s kind of on, I’m an honor to get to be on here with you because I I’m at 53 episodes right now, you’re at 600 plus and I listened to your episode with Matt McCloud and it was.

You’re you’re a master, in my opinion, you’re a master at doing this the way you ask questions, the way it flows and even ours tonight. Like, I mean, besides me rambling on too much, like it’s just been, it’s just been phenomenal the way that you bring it around and do things. So all that to say it’s been a blast, the Jimmo podcast, I’ve had so much fun with it so far.

[01:32:14] Mike Klinzing: That’s awesome. And I think you highlighted something that has been one thing that we’ve really enjoyed, which is getting an opportunity to talk to coaches at all levels. And we’ve had the opportunity to have some bigger name people on that everybody’s heard of, but we’ve had just as many people on that nobody has heard of except maybe people in their local area or their county or their state.

And what you find is that there are great, great, great coaches, great basketball minds, all over the country, all over the world and at all different levels, doing all different kinds of things. And I think that’s, what’s been the most interesting for us is just getting an opportunity to talk to those people, to be able to pick their brains, to be able to give them a platform, to share their knowledge, which to your point, as you said, who are the guys that go and speak at clinics?

They’re coaches that Wednesday tournaments they’re coaches that have. Big time, division one athletes. And look, there are great coaches that have those things, but there are also great coaches that do not have those things. And what we found is that no matter whether it’s a high school coach from Texas, or it’s a high level division one coach, or it’s an NBA assistant, or it’s somebody that’s on TV, everybody brings something to the table because ultimately they love the game of basketball and everybody kind of attacks that love in a different way, whether they do a podcast, whether they’re a coach, whether they’re an announcer, whether they coach at the high school level, they’re an assistant, they’re a head coach.

Everybody brings that love for the game that we started out this podcast talking about where that’s right, is your love. Where did your love for the game of basketball come from? And for everybody, it ends up kind of manifesting itself in different ways. And I’ve said this on the podcast, that one of the things that is interesting to me in talking to all these coaches that I never realized when I was a player.

And I dunno if you realized this when you were a player, but the number of guys that were managers at the college level that went to be a manager because they felt like that was a route for them to go into coaching. And when I was a player. I always thought, man, these guys are managers. They must, must really like us players.

And they just want to hang around the team and think that we’re really cool.

[01:34:54] Matt Sayman: And they want to be a part of it. Yeah.

[01:34:56] Mike Klinzing: It never once crossed my mind that somebody was going to be a manager because they wanted to be a coach. Never crossed my mind.

[01:35:03] Matt Sayman: That’s that’s the door. That’s the door. They could get itwant to go through.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I had no,

[01:35:09] Mike Klinzing: I mean, I did not see that at all back when I was playing and you just learn a ton from everybody that you talk to and that’s, what’s been really fun about it. And then the second piece that I always have this conversation, usually when the podcast ends, but it’s worth having it now that it’s not very often that you get a chance to talk to somebody in your life for an hour and a half, like, right.

Who’s the last per, who’s the last person that you had an hour and a half conversation with. Maybe your wife back when you were dating early on in your relationship. Right. You might sit on the phone and talk for an hour and a half.

[01:35:44] Matt Sayman: That’s right. Yeah. But it’s certainly, now, now it’s, now it’s 30 seconds.  30 seconds is the longest phone call with it. Yeah. where are we going now?

[01:35:55] Mike Klinzing: Or where do we have to get the kids to, or when’s the next game and all those things. Yeah. And so you just don’t get the opportunity. So we’ve been able to build such great relationships. And again, not with every single person that’s been on the podcast, but with a lot of people that have been guests, we’ve developed.

Honest to goodness, genuine friendships and people that I’ve been different places and I’ve hooked up with people and met with them in person. And those are the kinds of things that I never ever would’ve guessed. Would’ve happened as a result of this silly podcast. And there’s just, there’s no way, there’s no way to replace that.

And, and just the, the love for basketball and how much people appreciate what the game has done for them. And then consequently, how much they want to give back by telling their story. And we just feel like we’ve been able to, for whatever reason, we’ve been able to build this little platform to, to give people an opportunity to do that.

And in some way, I feel like we’re giving back directly to our guests and then hopefully we’re also giving back to our audience. So that’s kind of where we didn’t start out with that, with those intentions. It wasn’t the way we, we planned it out, but it’s kind of the way it’s, it’s gone. And to hear you talk about giving a platform to high school coaches, I, I couldn’t agree more just because again, there’s so much knowledge at every level of the game

[01:37:13] Matt Sayman: it’s been phenomenal.

Like I’ve been blown away by how in every talk, there is oftentimes more than one thing, but there’s at least one thing that I thought, man, like I needed to hear that. Yeah. But I’m literally having this conversation for that reason. and, and, and coaches at all different levels. And then I even like to get outside of that a little bit with some strength coaches, I noticed you’ve had some guys that are, that aren’t necessarilywant to coaching a team at, at a certain level right now.

And, and, but they, they all just have such interesting perspectives and what I love about the community and you, you just alluded to it too, is just how willing guys are to share. And, and, and it’s really fun for me to get, to hear their passion come throughwant to what they’re talking about and then great reminders for myself as somebody that at times can feel like I don’t understand why not everybody doesn’t play the way we play like that, that thought goes through my mind.

Sometimes it’s a great reminder that man, there are a ton of ways to do this. And, and guys have had a lot of success in doing it the way that there are. And sometimes they will say some things that make me really have to do a deep dive into something that I believe with, with our team, with our program or with, with coaching or leading.

And then other times it validates what we’re doing as well. And so it, it has been such a satisfying thing and I’ve been blown away. I mean, to me, it’s like, I don’t know what the difference is like it, I think I’m a, I’m an eighth grade player, right? Talking to an NBA player. Like that’s the difference between our levels with what we’re doing here.

[01:38:58] Mike Klinzing: You’re gimme a little too much credit now.

[01:39:00] Matt Sayman: I think that’s close. Okay. You’re a, you’re a, you’re a European pro and I’m, I’ll take that, but that’s pretty darn good though, too. So it’s like, but Iwant to I’ve just been blown away with your level of organizationwant to the, the way even with social media, what you guys do.

I was scrolling through it today. I was like Ali. They post every hour, every hour. There’s something we to get stuff out. Yeah. And what I like too, is that it’s so I put episodes out on a Monday. And then I try to do a few things throughout the week with it, but then once that episode’s over, it’s kind of done, but I’m kind of looking through, like you you’re referencing guys over and over and over again.

And that just, it, it was like a light bulb moment for me today. You know, I, I need to be reminding, I, I mean, again, I don’t, there’s not a lot of followers there and that’s okay. But I need to be reminding people of the, the episodes and things that have gone through. So I’ve learned a ton from you already.

[01:40:06] Mike Klinzing: Well, I appreciate that. And I don’t know that any of the stuff that we’re doing, it’s like I’ve had conversations with people. Hey, what are we doing? Social media wise. Is it good? Is it bad? Does it work? Does it not work? And we try to go through, and as you said, we try to recycle old episodes and what, what I’ve found, and it’s kind of the formula that we’ve tried to stick with.

And you can kind of sense it with your episode too, is that I try to create interviews that are somewhat evergreen, that we’re not talking about. Hey, how was your season last year? And what about yeah, your performance in the state tournament? It’s more just tell me about your program. Let’s build your culture.

Let’s tell your story so that somebody could listen to this episode three years from now, and it could still be very, very relevant. And so that’s what we’ve tried to do on the social media side is to be able to go back and just kind of recycle those episodes. And like I said, I have no idea whether or not our social media strategy is a good one or not a good one.

We just kind of keep throwing stuff at the wall and see what we think will work and what will be helpful. And I don’t claim at all to be an expert. And it’s part of what honestly has been fun about this whole process is learning the social media side of it, or at least to whatever degree we’ve learned it and learning the technology and figuring out how to get it to work and what the sound quality could be compared to what it sounded like at the beginning.

And you mentioned, and I appreciate the kind words about being an interviewer when you go back and listen to those first few episodes, yeah, it can’t be brutal myself talking. I’m like, oh, that is just, it just sounds awful. And you become very conscious of the number of times you’re saying and you know, and all those things and you have to be, it’s just right.

It’s just like a coach. Like you go back and listen and you think, man, I’m doing way too much of that and not enough of this. And so then you try to adjust and grow and it’s a, it’s a process. And I think what you want to do is you want people to appreciate what you do as a host. And yet you don’t want to get in the way of what the guest is trying to share, because ultimately you’re the one tonight that’s bringing the knowledge.

You’re, what’s, you’re bringing new things to the table. I’ve been on this for 640 episodes that people have heard a lot of my stories that I’ve told at various times to different people on the pod. And so they want to hear from you. And it’s a, it’s a little bit of an art and a dance to you want to share some things because you want this to be a conversation.

And yet at the same time, people didn’t tune in to hear my story. They turned in to hear from you. And I think that’s what, yeah. Ultimately makes it interesting.

[01:42:50] Matt Sayman: That’s a good point, because I, I had Brian McCormick on I, I haven’t put that episode out yet, but he’s fascinating to me. He’s great. Love Brian fake fundamentals and yep.

I read that. And so I just, I was really trying to, to, I contacted him and we, it took a little while to get, to make it happen because he’s over in Estonia right now. But he, he, you knows before our talk, he had tweeted out something about how he hated listening to a podcast where the host wouldn’t let the guy there interview or whatever, it wouldn’t let him talk and I, or wouldn’t listen to him and I, and I thought, okay, remember thatwant to go ahead.

When not, when, not just when I’m talking to him, but, but just to be present right. When, when that person cause whatwant to and you kind of mentioned a little bit, like I like along the same lines it’s you, you probably dive a little bit more into the past of the person a little bit more than, than I do because there’s, there’s parts of, I, I love going to clinics, but at clinics when I’m live with a person I’m sitting in an audience, I’m just, I, I just have to sit in whatever they choose to address.

If it’s a two, three zone, that’s it. That’s all I get from that person. And so with this, I, I put a, a list of questions together. I think I’m up to 23 questions now that like here’s are the, here are the things that I would love to know about almost any coach out there. And it definitely, it definitely will guide a little bit the direction of it, but, but then within, it’s always fun towant to to, to let it flow and find new rabbit holes.

But I, I do the, a little bit of an intro before, because you know, full transparency sometimes when the first 20 minutes of an interview or 30 that I, or a podcast I’m listening to, if it’s just the backstory, but I know that some things are coming. Like I just go to that and so thought, what, what, what about a podcast?

That’s pretty much just all that where mm-hmm, like they get to, they get to hear about the guy real quick, but then all right, what standards are your pro what’s your program built on? And, and, andwant to like where you said, I love that with three, three years later, they go back. It’s not about their miracle season that they had.

It’s about things that, man, maybe that’s an area of my, my planning that I just don’t have down or something I needed to hear about. So I, yeah, I, I brought right on board with what you’re saying.

[01:45:27] Mike Klinzing: It’s really interesting to because we’ve played around with the format and thought about it and tried to figure out, Hey, like our episode’s too long.

That’s a conversation that Jason and I have all the time. So speaking ofwant to And an hour and a half. And so it’s like, I always, we go back and forth and we’re like, well, do do more people listen to episodes that are only an hour, do more people listen to episodes that are an hour and a half. Does it matter?

Does it not matter? And we’ve kind of just come to the conclusion that we like going for as long as we like to go. And with some people it’s less for some people it’s more, depending upon the schedule on a given day, we might have to go less than we want because somebody else is coming on after that. And so it’s just, there’s a lot of things that go into it.

But to your point, I think everybody gets, you find value in different things. And depending upon what you’re trying to get out of the podcast, you can find, you can find those nuggets and you can find what it is that you’re looking for. And, and there’s so many, there’s so many podcasts out there, right?

Just like there’s so many kids out there. There’s so many leagues and Hey, you teams and all this stuff that you kind of just hope that your audience that finds you, you can’t, you kind of almost have to please yourself and hope that that’s exactly.

[01:46:43] Matt Sayman: You find that audience, right? Yeah. That’s exactly what I was going to you, you took it right out of my mouth.

I said my motivation at the end of the day is to learn, to be better for my players at Faith. If I can do that, every talk that I have. Then it’s a success because I mean, obviously if it was about listeners or followers, well, I’m a, a colossal failure at this point. So it can’t just be about that.

And, and so I completely agree with the motivation there. And then you had mentioned a little bit with, I, I kind of took a Joe Rogan approach, I think, to it, he does long episodes. So some of mine are an hour and a half. I think my longest is like an hour 45 or so, but that really depends on one, the person, like I’ve found that some of the, maybe bigger name people, they don’t have as much time, or if I don’t have relationship with them, there’s not as much back and forth or and some, some guys don’t like, I don’t know if I, if in our talk tonight, I don’t actually, I don’t, I’m pretty sure I didn’t do a very good job of asking you many questions or your opinion.

And, and maybe that’s because I rarely get asked questions. And so I just ran with some answers and kind of took it. But you know, a lot of, a lot of guys it’s, I, I like to ask questions and I like to listen to their answers, but sometimes there’s not that give and take where it can go for a long time. But what Joe Rogan does is he, he does his long episode puts that out, but then he also does what he, he almost has like a separate channel for it’s clips.

And so on Mondays, I put out the long one, but then on Tuesday through Friday, it’s the different based on yeah. The questions. That’s a really good idea. The questions they choose, it’s the little clips and to it’s one of those things where unfortunately, I don’t know what, I don’t know. I don’t know if people like the long one.

I don’t know. I’ve had a couple coaches say that like they really appreciate the, 15 minute clip, that’s all around the one question and I try to choose, like, if a guy chooses four or five questions, I try to choose the three or four that really, I think that there was, that was strong.

And then, or sometimes it just goes a completely different direction and we kind of form our, a new clip from that, but that that’s been fun. And but I’m, I am, I am just trying to figure it out and also make it, oh, make it a way where it’s manageable because it’s just me. Like  right. ‘m a one man show.

So during the season I don’t want this to be stressful. And so I think I’ve figured out a way to where it’s basically one day’s worth of work a week or, or a few hours that day. And then I can make it happen.

[01:49:45] Mike Klinzing: It’s almost like exercise. Right? You have to find something that you love to do or else you’re not going to do it.

And that’s how yeah. Podcasting is like, I I’m the same way where. Jason previously, when we first started, he has two older sons. One’s eight and one’s six. And then two years ago he went and had another daughter and then seven weeks ago he went and had another one. So we were just getting to the point where we were kind of getting a rhythm and we were kind of sharing some duties in the back, in the back end.

[01:50:15] Matt Sayman: And then that kind of went away. And so I’m, yeah, I’ve heard the, I’ve heard the, without my guest thing a couple times on your deal. That’s right. I’m like, man, where is this guy?

[01:50:26] Mike Klinzing: He’s with…He’s on baby duty. So he text he’s grinding then. Yeah. He texted me right before we started with you. He’s like, well, if we’re doing that second one, he goes, I still got Abby, I’m holding her right now. I don’t think I’m going to make it. I don’t think I’m going to make it on. So that’s so he’s, he’s kind of hit or miss, but yeah, it’s just, you got, you have to do what’s you have to do.

What’s manageable. You have to do what, what, what you enjoy doing. And that’s what we’ve been able to do. And it’s been, it’s been a lot of fun and, and you’re doing a great job with yours and I, I. I like the breakdowns of, of pulling out little smaller clips and things. I do think that there, I do think there’s value in that we’ve thought about doing that at various points and it’s just like, you kind of pick and choose of, okay, how much time do I have to edit that, get it uploaded and put that together and do this and that.

And we’re like, yeah, I don’t know if we’re going to do that, but we’ve kind justwant to you, you figure out, you figure out what works and, and then you just, and then you just roll with it and see what happens.

[01:51:23] Matt Sayman: So it obviously works. Obviously works the way you’re doing it because of not just the people you have you’ve had on.

But the fact that, I mean, it appears as if you’re not being told no, a bunch like it, people are typically pretty willing to, to come on and share. They’re excited about it. Yeah. You know what what’s, what’s fun. What that you have is, is a co-host where you guys can do some episodes just together.

And I, right. You know, I’ve thought I’ve thought at times about because you, you, we had talked about social media a little bit and you didn’t know if what you were doing was good or bad. I think how consistent you are with it is always that’s. That’s always, that’s always good. Right?

[01:52:03] Mike Klinzing: That’s always a good thing.

[01:52:05] Matt Sayman: I agree with that. I think I do struggle a little bit with that with, with the social media piece and also too, because I’m so small, like I’m not seeing really anything from it, but I won’t until I get. It’s just like losing weight. Yeah. It’s,

[01:52:23] Mike Klinzing: It’s a long grind. It’s a long grind to build even a small loyal audience that takes a long time.

And to build your social media following takes a long, long time. And then even when you get to a point and like our social media is fine, whatever we have, like, I don’t know, 4,500 followers on Twitter, which is great, but it’s not like mind blowing. And yet part of me is like, well, what does that, what does that do for us or not do for us as far as the number of downloads?

And then ultimately it’s like, well, what does that, what does the download, what are the downloads mean? Yeah. They meanwant to I could go and talk to a potential sponsor advertiser and give ’em the downloads. But in a lot of cases, I barely understand what the numbers mean. I’ve been doing this for four years.

So when you go to somebody, you say, Hey, we’re getting X number of downloads. And they’re like, well, okay, great. What does that mean? And I could say, well, it means this. And they’re like, okay, well, so it’s

[01:53:20] Matt Sayman: I think ultimately it’s just a weird world. Yeah.

[01:53:24] Mike Klinzing: It really is a, and I think, I think what you have to do is just, you just have to do it because you love doing it.

And I think in your situation where you’re doing it, where you’re learning and growing in your job as a head coach, that just adds a whole nother layer of value to it. So it’s been a blast. I’m, I’m super appreciative of everybody that’s come on. And I just it’s, it’s been, it’s been so

[01:53:47] Matt Sayman: much fun. I got a question for you.

Like, I’m sure you feel the same way about you hear so much great information from such wise people and, and what, how do you choose what you implement? Like what, because you can, you only have so much room actually was at at, at our church LA last night. There’s a, a speaker that came in on Wednesday night and was he talked about the wisdom pyramid and it’s a, that’s what the book is called.

And it was, it is kind of a cool concept. It’s like the food pyramid, but where wisdom, how it should come and where it comes and how most of like the cell phone and social media and everything should be at the very top where sugar and Sweetss are in the food pyramid. But it’s flipped for most of us where it’s just a information overloadwant to that we’re, we have so much coming in, so that was fascinating.

But then it made me even think. So I’ve started to go back through and listen to each episode, again, taking notes over the, what Iwant to golden nuggets or the, the big action items from it. But it’s almost like it’s too much. So how do you with like all of your episodes? I mean, I’m assuming there’s some that are just going to kind of fade a little bit, like you just don’t really revisit it, but like yeah.

That’s choosing what you take in and what you kind of just don’t that’s a great, that’s a great question.

[01:55:22] Mike Klinzing: So I think I would answer that in two parts. So one

[01:55:26] Matt Sayman: is that I’ve never been

[01:55:30] Mike Klinzing: great about putting something, implementing something as a coach and then sticking with it for a long time. Like, I’m like, Ooh, let me try that.

And I’ll do that for three weeks or a month. And then I’ll be like, oh, alright, let me try this. That sounds cool. Let me do this. And so I’ve been, I think, notorious for kind of jumping from one thing to another. So I am a person that I’ll hear something and I’ll be like, oh, I want to try that. Or let me see if that’ll work and I’ll try it and then I’ll get distracted by the next thing.

So I’m probably not the right person to talk about how to best implement any of these things. So there’s that piece of it. And then I think the second bigger piece of it is I’ve thought about trying to figure, how could I take, because there are definitely themes that have run through when I think about the episodes, when you talk about how coaches have had success and what they’ve been able to do.

Yeah. There’s definitely themes over the course of the whatever 400 and somewant to coaching interview episodes that we’ve done that are. I don’t want to say universal truths, but just things that have come up over and over again with whatever 70%, you’ve 9% of the coaches.

[01:56:41] Matt Sayman: You probably have a book, you probably have a book

[01:56:44] Mike Klinzing: there.

That’s yeah. So that’s what that’s, that’s part of. And, and then when I think about writing a book, I’m like, whew,  Where am I fitting that?  where am I fitting that into my current life? But I, I do think that there’s, I do think that there’s a book here. So I ha I did at one point about six months ago, I started to try to categorize and come up with those themes and then start to go back and think about episodes where coaches talked about it.

But it’s almost so daunting now because we have so many episodes. Yeah. That to go back, to go back and find those sound bites and clips and figure out exactly where those are. It almost seems, it seems rather daunting, but I do think there’s a book in there and I have, I have thought about it. And I do think that the collective wisdom of the people that we’ve had on would make a really good book.

It’s just a matter of finding the, the time and the wherewithal to be able to do that.

[01:57:42] Matt Sayman: So. So I’m an idea guy, too. What, what do you think of this? I love the Tim Ferris book tools of Titans. Yeah. That’s a great one. Like, like to me that, that that’s the blueprint for. Yeah, I agree. Because I, like, I think I like your idea of everything that you’ve had.

Like, you could almost like a Kevin Eastman type of why the best are the best kinda like that, like go through and find some themes. Like you could definitely do that. For sure. I, I don’t have, and my, and when, I mean another book in me, like, I, I struggle to write the leftovers and, and I, so that’s just not something that is, is a, I don’t, I don’t feel like it’s once, once is it once is enough once, once is enoughwant to like everybody has a story in their life, like that’s mine.

And so I’m not just going to make up another one. And then but, but I did think like, as a coachwant to I love free stuff. I love free stuff. I love, I will, I will almost put my email in any mailer. If they say, well, they’ll send you a free PDF of something. And so I love that. And I thought, okay, I don’t really know what to do with these episodes after they’re done.

And unfortunately, I didn’t, I maybe kind of like you, I didn’t do a season thing. I just started. And because I, I, I do believe in consistency. Like I don’t see an end date. I don’t see a pause date. I, I just, so I think I’ll havewant to years, then another year. And so I thought of like jam Modi tools for coaches, something like, cause I like the, just a matter of doing it term is right.

I stole that in. I stole that in seventh grade from a coach at a camp and I kept saying it and he finally told us what it meant. And I made my, my personal workout as a junior high kid. So it’s always been kind of this mantra, just a matter of doing it with anything in life. And then with the podcast, it just made sense.

But I thought about that Jimmo tools for coaches or Jimmo tools or something where it’s season one or, or year one. And then it’s, it’s a tools of Titan esque where it’s the episode, but like I’m looking at Kelvin Sampsons right now in my notebook. And it’s four pages of just unbelievable don’t try to eliminate your failures, learn from them.

It’s okay to fail. Like you, you just, if, if I, I, if I wanted to kind of gift wrapwant to the first year to these coaches here are the golden nuggets andwant to action steps or maybe a shooting game and, and kind of put that in there. I, I think that would. Again, if we’re just trying to add value or bring value to people.

But then it’s like, do I do an ebook with it? Is it just a PDF? Is it just like all the, that stuff? Do I, I don’t, I don’t think I want to go down the publisher route again because that’s, that’s always fun. And so I don’t know, man.

[02:00:53] Mike Klinzing: There’s so many potential offshoots of things that I’ve considered over time.

And for me it always comes down to when I look at what we’re doing now and I think about, okay, what are the things that we could do that sort of spring off naturally from this? And we’ve had ideas and thoughts and conversations and it, it continuously comes back to how much time do you have to dedicate to something that as my wife likes to say, come on, like it’s just a hobby.

So it’swant to it’s interesting and it’s a lot of fun and you know, we’re going to keep doing it and who knows where, who knows where it goes. So that being said, we are at, I don’t even know at the time, I’m not even on our, I’m not even on our recording screen anymore. We’re at like two hours. So this might two hours at eight minutes, two hours minutes But it’s only 2:01 AM here where I’m sitting.

[02:01:44] Matt Sayman: So, I mean, we really haven’t talked about some of the good stuff like the Leftovers,, the largest tragedy or scandal in college basketball history.

[02:01:55] Mike Klinzing: That’s going to be  you’re going to come back out. I want to talk about that because I definitely want to compare.

I don’t, we, I didn’t deal with anything anywhere near what you had to deal with, but just the, the, the era of college basketball, I was 88 to 92. So you were a little bit after me, but I think there’s a lot of similarities in terms of just the experience of what it’s like to play. Yeah. One basketball. And I, I think a lot of people that are out there maybe don’t always have a good understanding of really what, what all that entails.

So I think that’s a podcast in and of itself. So all that being said, why don’t we do this? You share how people can get in touch with you, reach out to you, find out more about you and your program, social media, email, whatever you want to share, website. And then I’ll jump back in, wrap things up, and then we will make plans off air to get you back on

[02:02:43] Matt Sayman: Okay. Yeah. And first of all, just thank you. Thank you so much for allowing me to come on based on the names. Absolutely. You’ve had, I don’t feel, I don’t feel qualified a hundred percent, but, but then I, I love that about this, this game too, is just that people far away there’s just, there’s commonality in, in the fact that we love the game and we love to share and talk hoops.

And anybody, if there’s anything today that that made you think, especially about shooting, maybe running and gunning, if you want to talk to me about rebounding games and defense, I may not be your guy. I get that. But the other side of it is, is fun for me. Social media’s just @Matt_Sayman

And then email, just sayman@gmail.com will be great. I’ll tell you this. So since I did go more into depth with the Jamon skill rating I’m working on just on my phone, filming it film my stepson going through it. I’m going to put it together with a little, some voiceover with the rules.

And I think I’m just, I’m going to start sharing it with some people that want it, because it’s been such a great tool for me over the years, that, and like that coach said, like, quit, quit holding onto it. And so if anybody would like that it may not be ready. Like if you email me tomorrow, it’s not ready, but I’ll, I’ll get it to you.

And hopefully you can, you can play with it and adjust it. And, and it’s been really fun.

[02:04:17] Mike Klinzing: Matt, cannot thank you enough for taking the time outta your schedule. It’s been an absolute pleasure having this conversation and definitely we look forward to getting you back on and talking some Baylor basketball and your time there and your book, the leftovers.

[02:04:32] Matt Sayman: And again, it’s just been A complete pleasure.

[02:04:35] Mike Klinzing: I want to say thanks to Matt McLeod for connecting us. That’s. One of the things that I think is super important here on the pod is to recognize the fact that our previous guests oftentimes are the ones that make the connections for us to get our new guests on.

So thanks to Matt. Thanks to you, Matt, for jumping on tonight and to everyone out there. Thanks for listening. And we will catch you on our next episode. Thanks.