RJ Melendez

So I think, like, that's one of the biggest question marks in basketball is how do we rotate after the ball hits the roller? But with the plug, that didn't happen a lot because the on-ball defender was plugging, so that prevented us from getting to rotation a lot.

Working in that same vein of taking away passes and the shrinks, if the pass went to the fence man's matchup, so they hit kind of that release pass, were you having that fence player then try to shade the swing pass to the corner or still sit square on the ball and protect the roller because the mig is now going out to the corner and the big is recovering? You know, we've seen it both ways, you know, trying to take away the extra versus taking away the roller, I guess.

What would the fence guy's responsibility...

So because he was in fence positioning, it was not possible for him to do that and then prevent the extra pass, the swing-swing pass to the corner.

So we definitely worked on peel switching also because, again, since we were basically getting to a rotation once a drive was happening, our whole idea was to protect the paint.

So never forget that.

I would always say this to, to our players, "Never forget that we're trying to protect the paint." So when I first introduced peel switching to some of them, it was something completely new.

It's like, "Oh my gosh, I'm gonna help from the corner." Like, "Oh, how is that gonna happen?" And then as the season went on and then they would peel switch, so there was the guy in the gap that would pick up the handlers driving, and the guy that just got beat would then peel to the corner, and then he all of a sudden was getting steals out of it, and they were like, "Oh, that works." I remember some video sessions, we had James Bouknight in our team, and it was a big pleasure to coach him, and it was like, "Man, that's kinda crazy, but it works." [laughing]