Thoughtful Offensive Systems of Play | Tony Miller, JAMODI Podcast

Sometimes a big discussion is, do you have a system that you can fit any player into, or do you build your system around the players that you have? And I think I've been on both sides of that from time to time.

But in your experience, man, coaching in college and then, uh, and everybody you've talked to, where do you fall in that, in that category?

So I wanna be careful because, as you just mentioned, from a college coach's perspective, you have a little bit more control over things 'cause you can recruit in certain types of players.

That kind of, uh, [chuckles] that ends when you're not Duke and North Carolina and Kansas.

[laughs]

You know, y- you, you try to, and, you know, sometimes you're fortunate n- uh, to be able to get in guys that do fit in the system that you want it to, the way that you want it to look.

But that's not always the case.

We've numerous years missed out on guys and had to kind of like scramble and adjust a little bit.

And so there's always like that balancing act between my way is the hard and fast way and the system being the thing that rules everything else, and we're gonna do it no matter what, versus being adaptable and, you know, playing to your players' strengths.

With that being said, I do think that that can sometimes be used as, as an excuse to, "Well, we can't run this because we don't have."

Yeah.

And I, I, I would encourage coaches, there is enough out there now.

I'm really big on conceptual offense.

Yes, there are certain parts of it, depending on what you pick.

If you're a team that your system uses a lot of ball screens, but you don't have guys [chuckles] that can set good screens, well, like teach them to set good screens.

Yeah.

I, I think to an extent, um, we sometimes use that excuse, "Well, I can't do that." And I think that there is a place for being realistic about what your players are capable of doing, but I also do think that modern basketball has allowed us to be able to create systems that really can especially use, uh, smaller lineups, which is, has been historically the excuse.

Like, "Well, I just don't have a..." And then whatever size player is the biggest for your, your level of play.

Yeah.

Um, and I, I do think that that's one of the strengths of what we have this day and age, is the fact that you can sometimes level the playing field a little bit, uh, with smaller players.

We did that this year and had a lot of success.

Um, but playing against bigger, bigger teams, uh, at certain points of the year and that kind of thing.

And sure, like there's gonna be some downside to it, but, um, certain match-ups and that kind of thing.

But I, I do think that you can, um, you can pick systems this day and age that allow anybody to have success.

Doesn't matter if they're big or small or whatever.