Thats a Wrap on Season 1 | May 4, 2024 001

As we wrap us season 1 Joe talks about AAU starting, NIL, and a look into Season 2

What is The CBA Podcast?

Topics for Club, High School and AAU Basketball

CBA PODCAST (00:00)
You're listening to the CBA podcast where we talk everything basketball from club to high school to AU to college. CBA podcast is brought to you by Chapman Basketball Academy. Your hosts for the show are Terry Massey, Max Johansson and Joe Chapman.

All right. How's everybody doing? We're going to it's kind of going to be a season little end of season type of podcast, and then we're going to hit it back up probably midsummer or the beginning of the season and stuff kind of do it. And of the season. So busy. You use full born trainings. Jim's full and time is of an essence. It's a great time of the year.

You know, all the kids are back where every team has started practicing in their tournaments and games. So it's a fun time of the year just to get everybody going. You're traveling around the country, you know, playing in different tournaments and so many different teams play. You know, so yeah, it's a fun time of the year. It's good to have a season kind of recap of season one and then, you know, jump into season two, you know, a little bit later in the spring summer.

But I would say our first 11, 12 episodes has been really good and informative of CBA and what we all that we kind of offer. You got a chance to see some of the in and outs of the program as far as different people that came on that help us or who have been a part of this program. So it's been pretty cool to look back and listen to the podcast to see the steps that.

it has taken to get here so far with CBA. I think some of the information that we gave to was if you look back, the importance of like the mental health ones with Dr. Brittany and then with Tim and yeah, then we're probably the two most important ones. I think we did personally. That's just my yeah, I think so, too. I think that's the thing that is mental health awareness a month this month. So I think everyone should just take time and really listen to your mind, your body, listen to your health, listen to, you know,

You want to be free, free -spirited. You want to make sure that you're doing the best to help your psyche out so you can help other people. So really use this month and use those couple podcasts to really listen to advice. Or if you need help, make sure that you're finding the right person that you trust and kind of go from there. But I think those are the best informative.

podcast is that we have so far. And as we look in the next season, there'll be plenty to talk about, right? New coaches kind of all over the place and on the girls side. Yeah, I don't know how much really on the boys side is there? No, no, not not many on the boys side, but there's a lot on the girls side. But, you know, it's very hard to, you know, coach high school basketball. So you got to have the right coach, the right system, the right junior program. You got to have the right fan base. You know, it's not a.

It's a thankless job and you got to have the right people around you to make you feel appreciated in those, especially in high school. So as we do a wrap here on the season with AU starting two tournaments in the books already, I think for you, right? Yeah, two or three tournaments on a boys and a girl side. Now our youth teams are started now too. So they're getting started now too. We had your team in particular went to Iowa. We had.

You know, our younger teams went to Indianapolis. Our older teams are traveling, you know, as well. So it's this fun time of the year to see as a director just the positive feedback that we hear from different programs, different directors, just how well organized we are and how hard we play. So as a program director, you're going to always have highs and lows, you know, but overall it's been pretty good so far.

So yeah, I was in Iowa. And just to start talking a little bit of AU, my kid picked up a pickup game at the playground with another one of the teams or whatever. And this kid came. And they had a lot of size. And this kid comes, yeah, this is my second year in sixth grade or something like that, he said. So that brings me to a question. We talked about it in the class. Re -class, what is it and how much do you think it happens? Well, it happens a lot.

It happens more than everyone's talking about it now, but it does happen that much. But I always go back to, I don't think it really matters as much if you've reclassed or not. Because you're gonna see those same kids, group of kids, whether you're ducking it one year or you're gonna see them in year three of high school if you're a freshman and the class that you're really supposed to be with is juniors, you're gonna still see those kids and be around them. So.

I don't know if there's much of an advantage to it. I really do think the mental aspect of the game, you need to further along the development of playing older kids. The more you can play older kids, the better it is for you. So if you're 16 years old and you're finally getting to high school, well, you're really supposed to be a junior at that point. So I don't.

really see the benefits of it. But I don't condone it either. If that's something you want to do that's best for your kid and your family, you got to go for it. It's just too many people on the internet that's just frowning upon it. This is the way it is. So your kid is either going to go up against, in seventh grade you might see a 14 year old. It's just a part of it now. So.

You know, we can't make excuses for the kids that are not reclassing. You got to go out there and prove that you belong on that court and prove that, you know, them holding them back a year or two didn't stop you from your development. Do you know how venues are picked? So, for instance, I traveled to Iowa and I saw probably two or three teams. We actually played a team that was from Wisconsin. Right. So how is that beneficial traveling out of state, seeing teams that you can see in the state? How are venues picked?

Yeah, I don't think that's beneficial at all. I don't think teams should be traveling out of the state playing each other. I think that's very wrong to do as directors who run tournaments. I don't think you should do that. But obviously, sometimes you don't have a choice just depending on the number of teams you have in that pool. Sometimes it's just unfortunate that it does happen. But when it does happen, it's good for the game because there's so much talent in this state.

that you want to keep going against different people of your peers and your class. It's just so happy you don't want to do it out of state. But when it happens, there's a great amount of respect for the teams and the players that's in this state. You and I are watching some games here of your teams playing, the girls in particular. You were talking a little bit about how you guys are playing trap and zone. How much zone did you see? We see a lot of zone, unfortunately.

Is it the same type of zone though? Are they playing the same type of zone that these kids going to college are gonna see? And does that zone carry over to the NBA that they're playing? Yeah, I think it does, especially they're gonna see zones, it's a part of it. Unfortunately, in AAU sometimes college coaches don't wanna see too much of it. My philosophy is we play 70 % man to man and then 30 % whatever you need to do to mess with the other coach. And that's how I feel if -

If we in a 1 -3 -1 and you call a timeout and prepare for that 1 -3 -1, well, next time out when we come out of that timeout, we're gonna be in a 2 -3 -4 court or a man -to -man running jump. It's about throwing the other team's rhythm off when you do switch defenses too. It's just not a weakness to say that I'm just gonna play man -to -man only. There are so many coaches that I know that just die on their sword and just say, this is the only way.

I know how to win. I do think you need to mix it up. I do think you need to change speed and pace and have the game be read. We've ran against teams that ran zone the whole time. We wasn't mad about it. What that meant was we're going to pick up for a court and switch the game because the game is going to be slower if they just methodically just play their zone defense. We got to speed the game up a little bit. So we play different zones too. We play.

You know, one, two, two, one, three, one, two, three, four court into a jungle, which we call the one, one, three. You do what you can with the, with the people that you have around you. If you've got a really smart team and you can throw different defenses on a fly and not have a timeout to do it, that really throws the rhythm off of the other team. When you play a good trap defense, you got to have players that you've taught good man to man, right? Cause they got to know how to close out. So.

Yeah. At what age, you know what I mean? I don't think you should be seeing zone sixth grade, seventh grade. Yeah. Teaching man to man because that's going to lead over to playing a good zone. 100 % trap. Yeah. Knowing how to close out. Right. Yeah. And unfortunately, we're seeing zones in fourth and fifth grade. The boys are traveling now. They're saying, you know, two, three zones. They played a sixth grade team and they had two, six, four kids sitting in a paint just playing a two, three zone, you know, and they were just lazy in it. You know, I don't mind the zones, but.

You gotta have man principles. So this is your area and you gotta guard that area really well. You gotta jump, you gotta scream, you gotta be in positions to get deflections. We're not gonna do anything that's lazy, you know? And right now, that's what we're doing. We're doing lazy defenses right now. That's what's being taught. So I think, especially at that sixth grade level, you can start to implement little things, you know, here and there, where I think man -to -man defense should be.

you know, 50%, 60 % of your practices teaching how to stay in front of a kid, whether it's not giving up middle or, or you're playing gap defense, whatever kind of defense that you want to incorporate, but you got to keep man principle principles on the front line of their brain. That way, you know, that's what they're learning. You said, I saw some big guys in the paint. We in Iowa to my tallest, my tallest post player was probably.

three inches shorter of four of the other players on the other team that we played. So you told me in the past that you love seeing a tall team. Yes, especially like I know on your girls side, you got girls who can light it up. Yes. So without giving away all your secrets. Yeah. How would you play against a really good post player? Well, we love that. I love going against really good post players and I love our girls to spread their wings a little bit and guys. So when we see post players, we're going to front the post.

and we're going to play backside defense or we're going to play strong, which is we throw the ball in and we're going to trap from the front side. We're not going to allow them to look over us and do everything to pick us apart. Because once you have a really good post player, it's still really hard to go against them. So what we like to do is spread the court and play in the middle of the floor. We like to have three or four different motion offenses and set plays to go with.

those motion offenses that we have. So if we have four or five different set plays for one motion, that's a dribble drive, then a second motion is a continuity wheel, and then a third one might be a dribble handoff to ball screens continuity. So you want to have different set plays to go around there. So whatever your set play doesn't work, you can flow right into your motion offense. So you might see teams that are really pesky up the sidelines. So you want to keep the ball off the side because they're going to trap you.

Yeah, and then they ready to you know, they they ready to get you so keep the ball off the side you play in the middle of the court So if they got a really big big we're gonna keep the ball in the middle of the court and now they're gonna have to guard us from the middle of the court so For all the coaches out there. You got to have different styles of play if you want to be successful You can't just live with one one thing only. I hear a lot of coaches say I just want to be great at one thing Well that one thing you might be great at

might be something that doesn't work for this weekend or this tournament or this game. So are you patient enough to be teaching different principles inside of different styles of motion that might be conducive for this game? Or are you a coach that's just going to say, well, this is my style and we can't win like this? So there's different scenarios that coaches got to kind of look at.

When it comes to us, we like to look at the teams we're playing. And if this is the style that they're playing, where they wanna be pesky up the side and trap us and be up the line a lot and make us go back door, well, we're gonna play in the middle of the court. And that way we can still get in all of our actions. A lot of our four and fives are actually threes anyway. So we want anybody and everybody to get the rebound and go as opposed to playing slow.

This is kind of a different kind of question. So your top players struggling from shooting the ball, how soon do you pull them and how long do you sit them? I see a lot in high school. You know, some of these coaches, right, they're playing freshmen and they put this freshman in and they mess up once and they throw them back on the bench after like a minute. Yeah. What does that do for their confidence? First of all? Yeah, number one, I see this a lot and I'm not judging any coach that does it. But if you move a freshman up, they least got to play, you know, great minutes.

on the varsity level. I'm not saying they need to start, I'm not saying they need to play half the game, but they need to play or they shouldn't be playing on varsity. And I know parents that only go to the schools where they know their kid is going to be on varsity right away. And I don't think that's right either. I think you got to develop and you got to play and you have to be around coaches that's going to be pushing you and players. So going back to your question, if you're a shooter like I am, you can't pull a player.

right away. You know, if they're struggling, you find ways to get them easy baskets, whether it's a free throw, whether it's a post play, whether it's a paint touch. But one thing as a shooter, you know, really good shooters are streaky, you know, they're going to miss forward and make their next forward. So you got to tell your shooters just to keep shooting the next play mentality. As long as they got the right footwork, right form, right feet, they got to keep shooting. Good shooters can't judge themselves on.

0 for 4 or 0 for 8, you got to keep shooting and keep doing it the right way. So if it's a one more pass and you're wide open and you turn down that shot, you know, and that's when you got to come out the game. You know, your confidence has to remain high, regardless if you're making or missing shots, because even if you're missing shots, you're a threat on the floor because they know that you can shoot the ball. So when a shooter does come out, you just keep reinforcing what they can do better.

to keep taking the right shots and also try to get yourself going in different ways. Be a good teammate, make the extra pass, be a great defender. Try to get a post touch, try to get an one, just to get your rhythm going. When you go to these big tournaments, you got 20, 30 courts in one room, but there's always a set of courts.

that are off by themselves. Explain what those are and who's playing on them. Yeah, those would be the main courts that are the main attractions that's probably got the top 150 players in a country that's playing on those courts. Or there might be that particular circuit have their own courts that they have their best teams on. And everyone who's playing in that event might be on the side courts. Still good competition, but they like to highlight some courts that are maybe UAA or Puma or Nike.

adidas they might just have their own court you know so you know that's that's what you're gonna see you gonna see all the eyes on those courts even some of the players they want to see the other players you know you know you take the kids over there hey check this play out and that's cool that's what the kids want i mean our boys saw one of their guys that played you know for overtime elite really high -ranked player this past weekend on the puma circuit

My boys and a couple of their teammates in fifth grade got pictures with them and they knew who he was. I didn't know who he was, but they knew and they want to watch the game. And little stuff like that is why it's important to have featured courts to say, wow, I can be there one day. And I'm not too far off playing these type of players. But that doesn't mean you're not gonna look at either though playing other courts because I think more kids gotta realize.

You don't have to play D1 ball. You can play NIA, play juggle. Yes, there's so much you can do. And that's the thing. When you play, just like we play with our girls at the state fair, and we had the USJN tournament, they had their Blue Star courts, and they had their regular courts. And we had girls, we're not on the Blue Star league, but we had 15 to 20 coaches watching each one of our games.

And for us, it's about the program you play for, if they're promoting you, if they're getting the coaches out to come and watch you play. It's really about the promotion, more so than it is about which team you play for. You want to be for a program that's going to put their best foot forward of getting their guys and girls into school. You had a lot of, I mean, your seniors this year played for you last year. Almost everybody's got an offer, right? Yes.

It's pretty spectacular. I wrote about it about two weeks ago. We just got done wrapping up our boys. So on our top two teams, we had 21 kids. 18 of the 21 are going to play from Division 1 to Division 3. The other three just decided not to play. They had chances to. Everyone on the girls' side, we only had six girls graduating the 24th class.

They're all going to play. So it's remarkable in our seven years that we get to the point where our first group is through the door and 18 of the first 21 on the boys side is gone. And every girl who played for us is going somewhere to play next year. So we're excited about that. And the groups are only getting bigger and better behind that first group. So kudos to them of starting this train.

you know, scholarships and Division one players, Division two players. So it's it's going to be a real treat to see the next 10 years. When you're watching the level play that you're seeing, what is the one skill you wish you could teach over and over? What's the what's the most important skill to teach? Being a good passer, I think is number one. If you're a good passing team, that means your your continuity is really you can. Yes. I mean, if if you pass the ball well.

And you can dribble. Those would be the two main things and obviously shooting. If you can do those three things really well. But passing is number one. I mean, I can't tell you how many times a bad pass gets to a shooter and they can't shoot the shot they want or a team is getting trapped and they can't pass out of it. So that's one thing we want to teach is being a good passing team and being a good ball handling team. I don't like overball handlers who dribble too much.

So, you know, that ball handling has to be something like that.

And then what is the skill that you think kids are lacking the most or lacking most of that you see? I will say. I know you want to me is skill is confidence. That was one of them. I saw it on Twitter. Come to practice, if anything mentally prepared. Yeah, they're they're losing their confidence way too too fast.

And I think it's the work ethic they do on a daily basis that kind of helps them prepare for that confidence. But I think playing hard is a skill set. I've said that many of times. I think you can't teach some hustle that certain players bring. I would say the desire to be a junkyard dog, that skill set is gone. I think everyone is into the Euro steps, the...

that multiple moves to a step back three. Their skill set is getting higher, but the intensity and tangibles, the toughness, the togetherness, like we said, the ball handling and passing, it's more individual than it is about the team right now. And that's what I think is missing, is the skill set of, can I be better by helping someone else be better? Or is it about me?

And too much in AAU, especially when you get to the recruiting world, it's about them. So me having a new group of U -17 players who are all really dynamic on the boy side. First two weekends, we went four and four because those guys are so talented, but it was about them. As soon as I called it, what can I do? What can I highlight I can make? Now they playing for me, who I tell them.

Like after two dribbles, pass half court, if you're not passing the ball, you're coming out of the game. It is what it is. So we're watching film and have buy -in and togetherness and continuity. And then we had two weeks off and then we went 4 -0 this past weekend. And we had six guys in double figures in every game, as opposed to one guy the two weekends before that. So the buy -in, they see it now. It's like, this does work.

You know, and it's just fun to groom and to grow teams. I always tell coaches, don't look at your last group. Because you can't compare your groups. You got to take this group for where it is and where they started. And eventually they're going to get there to where they are. Just like we don't want the kids to get too high and low, us as coaches can't get too high and low because people are going to leave after a week. People are going to leave after two weeks.

the AAU portal is gonna be happening. But the kids that sticks with you and you get to teach them the nuances of the game, those are the kids you wanna develop and grow and get better. So I would say that as a skill set of thinking about less of me, more of we, and having a junkyard dog mentality, a skill set of 8 a picking up full cord, of taking charge as being.

a great teammate. 8 a full court is brutal. It's brutal. You know, you see someone picking you up at 8 a You're like, damn, what did I walk into? I had two 8 a games this past weekend. Yeah. And just imagine, though, if someone's picking you up full court at 8 a and what that looks like. And it's just a continuous, the whole team is doing it. You're like, wow. We were down eight points and like.

30 seconds. Yeah, right. Time out. You know, my job and what I say as a coach is let the other team call the first time out, you know, because you're setting the tone. That means you're setting the tone of where this game is going to go. And if I see, you know, and I tell my girls this, especially if I see a tournament where it says six fouls until you foul out and it's 10 fouls until the one and one. it's over.

it is about to be a dog fight for that team because we're about to run and jump, foul, hack, you know, trap you, take charges, get on the floor for loose balls. The other team is going to be crying, you know, about how hard you guys are playing. But that's what you want, you know, because that's what college coaches want to see. So if there's a skill set I will want to see more of is being a junkyard dog and less me and more we.

After first practice, I asked the boys, I'm like, so what do you think happened? What was one of the things that I think you guys should have did better? And they're like, well, we should have been more confident, not played so scared. And then I stopped, and I'm like, all right. So after those first two games, we went to the hotel and jumped on the playground with the same kind of team, the same kind of size.

And you guys weren't afraid at all. You jumped right in there and you played pick up basketball against that same type of caliber team. Why don't you do that on the basketball court? And the looks on their faces were like, I don't know. Well, it's a couple of things. It's the social media world where they see kids and they see people and they see these type of athletes and they're trying to be like, I got to go against this team. they got that on their chest. So they already.

psyched out about the game, which causes them to freeze up in the game because of what they're wearing on their jersey. You know, my era, we wanted to play against teams with different high level jerseys because that means you get to go against them and show who you are. Right now, some of our kids get intimidated, especially early in the season when the continuity is not there yet. They get more intimidated because they still thinking about individually, I'm going against this team.

not we are going against that team. Because they all have that self -doubt and that self -reflection of, I can play on that level. It's about I instead of no, we can beat that team. So that's usually what happens during the first half of the season is getting to that aspect of getting out of I and more of we. And then you have parents got to realize.

Our first tournament's not going to be pretty. We're going to learn each other. We're getting to try to figure some stuff out. Yeah. You know, we may not have all our sets in. Right, right. It takes a while. I mean, most of us have three weeks before our first tournament just based on how spring break is and different things like that. So it's not going to be pretty. Our top team didn't look pretty the first couple of weekends. But you've got to get out there and do it, regardless of how the end game looks. And my message to the parents is, you know, judge the season.

at the end of it, not the beginning of it. And so many times that you go week to week and parents are leaving programs or coming to a program. It gets hard to, continuity and chemistry goes a long way. So you gotta let teams jail and figure each other out and players gotta figure each other's strengths and weaknesses out and so does the coaches. I was talking to my brother earlier. We're talking about Yanis and stuff being hurt and.

how they're going to manage his minutes. And he's like, how do these NBA players all do it back in the day of Jordan? And how do they play 82 games without getting hurt? And it's like, OK, Jordan didn't do five euro steps a game. You know, Berianis is going to get hurt and stuff. Right, right, right. The skill level is so much more now that these guys are tweaking their bodies. Yes, yes. But I also think that it's a mentality, too. When they when it.

When it became normal to miss games, I will say that Spurs with Coach Pop with the game management, he started that. I think the mentality of the players kind of dropped from there. They used to wear it as a badge of honor to play all 82 and to play in a playoff from there. It was a badge of honor. So now these players are, they know that they got to get to a certain amount of games to be considered for awards.

and different things like that. So they don't even, you know, they sit out back to backs. They do different things. And I don't think it's right or fair because, you know, people pay their money to come see these players play. And sometimes they'd sit out just based on it being a back to back. But if anything, I think these players can play more because of what they have now. The private flights and the masseuses to I mean, they got everything they need for their bodies. But.

Again, I just think it's the mentality first of the players and what they can get away with in this era. As we start thinking about high school coming up, the WIA just voted down NIL for high school. What are your thoughts about high school NIL? Yeah, I think that was a good idea. I think it's even trickier in college. I mean, we see all the loopholes that they're going through in college.

But I think that was, you know, something smart. But I think also the kids should be able to do different things like camps and different things like that. If it's in their name, they should be compensated for that. You know, little things like that. How much how much money, though? Like, OK, picture picture young Joe Chapman and coming out of high school. Here's ten thousand dollars. Yeah. What are you going to do? I think.

retrospect on that is you dilute the young kids mind of thinking that's what it's about. Hard work, I think. Correct, correct. And I think that's the hardest part. If you because where I grew up, the drug dealers, gang bangers, they gave me shoes and different things like that. It was just a part of it. But if someone gave me that amount of money, ten thousand, twenty thousand, it's like, well, I'm not going to this is this is it gets you in trouble. It's going to get you in big trouble.

And now your mind is thinking about that money as opposed to continuing what college is about, education and furthering your life. You're thinking of the short game instead of the long game. And that's what I think is the problem with NIL is it's a short game. If we're doing that, it should be a financial literacy person helping them.

Digest their money of where it needs to go, especially in college and high school NBA How many players do you see that are broke after right, you know, they get hurt there may be a star two years They tear their ACL once or twice. Yep. Yeah, they're out of the league two years over right and they're broke, right? Right. No, I totally agree I think the NIO is something that's in college that it needed to happen It's just it just needs to be honed in a little bit of what the kids are making what the coaches are

It's just something that's, it's a hard error to coach in. But definitely the players need to be compensated. It's just how much. Did you see the sectionals that they voted already in and stuff? Yeah, I saw some of it today. I saw some coaches talking about it as well on Twitter. It's unfortunate and it's fortunate. I mean, it just depends on what side of the spectrum you've kind of followed on with that. But you can never know if they -

get it right or wrong. It's this preference of where you are as a program, really, and who you're trying to see. Are you trying to duck the best competition until you get to state? Or are you OK with playing some of those teams early on and playing them in non -conference to kind of get a feel for it? All right. Well, that'll be a wrap for our season. I know you got stuff you got to do and stuff. Yeah. I know when we come back next season, there's going to be a lot of information.

And probably some announcements from you and stuff you got going on. Yeah. A lot of CBA stuff and some good stuff. Yeah, we got a lot of good stuff coming. You know, so stay tuned. We're thank you for season one. It's been a journey so far with this. It's been been great for us to get a podcast and talk about the integral parts of CBA and and having different guests on. And we got a lot lined up for season two. So we will be in a gym every day.

doing a day -to -day work with camps and clinics and training. A lot of great camps coming up. Yeah, a lot of good stuff coming up. So visit our website at ChapmanBasketball .com to enroll your kid or any other kid that want to join in on what we're doing. We're happy to work with rookies from three -year -olds, four -year -olds, all the way up to 17, 18 -year -olds. So take a look at our website. Thank you for joining our podcast. And we'll be back shortly. All right. Thank you, everybody. Take care.