ZAK BOISVERT – APRIL 2017 COACHING NOTES Sean Payton talks up Malcolm Butler amid negotations (ESPN.com) -"You know, coming out of a small town in Mississippi and through junior college and into West Alabama, it's pretty amazing," Payton told Xtra 360 radio in San Diego on Friday. "And the first three years he's had in this league, shoot, he's had a tremendous amount of success, winning two Super Bowls in three years and being a big part of a team that's accomplished a lot. So I'd say he's humble, but when you watch the tape, he plays with a chip on his shoulder.” The Luke Walton All-Stars (ESPN.com) -Beasley has even shocked the Bucks by easing into the role of sage veteran. Craig Robinson, in his first season as Milwaukee's vice president of player and organizational development, has tried to build chemistry by inviting players and team employees for dinners on the road. Beasley says yes every time. Younger players prod Beasley about his weird career path -- about washing out of the NBA, and adjusting to being (almost) alone in China. He answers every question. "It has been terrific for our guys to listen to his life story," Robinson said, "and hear from someone who has been where they don't want to go." Robinson pushes players to order something at those dinners they've never eaten. It's a way for them to expose themselves, learn about their teammates, and tease each other. Some blanch, but Beasley is game for anything. He taunts more cautious teammates until they cave. He badgered Thon Maker into sucking down oysters during the team's visit to New Orleans. "Thon won't be eating them again," Robinson laughed. -Playing decisively makes slow people seem fast. Embracing a “junkyard dog” mentality, Simpson emerges for Michigan (Michigan Daily) -In the locker room before Tuesday’s contest against Michigan State, John Beilein posted a picture of a dog on the board where he does his pregame talks. He wanted his team to look into the eyes of the image of the “junkyard dog” to understand the anger and the desperation the canine had. -“Today was perfect,” Beilein said. “They were there. They were angry. They were like junkyard dogs. That was the whole idea. We had to go out there angry and play with that edge we so desperately need.” The 5 Plays You Need to Know About Heading Into the NBA Playoffs (The Ringer) -The relationship between pick-and-roll offense and defense is not unlike the relationship between the flu and its vaccine. Each year, a new vaccine must be created to minimize the flu’s potential damage on the immune system. Teams have used different variations of the pick-and-roll for years, and new variants became more prominent last season. ZAK BOISVERT – APRIL 2017 COACHING NOTES How this UVM Basketball team was built (Burlington Free Press) -When coach John Becker led Vermont to the 2012 NCAA tournament in his first season, the Catamounts utilized a flex offense. The roster was loaded with players holding New England ties. Fast-forward to 2017 and the look of Becker’s Catamounts appears vastly different. Players hail from all over — Vancouver to Toronto to Arkansas to Indiana — while the Catamounts employ a ball-screen motion offense better suited for today’s game. Vermont has evolved and, five years later, has reached the same destination as the 2011-12 outfit: The Big Dance. -Without changing the program’s core principles of toughness and defense, UVM widened its recruiting net, overhauled its offense and overcame injuries and transfers to continue to remain a mid-major power out of the America East Conference. -“One thing I didn’t want to do and one thing I tried to stay true to is not taking guys for the sake of taking them. Making sure they were the right guys, from a character standpoint, from an academic standpoint, from a talent standpoint,” Becker said. “We stayed patient and ended up with Josh and Payton and then added Lamb.” -“Along the way we were able to maintain our culture and style of play and, at the same time, continue to accumulate talent,” Cieplicki said. “What’s never changed has been how hard we need to play, defend and rebound.” -“When we recruit, we want the best kids possible and then we morph our system to the players and not say, ‘We are only going to recruit a back-to-the-basket player,’” Cieplicki said. “That’s all come to a head this year, we’ve been so versatile and able to do things so well on both sides of the ball. It’s a credit to the players, they are able to handle things.” How James Johnson turned into incredible Heat weight-loss success story (Palm Beach Post) - Weight loss programs use before-and-after photos to attract customers to their service. The Heat use before and after photos to attract players to their “culture.” James Johnson is proof. -What got the 30-year-old Johnson to finally make his body a priority after seven mediocre NBA seasons? Was it the fact that Johnson was forced to take an underwhelming one-year deal worth $4 million this past summer in the middle of a free agency period that included unprecedented spending? Or was Johnson tired of just scratching the surface of how good of a player he could be? Probably a little bit of both. But the Heat deserve some credit, too. -“I love where he’s going,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said of Johnson. “We want to continue to be open to where he can get to next. Hopefully we’re not going to stop here. Hopefully there’s another level or two or three, whatever it may be, that he can get to.” -“It’s super real,” Johnson said. “This culture is real. Not only that, you know the kind of practices we have. We have those kind of practices where you can’t go out and hang out all night and think you’re going to be able to come to practice and really go hard because I’ll call you out, everybody ZAK BOISVERT – APRIL 2017 COACHING NOTES on this team will call you out. We won’t leave it to the coaches to call you out. We take care of that ourselves. That’s the inside of this locker room.” Chalk it up: In an era of constant change, Self has created a contender at Kansas (SI.com) -He establishes the rules and the tone for the Jayhawks early, usually when five-on-five competition begins in the summer. Everything is live. There is no out of bounds. Nothing is over until the ball is scored or secured after a defensive stop. It fosters a sort of brute peer pressure; Kansas assistant Norm Roberts recalls then-freshmen Andrew Wiggins and Wayne Selden staring idly before the 2013–14 season as big men Jamari Traylor and Tarik Black tore at a loose ball. "What happens is, the other guys will look at you like, 'Go get the ball! What's wrong with you, man?'" Roberts says. A couple trips later, the two young wings pounced on an up-for-grabs ball themselves. "That was something that stuck out to me, and it was coming from older guys that were here four or five years that were diving on the ball out of bounds in a practice that was a month or two before the season," Lucas says. "I was like, 'This is no joke.'" -The structure is sound and unwavering. Kansas begins practices with the same brief dribbling, passing and shooter close-out periods. Like the defensive shell drill and others that follow, these are mainstays. "It wouldn't be a practice if we didn't do them," senior forward Hunter Mickelson says. The routine is designed to create muscle memory. It insures against slippage in something as simple as footwork when running down a shooter, or guards and big men working in tandem to defend a certain action. This in part explains why Kansas has ranked in the top 11 nationally in defensive efficiency in 10 of its past 12 seasons, despite roster and talent fluctuations. -It is steady success because Self maintains a steady suspicion that no one is doing his best. This not restricted to passing, cutting or shooting from the corner. You can eat better. You can get more rest. You can think more positively. "How many people in life ever get totally against their ceiling?" he says. "As great as you are, there's probably something you could do, at some point in time, to make you a little bit better, in some way shape or form. There's gotta be something." -This is when his players hear the Ten Percent Speech. "He always talks about, 'If we just give 10% more, we'll be a lot better,'" says Traylor, the fifth-year senior forward. "He always asks, 'Mari, how do you think you played? As far as your effort goes, you think you could do a little bit better?' I'm like, yeah, I think I could probably do a little bit better coach. 'You think you could [be] ... 10% better?' I'm like, 'Yeah, I probably could do 10% better.' He's like, 'If you do 10% better, Wayne [Selden] does 10% better, Frank [Mason], you do 10% better, and if I can coach you guys 10% better, too, we'll be a lot better." ZAK BOISVERT – APRIL 2017 COACHING NOTES -Moments later, the workout begins like every workout begins.