Last week new Michigan coach Dusty May spent a day with the Miami Heat staff, then flew to Pittsburgh to trade ideas with Utah Jazz coach Will Hardy and Charlotte Hornets assistant Josh Longstaff. May will read any book or study any basketball team’s film if he thinks it might equip him with an idea or a play or a leadership tactic.
And part of his continuing education is a podcast from two coaches most basketball fans have never heard of.
While driving to lunch last February, May listened to Olympia Milano coach Ettore Messina break down the spacing concepts in his offense. The previous week, the voice of Tokyo Hachioji Bee Trains head coach Tyler Gatlin had come through May’s speakers. The next week he would hear from former NBA head coach Stan Van Gundy.
The globe-spanning lessons came from the Slappin’ Glass Podcast, which has turned into a word-of-mouth hit for coaches at every level of the sport, four years and 201 episodes in.
“I listen to every episode,” May said. “My staff listens to just about every episode. I think a majority of college coaches probably listen to it regularly.”
Jeff Van Gundy stumbled upon one of the hosts’ video breakdowns — they also have a weekly newsletter and YouTube channel — and was so impressed he called them up to say how great it was. Since then, he has encouraged some of his best friends in the business to go on their show, which is how two obscure basketball coaches who played together at Division III Chapman University end up on a call with Hall of Fame football coach Bill Parcells.
“Everybody’s wary of going on a podcast where they veer off into things that they aren’t able to discuss,” Van Gundy said. “They know they’re going to be straight basketball. There’s no ‘gotcha’ questions. It’s not overly dramatic clickbait, like ‘who’s the best player?’ … They’re truly trying to help coaches coach better.”
The show’s guest list features some of the most respected basketball coaches in the country — Brad Stevens, Geno Auriemma, Rick Pitino, Tom Thibodeau, Mike D’Antoni, the Van Gundy brothers, John Beilein, to name a few — and just as many big names in the international game. What started as a self-improvement project for the hosts has become a shop-talk paradise for coaches and hoops diehards at every level.
“You can put one of those on in an hour and you’re generally a better coach by the end of it,” said Saint Louis coach Josh Schertz.
Carney and Krikorian in Berlin, the night the idea for the podcast was hatched. (Courtesy of Dan Krikorian)
Dan Krikorian’s initial plan was to be a musician when he graduated from Chapman in 2007. Between tours, he made extra money giving shooting lessons, coaching a youth team, and eventually coaching the junior varsity team at his high school alma mater. “Once I stepped foot in the gym to coach, I was like, ‘OK, this is what I want to do,’” he said. In 2013, Krikorian returned to Chapman as an assistant coach. This summer, he was elevated to head coach.
Pat Carney played professionally for 12 seasons in some of Germany’s top basketball leagues. In 2018 he retired and stayed in Germany to pursue a coaching career. The two young coaches and former teammates stayed connected by phone, studying other teams around the world and talking ball. Over beers one night in Berlin after Krikorian’s band had played a show, Krikorian suggested they turn those jam sessions into a podcast and interview the coaches whose systems piqued their interest.
The idea was mostly forgotten until a year later, when Krikorian and Carney were discussing the motion offense of Division III Yeshiva University, which had just gone 29-1 running a modern-day replica of Bob Knight’s system at Indiana. Krikorian and Carney wanted to pick the brain of coach Elliot Steinmetz, so they set up a Zoom. Right before the meeting, Krikorian suggested he record it. He already had all of the sound and editing equipment; if it went well, he could turn the interview into their first episode.
The pandemic had made it more commonplace for coaches across the world to connect over video call. The podcast’s first episode, published on Aug. 17, 2020, was not as polished as what the Slappin’ Glass guys produce today, but they enjoyed it so much they decided to make it a weekly routine.
The audience was small at first — “our moms,” Krikorian jokes — but they got some bumps whenever a famous guest joined the show, like Jeff Van Gundy in February of 2021. The hosts put together a list of coaches they’d love to interview, took suggestions from coaching buddies, and then started shooting their shot. To their surprise, they rarely heard no.
“They ask really good questions,” said Alabama assistant Ryan Pannone, the show’s third guest while coach of the G-League Erie Bayhawks. “And as a result, because their product is good and they’ve had good coaches speak on it, more coaches are willing to come on because they listen to it.”
Their curiosity and research seems to loosen lips. Beilein, who has always been guarded with what he shared publicly about his two-guard offense, explained the teaching points to the Slappin’ Glass guys without hesitation, then praised the questions they had asked him.
“I haven’t talked basketball to anybody like this in a bit,” Belien said near the end of the interview.
Most coaches approach podcast interviews expecting to be dragged into story time, but the Slappin’ Glass guests quickly find themselves delving into the intricacies of their methods.
“That’s the ideal for us,” Carney says. “It’s not an interview. Let’s talk some hoops.”
The show’s ethos: Everything that a coach does is interesting.
“The best thing about basketball, and what keeps us having conversations fresh and new every week, is that there’s so many ways to win,” Carney said. “There’s so many ways to teach, so we’re never assuming there’s one right way. Otherwise we would have probably had that conversation, and we would have just wrapped up shop.”
Krikorian and Carney go into every interview with a few ideas of what they want to talk about from background reading and film study, but their ability to listen and ask insightful follow-up questions carries the conversation and sometimes leads them down a rabbit hole.
“That’s our favorite part of the podcast is when it goes someplace we didn’t even expect,” Krikorian said.
They often get coaches into uncharted territory during their regular segment called “Start, Sub, Sit,” a basketball-centric variation on a common forced-choice game. When Stevens joined the show, they asked him which of three Ted Lasso quotes he would start, sub and sit. (Stevens’ Start: “You know what the happiest animal on earth is? It’s a goldfish. You know why? It’s got a 10-second memory. Be a goldfish” — because you should never worry about what someone says about you or worry about missing a shot. “I love that,” Stevens said, “Let it go. Have shot amnesia.”)
Everything always comes back to the game, never going on a tangent that wouldn’t be applicable to coaching.
“We know the coach has 45 minutes to get on the treadmill, or they’re commuting for 40 minutes to work,” Krikorian says. “We don’t want to waste one second of their time with something that’s not valuable.”
Kirkorian (left) was named the head coach at his alma mater in August. (Alex Vazquez for Chapman University)
Relationships with coaches like Van Gundy have helped Krikorian and Carney land some of their most well-known guests, but what brings them the most pride is that the show’s downloads and listens no longer depend as heavily on name recognition. And they’ve been able to give some talented but lesser-known coaches a platform to share their knowledge and ideas.
“If you think about it, like the best players, they progress. They find a level. That’s not always true in coaches,” Van Gundy said. “Some do. And some, either by choice or by just lack of opportunity, don’t. But I think too many fans think the best coaches rise just like the players do. Not true.”
Krikorian and Carney have created a nice side hustle. Their podcast has multiple sponsors, and they average 30,000 to 40,000 downloads per month. Their newsletter has over 7,000 subscribers, with close to 1,000 of those paying for their premium content.
While their content is consumable for anyone who loves the game — not just coaches — it’s a niche audience. But the goal was never to become famous; it was to become better coaches.
“With coaching, you have to be proficient,” Carney says. “You have to know yourself. You have to work hard. But a lot of it is relationships, too, and this has allowed us to build genuine relationships and continue conversations past the podcast that have directly impacted our careers.”
During the interview for this story, Carney was in Poland with the German under-20 national team. The head coach of that team, Martin Schiller, was a guest in 2022 and kept in touch with Carney, eventually reaching out to ask Carney to join his staff this summer.
Krikorian says he’d be lying if he didn’t think about one day coaching at a higher level than D-III, but he’s living a pretty good life now as the head coach of his alma mater, in the backyard of where he grew up, building a sustainable business that was born from a whim during the pandemic.
“The people that I’m able to call for advice now,” Krikorian says. “It’s a dream of ours, honestly.”
ESPN analyst Fran Fraschilla, a fan and two-time guest, says what the Slappin’ Glass guys have done reminds him of an era long ago when coaches like Hubie Brown and Dean Smith went overseas to teach the game.
“What’s happened over two generations or three generations is the world is now teaching the game of basketball back to us,” Fraschilla says. “Slappin’ Glass has provided an incredible menu of international basketball ideas. They are the conduit for great basketball coaching information.”
(Top illustration photos courtesy of Alex Vasquez and @ralf.zimmermann.fotografie)
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5703115/2024/08/22/slapping-glass-podcast-basketball-coaches/
