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I'm just trying to teach them how to be better basketball players.

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Connor Har is the video Coordinator for the Osceola magic of the NBA's G League, managing all film related tasks and supporting player development, coaching and team strategy.

Har previously spent five years at NCAA Division 2 West Liberty University where he served as both assistant and head assistant coach.

Known for its uptempo style, West Liberty boasts the highest winning percentage in NCAA men's basketball since 2009.

Har also served as the head assistant coach at Great Lakes Christian College.

Har contributed to multiple one nationally ranked teams, five regular season conference titles, three conference championships, six national tournament appearances and one national championship runner up.

Connor has also developed the Basketball Strategy Channel on Twitter and YouTube, aiding thousands of coaches in improving their craft hey Hoop Heads.

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Visit coachingportfolioguide.com hoop heads to learn Grab your notebook before you listen to this episode with Connor Har, video Coordinator for the Osceola Magic of the NBA G League.

Hello and welcome to The Hoop Heads podcast.

It's Mike Clemsing here without my co host Jason Sunkel tonight.

But I am pleased to be joined by Connor Haar, video coordinator for the NBA's G League, Osceola Magic.

Connor, welcome to the Hoop Heads pod.

Happy to be on here.

Thanks for having me, Mike.

Absolutely thrilled to have you on, Connor.

Looking forward to diving into the interesting things that you've been able to do in your young career thus far.

Let's start by going back in time to when you were a kid.

Tell me a little bit about some of your first experiences with the game.

What made you fall in love with it?

Yeah, so, you know, basketball has always been a big part of who I am.

I grew up in Youngstown, Ohio, which is a predominantly football dominated area.

So, you know, it was kind of unique being somebody that, you know, really truly enjoyed the game of basketball and loved the game of basketball when most of your friends were, you know, playing football all the time.

But it was, it was really enjoyable for me because it was something that, you know, my family had a love for as well.

So my dad grew up playing.

He was a really good player at Watkins Memorial High School in Pataskill, Ohio, near Columbus.

Ended up playing a year at Walsh University when they were naia.

So, you know, it was always something that we could kind of bond over.

And he ended up, he was a longtime ref as well in Ohio high school.

So he's always loved the game of basketball.

And then I had uncles, cousins, other people in my family that were all avid basketball players and all big hoops fans.

So it was something that I could really connect with my family with as well and, you know, kind of got me into the game of basketball at a young age.

So talk to me about the influence of your dad, both in terms of what you were like as a player and then sort of when you think about that influence today as a coach, what are some pieces of your dad that you're still carrying with you even today as a coach?

Honestly, like my dad, me and him worked a lot playing basketball together.

And like, I think that honestly out of anything, like the hard work that he put in with me has kind of allowed me to do the same in coaching.

On top of that, like, I wasn't very good.

So, you know, I think his patience with me and, you know, probably not getting, not getting too upset with me, you know, because I, you know, wasn't as good as he was probably as a kid.

But he allowed me, he showed me kind of what it meant to work Hard.

And I improved a lot as a player.

I didn't end up playing that long.

Like, I didn't play in high school or anything like that.

So, you know, I was actually a much better track and cross country athlete.

So I did that in high school instead.

A big part of my coaching, though, I think comes from my mother.

So my mother's a second grade teacher in the Austin town school district around Youngstown.

And she is, through and through, an educator.

Like, she loves everything about education, she loves everything about teaching, she loves everything about her students.

She's one of those teachers that, like, you know, all the kids come back and see and all the kids love, like, they all want to hang out with her and, you know, all that stuff.

So I think a lot of my parallels in coaching, I like to think of coaching as teaching, and a lot of those came from watching my mom teach.

Because when I was younger, like, I would go in a room every single day after school.

And as I got older, like, I would start doing work in the class too, like helping out the kids with their reading and, you know, helping out the kids with their spelling and their math and all that stuff.

So that was really where I think my love for coaching started.

And it began with the.

My love of teaching and, you know, my mom's love for teaching.

Did you start thinking about coaching as an actual career and a path that you could go down in your life as opposed to, hey, I like basketball, I like working with the kids in my mom's class.

It's kind of fun.

When did it sort of dawn on you that, hey, maybe I can really do this for a living?

Was there a specific light bulb moment or was it more of kind of a slow burn?

I think it was a slow burn.

I originally knew that I wanted to work in basketball.

I didn't know at what capacity that would be in.

So when I graduated high school, I moved to Columbus with my dad and I started thinking about what I wanted to do for a career, because I hadn't really given it much thought, truthfully, up until that point.

And I went to Columbus State Community College.

I took classes there.

And that first year I was at Columbus State, I just really sat down and I thought about what I wanted for myself, what it was that I enjoyed.

And the one constant that I kept coming to was how much I love the game of basketball.

So originally I started out and I wanted to be a scout, like, whether it was high school, you know, NBA, anything really, like.

So I started putting out NBA draft articles online and I got my first paid job the winter of my freshman year of college writing NBA draft articles.

And then after that, during, like, the NBA draft cycle, and once the season ended in, like, March and April, I got approached by an agent that I was writing about one of his clients.

The client's name is William McDowell White.

So he came out of the NBA draft in, like, 2019.

I want to say he was draft eligible, an Australian point guard, and I was writing about him.

So the agent invited me to Williams pro day out in Vegas.

And there were a ton of really, really high level players there.

There was a ton of really high level NBA personnel there.

Like, I remember seeing Adrian Rojanowski and Greg Popovich and DeMarcus Cousins was working out on one of the courts next to us, and I was just like, man, this is crazy.

Like, I see all these people that, like, I've grown up watching on TV and seeing.

And I think at that point, that was when it really hit me that, like, you know, I have a chance at this.

Like, this is something that I can do and I can do for a living.

And then as I started to get more into the draft space, I started working with a lot of different agents.

And what I would do is I would make either statistical presentations or videos to help their clients either obtain new contracts if they were already in the NBA, or to try to boost their draft stock if they were coming into the draft.

And they'd pay me a little bit of money for that.

In my opinion, they paid me way more than they ever should for a five minute video.

And I was like, I was willing to do it for free.

And they're like, no, you know, I need to pay you.

And I was like, okay.

And I look at it and I get a Venmo for 500 bucks for a five minute video.

And I'm like, whoa, this doesn't seem like it's worth it, but yeah, so that's when I kind of decided, like, I thought I could really do this.

And then as I got a little bit more into the scouting space, that was kind of where the teaching part came in.

And, like, the influence of my mom is I felt like the scouting profession as a whole was just kind of lonely.

You, you know, you just sit and you watch film.

And I love watching film.

I take pride in watching more film than almost anybody else.

But, you know, it lacked the human interaction part.

And that was when I started to turn my focus towards coaching.

So when I did that, I emailed the head coach at Columbus State Community College.

At the time when I was a freshman, they already had their manager spot filled for the season and everything.

So I had to wait until next year.

And that's kind of where my feet got wet was at Columbus State being a manager for their basketball team.

And, you know, it was basic manager stuff.

Like, all I did was really like, run the scoreboard, mop the floors, do the laundry, forget a couple jerseys a couple times, and, you know, just kind of figure out the lay of the land and, you know, try to understand, you know, what college basketball was all about.

All right, I want to go backwards before I jump to some questions about that first coaching experience.

So the video piece of it, when you're putting that together for the first time, what's your process?

What are you thinking about?

How are you trying to make what you're doing unique?

Just what was the angle that you took as you were preparing those five minute videos for people that they felt like they were worth paying you for?

What was your process for figuring out what you needed to include in those?

And just how did you kind of map out that scouting path?

For lack of a better way of saying it?

Yeah, I think the important thing that I highlighted really was I tried to show how players would fit into a particular role.

So it wasn't just a highlight tape.

You know, it was.

And these guys I like, it wasn't guys that were established NBA players.

It was guys that, you know, were barely in the league, might have been in the G league at one point in time, were overseas trying to get in the league.

So it was more about understanding what type of role they could play and how they could support an NBA roster.

So, you know, for some guys, it would be, you know, maybe I'm highlighting their ability to pass the ball.

I'm highlighting their ability to make correct rotations every single time on defense.

I'm highlighting, you know, how many charges they take, like, whatever the thing is, whatever the ancillary skill is that they need in order to complement the other guys on the roster, I tried to be able to highlight that as much as possible.

And then I think the other thing I did a really good job of as well is like, I never tried to blindly make statements.

So everything that I put in the video, there would be like, you know, subtitles in the video, text in the video as well.

And everything that I tried to put in the video would be supported statistically.

So, you know, it wasn't just like I was saying, oh, this guy's a really good passer, and they go and look up his stats and he has a negative assist to turnover ratio, you know.

So it's interesting that you describe the videos in that way, because I remember I had a conversation with Mike Procopio, who at the time was with the Dallas Mavericks as their director of player development.

And he talked to me a lot about the fact that guys at the back end of NBA rosters or guys who are trying to make it to the league, which are the guys that you're describing, right, that you did the videos for.

He said so many of those guys don't always have an understanding of the fact that you have to be able to, as you said, play a role and fit a role on a given team.

And for so long in their careers.

They've probably been the best player on their teams for a long time, from the time they were a kid.

And we all know that when you're the best player on the team, right, you get the ball and you kind of get to do stuff and you get to shoot and you get to have the ball in your hands and maybe defense is a little bit secondary if you're the star of your team.

And so there's all these factors that go into it, and then all of a sudden they get to a level where they're no longer the best player, right?

And they have to then figure out, what is it that I can do, what are my one or maybe two skills at the most that I can bring to the table that will make me valuable as the 10th guy, the 11th guy, now as a two way guy on a roster, and he was really the first person on the podcast that I ever talked to about that particular concept.

So I think it's pretty cool that you had that insight as you were kind of getting started to create videos that were highlighting the things that, yeah, when you're at the back end of a roster, no one wants to see you play like LeBron with the ball in your hands for the entire highlight tape because you're just not going to, you're not going to do that.

If you're going to be the 11th guy on a roster, you're never, ever going to get an opportunity to do that.

But you might, as you said, you might have an opportunity to play six minutes as the backup point guard and get the ball to the next guy, or you might have an opportunity to be a great defender and knock down corner threes or whatever it is, whatever that role might be.

And like I said, Mike was the first guy that kind of talked to me a little bit about that and almost.

We got into a discussion about how it's almost flipped in terms of when you think about how we teach kids to play basketball when they're young, right?

You want the kids to develop every skill and then the higher level you go, it's almost like a lot of those skills, not that they completely drop off, but the utilization of those by role players certainly is diminished compared to what they were previously, if that makes any sense.

So I think, I think it's pretty cool that you had that insight when you started out.

Yeah, it's.

It's very funny too.

I was actually just on the phone with another coach on my way here about this.

His name's Ryan Streets.

He coached at Potomac State JUCO in West Virginia, a good friend of mine.

And we were talking about that even with coaching where, you know, you're talking about your progression as a young coach.

And the one thing that I always tried to do was I tried to be very self reflective and hone in on my strengths and really work on those strengths and make those strengths even greater.

And then, you know, when I had time in my free time, whatever it is, kind of fill in the weaknesses.

But even as a player, like I think it's huge because you kind of have to, you have to come to that moment of self realization.

You have to look at yourself in the mirror and just accept the fact that this is where I'm at and it might not be where I end up, but this is where I am right now.

And it's kind of.

It's about checking your ego at the door basically.

And you have the skills that you need and it's just a matter of honing in on the strengths that you have as a basketball player and kind of shying away from your weaknesses until you know, it's time for the off season or whatever.

And you can still work on your strengths and as much as you can, but now you can spend a little bit more time on your weaknesses as well.

And it's just to me, it always seems when you think about it, like I said, counterintuitive of here you are at the highest level with these guys who are ultra, incredibly talented and yet they still have to be able to understand and as you said, be self aware that hey, that's not my role.

If I'm going to stick in the league, I got to be able to do X and Y tremendously well and I got to put A, B and C off to the side right now.

And yeah, I can work on that in the off season and maybe I can try to increase my role.

But if I'm going to stick on a roster or I'm going to actually get some minutes, I've got to be able to be really good at the things that I do.

And I think it's also a good point that you just talked about, right, as a coach that I can think of a ton of coaches that we've interviewed on the podcast, Connor, who've talked about, hey, I started out and I was an offensive guy and that became sort of my niche.

And then eventually I got a head coaching position and I had to shore up what I was doing defensively or I had to figure out what my philosophy was on the defensive side of the ball because I had just always sort of focused on offense as an assistant coach.

And so it is interesting how there's parallels between the playing and the coaching when it comes to that in terms of your ability to sort of rise up the ladder in the coaching ranks.

Tell me about that first year as a manager at Columbus State.

Did you get an opportunity to kind of sit in on anything and see anything behind the scenes, coaching wise or just what were your impressions of the coaching profession in that first year where you, you were kind of at least in the door, so to speak?

I loved it.

I loved every second of it.

I loved being in the gym.

I loved watching the guys compete.

We had a really good group of guys.

I think, if anything, what I learned from that experience because we had a really, really good team and we had a ton of talented players.

And that was when I always talk about, when I talk about like building a roster and roster construction with certain people and coaches.

Like, I always talk about how I have a firm belief that there's a baseline level of talent required to compete.

And then a lot of that from there, there's a lot of other external factors that play into, you know, how good of a team you are.

And I think that was like my first realization of, like, hey, I'm in college basketball now and there's tons of good teams with tons of good players.

And, you know, talent alone isn't just going to equate where you want to get to as a team.

So I think that was huge.

And then, you know, the Columbus State people, they were great to me.

They, you know, they allowed me to do some recruiting on the back end of, of my time there and it kind of went hand in hand as well because I, at the time when I was in Columbus, I started working for my, one of my best Friends, Zach Fleer at 270hoops.

And that was at the time They've kind of shifted to more of just like regular media now, sports media in Columbus.

But at that time, they were doing a lot of Columbus scouting.

So I would go to high school games every night when I could, and I would write scouting reports about players, and that allowed me to make a lot of connections with coaches as well, because, you know, I'd write some scouting reports and, you know, people would like them or, you know, they'd be interested in a guy that they don't know a lot about, and they'd reach out to me and we'd have a conversation.

And a lot of those people I still have relationships with to this day, and a lot of them have done really, really well.

Like Jared Calhoun, like, he's somebody that, you know, I would consider, you know, a friend and somebody that's helped me along the way.

And I met him at a Bishop Hartley game when he was recruiting a kid from there when he was at Youngstown State.

So, you know, it was just things like that where, you know, it helped me out tremendously.

And that time just kind of getting my feet wet and also allowing me to start getting involved in front of recruiting a little bit and evaluating players.

Take you to feel like you had a pretty good sense or feel for how good a kid was at the high school level and what level they could play at in the college game.

How long did that take you before you felt pretty confident?

Then when you're watching a kid, you're like, yeah, this kid's a D2 kid, or this kid can play mid major, division one.

How long did that take?

For a long time.

Honestly, like, it took a long time.

I.

Here's.

Here's the thing with that.

I.

I think the.

The biggest thing with it is there's a lot of scouts out there and not a lot of them are watching Division 3 basketball or watching NAIA basketball or watching JUCO basketball.

So, you know, I think it's tough when you're not, like, fully immersed in it.

Like, Everybody watches Division 1 basketball and everybody knows what's going on in Division 1 basketball.

But for me, like, it was not, probably not until I got to Westlim, where, you know, I really figured out, like, okay, this is a Division 2 player.

And before, when I was at Westlive, I was at Great Lakes.

And so, like, I got to see NAI players and D3 players.

And, you know, until then it was.

It was tough, like, and a lot of times, like, I Just try to focus on the player's game rather than just penciling them in to a level.

And you know, with a lot of coaches, like they know, like they know who they, like they know if they think a kid's good enough or not.

And you know, more or less.

For me, I felt like it was my job when I was doing that just to kind of give them a synopsis of, of the players game and what they're good at and what they're not good at.

And I tried to use that same method and that same strategy that I used in the NBA with the scouting that I did there with high school as well.

So like, I tried to focus a lot more on you know, guys passing ability, guys iq, different, you know, reads that they're making things like that where you know, I felt like at that time, at least from the people that I was, you know, working with, like, you know, I was kind of at the forefront of that where you know, I was talking a lot more technically about a player's game than just saying like, oh, this kid's explosive and he can shoot.

Right.

So you're dialing in on what skills they actually have that they're demonstrating on the floor.

Instead of making a grand projection about hey, this kid is this, or this kid's at this level, instead you're kind of being more granular and breaking it down in terms of their skill, which makes a lot of sense again as you're evaluating a kid.

And it probably helped you to be able to sort of dial in on those things too, to be able to.

Instead of trying to make a grand pla.

Proclamation about every kid of hey, this kid's a Division 3 kid, or this kid's a Division 2 kid, or this kid should be this.

Instead you're just looking at the skills and saying, hey, this kid can do this.

When I see him play, this kid maybe struggles in this particular area.

And I could see the value in that, both for you as developing yourself as a scout, but then also for the people who are reading what you're putting together on different players.

Talk about the opportunity at Great Lakes after you get done at Columbus State, just tell me how that opportunity comes to you.

Great Lakes was awesome.

Probably some of the most fun and the best time I've had in my coaching career.

Probably the most beneficial as well.

So the way I got connected at Great Lakes, it's really random.

I was up late at night.

I didn't really know what I was going to do.

I think at one point in time I was going to go try to do like a student manager, student assistant at Urbana.

And that was a school in Western Ohio that ended up shutting down.

Uh, so the coach that was there at the time, Nick Dials, he ended up leaving.

And so when he left, I.

I was just going there for him.

So I was like, you know, I'm.

I'm not going to Urbana for.

When, I don't know, the.

The coaching staff or, you know, the people that I'm going to be, you know, working with every day.

And so it was like, really late at night.

I was laying in my bed, I didn't know what I was going to do.

And I randomly came across a tweet from a guy named William Payne, who has a pretty big Twitter following.

He promotes players, is a big advocate of small college basketball, and just all around, like, a really, really good guy.

He actually was a college coach in Ohio for a brief time at Miami Hamilton, I believe.

And so he tweeted something saying there was this school in Michigan and they were looking for a student assistant or basically just somebody that can work for free.

So I messaged him.

He gave me Richard Westerland's contact information, who was the head coach at Great Lakes Christian at the time, that's now the head coach at University of Northwestern Ohio up in Lima.

And he.

I got connected with Rich.

Rich actually knew my boss at 2:70, Zach Fleer, really well.

So called Zach about me.

Zach gave me a really strong recommendation.

I went to go visit campus in Lansing, which is where Great Lakes was at.

And after that, it was pretty much history.

And the cool thing about Great Lakes is they didn't have any staff.

Like it was.

It was just Rich.

And he needed somebody to help him coach the team, obviously.

So he gave me a lot of responsibility, and I had no idea what I was doing, but I was on the court every day acting like I knew what I was doing.

So, you know, with that, I learned from a lot of trial and error.

And each day was such a fantastic learning experience for me where I failed.

I messed up.

I did things wrong.

Not that I always did things wrong.

Like, sometimes I got things right.

But, you know, it was just that period where I had all that responsibility with none of it being earned or, you know, afforded any type of way that Rich gave me really allowed me to grow as a basketball coach.

So when I was there, I was the assistant and I was the head JV coach, so I had my own JV team as well.

Because of gym availability, we practice at six in the Morning every single day.

So it was JV college, JV basketball practices at six in the morning usually don't go over too well.

But you know, it was, it was fantastic.

It was probably the, the best time I've ever had as a coach, the most learning that I've ever done as a coach.

And I said a big part of that was just trial and error and getting out there and you know, figuring out what it is that works for you, what it is that doesn't work for you.

And I know all young coaches talk about all the time like trying to find your voice as a coach and trying to find out who you are as a coach.

To me, that whole period was just me figuring out who I was as a coach, what I wanted to be, how I wanted to operate, how I wanted to communicate with players.

And a lot of those philosophies and a lot of those things that I have, like, you know, I always try to self assess myself and reevaluate myself, but at the same time a lot of those like core beliefs still kind of hold true today.

Almost had the best of both worlds there in that you have the assistant piece of it where you're learning from a guy that you're working underneath and then you also have the ability to get those reps as the head JV coach where you're doing the substituting, you're making the decisions in game and a lot of times guys who start out obviously as an assistant, you're not getting those head coaching game reps.

So you kind of had the both best of both worlds in that situation where you could learn underneath somebody and also get the head coaching reps that not a lot of guys get early in their career.

Yeah, it was awesome.

I loved it.

I really enjoyed it.

It was the only time I've got to be a head coach in my career.

So it was a pretty unique experience and I don't take that for granted at all.

And kind of the cool thing about Great Lakes too.

So Great Lakes is like a legitimate Bible college.

So there's about 350 kids on campus.

Most of them go there for Christian fellowship work, missionary work, whatever it is to be pastors.

And when you go to Great Lakes, you double major with a degree in theology.

So it was a very unique school from that perspective and the program before Rich took it over.

So it was, I got there, Rich's second year, his first year when he took it over, they were really, really bad and he turned them around in one year and took them to the national Championship game of nccaa, which is remarkable.

And, you know, kind of what we did was we had to get really good players.

And the only way we could do that was kind of taking guys that, you know, needed a chance.

So, you know, what we would do is we'd call up, you know, all the.

Because they had different eligibility standards.

Like, we call up all the NAIs, all the JUCOs, all those schools and just say, you know, who do you got that's not eligible?

And, you know, we ended up getting some really, really good players.

So, you know, guys that had Division 1 offers, guys that are still currently playing overseas, guys that played D2, D1 NAI at all high levels.

So it was a pretty competitive team as well, which I thought was great.

Being able to, you know, have that much experience, especially when you're working with, you know, a high level player as well.

So being able to do that was awesome.

And, you know, we got to, like I said, exposed to a lot of different levels of college basketball.

NAIA, D3, NCCA, we played all those teams.

So, you know, I got really familiar with the Crossroads League in Indiana, like those teams like Grace and Taylor, and, you know, got a feel for how good basketball is there and, you know, just how good basketball is even at the Division 3 level, where, you know, you got schools in Michigan and schools in Ohio that all compete at a really, really high level.

So that really opened my eyes from a basketball perspective and broadened my horizons of just how good college basketball is as a whole.

Pure basketball perspective.

What area in that year do you feel like you grew the most in?

I don't want to.

I don't know if you want to take it X's and O's or culture or.

What did you learn in that year that you really feel like accelerated your growth maybe from where you were when you came in at the beginning of that season?

I would say probably just overall presentation.

So my, like I said, my voice on the court, my ability to recruit players, my ability to, you know, I would have to do athletic visits, so carry out athletic visits with recruits and their families.

Like, you know, I was.

I turned 21 during the season.

So, you know, being able to do all that and being able to be incredibly vocal is something that I think a lot of coaches come in and they really, really struggle with.

No matter how much they know or, you know, what their playing background is or whatever it is, like, that's usually the hardest leap.

So once I got really good at that and coach Rich, like, he's.

He's got such a way with words.

We always joke around with him and say he could sell ice to an Eskimo.

Like, he's just a very smooth talker.

He knows how to relate to people.

He's one of those people that like, he comes in and he just captivates a room.

And because of that, I learned a lot of his qualities from him and just kind of his outlook and mindset on life.

He's somebody that's been through a lot of challenges and a lot of trials and a lot of tribulations and, you know, he's just thankful for what he does and he's thankful for his job every day.

You know, there's a lot of people that, you know, just constantly want more and more and more and, you know, are upset about their situation because they feel like they're deserving of more.

And he's somebody that, you know, woke up every day and was fired up from the get go that he got to go work at Great Lakes Christian College and coach college basketball.

So, you know, I think that day to day mindset, even with him, was huge for me as a coach.

That's a great lesson to learn, especially early on in your career where you start talking about doing the best possible job that you can where you're at.

I always think back to John Shulman, who he's at Central Arkansas now, and he's always saying, make the big time where you are because no matter what the game that you're playing, it's important to you and it's important to a circle of people that are involved in.

And he goes, but you go two states over and nobody cares about your game or you go two, two blocks down the road and nobody cares about it.

So you got to make sure that you make wherever you are, doesn't matter that you, you make the big time where you're at.

And I think if you can do that at every stage in your career and put your best foot forward and, and work as hard as you can and do what you're supposed to do, then that's when you get the next opportunity, right?

It's, it's not, it's not the guys who have one foot out the door and are looking over their shoulder to see what, what's coming next.

It's the guys who are putting in the work and doing what they're supposed to do and giving everything they have to the kids that are in front of them and to their fellow coaching staff, the community.

And if you do that, you're going to A have a lot more fun and be a lot more successful in that place where you are.

And then that's also sort of counterintuitively is going to give you that next opportunity.

It's when you're looking, always looking out the door that, that sometimes you get in trouble.

So your next opportunity was at West Liberty.

So talk about the experience there.

I know you were there for a number of years and obviously had a tremendous amount of success there.

One of the best Division 2 programs in the entire country.

So just walk us through how you get to West Liberty and then just what are some things that you feel like you took away from that experience?

Yeah, so I get to West Liberty.

First of all, West Liberty is a first class basketball experience and it's a first class basketball school.

You want to talk about a place that people care whether you win or lose.

You go to a West Liberty game, that place is packed out every single game.

Regardless if you're playing the best team in the league, the worst team in the league, everybody wants you to score 100.

And if you win by 60 and you were supposed to win by 65, you didn't win by enough.

But it's truly a basketball school, which to me is just so unique of a Division 2 school or even a low major school.

A lot of times you don't get that experience unless you're at a perennial high major or perennial blue blood.

So obviously it's on a smaller scale, but it's the same experience that you would get anywhere else where, you know, everybody knows the team, everybody knows who you are, and it's truly like, in my opinion, one of the best basketball experiences regardless of level that any player or coach could ever get.

So with me at West Liberty and how I got started, same thing like I was working at 270, uh, and I met Mike Lamberti, who just recently got named the head coach at West Liberty and who was formerly the coach at Coker and an assistant at West Liberty at the time.

So I met Mike, sent him some stuff online and you know, I just hit him.

I had Zach hit him up randomly one day and just say, like, hey, like, this kid really wants to come to WestLB and he really wants to help out with the team.

Like, is there anything that you might have for, for them?

And you know, luckily I was fortunate that, you know, they had an opening and, you know, I became a student assistant at West Liberty after my year at Great Lakes.

And West Liberty is, is very unique because on top of the experience, like they play a Very unique style of play.

And you just do things differently there.

Like, a lot of the things that are done at the other places that I've been to or when I go watch practices, they're not done at West Liberty.

And I tend to think, and I think part of this is because of, you know, how I was indoctrinated into West Liberty basketball, but also how I grew up.

Like, not being a high level basketball player is, you know, at West Liberty, like, they truly believe in being the ultimate team.

Like, you win as a team, you lose as a team, you play as a team.

And I think for almost every other basketball that I watch, I think sometimes that gets misconstrued.

And, you know, you see a West Liberty basketball game and all five guys are chasing guys down from behind out of the press, all five guys are scratching and clawing for rebounds, all five guys are touching the ball on every possession.

And you know, it's just, it's just so unique to how everybody else plays the game of basketball.

And for me and myself, where I've constantly thought about basketball as a team game and, you know, how there's five players on the court on your team, and, you know, I think sometimes teams only make use of one or two of them.

And, you know, with that, like the West Liberty system and how I viewed basketball philosophically at the time, like they just, they just clicked like that.

So, you know, I was at westlive for four and a half years.

Student assistant, assistant coach, head assistant coach.

I went to the national championship game in Division 2, unfortunately lost, played in two Elite Eights, played in two Final Four or played in one Final Four, played won four conference regular season championships and two conference tournament championships, made the NCAA tournament every year.

I think in the timeframe, we won 85% of our games, which was probably one of the higher out of any college program in the country.

So it was a great experience.

And most importantly, out of anything, I got to work for a really, really high level basketball coach in Ben Hallett.

The man has done nothing.

But when almost every single basketball game he's coached in eight years, and he's ultra competitive and he kind of marches to the beat of his own drum similar to, you know, kind of what I've heard about Coach Crutchfield.

And, you know, I love working with him and, you know, being around him and learning from him and getting to understand more about how they played for him.

So I just sit in his office all day and just talk to him and like, until he told me to get the Hell out of there.

Like I just sit in his office and try to learn as much as I could from him.

And you know, eventually it got to the point where, you know, he, we developed a very strong working relationship and he developed a lot of trust in me and you know, provided me with a lot of opportunities that have helped me out tremendously in my career as well.

So, you know, at West Liberty, like I said, great basketball experience, phenomenal coach.

And you know, I don't think if you could tell me I could go to Duke University and do the exact same thing at Duke University, I'd probably still pick westlift Foreign.

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What's the secret sauce to getting a team to play?

Five guys together sharing the ball?

What did you guys do?

What did you talk about?

What's the everyday emphasis that gets teams to play that way?

Because I always, when I watch basketball, when I played basketball, when I think about basketball, I think about it in terms of teams that share the ball, that play together, that are unselfish, that makes the extra pass, that gets everybody involved.

That's the secret to winning basketball.

And yet you and I both know that you can watch a lot of basketball and never see that because you see selfishness or you see teams that are focused, as you said on only one or two guys have the ball in their hands all the time.

So what's the secret sauce that you guys threw together at West Liberty?

How do you go about that on a day to day basis to get guys to buy into playing that winning style of basketball.

Yeah, and we, we never really use the word culture, Coach Hallett and also myself, like, we weren't really big fans of that word.

But, you know, I think culture is just about what you do every day.

Like, it's not sayings on a wall.

It's not, you know, you can see it.

You, you can see the culture in practice.

Like, you can go to a West Liberty practice and you would say that team plays really freaking hard and they play more together than any team I've ever seen.

And so for us, like, I think it starts with letting the guys know that we recruited 12, 13, 14 really good players.

And all you guys are all capable basketball players.

And we kind of instill that belief in the guys that, you know, they're playing with other good players as well.

This isn't high school anymore where, you know, we recruited a lot of rural kids from small towns in Ohio and, you know, a lot of those guys, like, they got to take every shot for their team to have a chance at winning the game.

But, you know, when you get to the college level, like, it becomes a lot more realistic where, you know, if you recruit well and you find the right guys, you can get a ton of really good players.

And, you know, it's about setting that standard that, you know, everybody's.

Everybody's going to be held accountable.

You know, if you take a bad shot, if you don't run back on defense, if you do something selfish, we're going to let you know about it and we're going to let everybody know about it.

It doesn't matter if you.

We've been very fortunate to have really good players.

We had all Americans guys that ended up transferring up Division one and making hundreds of thousands of dollars in nil.

You know, your accolades, your statistics, they don't matter.

Everybody's held accountable the same way.

And to us, that's what it's about.

It's about being the ultimate team.

And the only statistic that truly matters at the end of the day is winning and losing.

And we continue to ingrain that every single day in their heads.

And until one point they start to understand, hey, this is, this is what works.

And you know, obviously with westlive, with the track record that they've had for so long, like, you know, you tell them, they do this and you see there's literally a banner hanging up in West Liberty for every year since like 2005.

So they look at all these banners, and they're like, yeah, you know, that must work.

Probably makes sense.

Maybe I should listen.

Right, right.

So.

But, you know, it's just about.

It's just about, you know, being up front and being honest and, like, making sure that you have these conversations with your players of them understanding.

You know, when I recruit a guy to Westlib, I don't tell them that they're going to score 25 points a game or they're going to start and play every second.

What I tell them is they're going to get the opportunity to be a part of the ultimate team, and they're going to be held accountable.

And I don't even promise them that we're going to win games.

I say, you know, we're going to compete, and we're going to go at it every single day in practice, and we're going to accumulate as many good days as we can in practice, and we're going to play as the ultimate team.

And, you know, if everything else kind of takes care of itself, so be it.

But I've always found it funny, like, when you talk to coaches and, like, you ask them, like, hey, like, you know, how do you guys think you're going to be next year?

And you're like, oh, yeah, we're going to.

We're going to kill it.

I'm so, like, like, I'm, you know, and I get like, you'd be excited about the personnel that you have on your team, but at the same time, even in college basketball nowadays, with the amount of turnover that there is, like, you're retained, you're lucky if you retain 50% of your roster.

So if somebody tells me, like, oh, how do you think we're going to be?

I'm like, I don't know.

We got to figure it out.

Like, we got to figure out how these guys gel together, how they get along on the court, how they get along off the court, how they play together.

And, you know, there's just so much.

There's so much more that goes into, I think, being a winning team than just having, you know, a ton of really good players.

Obviously, it doesn't hurt, but at the same time, I think it's truly about, like, what you talked about, the ball movement and, you know, everybody being involved and everybody feeling like they're a part of the game and a part of the team.

That's what we try to do, like, and, you know, that's how we play.

And we're fortunate enough that we play very uptempo and we Play a very fast pace, so it rewards that kind of stuff.

And then I think the last thing as well is just at West Liberty, we don't script our offense.

Like we run a five out, open motion offense where guys are allowed to make decisions and make plays.

And I think because of that, nobody's being dictated where to go or where to screen or what to do on every single possession.

And I think a lot of times that's where a lot of the, you know, the, the lack of ball movement or the lack of like the selfishness kind of comes into play.

Because, you know, your players, you spend all this time with your players working on your plays and then all of a sudden your plays don't work and now what are we going to do?

You're going to do the same thing that everybody else does.

And I hate this.

I think there's so many other better substitutes, but you go set a ball screen in the middle of the floor for your best player and it's just like that's kind of what I feel like a big part of it is as well, is just, you know, I think that the amount of freedom and the amount of decision making that we give to our players allows that to truly be.

Allows that to truly kind of make sense with the team where, you know, we tell them too, it's like you're going to get more freedom here than pretty much anywhere else in the country within reason of being good.

And, you know, all we ask is that, you know, you guys play as a team, you move the ball and you take really easy shots.

And you know, the flip side of that is we could walk the ball off the court and run a set play every time down and nobody wants to do that.

That's no fun.

So how do you balance the freedom that players have with helping them to make better decisions within the confines of what you're trying to do offensively?

In other words, during practice, kid makes a decision.

Maybe as a coaching staff on the side, you feel like there was a better decision to be had.

How do you teach that and yet not stifle the players creativity and freedom?

Yeah, that's something where I pride myself on being very conversational with players.

Like, I don't want to say, like, I think sometimes conversational gets misconstrued as laid back.

And I think if there's one thing that people will tell you about me is like, I'm really, really passionate and I'm passionate about the game of basketball, I'm passionate about teaching players, but it's a Conversation that we can have.

And it's almost like one of those things where it's.

We're not sweating the small stuff, right?

So, you know, if, let's say player drives from left wing, there's a guy in the left corner and there's a guy on the right corner and the low man defensively in the right corner is pulled over and the left corner, just the ball side corner, just stunts a little bit.

He could have probably skipped that pass to the opposite side, but he decided to pass the ball to the corner and said like, so sweat.

Like, you know, we're, we're kind of, we're living to play.

And you know, it's one of those things where, you know, you have to be very kind of metic, not meticulous, but very, you know, detailed with how you're doing it and how you're going about it where you're not stopping every single time and you're not, you know, pausing it.

It's just.

And a lot of the stuff that, like coaches, like when they stop practice and it's just like, you know, a lot of that stuff can just be addressed when they come out of the game.

Like, you know, hey, you see this?

No, you don't remember?

Okay, that's cool.

Like, we'll watch it on film, you know, another time and, you know, we'll see it and we'll get to understand it.

And that was one thing I did with a lot of the guys is like, I watched a lot of film with them and I constantly, constantly, constantly tried to teach him lessons about the game of basketball.

So, you know, we had a kid, phenomenal player, Pat Robinson, and he would come shoot every single day at 11 o' clock, same routine.

It was like clockwork every day at 11 o' clock.

So he'd come and shoot at 11 o' clock out of rebound for him, let him get his shots up.

And then every day, every day after he, I rebounded for him and he got his, you know, his shots up, we would, we just talk and we just talk about basketball.

And like, I would, like, we literally do.

I do like 30 minute mini clinics with him just walking through stuff on the court with him, you know, at, you know, 11:30.

And we do that like almost every day.

So, you know, it's kind of about for me.

Like, I'm just trying to teach them how to be better basketball players.

I'm not teaching them how to make every single decision right.

It's impossible to get every decision right and lie.

Like, I probably screwed up 15 to 20 times today.

And I haven't even realized it, but you know, it's about, you know, trying to see the bigger picture and trying to see the common goal of what it is that we want.

What do we want?

We want an easy shot.

We want an easy shot.

And you know, Coach Howard would say, we want an easy shot with guys in rebounding position.

And if we get that, who cares how we get there?

Like, who cares about the process?

Who cares about how pretty it looks or whatever?

Like, it doesn't matter.

Like as long as we get the result that we're looking for, why, why are we, you know, focused on, you know, the path to get there?

Makes sense.

I mean, did the series of decisions that were made lead to the outcome that you were looking for?

And maybe every decision along the way wasn't perfect, but the cumulative effect of all those decisions, more often than not is going to lead you to the outcome that you want.

I think that's really an interesting way to look at it in terms of the bigger picture.

And yeah, there are details in there that you have to address.

You have to talk to players about again, maybe when they come off the, the onto the sidelines during a drill in practice, or you talk about it and dress it with them in film.

But you don't have to blow the whistle every 15 seconds and point out every single decision, say, hey, ball should have gone here.

Hey, you should have cut there.

Hey, we needed to move this particular way because as you said, there's a myriad of ways that you can make decisions.

Some are, some are right, some are more right, some are, some are maybe a little less right.

But ultimately, again, you're looking at what's the bigger picture.

And if you keep your focus there, I can see where players eventually start to figure out, hey, how does my decision making process lead to the outcomes that we're looking for as a team?

And that also builds that again, five player team where everybody's working together for one outcome as opposed to me just focused on my one decision and how that's going to impact what I do.

So I really think that's a really, really interesting and positive approach which obviously has worked.

Yeah, I think for me, I kind of want to say this to like philosophically for myself, basketball wise and kind of want to talk to people about WestLB.

Um, I believe that basketball is one of the sports with the most variance in the world, maybe outside of like soccer or hockey, just because of how fast paced it is.

I couldn't give you an Honest answer on either one of those, because I don't watch soccer or hockey.

But there's so much variance in the game of basketball.

And what we're trying to.

How I feel like we're trying to do at West Liberty and how we've played, played is like at every other college basketball program in the country.

Besides the three or four or five that run the same system, everything's very black and white.

Even if you say, like, hey, you know, we're running flow, we're running out of concepts, and, you know, that's kind of like the sexy term that everybody uses now.

And it's like everything's still very dictated.

And what we're trying to do here at West Liberty with the pressing and the possessions and the up tempo was, you know, and how I feel about it is like we're trying to master the gray area, and we're trying to play as much of the game in the gray area as possible.

And we practice the gray area every single day.

So when we go and play another team, if we can play 60% of the game, 70% of the game in the gray area, and we practice that every day.

And you've just practiced it for two days leading up to your game against West Liberty, all of a sudden now you've given yourself a serious competitive advantage in the game itself.

So, you know, I think that's a huge part of it as well, is, you know, just trying to, like I said, just kind of seeing things a little bit differently and doing things a little bit differently and doing things outside of the box.

Sense.

All right, tell me about getting to the G League with the Osceola magic.

Yeah.

Yeah, it was great.

Never thought I'd end up in the G League.

It was always, you know, kind of like a dream or, you know, something that.

It almost felt like it was something that would be too good to be true.

And I actually, ironically.

So a lot of the stuff I do, a lot of stuff on Twitter and on Substack, and I put out a lot of newsletters.

I put out a lot of X's and O stuff.

And that was kind of like.

That's kind of been like.

My niche in coaching has been, you know, the tactical side of basketball, philosophically how I view the game, and, you know, recruiting, obviously, that doesn't do anything for me in the G League.

You know, it was.

It was great.

So when I was on.

When I was putting all my stuff out on Twitter, I got connected with a guy named Amir Baher.

Amir Baher is one of the assistant coaches for the Orlando Magic right now.

At the time, he was a video coordinator for the Orlando Magic, and he was getting ready to start working with the summer league team, and he was in charge of putting some stuff together offensively for the summer league team.

So he hits me up on Twitter.

He says, hey, I like a lot of your stuff.

I'm doing some stuff with the Magic summer league offense.

Do you have anything.

I believe it was.

Do you have anything with the.

Like, what is your favorite stuff with the shallow cut?

I can't remember exactly what it was off the top of my head.

It was like picking rolls with the shallow cut to kind of manipulate the tape tag.

So I sent him, like, 25, 30 things over that I had, and he was like, man, this is awesome.

Like, we got to get on the phone.

We gotta talk sometime.

So, you know, we talked, and, you know, basically I just told him, like, hey, like, this has always been a dream of mine to, you know, coach professionally and work in professional basketball.

So, you know, I'd like to stay in contact with you, if possible.

You know, keep sending you stuff, whatever.

And so me and Amir stayed in contact for a while, and then he introduced me to the guy that hired me in Osceola, Dylan Murphy.

And Dylan Murphy, at the time was an assistant with the Orlando Magic.

He was the head coach of the summer league team that year with Amir, and he was going into his first year.

I don't know if he knew it yet or not, but he was going into his first year as the Osceola Magic head coach.

So the year I got there was the second year, and me and Dylan just developed a really strong relationship through basketball.

You know, I just send him all the stuff that I watched, all the film that I watched, Just send him stuff that I liked.

And, you know, we talked a few times on the phone here and there.

And, you know, it got to the point where I knew him for, like, probably about a year and a half before I started working with him.

And, you know, we talked frequently.

Never really met in person, but, you know, obviously knew each other.

And that's something that, like, I think for myself, I've tried to really be intentional about, Especially now, as I've gotten later in my career is like.

Or further along in my career is trying to work for good people and trying to work for people that I trust and trying to work for people that I believe in and I believe are going to succeed.

Like, in my opinion, there's no reason why Dylan Murphy shouldn't be An NBA head coach right now.

You know, he's done a tremendous job in Osceola.

He's won 80%, I think 75, 80% of his games in two years there in the regular season, in the G League two years in a row.

Best record in the G League in the regular season.

So, you know, he's done a phenomenal job.

So I wanted to work with somebody that I believed in, and Dylan was somebody that I believed in.

And, you know, that's kind of how it all came about.

It just came about from, you know, me and kind of goes back to what we were talking about in the beginning, like, seeing what my strengths is.

And I'm not like, a big, like, networking guy, but I saw what my strengths were.

I wanted to be really good at the tactical stuff.

I wanted to be really good at the X's and O's, and I wanted that to be my niche.

And because of that, in order for me to make connections, I would market that stuff for free.

I wouldn't ask for any money or any payment.

All I would ask for is just a phone conversation and for me to get to know you and for, you know, hopefully, if it goes well, for us to continue to talk to each other.

And, you know, I think it's hard sometimes, especially as a coach, where, you know, you're cold calling people and, you know, you're trying to, you know, get connected.

And it's like, how do I go about this?

And had a lot of young coaches just ask me about that, and it's.

I tell them all the time, find what you're good at, market it and provide it to somebody, and don't charge anything more than a conversation.

It's a great lesson for any young coach.

It goes along sort of with the things that I've learned about the coaching profession over the course of my time doing the podcast from talking to lots of different people, and you sort of checked off a bunch of these boxes, right?

One, gotta be willing to work for free, which you've done in your career.

You gotta be willing to move and go to different places geographically.

You've been in a lot of different places already at this point in your career.

And then you just put out another one where talking about networking versus just doing what you do, doing it well, offering it to people and wanting nothing more than a conversation and building a genuine relationship.

And to your point, you never know when that relationship might pay dividends for you, or maybe it's going to pay dividends eventually for the other side of the conversation for somebody that you'll eventually be able to help and.

And move them along in their career.

And I think for any young coaches that are out there, if you can take what Connor just said and put that into your own mindset in terms of your career and how you go about attacking the coaching profession, I think anybody would be a lot better off if they could kind of start out with that mentality that you had where, again, you're just doing something that you love, you're creating it, you're putting it out there for people to be able to consume.

People are then reaching out to you and you're having a conversation and boom, you never know what's going to happen as a result of that for you.

Got you an opportunity to.

To get into the G League and to be able to have that experience with the Osceola Magic and with Dylan Murphy and to be able to.

I'm sure the learning curve there, where you spend as much time as you spent in the film room, I'm sure the level of knowledge that you had of X's and O's, whatever it was before, I'm sure it grew exponentially in your time there.

Just because the amount of time and access to the tech and the things that you could see in terms of working with your own team, but also scouting all the other teams to see what other coaches are doing, I'm sure the growth was just phenomenal.

Yeah, it was.

I.

I was very fortunate that I worked with a lot of really good people and, you know, just to name a few, like Thomas Bridges.

He's been an assistant in Osceola for a couple years now, was in the video room in Philly, and that guy's a stud, you know, similar to like what I was telling you with Coach Rich.

We're like, he just captivates a room when he's coaching.

And he also just happens to be really, really good with all the video and all the X's and O stuff.

So being able to learn from him.

Johnny Taylor, who played for the Denver Nuggets and, you know, in my opinion, probably should be a head coach soon.

He was the associate head coach, and he was phenomenal.

Ike Hermer, who was at uni and at Minnesota with Richard Pitino, was really good with player development.

Corey Hawkins as well, who was a phenomenal player at UC Davis, absolutely phenomenal player.

And he, you know, got into coaching relatively early, and he's been an elite player development guy, an elite relationship guy, and just somebody that you always want to be around.

So I think it helped a lot working with so many good people.

And I think it helped a lot just working with so many high level players as well.

And I think like a lot of times the G League gets a bad rep.

Like, you know, I think it gets this reputation of like, you know, it's one of those places where like, you know, it's just like nobody wants to be there.

Like nobody wants to, you know, nobody wants to work or whatever.

It's kind of like, you know, the NBA is, you know, kind of just lost.

And you know, a lot of the guys are like, they're incredibly professional.

They work hard, they know they're right there and they're doing everything that they can to get there.

So, you know, having guys like that, you know, really, really made my job enjoyable where because of the players and the coaches and even the management, Kevin Tiller and Trent Pennington, like, those guys are phenomenal.

And again, it all goes back to.

And I stumbled into this.

Like I came to work for Dylan Murphy because he's a good person, but I found a really, really high level basketball organization while I was there.

Yeah, it's awesome.

I mean, to be able to step into a place, as you said, that is just filled with good people that are doing things the right way.

And as you said, I think sometimes there is that thought of coaches don't want to be there, players don't want to be there.

And in a sense, right, everybody wants to be able to make that leap up to the NBA at some point.

But yet what we're talking about here is that everybody that's there is working and busting their tail and doing their best.

Whether you're a player on the floor or you're a coach on the sideline, to be able to maximize the opportunity that you've been given.

I think that obviously you've been able to do that in every stop that you've had along the way in your career.

I want to ask you one final two part question here, Connor, real quick.

Part one.

When you think about what you get to do every day, what's the thing that brings you the most joy?

And then second part of the question.

When you think about your coaching career moving forward, what do you see as being your biggest challenge?

So your biggest joy and your biggest challenge?

That's a very good question.

So for me, I think my biggest joy that I get out of coaching is, is being able to teach the game of basketball and being able to work with players every single day and being able to connect with them.

Every single day, there's one of my good friends.

He always has.

Has this quote that he says is like, the greatest gift in life is connection.

And being able to connect with everybody is truly what I look forward to every day.

And, you know, it just so happens that I get to do it in the sport that I love and something that I'm really, really passionate about.

But at the same time, like, even just sitting in the office with players, like, that's.

That's what I look forward to the most every single day.

And then my biggest challenge, I think for me, my biggest challenge is honestly just trying to navigate where I.

Where I want to go or what I want to do.

And, you know, just kind of.

I'm a big, like, planner.

Like, when every job decision that I've made, I know it sounds like it just kind of happened on a whim because, you know, we're talking and we got to get through everything.

But, like, every decision that I've made in my life, for the most part, I feel like has been pretty well thought out and pretty calculated in a very general sense.

Obviously, like, you can't.

If an opportunity comes, it's, like you said, a big part of being a young coach.

You gotta be ready to go.

But, you know, in a general sense, I feel like everything's kind of been planned out and laid out, and for me, I think it's just kind of what I want to do next and, you know, really sitting down and taking that time to reflect and see where I want to go in the future.

All right, real good answer.

Before we get out, I want to give you a chance to share.

How can people connect with you?

You talked about your Twitter account, share, social media, email, whatever you feel comfortable with.

And then after you do that, I'll jump back in and wrap things up.

Sounds good.

Yeah.

My Twitter is har H A R R Connor.

C O N N O R.

It's just my last name and my first name.

Pretty easy to find.

And you can connect with me on there anytime, like, send me a message, whatever.

It's open.

And I love connecting with coaches.

I love talking to coaches.

I love being able to just talk basketball with anybody.

So if anybody wants to contact me, they can contact me through Twitter.

That's probably the best way to reach me.

And then if you want to get on my newsletter, just Google Connor Hart substack and it'll come up.

It'll say, connor Hart's coaching newsletter.

And, you know, you'll be able to kind of read X's and O's basketball, philosophical thoughts and just really get kind of an insight in more detail on how it is I view the game.

But yeah, that's it.

Perfect.

Connor, cannot thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule tonight to join us.

Really appreciate it.

And to everyone out there, thanks for listening and we will catch you on our next episode.

Thanks thanks for listening to the Hoop Heads podcast presented by Head Start Basketball.