Lockdown Newsletter: Teaching Players How to Talk
The biggest barrier to defensive communication isn't confidence. It's vocabulary.
Welcome to the Lockdown Newsletter!
Thank you for being part of this community—coaches and players committed to mastering defensive technique and development.
They Don’t Know What to Say
This week I asked coaches a simple question on X.
Why don’t players communicate on defense?
I’ll admit, I expected any of the other choices to win. Instead, more than 40% of coaches agreed:
“They don’t know what to say.”
And it makes sense. We spend years teaching players how to defend. How to close out. How to guard the ball. How to rotate. But we almost never teach them how to speak.
Instead, most coaches usually just yell one word.
“Talk!”
Or maybe two:
“Talk more!”
Imagine trying to teach shooting that way, or ball handling.
“Just dribble!”
Nobody would coach like that.
We’d break the skill down. We’d teach technique. We’d give players repetitions until it became automatic.
But communication somehow gets treated differently. We assume players will figure it out on their own.
The problem is that communication isn’t one skill. It’s a language. And if you’ve never been taught the language, of course you’re going to stay quiet.
Think about a freshman stepping onto a high school floor for the first time. Everything is moving faster than they’ve ever experienced. They’re trying to guard the ball, remember the positioning, recognize actions...and on top of all that, they’re supposed to know exactly what to yell.
That’s a lot to ask.
I’ve started simplifying for players.
I tell them there are four things you can always communicate. You can tell your teammates where you are. You can tell them what you see. You can tell them what you’re doing. Or you can simply bring energy to the group. If you’re doing one of those four things, you’re helping your defense.
What I’ve found is that once players have a framework, they start talking more naturally. They’re no longer searching for the perfect phrase. They’re simply describing the game as they experience it.
And that’s really what communication is.
Not yelling for the sake of yelling.
Helping your teammates see what you see and act on the same page.
That idea led me to build an entire communication lesson around something I call The Voice. It explores why communication is about much more than calling screens and how it’s the one skill that can impact every single play.
It’s about leadership, emotional contagion, verbal dominance, building confidence, and giving players an actual vocabulary instead of just demanding they “talk.” It also includes practical exercises like building a player’s own communication blueprint and practicing calls through film, so the skill becomes deliberate instead of accidental.
The Voice is just one module in a 5-Day crash course on the mental skills needed to be an elite defender. Check out Built for Stops now to find out more.
From X: Weekly Recap on Most Popular Posts
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Change of Direction Drill (Link)
Rick Pitino BLOB Defense (Link)
Helpside Drill (Link)
In Game Adjustments (Link)
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