Episode 68: Mike Sotsky, Less is More Philosophy

Mike Sotsky, Less is More Philosophy Guest: Mike Sotsky, Harvard’s Basketball Assistant Coach In this week’s coaching conversation, Mike Sotsky, an assistant coach with Harvard's men's basketball team, joins The Basketball Podcast. Sotsky is heading into his fourth season working with the Crimson under coach Tommy Amaker. The 2018-19 season was a good one for Harvard, as the team won its second-straight Ivy League championship, and earned its second-straight trip to the NIT, scoring its first ever win in the tournament in program history, beating Georgetown (71-68). A native of Wyckoff, N.J., Sotsky went to Ramapo High School, and then graduated from Duke in 2015, armed with a Bachelor of Arts degree, a double major in History and Public Policy. He spent four seasons as the Blue Devils' team manager, moving up to be a staff assistant, helping the Duke basketball staff with scouting, recruiting, video, and day-to-day operations. Sotsky was a part of Duke's 2015 NCAA championship team, serving as the senior manager, and was a co-recipient of the Gopal Varadhan Award, presented annually to the program’s top upperclassman manager.   Breakdown 1:00 - Introduction 2:00 - Being a Coach in this Era of Basketball 3:30 - Coach Amaker's Influence to Him 4:30 - Less is More 6:30 - Simplified Scouting 9:00 - Opportunity and Time Cost 10:00 - Self Scout 13:00 - Desire to Help his Players 15:00 - Talking about Baseline Inbound 17:00 - Handling their Analytics 19:00 - Quick O-B 20:00 - Handling Consequences and Correction 23:30 - Dealing with Practice Design 26:30 - Working on Opening tip 28:00 - Happening in Intervention 31:00 - The Things He Do to Manage his Amazing Ideas 34:00 - More Concepts of Coach Amaker 37:00 - Managing Offensive Concepts into a Simpler Function 39:00 - Freedom of Making Decisions 41:00 - Things he Learned from Coach Amaker/Krzyzewski 43:00 - Changes in Ball Screen Coverage 46:00 - Simplify 47:30 - Player Development for his Players  50:00 - Skill Equals Confidence  54:00 - Post Development is Overlooked  57:00 - Focusing on the Fundamentals 59:30 - “Too simple is not good either” 1:01:00 - Conclusion/Plugging his Social Media Accounts   Mike Sotsky’s Bio Bio: https://www.gocrimson.com/sports/mbkb/coaches/sotsky_michael?view=bio Twitter: https://twitter.com/mike_sotsky?lang=en Email: msotsky@fas.harvard.edu    Basketball Immersion Website: http://basketballimmersion.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/bballimmersion?lang=en YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/basketballimmersion Facebook: https://facebook.com/basketballimmersion See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.