Golguric's training starts directly in the training hall of Santa Monica Academy, there is no classroom for students to sit and listen to the lectures, there is no bright whiteboard, Gelguric likes to teach directly on the court, and through the constant movement and movement on the court, holding the ball to teach his students tactics and action details. Then, in the afternoon video analysis class, he will review some classic playoff games with his students, especially the games that his students have commanded, and illustrate the use of techniques and tactics through concrete examples.

Of course, on the last day of the training course, he will participate in the Drew League with the students, and the students will each command a team to compete on the field in batches, and test the learning results through actual combat drills.

In the first three days of study, Gelguric mainly taught some offensive tactics and strategies, and summarized the more popular and used tactical ideas in the league in recent seasons, including the tactical routine of combining the secondary rapid offense and the triangle offense proposed by Fox Leon, which was evaluated by Gelguric as "an offensive tactical system on the edge of the blade that only a few coaches can control." ”

And the next three days are the focus of Gelguric's teaching, his old job, defense.

After all the personnel arrived, Gelguric picked up the ball and walked to the middle of the court, where several students were free to choose their positions to stand around him and listen to Gelguric's lectures from different angles.

"Some of you are already well-known head coaches in the league, or you already have a lot of experience as assistant coaches, or you have been around your own families. So about defense, I won't emphasize the basic things, such as willpower, the basic principle of defending the bottom line in the middle, the position and change of the joint defense, etc., you have either done well on the field, or you have often used and emphasized in training, and these things have been carefully studied in the earlier training classes. Okay, so we're not going to waste time on those things, so in our training class this year, we're going to look at more advanced defense, elevate defense to a strategic posture, understand the role that defense plays in the course of the game, and even how defense can change the dynamics of both sides throughout the series, and ultimately make it a tool for you to win. Gelgurich began today's lecture with an opening remark, and no doubt everyone was drawn to Gelguric physically and mentally.

Whether it's Brown, Leon or Carlisle, they've all worked with top defensive coaches in actual team operations, and they know and use all kinds of defensive things, and they've seen all kinds of wonderful defensive designs. Obviously, ordinary defensive courses are completely unsatisfying for them, and defense must be raised to a new level to be analyzed, so that they can get a new understanding.

"For the defensive lesson, I will start with a few tactics as analysis points, and gradually expand to explain the essence of defense in basketball. Before that, I would like to remind you that the difference between defensive tactics and offensive tactics is that offense is more focused on change, while the core idea of defense is to remain unchanged and adapt to all changes. Gelguric reminded him before his formal lecture.

"The first defensive tactic we are going to talk about today is not unfamiliar to everyone, and it is also the defensive strategy that I became famous for in supersonics, Amoeba-defense, amoeba defense. That's right, I was talking about it just now, the core idea of defense is to change everything, but I want to talk to you about amoebas. Gelguric said half-jokingly.

The so-called Amoeba-defense, literally translated as amoeba defense, is a well-known amoeba whose body is naked, soft, and can stretch out in all directions. And this bug is a very deadly pathogen, which can cause a variety of diseases after entering the human body, which is quite dangerous. The same is true for amoeba defense, first of all, he does not have a fixed defensive formation, pays attention to strong pressing, and requires defensive players to take the initiative to attack everywhere, like amoeba tentacles.

At the same time, if this kind of defense is successful, it will cause the opponent to make a lot of mistakes, making the opponent look as if he is infected and sick, and he is dying in his own tackles and counterattacks. Therefore, it is very appropriate to name it as an amoeba.

As Gelguric said, this kind of defense became famous with the SuperSonics, who reached the Finals in the 1996 season, and it was this defense that allowed Michael Jordan to achieve the lowest average score of his Finals career.

But this kind of defense has a lot of weaknesses, and it has high requirements for player configuration, so it has never been popularized in the NBA, and since the superSonics of George Karl, no team has achieved more with this defensive tactic as the core. More often than not, this becomes a defensive variation option for teams to suddenly increase their defensive intensity during special periods, rather than being used throughout the game.

"The weakness of the amoeba defense is obvious, and I remember Coach Charles Ridder repeatedly reminding me that if the amoeba defense is not used well or unreasonably, it will in turn greatly damage the team's defensive morale and have a bad impact on the team. Let's demonstrate the problems and weaknesses that exist in the actual use of amoeba defense. After saying that, Gelguric asked the five of them to come over and form a basic formation of amoeba defense in the half-time - the diamond formation.

The core concept of amoeba defense has two points, one is to strangle the first point of the outside line, and the other is to use fast movement to form a local more against less. This requires that, on the one hand, the defensive players must have strong mobility and defensive area, so the Seattle SuperSonics had an extremely strong forward line; On the other hand, players are required to have a very good overall defensive awareness, a strong sense of position and distance, which is often easy to overlook, in fact, this is more important than the first one.

Gelguric next demonstrated, the amoeba defense that pays attention to movement and wrapping has huge holes in the two bottom corners and the top of the arc, once the players do not cooperate with each other's defense, blindly wrapping and moving, it will bring the opponent the opportunity to open a large space.

"After a brief explanation of amoebae, I will talk about the second defensive tactic, which is the most common and widely used defensive tactic in our basketball game, and that is man-to-man. The core of man-to-man is to respond to all changes with the same attitude, firmly believe in the player's individual defensive ability, break the opponent's blocking and dismantling, break through the ball and quickly transfer the ball, and ensure that every player on the opposing side has a defender in front of him. It's the most primitive and ancient defensive strategy, but it's also the most persistent, and I can say that 80 percent of the NBA's offensive tactics exist to crack man-to-man defense. After a shallow taste of the amoeba's defense, Gelguric began to talk about the most ordinary man-to-man defense.

It can be said that these are two extreme defensive tactics of each other, one is a sword, one is a big skill, one is only a touch of brilliance, and the other is eternal in the basketball world.

Leon listened carefully to Gelguric's story, and he knew that Gelguric's two almost opposite defensive tactics would never be for popular science. Obviously, he must have had something in mind.

Sure enough, after a rough rundown of man-to-man defense and a basic move, Gelguric said, "Why would I talk about these two defensive tactics that are very different in style? Because, 30 years ago, my teacher, Mr. Charles Riddle, tried to combine these two defenses into one ultimate defensive tactic that combines the advantages of both defenses and avoids the disadvantages to the greatest extent! Of course, in the end, he failed, and he just used different types of players at different times to implement different defensive strategies. And to this day, I'm still searching for that answer. The content of our course is to discuss how to organically combine these two kinds of defense and maximize their power! ”

Gelguric finally got the subject of the lecture, and his teacher, Charles Riddle, the Hall of Fame master coach at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania who invented the amoeba tactic, has been pursuing the ultimate defense throughout his basketball career.

Fox Leon finally felt that coming to this training class was perhaps more interesting and important than trying to get Carlisle to join the Celtics. (To be continued.) )