Transcript
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Scott Galloway (0:33)
Hey, it's Scott Galloway. In today's marketing landscape, if you're not evolving, you're getting left behind. In some ways, it's easier than ever to reach your customers, but cutting through the noise has never been harder. So we're going to talk about it on a special Prof. G Office Hour series. We'll be answering questions from C Suite execs and business leaders about how to market efficiently and effectively in today's chaotic world. So tune into propg Office Hours Special series brought to you by Adobe Express. You can find it on the propg feed wherever you get your podcasts.
Sue Bird (1:06)
Did you understand that I'm now starting and if I do well, this is going to be mine for the rest of the season?
Natasha Howard (1:12)
I did.
Sue Bird (1:21)
Hey everybody, welcome back to Bird's Eye View. Today's guest has done something that has never been seen in the history of the wnba and I don't know if we're going to see it again. Natasha Howard went to the Finals for four years in a row with three different teams and she wasn't done because you fast forward two more years and she got there five out of six seasons. There is something about Tasha in her game that just allows her to fit in with highly talented teams. It's what makes her special and it's why she's a three time WNBA champion. It doesn't hurt that she's also a two time All Star, two time All Defensive Player, the 2019 Defensive Player of the Year, and the 2018 Most Improved Player. But before we get to that, here's Sue's view. First up, I'm going to talk about the Flow offense. You have heard me reference this when talking to Jewel and Stewie. It's the offense we ran in Seattle, but I got to take it back a little bit and give you a little bit of an origin story. So Jenny Bussek, who became our head coach in 2015 and introduced this offense to us in that year, she had worked with the Dallas Mavericks and With Riccarl prior, nothing official, but she knew Rick for many years and she would go to their training camps. You know, it's back in the days of Dirk Nowitzki. And she would really study, she really studied their offense. And a lot of times in that 2015 and then even in the 2016 training camp, she would show us clips from the Dallas Mavericks because this is how they played. Now, the flow offense, if I had to loosely define it, it has to do with read and react, you've heard me say it has to do with a controlled chaos. A lot of traditional offenses, you know, there's transition where you're able to get out and run, and then there's play calling, right? You're calling sets, you're trying to get a certain. Look, there might be one option, maybe a second or a third, and that's about it. But the flow offense, it's very free in that we're trying to get option one, two or three, but we understand we might not get those and we might be going to option 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. And that's the beauty of it. It was a limitless option type offense. I digress. So Jenny comes to Seattle, teaches us this offense in 2015. We run it in 2016 and 17, and even though she left the Storm, we continued to run it. And that's where myself, Jewel, Stewie, Alicia Clark, add in Natasha Howard, we really started to perfect this offense. Now what's interesting is the other part of this flow offense that makes it different, makes it exceptional, makes it hard to scout, hard to play against, is that you're playing with pace. Now, when I say pace, I actually don't mean the statistical category that you might find in an advanced box sheet. Right. I'm literally talking about how fast you play, how fast you push the ball, how fast you cut, how fast you're able to read, react and make decisions. So it's like a physical speed, but it's also a mental speed that you're playing with. The thing about flow, though, is because you're playing with that pace, it really has to become a lifestyle. You have to live it, you have to practice it every day. You have to do drills that are going to encourage this, that are going to back it up. We used to have this one drill where you know a certain time would go on the clock, let's call it anywhere from 12 to 14 seconds. You had to go full court, everybody had to touch the ball. You also had to get certain actions right. Is it a pick and roll? Is it a back door? Is it a post up? Is it a flare screen? The coach would yell out certain actions and you had to get this all done within 12 to 14 seconds. So it was all about again, making quick decisions and playing fast. The other part of it is you have to be comfortable being uncomfortable because the truth is you are going to come down the floor and you know, you have a player like Brianna Stewart, of course you're trying to get her the ball in certain spots, but teams guard that, teams scout that. So you have to be willing to stay open minded to the fact that anything could happen. And that's where a lot of the confidence comes from, right? We play fast, we wear teams down. By the fourth quarter, you can hear them huffing and puffing. But when you actually, you know, find the weak link in the defense, when you're able to exploit certain things and you have that open mind, it just gives you more and more confidence. So what makes flow offense difficult to run? You really need high IQ players. What flow offense difficult to guard. It's unpredictable and it's exhausting. And like I said, by far my favorite offense to play in. Next up, I'm going to do a little preview of the Commissioner Cup Final that is coming up on Tuesday, July 1st. Just a quick refresh. The winning team gets to split a $500,000 pot amongst its players. The runner up or the losing team, they get 10,000 per player each. I also think there's like some crypto in there, but who knows what the hell that is. All right, so it's Indiana versus Minnesota in the final. And I think what's most interesting about this matchup is that they haven't played each other yet this season. So it's totally fresh. You don't, you don't really know what you're going to see. So I'm going to check out the stats and see if I can maybe pull some things. It's interesting because they're kind of sort of similar in some ways, right? Like offensive rating, Minnesota's third, Indiana's fourth. Defensive rating, there's a little bit of separation, Minnesota's first, Indiana's fifth. But there's a lot of other similarities. And so I'm just going to go based off some stuff where there's a lot of separation, right? So first and foremost, can Indiana, who is 11th in opponents free throw attempts, stop fouling Minnesota because you cannot, you cannot give Minnesota easy points, so you got to keep them off the free throw line. Also can Indiana, who's in the Bottom half of the league in turnovers limit then against a defense that is third enforcing turnovers. So those are just like two quick areas that you can keep your eye on, I think, for Indiana's offense. And of course, we don't know if Caitlin's going to be playing. So this is a huge, huge, huge asterisk. It changes everything. But they've added Arie McDonald and, you know, I got to watch Caitlin play in person against Seattle, and one thing I noticed was it'd be really beneficial to her if she had players around her who could create shots for her. Right. She has to create a lot of her own shots, but she's also creating for her teammates. And there are times where if she could just get some open looks off other people's play, it could be really beneficial to her. And that's where Arie McDonald might have some impact. I think the only issue here would be is you'd have to find ways to figure out, like, how to have them on the court defensively that doesn't give up too many mismatches. But the good news is when Arie was with the team previously, a lineup of her, Natasha Howard, Kelsey Mitchell, Lexi hall and Aaliyah Boston had a Net rating of 53.1. Very small sample size, but just saying. The other thing to note about Indiana is recently their small lineup of Kelsey Mitchell, Sophie Cunningham, Lexi Hull, Caitlin Clark and Aaliyah Boston is at a 41.7. These numbers are just like, really high. They can spread the floor. Aaliyah, Boston, go to work. So I wouldn't be surprised if we see those two lineups. I think for Minnesota on the other side, you know, if Caitlin plays, it's just going to be a matter of how do you want to attack this, right. Do you want to focus on her and put all the focus on her, forcing her teammates to get off? We saw that in Seattle. It didn't work out. Indiana still got the win. Or do you want to just try to limit Caitlin, make it hard, but not give too much up to her teammates? I think anytime you're playing Indiana, that's probably the question. And I wouldn't be surprised if that's what Minnesota, heading into the Commissioners cup, will be thinking about again. If Caitlin doesn't play, this all goes out the window. Next up, I'm going to check back in on Phoenix. Talked about Phoenix in some of my earlier episodes and how. What's so interesting is I think a lot of people view their offense and, you know, the system that Nate Tibbets has put in and kind of, you know, falling in love with that, which is very true. Their offense is doing really well, but it's still their defense that continues to be a driving force. They are top three in defensive rating. They're first in creating turnovers. They're top three in points off turnovers. They're second in opponents points in the paint. And they have a killer lineup of at Kathryn West Belt, Satu, Akon, Makani. And then you plug in either Sammy or Kah, and it's elite. And that is actually the perfect segue to those two players. Kah, Kalia, Copper, just getting back into the swing of things. So I imagine their defense will get even better and their offense will get even better. But in the meantime, Sammy has had incredible impact. That is Sammy Wickham, for those that don't know. She's only shooting 32.5% from three on like five and a half attempts this year. But the last four games she's shooting 48.1% on nine attempts. She's leading them in scoring at 17 points per game and is actually the best rebounding guard at 3.7 per game. Again, last seven games, she's shooting 42% in total on 6.3 attempts. So just want to give some quick love to Sammy. You know what it is. All right, last but not least, before we get to this interview, I just want to talk a little bit about the physicality of the league. There's so much conversation about it. Is it too physical? Is it not all these things? And I think there's been this, like, narrative that's gone around that we, and I'm going to include myself here, we as WNBA players talk about the physicality in our league with, like a badge of honor. Right? And I don't think that's the case at all. I personally don't feel that way. But when challenged about the physicality of the league and the historical physicality of the league, yes, we say, yes, this is a physical league. Like, yeah, it's a grown woman's league. Like, yeah, you got to be ready for it. And the only reason why I want to bring that up is because while it's true that we have defended the physicality, it's not true that it's because we want it to be that way or like it that way. I think for a really long time it's something we've talked about. But when the refs do ref the game and allow physicality, we're kind of just playing in it. And of course, what refs allow you're going to take and that's really what you're seeing in our game. I would argue that most players don't want it to be this physical. I was the first one with my hand up when I was playing. Do you think I wanted it to be physical then? You've never seen me play. No, I did not want it to be physical. And in fact, one of my, one of my wishes that never came true. I said this to multiple owners. I said this in competition meetings. I never understood why in a 40 minute basketball game we got six personal fouls. And a lot of times I was met with, well, we don't want our star players fouling out. And just to give a little bit of context, the six fouls is definitely like a, not a hangover. But we got it from the NBA game.