How Two Obscure Coaches Built the Basketball Podcast Top Coaches Swear By

Last week, Michigan’s new coach, Dusty May, spent a day with the Miami Heat staff and then flew to Pittsburgh to bounce ideas off Utah Jazz coach Will Hardy and Charlotte Hornets assistant Josh Longstaff. May will read any book or study any basketball team’s film if he thinks it can provide him with an idea, a play or a leadership tactic.

Part of his continuing education is a podcast by two coaches most basketball fans have never heard of.

While driving to lunch in February, May listened to Olympia Milano coach Ettore Messina explain the spacing concepts in his offense. The week before, the voice of Tokyo Hachioji Bee Trains head coach Tyler Gatlin had been playing through May’s speakers. The week after, he would hear former NBA head coach Stan Van Gundy.

The global lessons came from the Slappin’ Glass Podcast, which after four years and 201 episodes has grown to be a hit with coaches at every level of the sport.

“I listen to every episode,” May said. “My staff listens to almost every episode. I think most college coaches probably listen to it on a regular basis.”

Jeff Van Gundy came across one of the hosts’ video analyses — they also have a weekly newsletter and YouTube channel — and was so impressed he called them up to tell them how great it was. He’s since encouraged some of his closest friends in the business to go on their show, which is how two obscure basketball coaches who played together at Division III Chapman University ended up on a phone call with Hall of Fame football coach Bill Parcells.

“Everyone is hesitant to go on a podcast where they’re going to stray into things they can’t discuss,” Van Gundy said. “They know they’re going to be playing straight-up basketball. There’s no ‘gotcha’ questions. It’s not overly dramatic clickbait, like ‘who’s the best player?’ … They’re really trying to help coaches coach better.”

The show’s guest list includes some of the most respected basketball coaches in the country — Brad Stevens, Geno Auriemma, Rick Pitino, Tom Thibodeau, Mike D’Antoni, the Van Gundy brothers, John Beilein, to name a few — as well as big names in international sports. What started as a self-improvement project for the hosts has blossomed into a shop-talk paradise for coaches and basketball fanatics at every level.

“You can set one up in an hour and you’re generally a better coach at the end of it,” said Saint Louis coach Josh Schertz.

Carney and Krikorian in Berlin, the night the idea for the podcast was born. (Courtesy of Dan Krikorian)

Dan Krikorian originally planned to become a musician when he graduated from Chapman in 2007. Between tours, he earned extra money by teaching shooting lessons, coaching a youth team and eventually coaching his high school’s junior varsity team. “Once I stepped into the gym to coach, I was like, ‘OK, this is what I want to do,'” he said. In 2013, Krikorian returned to Chapman as an assistant coach. This summer, he was promoted to head coach.

Pat Carney played professionally for 12 seasons in some of Germany’s top basketball leagues. In 2018, he retired and stayed in Germany to pursue a career as a coach. The two young coaches and former teammates stayed in touch by phone, studying other teams around the world and talking ball. One evening in Berlin, after a performance by Krikorian’s band, Krikorian suggested turning those jam sessions into a podcast and interviewing the coaches whose systems piqued their interest.

The idea was largely forgotten until a year later, when Krikorian and Carney were discussing the offensive line at Division III Yeshiva University, which had just gone 29-1 with a modern replica of Bob Knight’s system at Indiana. Krikorian and Carney wanted to pick the brain of coach Elliot Steinmetz, so they set up a Zoom. Just before the meeting, Krikorian suggested he record it. He already had all the sound and editing equipment; if it went well, he could turn the interview into their first episode.

The pandemic had made it more common for coaches around the world to connect via video calls. The first episode of the podcast, released on August 17, 2020, wasn’t as polished as what the Slappin’ Glass guys produce today, but they enjoyed it so much that they decided to make it a weekly routine.

The audience was small at first — “our moms,” Krikorian jokes — but they took a hit whenever a celebrity guest came on the show, like Jeff Van Gundy in February 2021. The hosts compiled a list of coaches they’d like to interview, took suggestions from coaching buddies, then started taking chances. To their surprise, they rarely heard no.

“They ask really good questions,” said Alabama assistant Ryan Pannone, the show’s third guest when he was coach of the G-League Erie Bayhawks. “And as a result, because their product is good and they’ve had good coaches talk about it, more coaches are willing to come because they listen to it.”

Their curiosity and inquiry seem to loosen their lips. Beilein, who has always been reticent about what he shares publicly about his two-guard offense, laid out the lesson points to the Slappin’ Glass guys without hesitation, then praised the questions they asked him.

“I haven’t talked to anyone about basketball like this in a while,” Belien said toward the end of the interview.

Most coaches go into podcast interviews expecting to be dragged into a reading session, but Slappin’ Glass guests quickly dive into the details of their methods.

“That’s the ideal for us,” Carney says. “It’s not an interview. Let’s talk about some hoops.”

The message of the show: Everything a coach does is interesting.

“The best thing about basketball, and what keeps us having new and fresh conversations every week, is there are so many ways to win,” Carney said. “There are so many ways to teach, so we never assume there’s just one right way. Otherwise, we probably would have had that conversation and just been done.”

Krikorian and Carney go into each interview with some ideas about what they want to talk about, based on background information and film study, but their ability to listen and ask probing follow-up questions keeps the conversation moving forward and sometimes even digressing.

“That’s our favorite part of the podcast: when it goes somewhere we didn’t even expect,” Krikorian said.

They often take coaches into unfamiliar territory during their regular segment called “Start, Sub, Sit,” a basketball-centric variation on a common forced-choice play. When Stevens joined the show, they asked him which of three Ted Lasso quotes he would start, sub, and sit. (Stevens’ Start: “Do you know what the happiest animal on earth is? It’s a goldfish. Do you know why? It has a memory of 10 seconds. Be a goldfish” — because you never have to worry about what anyone says about you or worry about missing a shot. “I love that,” Stevens said, “Let it go. I shot amnesia.”)

Everything always comes back to the game, and no side path is ever taken that does not apply to the coaching.

“We know the coach has 45 minutes to get on the treadmill, or they have a 40-minute commute to work,” Krikorian says. “We don’t want to waste a second of their time on something that’s not valuable.”

Kirkorian (left) was named head coach of his alma mater in August. (Alex Vazquez for Chapman University)

Relationships with coaches like Van Gundy have helped Krikorian and Carney land some of their biggest names, but what they’re most proud of is that the show’s downloads and listenership are no longer so dependent on name recognition. And they’ve been able to give some talented but lesser-known coaches a platform to share their knowledge and ideas.

“If you think about it, just like the best players, they progress. They find a level. That’s not always true for coaches,” Van Gundy said. “Some do. And some, either by choice or just lack of opportunity, don’t. But I think too many fans think that the best coaches rise just like the players. That’s not true.”

Krikorian and Carney have created a nice side income. Their podcast has multiple sponsors and they average 30,000-40,000 downloads per month. Their newsletter has over 7,000 subscribers, almost 1,000 of whom pay for their premium content.

While their content is consumable by anyone who loves the game — not just coaches — it’s a niche audience. But the goal was never to become famous; it was to become better coaches.

“Coaching requires skill,” Carney says. “You have to know yourself. You have to work hard. But a lot of it is also about relationships, and this has allowed us to build real relationships and continue conversations after the podcast that have directly impacted our careers.”

At the time of the interview for this story, Carney was in Poland with the German under-20 national team. That team’s head coach, Martin Schiller, was visiting in 2022 and kept in touch with Carney, eventually asking Carney to join his staff this summer.

Krikorian says he’d be lying if he didn’t think about coaching at a higher level than D-III someday, but he’s living a pretty good life now as the head coach of his alma mater, in the backyard of where he grew up, and building a sustainable business that sprung up on a whim during the pandemic.

“The people I can call now for advice,” Krikorian says. “It’s a dream of ours, honestly.”

ESPN analyst Fran Fraschilla, a fan and two-time guest, says what the Slappin’ Glass guys did reminds him of a long-ago era when coaches like Hubie Brown and Dean Smith went overseas to teach the game.

“What’s happened in two or three generations is that the world is now giving us the game of basketball back,” Fraschilla says. “Slappin’ Glass has provided an incredible menu of international basketball ideas. They’re the conduit for great basketball coaching information.”

(Top illustration photos courtesy of Alex Vasquez and @ralf.zimmermann.fotografie)