Coach Thibault On Playing Overseas
Coach Thibault sat down with connecticutsun.com to share his thoughts on players going overseas.
What is the value of going overseas for a young player?
“I think the value changes from player to player depending on where they play, who they’re playing with, the level of play and the coaches they have. For example, we’ve been very fortunate the last couple of years to have somebody like Sandrine Gruda play on a team in Russia where a coach like Marianne Stanley, who is a very good post coach, was an assistant. There are times when players go to teams where they are kind of left on their own, so they have to be a lot more self motivated and they probably aren’t going to get the follow-up work that we would normally do with them here at home. It varies player to player.”
Do you give each player specific skills to work on?
“Yes. We gave each of our players who were going overseas things to work on. Some will just be up to them. One of the comments I made to several of them was, you are in a foreign country with a lot of free time on your hand. There is no reason not to put in the extra 30 or 40 minutes a day to work on specific things. It’s not like they have a ton of outside things to fill up their day. Having said that, they are also in a situation where, playing year-round, they are looking for some down time. They need to balance the two. For example, a kid like Tina Charles, one of the things that she encountered this year that she needs to work on is passing out of double-teams. Well, that is not something you just go work on by yourself after practice. Hopefully, that kind of thing gets worked on within their practice structure. Some of the defensive things we would like to see our players do, they probably have to try and do those during the course of the games they play. Working on a scouting report on a player, taking away things…individual things…working on your left hand if you are a right-handed player. Working on extending your range or getting off a quicker shot, those are things you can work on, on your own after practice with a teammate, but you have to be self-disciplined and do it because there is nobody there to baby sit you.”
How does that differ from the NBA, were you were a longtime assistant?
“One of the biggest differences between player development in our league and in the NBA is that in the NBA, you have a longer season, your players aren’t taking off somewhere else, and in the summer, NBA assistant coaches can get their players for two or three days a week after they’ve taken a break, and they can control the environment their in to work in without the stress of playing in games. The WNBA, once they leave us, it’s kind of out of our hands whether they are going to do it or not.”
How should these younger players approach their experience?
“I would hope, but it doesn’t happen in all cases, that they would approach it in three different manners: One, understanding that it is a way to set themselves up financially for their future, and try to save as much money as they can to build a nest egg. The second part is, you would like them to expand their game while they are doing it. That’s important. But the third part of it is, just as adult human beings, expand their view of the world. It’s an opportunity to see other parts of the world, and have someone else pay for you to do it. There are a lot of people here who save up to take a vacation overseas and spend a lot of their own money to go somewhere new. These young players have an opportunity to do it on somebody else’s dollar, and I hope they try to expand their view of the world by doing that instead of sitting in their apartment watching TV. It’s a great opportunity to expand their horizons in general.”
So you think playing overseas can really help an individual grow in other ways outside of basketball?
“I think that is a huge advantage for them. I would say a majority of our players have learned to do that. I worry about the ones who don’t. I don’t think you can become an isolationist when you go over there and only live in that little world of that town you are in. You are going to travel to different cities, sample the culture, see how other people live and appreciate what we have here.”
You always place a lot of emphasis on off-season improvement. But given how young the Sun was in 2010, is it fair to say this off-season is even more crucial for Connecticut?
“I don’t know. I had thought that at one point but I have mixed feelings about it and I will use Tina (Charles) as an example, who have played a ton of games over the last two years. Between her UConn season, and USA Basketball and our season, just since a year ago last summer, Tina has played 130-plus games. It’s over 100 games. So you hope she can get some down time too. I don’t want her coming back either mentally or physically exhausted from a grind. While I want her to spend some time working on her game, I also want her to come back somewhat refreshed if that is possible. They don’t play a ton of games there. They are there a lot of months, but they play an average of two games a week on average, so hopefully she can find a way to get some down time. Kelsey Griffin has kind of been in the same boat. You want them to get a balance of downtime and improvement. I think on top of that, though, for a kid like Danielle McCray who sat out the last half of her college season with an injury, this is a crucial time for her. It’s time for her to get the experience that our other players got this summer. This is her time to kind of catch up to everybody else. So for someone like her, it might be a lot more important than for others.”
So when you see her score 30 points the other day for her team in Israel…
“That is a good sign that she is healthy, for one, and number two, she is being aggressive, which is what we asked her to be. We need her to come in and have a scorer’s mentality here. Obviously as a rookie on a team in a place where she’s never been before, to come out and get 30 points in her first game, that is a good sign for me.”
Is there a player or two you use as an example to younger players of someone who maximized their overseas experience?
“Yes. I go back to Katie Douglas, who when she came here from Orlando, had been overseas on year, maybe two at that point. Brooke Wyckoff was another. What I used to tell them was go try things over there, especially in games you know you are going to win, work on things you might be a little bit nervous about working on here in the heat of a big game. It’s your time to add something to your game. They did a great job of taking advantage of that, and I try to point our players to do the same things now. You are not in the spotlight every day, you have time to try things. That’s the biggest thing. Every year, a player should come back with something added to their game.”
Is the biggest hurdle adjusting to the game overseas or adjusting to the culture shock of being away from home.
I think it’s a little bit of both. I think your first time over there, it’s more the culture and the language – depending on where you go and how many teammates you have who speak English or if your coach speaks English. In a situation like Tina Charles, she’s going to a team where she’s going to play with Becky Hammon and Shameka Christon. She’ll have a built in support system that will make it easier. After a season in the WNBA, I don’t know if there is as big an adjustment in the basketball part of it because you’ve already made an adjustment from college to the WNBA. But it still is a different game. The refereeing is different, it’s more physical in some ways and you’re not going to get as much sympathy because now you’re the outsider playing over there so those are things that are different.”
How much do you think playing with the USA team, and winning a gold medal at the World Championships, helped Tina Charles?
I think just the confidence she gains by being accepted by the best players in our league. She’s worked out with them and played with them for awhile, but actually being a starter on a world championship team only adds to her confidence level. I think playing against different styles of play during the tournament. European post players, a lot more of them, come outside to shoot the ball, so I think that is one experience that will be greatly beneficial to her. I think she got a little bit of a good education in different styles of play. One night she’s guarding the big young kid from Australia and the next night she’s guarding someone who’s 6-3 and who is playing out at the three-point line. It gives you a variety of experiences to draw from as you go forward.”
What is the value of going overseas for a young player?
“I think the value changes from player to player depending on where they play, who they’re playing with, the level of play and the coaches they have. For example, we’ve been very fortunate the last couple of years to have somebody like Sandrine Gruda play on a team in Russia where a coach like Marianne Stanley, who is a very good post coach, was an assistant. There are times when players go to teams where they are kind of left on their own, so they have to be a lot more self motivated and they probably aren’t going to get the follow-up work that we would normally do with them here at home. It varies player to player.”
Do you give each player specific skills to work on?
“Yes. We gave each of our players who were going overseas things to work on. Some will just be up to them. One of the comments I made to several of them was, you are in a foreign country with a lot of free time on your hand. There is no reason not to put in the extra 30 or 40 minutes a day to work on specific things. It’s not like they have a ton of outside things to fill up their day. Having said that, they are also in a situation where, playing year-round, they are looking for some down time. They need to balance the two. For example, a kid like Tina Charles, one of the things that she encountered this year that she needs to work on is passing out of double-teams. Well, that is not something you just go work on by yourself after practice. Hopefully, that kind of thing gets worked on within their practice structure. Some of the defensive things we would like to see our players do, they probably have to try and do those during the course of the games they play. Working on a scouting report on a player, taking away things…individual things…working on your left hand if you are a right-handed player. Working on extending your range or getting off a quicker shot, those are things you can work on, on your own after practice with a teammate, but you have to be self-disciplined and do it because there is nobody there to baby sit you.”
How does that differ from the NBA, were you were a longtime assistant?
“One of the biggest differences between player development in our league and in the NBA is that in the NBA, you have a longer season, your players aren’t taking off somewhere else, and in the summer, NBA assistant coaches can get their players for two or three days a week after they’ve taken a break, and they can control the environment their in to work in without the stress of playing in games. The WNBA, once they leave us, it’s kind of out of our hands whether they are going to do it or not.”
How should these younger players approach their experience?
“I would hope, but it doesn’t happen in all cases, that they would approach it in three different manners: One, understanding that it is a way to set themselves up financially for their future, and try to save as much money as they can to build a nest egg. The second part is, you would like them to expand their game while they are doing it. That’s important. But the third part of it is, just as adult human beings, expand their view of the world. It’s an opportunity to see other parts of the world, and have someone else pay for you to do it. There are a lot of people here who save up to take a vacation overseas and spend a lot of their own money to go somewhere new. These young players have an opportunity to do it on somebody else’s dollar, and I hope they try to expand their view of the world by doing that instead of sitting in their apartment watching TV. It’s a great opportunity to expand their horizons in general.”
So you think playing overseas can really help an individual grow in other ways outside of basketball?
“I think that is a huge advantage for them. I would say a majority of our players have learned to do that. I worry about the ones who don’t. I don’t think you can become an isolationist when you go over there and only live in that little world of that town you are in. You are going to travel to different cities, sample the culture, see how other people live and appreciate what we have here.”
You always place a lot of emphasis on off-season improvement. But given how young the Sun was in 2010, is it fair to say this off-season is even more crucial for Connecticut?
“I don’t know. I had thought that at one point but I have mixed feelings about it and I will use Tina (Charles) as an example, who have played a ton of games over the last two years. Between her UConn season, and USA Basketball and our season, just since a year ago last summer, Tina has played 130-plus games. It’s over 100 games. So you hope she can get some down time too. I don’t want her coming back either mentally or physically exhausted from a grind. While I want her to spend some time working on her game, I also want her to come back somewhat refreshed if that is possible. They don’t play a ton of games there. They are there a lot of months, but they play an average of two games a week on average, so hopefully she can find a way to get some down time. Kelsey Griffin has kind of been in the same boat. You want them to get a balance of downtime and improvement. I think on top of that, though, for a kid like Danielle McCray who sat out the last half of her college season with an injury, this is a crucial time for her. It’s time for her to get the experience that our other players got this summer. This is her time to kind of catch up to everybody else. So for someone like her, it might be a lot more important than for others.”
So when you see her score 30 points the other day for her team in Israel…
“That is a good sign that she is healthy, for one, and number two, she is being aggressive, which is what we asked her to be. We need her to come in and have a scorer’s mentality here. Obviously as a rookie on a team in a place where she’s never been before, to come out and get 30 points in her first game, that is a good sign for me.”
Is there a player or two you use as an example to younger players of someone who maximized their overseas experience?
“Yes. I go back to Katie Douglas, who when she came here from Orlando, had been overseas on year, maybe two at that point. Brooke Wyckoff was another. What I used to tell them was go try things over there, especially in games you know you are going to win, work on things you might be a little bit nervous about working on here in the heat of a big game. It’s your time to add something to your game. They did a great job of taking advantage of that, and I try to point our players to do the same things now. You are not in the spotlight every day, you have time to try things. That’s the biggest thing. Every year, a player should come back with something added to their game.”
Is the biggest hurdle adjusting to the game overseas or adjusting to the culture shock of being away from home.
I think it’s a little bit of both. I think your first time over there, it’s more the culture and the language – depending on where you go and how many teammates you have who speak English or if your coach speaks English. In a situation like Tina Charles, she’s going to a team where she’s going to play with Becky Hammon and Shameka Christon. She’ll have a built in support system that will make it easier. After a season in the WNBA, I don’t know if there is as big an adjustment in the basketball part of it because you’ve already made an adjustment from college to the WNBA. But it still is a different game. The refereeing is different, it’s more physical in some ways and you’re not going to get as much sympathy because now you’re the outsider playing over there so those are things that are different.”
How much do you think playing with the USA team, and winning a gold medal at the World Championships, helped Tina Charles?
I think just the confidence she gains by being accepted by the best players in our league. She’s worked out with them and played with them for awhile, but actually being a starter on a world championship team only adds to her confidence level. I think playing against different styles of play during the tournament. European post players, a lot more of them, come outside to shoot the ball, so I think that is one experience that will be greatly beneficial to her. I think she got a little bit of a good education in different styles of play. One night she’s guarding the big young kid from Australia and the next night she’s guarding someone who’s 6-3 and who is playing out at the three-point line. It gives you a variety of experiences to draw from as you go forward.”
