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MAILBAG Grant Wahl will periodically answer questions from SI.com users in his mailbag. Your name: Your e-mail address: Your home town: Enter your question:

I'd planned to lead off this week's 'Bag with the back story for my feature in this week's Sports Illustrated on the Dribble-Drive Motion offense, which is now being run not just by the top-ranked college team (Memphis) but also by the top-ranked high school team (Bob Hurley Sr.'s St. Anthony of Jersey City, N.J.) and -- in elements, at least -- by the top NBA team (the Boston Celtics).

The high-octane DDM attack, developed by Vance Walberg during his days coaching Clovis (Calif.) West High and Fresno City College, has turned into the hottest thing in American basketball, and over the course of a month we found more than 200 teams across the country using it at every level of the game. (There's even a cool map with dots for every team's location in the SI mag package.)

From the moment I started working on the story in early January, I wanted to portray it as the biography of an idea, exploring how a basketball innovation happens and then spreads, sometimes to the detriment (and against the wishes) of the innovator himself. In the end, the story led me down all sorts of unexpected paths and taught me several new things about today's game.

Here are a few things worth pondering:

• At the same time that Walberg is receiving more professional respect than ever before (from all the coaches around the country running his stuff), he's also going through the most difficult moment of his 30-year coaching career. I first interviewed Walberg in his office at Pepperdine on Jan. 9. On Jan. 18 he abruptly resigned, citing personal reasons. I knew Pepperdine wasn't winning many games, but I had no idea that the situation was bad enough for Walberg to resign midway through his second season.

The SI story takes a closer look at what was going on in Malibu, but it's safe to say that the near-cult of high-school and small-college coaches using Walberg's stuff was crushed by Walberg's decision. By their lights, Walberg was one of them -- a high-school and juco grinder who'd made it big.

• I loved talking to Memphis coach John Calipari and Bob Hurley Sr. about why, as successful coaches, they decided to completely change their offenses. It's a good lesson for any of us not to get too stagnant in what we do for a living.

• The sub-culture of high-school coaches who pursued the Walberg offense and defense absolutely floored me. Walberg and Calipari have held clinics for more than 400 coaches at a time, but they have been unwilling to reveal all their secrets in any instructional videos. Yet Herb Welling, an assistant coach at Omaha (Neb.) Central High, performed some CIA-level espionage work, teaming up with John Jordan, the coach at St. Francis High in La Cañada, Calif., to "crack the code," as they put it.

"The Internet has made it a small world," says Jordan. "Herb is a good guy and was obsessed with finding out more" about what Walberg called the AASAA system (for attack-attack-skip-attack-attack).

Back when Walberg was at Fresno City College, Jordan would drive six hours nearly every week to scout Walberg's games and practices, and he would also attend every clinic Walberg held. "In one clinic you'd never get that much," he explains. "You'd have to go to this and that and put together meticulous notes and save them. He'd throw out terminology that wouldn't make any sense to you unless you'd been to something maybe five months previously. Then you'd be like, 'Oh, that's what that means.' It would really fill in a lot of holes for me and Herb."

Welling, a 45-year-old security guard by day, not only used the offense to help lead Omaha Central to the last two Nebraska state titles, but he passed it along to his pal Bob Hurley at St. Anthony. And that wasn't all.

• Welling also made two Dribble-Drive Motion instructional videos for Sysko's, one of the nation's top instructional video retailers. And if you could believe it, Welling's video is Sysko's top seller over the past 12 months, exceeding the sales for videos by Mike Krzyzewski, Roy Williams, John Wooden, Bo Ryan, and a Who's Who of top basketball coaches. Interestingly, the No. 2 seller was Pete Carril's videos on the Princeton offense, while No. 3 was Chris Lowery's video on defense.

• Welling argues that basketball coaches share information far less than football coaches. He pointed out one underground Web site, fastandfuriousfootball.com, that has reams of inside information on trendy pigskin systems -- from Urban Meyer's spread offense to Mike Leach's pass-happy attack -- but Welling noted that no such equivalent exists for hoops.

• One of my favorite parts of this story was communicating with more than 200 coaches about their fascination with Walberg's brainchild. (SI reporter Caitlin Moscatello also spoke with a bunch.) Thanks to Walberg's daughter Heather and to Memphis director of operations Andy Allison, we had a contact database for coaches who've communicated Walberg and Calipari about the offense or attended their joint clinic in Tunica, Miss., last summer.

I can't tell you how many times I said "I love coaches" to myself while reporting this story. I got dozens of long e-mails from coaches who couldn't stop talking about it (often in all-caps). Here's a small selection:

"MY KIDS LOVE PLAYING IT."
-- Frank Sciolla, Pennsbury High boys' coach, Fairless Hills, Pa.

"I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THAT ALL COACHES USE WALBERG'S PRINCIPLES OF DRIVING AND KICKING IN WHATEVER OFFENSE THAT THEY ARE RUNNING. GETTING TO THE BASKET, UNDER CONTROL, IS THE NAME OF THE GAME."
-- Patrick Callahan, Nome-Beltz (Alaska) High boys' coach

• There were a few teams running the Walberg stuff (or elements of it) that came in too late to be included in the magazine map this week:

Sherwood, Ark., Sylvan Hills High, boys'; Cypress, Texas., Cypress Springs High, boys'; Houston, Texas., Klein Forest High, boys'; Medford, Wisc., Medford High, boys'; St. Francis, Wisc., St. Francis High, girls'

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