What are Principles of Play & Why Are They SO Important For All Coaches?

This is the Transforming Basketball Podcast, and I'm your host, Alex Sarama. This is the podcast where we help coaches and practitioners change the way we think about basketball performance. Our goal is to create the ultimate resource to help make sense of how contemporary skill acquisition ideas can be applied within the basketball world.

Throughout the podcast, we'll unpack how an ecological dynamics framework alters our perspective of the game. If you're ready to join us in our quest to transform the basketball world, then this is the podcast for you. In this podcast episode, we are going to take a look at principles of play and understanding what these are and how we can develop them through the constraints-led approach.

So something I've been thinking about a lot since starting Transforming Basketball is how we can keep explaining what a CLA is to other coaches throughout the global basketball community. It's a big mindset shift. And I think that one of the biggest barriers to not only understanding the CLA, but then implementing it in practice is the lens through which many of us approach offensive and defensive schemes in basketball.

And what I mean by this is From an ecological dynamics perspective, affordances, opportunities for action, are constantly appearing and disappearing within the environment, and our offenses and defenses should be designed around some of the natural kind of behaviors that emerge within the game itself.

So what I'm getting at here is many times, especially when we look at team offenses, they are so highly controlled that they actually take players away from what they would do naturally if these offensive systems were not in place. And they're so artificial that many times they actually over-constrain players by acting on what could be really good advantage-creating opportunities.

So this is what leads us onto the topic of a game model. And this, I used to actually use this term before I realized what a mistake I was making. A game model comes from football originally, and it's very much a case of coaches who try and have their teams playing very rigidly in the 4 phases of the game.

So those phases would be transition offense, half-court offense, transition defense, half-court defense. And within game models, coaches often have these automatics and things that must happen. And instead, I believe in principles of play. So I really kind of understood the difference. I was actually on a Zoom call with Adam Omiecinski and Karl Woods, and You would've mentioned, obviously Adam's done a bunch of podcasts and helping me with Transforming Basketball and Karl, some of Karl's research I've referenced already in many blogs and podcasts.

And Karl spoke about how principles of play, they're basically there to orientate players. So as opposed to informing the players that they must do something in a particular way, principles of play basically provide possibilities. And it's essentially like a northern star. So when we have these principles, they shape the intention of our players.

For instance, maybe it could be the type of shots we're looking for, the type of triggers that we're trying to use to create an advantage, and maybe even some of the actions we're looking for when advantage is created. But it's not overtly stipulating that specific things must happen, and it's absolutely not about an if X, then Y approach, because like I was talking about before, There are many solutions to different things which emerge within the game.

So I'm just going to read my specific kind of definition that I've put together for what I consider principles of play to mean. So here we go. Principles which help educate the intention and attention of both the individual players and the collective team.

These may shape a team's behaviors within the 4 phases of the game. Principles of play should not overtly constrain players, but rather support them as they explore their environment. Examples of specific principles of play within half-court offense may include the concept of dominoes, for instance, converting advantages, using triggers, which are framed as opportunities to create advantages, and coverage solutions reframed within an ecological approach as attractive affordances, which may appear when triggers are initiated.

So that's an example of some offensive principles of play I have listed right there. Now let's make it really clear with what a game model could look like in basketball. For me, classic one, youth basketball, pass and cut, which I've already spoken about on an episode.

I would also say motion offenses, which are heavily regimented, are a perfect example of game models because they stipulate what the players must be doing, how they should be doing it, and it really kind of And it really is not congruent with an ecological approach.

So I've often said that you can't run a continuity offense if you're really adopting the CLA. Now, some coaches haven't understood that because what they've done is created small-sided games for that continuity offense, and that's great. I think that that's definitely way more effective than doing a traditional drill, but the ecological dynamics underpins the CLA.

So if we have an offense which is based on a continuous pattern, which we're constantly replicating, then that very nature of the offense itself is not ecological. So anytime we introduce a set and the players take it very rigidly and they believe that we have to run the set to the end, that's not ecologically informed.

So instead, what we want is even in a set play, we want players to be attuned To maybe the first trigger in the set is an opportunity to create an advantage. So if we are running the play merely to get to the end of the play, like I often see at all levels of basketball, for me, we actually haven't done our job well.

So something I actually say to players is, I don't want you to run the play. I want you to find affordances to go off script. And if you don't think an obvious one exists, then of course, then we get to the next part of the set.

Now we have to make another decision. Can we break off scripts? If we can't, next part of the set. So the idea is we're breaking the defense down so that as we've run each trigger, the defense have gradually become more and more and more distorted.

So it creates this momentous effect. So if we've done that well, by the end of the set, some type of advantage has existed and the set has achieved its goal. Often, however, I don't see that because what happens while players are running their sets as the coaches teach it, 5-on-0, They're not deceptive.

So the first part of the sets, it's obvious that they're not looking for advantages, but defense don't respect it. So, and sure enough, it gets to the last part of the set with the seconds winding down, 10 seconds or less, and what do we do?

We get a bad shot. So this is why I think it's so important, because I see this happening all the time at many levels. So we don't need motion and we don't need to rely on set plays. I still think we can use set plays on dead balls in a conceptual offense because I think it, it could be a good opportunity to disorganize the defense if we run them creatively.

But we don't need to be controlling offense as the coaches. This is the biggest kind of thing I wanna leave you with today. And we've been left with this idea as a coach that we have to control offense and dictate what must happen.

It's impossible. We're merely attempting to control the uncontrollable. So from my perspective, the players are the ones playing the game. We have to let them make the decision. So by all means, we can support them a lot as the coach and we can influence them heavily, but ultimately we should not be calling everything, right?

We need to give them autonomy because they're the ones playing the game. For me, what's the alternative? Well, it all begins with understanding the concept of offense. And while it's too simplistic to say to score, I consider the concept of offense to create an advantage because as soon as we create one advantage, we are looking to extend that advantage until we score.

Now, I don't believe we need to even distinguish between different advantage types. I just think it's unnecessary regardless of whether that's small or big or different types of advantage in relation to what the defense are doing. I used to do that, and again, now it's not even needed.

I just want to Let players get used to appreciating whatever they think of an advantage is, understanding that moment that appears, we're just playing with our advantage concepts, and we don't need a heavily structured offense. We are just playing with our dominoes concepts, which I got, of course, from Ross McMaine.

So this means, you know, we're looking to play with principles of play when an advantage appears to get a great shot. Naturally, this leads to the question, How can we develop attunement to get players recognizing advantages and critically converting them successfully? Firstly, shot selection.

When we have an advantage, ideally the advantage ends the moment we get a good value shot on our shot spectrum. And this is where I am now using the analogy of medals. A gold medal is a 3-throw, a dunk, or a layup inside the smile.

A silver medal is a catch-and-shoot 3. Obviously, if it's in the corner, even better, but it could be any other type of spot-up catch-and-shoot. And bronze medals are off the dribble 3s and paint 2s, but outside the smile. Those are the main medals we're trying to get, but most notably gold and silver.

We will only really settle for a bronze if maybe it's a great shooter on a team and that's a really good shot for them, or if we're kind of entering the dwindling stages of the shot clock. This is an example of principles of play, and for me, it's a very influential task constraint because something I've noticed just playing with Shot Spectrum I've noticed how much it's impacted the movement solutions of my players.

They become far better finishing because they know they can't bail out with a floater or a mid-range shot. So it's forced them to become incredibly adaptive, finding ways to get to the rim. And also it's improved their 3-point shooting drastically because they know that we place such a value on it as a program.

So at the same time, I'm getting in our offensive principles of play and our defensive ones. So let's say An advantage exists, and maybe as a team, one team is looking for those shots. Well, the medal concept also applies to defense. And, you know, what we want to look at here is, all right, if these are gold and silver medals for us, when we are playing defense, how can we actually prevent the other team— well, no, I don't want to use prevent, that's too strong— reduce the occurrence of them taking these shots.

And this, to me, should inform how we design defensive coverages. in line with things like the individual constraints and action capabilities of our players. And again, this is why I don't believe in copy-paste, because every situation's different. So our defensive principles of play could be centered around the shots that we want to reduce.

And then we gotta look at things such as, if dominoes is how we play in an advantage, what do we look to do on defense? What's our intention on defense to get back from dominoes into a neutral situation? And of course, this is where something such as peel switching enters the equation.

And I love peel switching as a principle of play to negate offensive advantage. So let's look at transition now. So what are some examples of principles of play in transition? So for me, easiest example would be the moment we rebound. I got this from Mike McKay.

We want to look to land like a quarterback in American football. So what do we mean by that? Well, we can immediately begin the transition by breakout dribbling. And we have vision of the court. If we land, as is traditionally court taught, with catching, facing the rim, outlets, and then finding the outlet, the point guard for the outlet pass, all we are doing by, by that approach is reducing affordances to find easy, efficient scores in transition.

So we wanna play as quickly as possible. Another example could be, used to call it race car, where we are leaving the middle of the court free. for the ball handlers. So players will go up around the sides to create space, and then we're filling corners first.

So that's another principle of play. Skipping to a 2-side, aka the 2-side break, could be another principle. So within all these things, coaches, it's not absolute, it's possibilities. For, so for instance, an affordance might exist to skip the ball to the 2-side. It might not exist, and the player might keep dribbling, or maybe the player in the single-side corner is left open, so they kick it ahead to them.

Maybe let's say the pass goes to the 2 side. Well, anything could happen. The receiver could shoot it, they could make an extra pass, they could drive it. In other words, they're perceiving affordances that emerge from the backdrop of these principles of play.

So we are not overtly controlling it, and we're not trying to say you must do this, you must run this offense. Looking now at offense, we've looked at transition a little bit. If we don't have dominoes when we arrive after transition, for me, it's a case of immediately flowing into a trigger.

And this is where You know, we get into conceptual offense. So the idea is we have triggers which can be run at different locations out of varied spacings. We want Bernstein's concept of repetition out repetition. We want that embodied in how we actually play offense and defense, in fact.

Now, as we're running a trigger, the most important thing is the coverage solution. And this is however the defense chooses to defend the trigger. Can our players punish that? By acting upon an advantageous affordance to start dominoes. And this, of course, comes back to how we do that through use of the CLA and practice environments.

You know, lots of different small-sided games we have, and I do a lot of things like playing with a short clock, giving the offense one chance only to create an advantage out of a trigger, playing in small space, and different coverage solutions will emerge.

One player might be really good at rejecting, one might be awesome shooting pull-up 3s, one One might be really good at drive-arounds on a pick and roll. So every player's gonna be different. And then of course, the idea is that when, you know, a coverage solution is successful, we're in dominoes, and then we're just playing with our dominoes principles of play, playing in 0 seconds, not allowing one defender to guard 2, and acting like the floor is lava.

So we're not catching the ball in the mid-range. We're in great spacing. How could this be extended to half-court defense? Well, my whole kind of idea of defense is we wanna be disruptive and unpredictable. So If we always have the same base coverages and a team is able to pick that apart and we don't have anything else, we're not gonna be that surprising as a defensive team.

Whenever possible, I love to play with multiple coverages, and I also want the defense to sometimes try and dictate what the offense does. So as opposed to merely allow the offense to choose what triggers they wanna run and, and all that, we might be really disruptive preventing certain players coming into the action.

Being very physical, preventing certain players getting to parts of the floor. We might leave some players completely open and see how they respond. We might mix in some zones. So my whole idea is instead of playing with stretches of the game where we're using the same defenses, we are constantly mixing different defenses.

So that means, number one, the players have to be developed in a way where they can change coverages. And obviously, if you're not using the CLA, It's gonna be impossible 'cause the players just aren't gonna be able to do it. In a CLA practice, it's easy.

So changing coverages and then empowering them to change defenses regularly. Something, you know, I used to do with my prep team is the guys on dead balls would sometimes get to a zone, sometimes get to a junk, sometimes they'd play man-to-man, sometimes they'd do a random trap, sometimes on an inbound they'd double up.

What this meant was it was very unpredictable. And during the whole 40 minutes of a game, the offense never truly knew What type of defense they would be seeing. So of course, this is all within reason. You have to understand your players and your practice constraints, but I really think that we can do very creative things on the defensive end, which we haven't really seen yet by relying on base coverages, et cetera.

Biggest takeaway is I've outlined principles of play in this podcast. Think about how you can apply these across a whole program. So maybe in a club, think about how you can have similar principles of play from under-12s to under-18s to seniors. And it's really important that you're adaptive and your principles of play change as your players change.

And what this means is when I was coaching in Italy, I saw, I don't think I'd ever been in a country before where there was such an emphasis on game preparation. And virtually, you know, many of the Italian coaches I saw, fantastic minds, but they're used to the whole kind of week of practice instead of focusing on their principles of play.

They basically almost changed the whole way they played to prepare for the opponent, or they literally spent the whole time just going through their opponent's sets. And for me, when we have principles, we don't need to do that because all we're doing is within each game, we're maybe going to a different area of our team's principles of play that maybe we haven't uncovered until we played a previous opponent that shared some similarities.

Maybe if a team is doing something brand new or they got a whole new action, we frame it as, okay guys, this is our new principle of play. So if we see this action again, This is maybe some options we have to defend it.

The whole idea is we can focus more on us and focus on developing our players as opposed to merely preparing them for one game and hoping that they're gonna be able to execute some type of game plan. I hope this episode helps and provides you with some takeaways on the importance of playing with principles of play, and see you on another Transforming Basketball podcast.

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