The Book is OUT!

This is the Transforming Basketball Podcast hosted by Alex Sarama. This is the podcast helping coaches and practitioners change the way we think about basketball performance. Our goal is to provide the ultimate resource for making sense of applying contemporary skill acquisition ideas within basketball.

Within this podcast, Alex and his guests unpack how an ecological dynamics framework impacts our perspective of the game. If you're ready to join us in our quest to transform the basketball world, this is the podcast for you.

Introduction, exploring an alternative approach. For many players, coaches, and practitioners working in the basketball world, their early experiences of the game were often encountered in backyard and free play settings. When playing in my backyard in my younger days, I mimicked the tendencies I observed from the professional players that I admired.

I created unique scenarios whereby I had to make certain shots to win or lose imaginary games. I would rapidly wear out patches of the grass, cueing for the hoop to be moved to different parts of the lawn. Unusual playing spaces were afforded to me by the frequently changing location of the hoop.

This impacted how I practiced and what shots I could take. The unpredictable English weather served as no distraction. When it was windy, I explored different ways to finish closer to the hoop. When the lawn was waterlogged, I shot without dribbling and performing extraneous movements.

In the winter, when the grass became off-limits, I moved the hoop to a narrow stretch of patio. The patio doors served as one boundary line, with the grass as the other. It was never on my agenda to robotically rehearse highly similar techniques or perform spot shooting drills by taking 5 shots in a row from the same location.

I was continually exploring novel ways to interact with the ball and the basket in a process which was shaped by my intentions and changing practice conditions. At the time, I had no idea about the research behind human movement and skill acquisition. However, while writing this some 15 years later, it is apparent that there was inherent variability in the way I practiced.

I practiced in this manner for 6 months before I started playing organized basketball at my school, which preceded joining my local club. In an experience shared by basketball players all over the world, the environment I created in this formalized setting was the complete opposite to the one fostered in my backyard.

This same theme is reflected in the coaching methodologies that dominate the basketball world. The reality is that at all levels of the game, from grassroots to the NBA and WNBA, we see coaching strategies and organizational approaches which contradict with what research suggests as being a more effective alternative.

Transforming Basketball exists to provide a new lens for viewing basketball performance. Allowing us to rethink the organizational and coaching methodologies which accompany this change in perspective. In my team practices growing up, the way I performed layups often deviated from the textbook model. I had to demonstrate the perfect one-two-step layup before I could go back to expressing the other solutions I had already exhibited.

Additionally, the positioning of my elbow when shooting the ball was supposedly too far out. I had to run the coach's pass-and-cut offense over and over again or risk being substituted for another teammate. During games, we always received the same feedback: play hard, don't turn the ball over, and run the play.

At the time, it seemed ridiculous to suggest that the level of coaching was suboptimal, or that the coaches knew little about transformational leadership, skill acquisition, and the nonlinearity of learning. For all the practices I participated in as a youth player, I could seldom express myself in the way that I did in my backyard.

As opposed to building on the creativity and joy that were cultivated within these backyard sessions, my team practices stifled any such sentiments. Practices were virtually the same, to the extent of which I could have probably organized them myself as a youth player. Practices consisted of a dynamic stretching routine, The shell drill, old classics such as the 3-player weave, 1-on-0 finishing, dribbling technique rehearsals, and the 5-on-0 rehearsal of motion offense and set plays.

This was followed by 15 minutes of scrimmaging at the end. Any extra time was devoted to listening to excessive feedback and instructions provided by the coach, or completing punishments for getting the offense wrong or failing to obtain a desired target during perfection drills.

The highlights of my basketball career were not my organized practices and games, but rather the morning and afternoon break time spent at my school. St. Peter's Catholic School in Guildford, England had 3 outdoor hoops, each standing at a different height. The hoops were positioned within the turning point of the school buses, accounting for the variance in height and backboard angle.

When I first started at St. Peter's, The highest, most crooked 12-foot hoop was left available for myself and my friends. Relatively quickly, we were able to move up in the basketball world by joining the older players at the top hoop, the sole hoop that had been left unscathed by the buses.

During every break time, we organized ourselves into different teams with players of varying ages throughout the school. There were no boundaries, and with only one hoop available, we We had an imaginary 3-point and clear line. Sometimes we would play 3-on-3, 5-on-3, or 8-on-8.

We figured it out based on whoever was present. While I was unaware of this at the time, the irony was that virtually all my improvement in basketball was a result of my backyard experience and school break sessions. All the hours spent in traditional practice environments simply limited me or possibly even made me worse.

This story shares parallels with many of the concepts that are central to this book, most notably the fact that entire approaches in the basketball and wider sporting world are well-intentioned but based on outdated methodologies, beliefs, and traditions. This extends to coaches and organizations working with players of all ages, in all countries, and at all levels of the game.

In practice environments around the world, Coaches are frequently reliant upon methodologies which greatly contradict the science of human movement, the nature of how the game is played, and what is actually required for players to become skilled performers. Many of these traditions have become so deeply ingrained and enshrined within basketball culture that they have been passed down from generation to generation without their effectiveness ever being questioned.

This has only made it harder to challenge such methods and ask, is there a better way? Until now. Transforming Basketball aims to become the go-to resource for anyone within the basketball world curious about enriching their personal experience and knowledge with evidence-based ideas. This is all about improving the transfer between an organization's intentions for how their team performs compared to the reality of what actually happens within the game itself.

Coaches and practitioners often wonder why their players cannot do certain things. This leads to generic phrases being echoed or coaches chastising players when events fail to go to plan. This prevents organizations from completing a nuanced examination into what limitations persist before following this up with specific actions to effectively remedy them.

This book will provide the answers as to how evidence-based ideas can be harnessed to create specific interventions, bringing the intentions and reality of performance closer together. In reflecting on my youth basketball experience, I can easily say that it was not dissimilar from the one experienced by many others all over the world.

The only notable difference was that growing up in the UK, I had less practice time, an abundance of multi-sport lines on the court, and a plethora of badminton players to kick off before each practice. Since then, my desire to explore the alternative has led me on an entirely different path.

Over the last 5 years, I have been committed to reframing what the dominant approach is within our sport. As a consultant and coach educator, these ideas have enabled me to travel to over 40 countries to deliver coaching clinics, camps, and workshops. While the players, gyms, languages, and mannerisms are always different, the same underlying features have consistently presented themselves.

Firstly, the repetitive and highly similar drills that are used. An obsession with correct technique and the teaching of moves. A belief in the importance of fundamentals. Highly controlled offensive schemes of a similar disposition. A widespread copy-and-paste mentality extending to playbooks, drills, and even entire organizational approaches.

Corrective instruction based on idealized movements and correct patterns. Excessive lecturing and the usage of generic feedback from coaches. Players waiting in lines or practicing on one basket with low time-on-task rates. Punishments when events fail to go to plan. And finally, transactional coaching styles and negative environments that are not conducive to human development or improved basketball performance.

It is the accumulation of these experiences which motivated me to write Transforming Basketball. This book exists not merely to increase awareness of what evidence-based ideas are, but more importantly, how they can practically be used within the basketball world. This includes providing the evidence as to why we need to move beyond the traditional approaches which dominate the industry.

To act as a catalyst in achieving this, Transforming Basketball is the first of a 2-part book series for coaches, front office staff, athletic performance coaches, physical therapists, and any other practitioner working within the industry. One of the barriers limiting the widespread adoption of contemporary ideas are the generalizations that are commonly expressed within the sports world.

For example, if Country X has been effective in developing players, They should supposedly be a case study for others to imitate. In coaching circles, many have assumed it is solely the practice methods of the basketball coaches working in specific countries which have accounted for any potential successes.

What has widely been ignored is the strength of specific societies and cultures as a whole in creating an environment conducive to developing basketball players. This has led to an overt tendency in basketball to copy and paste. The widespread copy and paste approach is observed through the inclination of many youth, collegiate, and professional coaches to replicate celebrity coaches.

If Coach X has won a number of championships, then their whole philosophy, offensive system, and drills are supposedly the most effective. On a similar note, the presence of coaching trees in professional sport often leads to certain processes being passed down over the decades.

As rites of passage. Entire strategies are copied without a consideration as to whether or not they make sense for the players and the wider team. This accounts for why coaches adopt attitudes, behaviours, and entire ways of working, irregardless of the context. This has led to practitioners rarely reflecting upon why they think, coach, and operate in a certain way.

This leads to the dominant approach being repeated in a perpetuating cycle. Preventing practitioners from developing awareness of alternative methods. The dominant approach is not confined solely to coaching, but also to multiple departments within basketball. This is why throughout the book, I outline the theoretical frameworks that are relevant for every practitioner.

I explain why it is important that the basketball world changes, what change looks like, and how it can be achieved. Throughout this book series, Numerous practical examples are provided to bridge the gap between the research and its practical application. In order to truly begin transforming the basketball landscape, it is important to take stock and review how the industry as a whole is currently positioned.

While there are always exceptions and individuals who buck the trend, many practitioners, and specifically coaches, are viewing the game through the dominant approach. Through this lens, some questions which commonly emerge are, what is the best finishing move to teach? What are the optimal shooting techniques?

What is the most effective set play? Or what is the best drill? It is easy to see how such questions and this approach have become widespread within both basketball and the sporting world. One would seldom witness an 81-point performance and think, is there an even more effective way to practice?

In the same vein, who would question the validity of a coach who has won multiple championships? However, we must remember that the coaching and playing greats operated with the best available information within their time. It was not their job to research alternatives or discover contemporary approaches.

For many, the research was not even readily accessible. This led to methods that seemed to be the cause of their successes, being bequeathed throughout the basketball world, much like bad legislation without a second notice. Transforming Basketball was not written to unnecessarily critique the dominant approach or the individuals who adopt this style.

We have all been there, including myself when I first started coaching. While it is necessary to share the limitations of the dominant approach, Transforming is more focused on showing how coaches, practitioners, and the players themselves can benefit from new approaches. This is done with the intention to be a positive vehicle for inspiring change within the basketball community.

The implications for adopting a contemporary approach are wider-ranging than merely being used as a tool for developing more skillful basketball players. Culturally, this topic is of the utmost relevance when considering how the youth of today are faced with numerous choices and distractions. Within this backdrop, practice styles of the dominant approach may fail to harness the full excitement that a sport like basketball has to offer.

In Nonlinear Pedagogy and the Athletic Skills Model by Rad et al., they've referenced research by Guthold et al., indicating that on a global level, 1.4 billion adults do not meet current guidelines of 60 minutes of activity per day. Ding et al. outlined how this directly contributes to more than 5 million premature deaths per annum and an economic burden of more than $50 billion per annum.

Who would have thought that the dominant approach to coaching may have a role in such profound societal implications? Aside from the societal ramifications of how many practice environments fail to inspire and motivate children to participate in sport, having a detrimental impact on their physical literacy, the dominant approach also has consequences at the professional level.

At the highest levels of basketball, NBA and WNBA organizations are continuously searching for advantages over their rival teams. However, over the last few decades, this search has mostly been focused in erroneous places. The adoption of evidence-based ideas in the field of skill acquisition has the potential to be the next Moneyball, acting as the next frontier for the basketball world to bridge after the widespread adoption of analytics.

Embracing these ideas begins with a need to understand what skill really is. Many coaches believe that skills are simply taught techniques that players can learn and then apply within the game at the right time. Coaches do not view techniques as phenomena which emerge in context within the environment, or as something that can be developed while players are making decisions.

The entire sports coaching industry is therefore built on shallow foundations without a theoretical understanding as to what skills are and how they can be effectively developed. The viewpoint of players must be taught it before they can do it remains steadfast throughout the industry.

Generations of players are subsequently being raised in a manner whereby they are not developed to become independent problem solvers. The global basketball culture promotes a form of dependency upon the coach, where players are reliant upon the coach's every instruction. For all the players that have emerged from this backdrop to play collegiate or professional basketball, this approach may have limited them from fulfilling their complete potential.

How many players did we never hear of that could have been highly successful if they were developed in an alternative environment? Such problems are not confined solely to basketball, but in virtually every sport, impacting players at all levels. In taking a few seconds to reflect on the most skilled basketball players in the world, it may be interesting to consider what specific words are synonymous with how they play.

Words such as adaptive, fluid, or versatile may come to mind, along with players like Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Steph Curry, Diana Taurasi, and Candace Parker. It is then worth considering how appropriately practice environments of the dominant style foster the emergence of such attributes.

This provides an opportunity to compare the characteristics of skilled performance in basketball with another domain. Jazz music. In my younger days, my presence on the basketball courts during school breaks would only ever be missed for one reason: when I had practices with my school jazz band.

My experience playing the alto and tenor saxophones allows me to highlight the contrast between jazz music and current trends within the basketball world, specifically how players are effectively being trained and treated as classical musicians. The requirement of classical musicians to first learn the musical scales before playing more complex songs shares many similarities with how coaches have insisted on players first learning the fundamentals.

Classical musicians are known for their deliberate and repetitive practice styles. While there are always exceptions, musicians that are solely classically trained often find it challenging to adapt to other musical styles. On the other hand, jazz musicians are notoriously more versatile, To reference the legendary Miles Davis as an example, as his career progressed and traditional jazz became less popular, he was still able to adapt.

Davis pioneered post-bop in addition to experimenting with rock, funk, African rhythms, and electronic music technology. Rather than being limited to one style, he was adaptive. He came up with some of the best music when faced by the constraints of a changing society and evolving musical landscape.

This contradicts with many elements of the basketball world where the same drills, philosophies, and offenses are used in an identical manner to how they were first employed over 50 years ago. The game is inherently unpredictable, as players and coaches can never precisely predict the next outcome.

Free-flowing basketball possessions equate to compelling jazz solos and harmonious improvisations. Unfortunately, such moments are often curtailed due to teams practicing in classical environments and coaches aiming to have offensive possessions follow a well-rehearsed script. Despite being the ones who play the game, the players are commonly not trusted or empowered to be the ones to make their own music and demonstrate their own effective solutions.

Especially at the youth and collegiate levels of the game, coaches effectively act as the conductor of the classical orchestra, the individual that is always correct and ever in control. The parallels between both domains are endless. It is for this reason that quotes from famous jazz musicians are used as metaphors to introduce some of the chapters found throughout Transforming Basketball.

Over the last 5 years, I've been committed to learning about the application of contemporary skill acquisition ideas. This is where concepts such as ecological dynamics, a nonlinear pedagogy, and the constraints-led approach enter the equation. I have worked in programs where I have had complete freedom to apply these ideas without any limitations.

My experiences coming from outside the established system and without the need to conform to tradition provided the backdrop for the ideas found within Transforming to emerge. These concepts stem from the research world and challenge many widely held notions that have long been viewed as the most effective way within our sport.

References are included throughout the book to link these ideas back to their origins within the research. This is done to set the foundation for the basketball world to transcend beyond opinion-based exchanges towards adopting more empirically informed approaches. If such ideas offer so much potential, then what has prevented organizations and individuals from benefiting from them?

The stark reality is that a huge gap exists between the research and its practical application. Harnessing the complexity of evidence-based ideas and applying them on a daily basis can be a challenging task. For individuals wishing to learn more about these ideas, extensive independent research is needed from a variety of sources.

While evidence-based approaches have a lot to offer the basketball world, where would someone start if they wanted to make sense of this subject area? Fulfilling this void is what I hope to achieve with Transforming Basketball. My intentions are to remove the barriers to entry by making the research accessible and understandable to all.

Despite Transforming being written with a primary focus on coaching, the ideas within are highly relevant and applicable for every practitioner. In the present day, it is no longer enough to simply repeat what has always been done in the past. Ultimately, as practitioners, we owe it to our players to be working to become the best version of ourselves, adopting approaches which align with how the players may develop and perform as optimally as possible.

This means we have to reframe the importance of professional development, education, and learning within the basketball world. Approaches which may have been beneficial 50, 25, or even 5 years ago are not necessarily as effective in the present day. Throughout the first and second publications of this series, many of the beliefs that have been nurtured within the basketball world for several decades have been placed under the microscope and closely scrutinized.

To present the alternative, the theory is supplemented with ideas relevant to organisations at all levels of the game. Adopting contemporary thinking is often challenging when faced with the presence of influential socio-cultural historical constraints. These often act as a force field by continuing to draw practitioners back towards the dominant approach.

In order to eclipse such paradigms, it is critical to have a sophisticated and nuanced understanding of the theoretical frameworks that underpin the approaches I share. The roots of these ideas begin with reconsidering human movement. How do movements in basketball actually emerge out of so many potential possibilities?

How is it that players move in the ways they do? Finally, what organizational approaches may improve rather than hinder the ability of the players to become skillful? Questions such as these reveal the true nature of our beliefs regarding the when, what, why, and how of human movement.

For this reason, it could be said that the foundation of Transforming Basketball is based upon understanding how the theory of human movement has far-reaching implications for how we view and approach basketball performance. Whether we have a theory of movement or not, this shapes everything we do within an organization, from the general manager to the video coordinator.

Given how Transforming offers an alternative perspective, on current affairs within the basketball world, I have also attempted to write this book in a nonlinear manner. The nature of any book is inherently linear, with a gradual buildup of chapters in order for the reader to make sense of the overall topics and themes.

While organizing this book as coherently as possible meant starting with the theory first, it is possible to cycle through the various chapters as you see fit. If doing so, the glossary at the end will help make sense of any terminology missed in earlier chapters.

In spite of this, if you are not yet familiar with the theory, it is advisable to avoid skipping past the theoretical chapters. Within many basketball programs, the theory often acts as the elephant in the room. However, it must be grappled with in order to start thinking differently.

While the theoretical language may be challenging in some places, Without an understanding of the language, it makes it difficult to outline the theoretical basis as to why such wide-ranging changes are necessary within the basketball landscape. The nonlinear nature of the book may also take you back and forth in some instances.

For instance, after starting with the theory, you may wish to skip ahead to the activities chapter to see how these ideas are practically applied before returning to conclude with the remainder of the theoretical sections. My hope is that the continuous approach of theory, practice, theory, practice may allow for these ideas to resonate in a more effective manner.

Various interactive links are also shared throughout Transforming Basketball in order to achieve this. These include a combination of practice videos and other resources from leading practitioners and individuals within the basketball and skill acquisition communities. The goal of the book is not to provide one quick and easy fix, but instead to help change and positively impact the way individuals within the industry think.

As such, this book is not a strict blueprint that must be followed in its entirety, but rather a framework that challenges conventional thinking. On this note, I hope this book empowers you to agree with, build on, or even challenge the ideas I share.

I would particularly love to hear from individuals who take these ideas and make them their own. You can join in with the discussion either on social media or through our website at www.transformingbball.com. Furthermore, transformingbball.com/book-resources contains many of the resources that are shared throughout.

One of my main intentions of writing Transforming Basketball was to encourage you to reflect frequently and deeply on your own practice. You may even wish to compare notes and ideas with another colleague as you progress throughout each chapter. My goal is to provide inspiration to adapt these ideas based on your own unique context and practical experience.

The goal is not to simply provide you with the recipes to copy, but rather the knowledge through which you can craft your own. While I have done my best to make this book as authentic as possible, It is very much a reflection of all the independent research I have conducted until this point, the books and research papers I have read, the podcasts I have listened to, and the skill acquisition researchers and practitioners I have had the fortune to learn from.

The adoption of evidence-based ideas has the potential to become the new norm within the basketball world. I hope that Transforming Basketball can play a part in accelerating this process.

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Transforming Basketball Podcast. If you'd like to learn more about the work that we do, head to transformingbball.com to access our free resources and spread these ideas throughout the basketball world. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform.

You can also connect with us on Instagram, X, or YouTube with any questions that you have from the episode. See you next time on the Transforming Basketball Podcast.