'Going all in' on CLA as a HS Coach with Ty Keck

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Thank you so much and enjoy today's episode. Welcome back to the Transforming Basketball podcast, joined by my friend Ty Keck from Idaho Falls. Ty, thanks for joining us.

Absolutely excited to be here.

So, Ty, when you first reached out to me, I had no idea where Idaho Falls was. You reached out, you're really interested in conceptual offense, and, you know, since then we've developed a friendship where I've come and worked with your varsity girls team, who are now, you know, one of the, the better teams in, in Idaho.

You've been using the CLA now for 2 years, I'd say, like, in a very good way. becoming, you know, really creative with how you're using it. And, you know, I think it's been great seeing some of the things you've been coming up with.

And then, of course, you came to Italy this summer and you helped me with one of the summer camps at College Prep. So awesome to have you on.

Yeah, totally excited to be here. And this whole journey with the conceptual offense and how I ended up here has been cool. And then, you know, the extra side of that is, yeah, I've made some pretty cool connections from some of the people that I met in Italy this summer.

some of the people that I've interacted with online over this stuff. And then, you know, obviously the connection that you and I have kind of built over the last couple years has been pretty fantastic.

Absolutely. So let's start with that. And, you know, kind of, I'd love to know what has changed for you, Ty, since, you know, going all in on principles of play and using conceptual offense. What's, what's been the biggest difference for you and the team?

I, I think one of the biggest things that I have really been able to come away with out of this offense, this whole— it's more than an offense. It's really just more of a program design is really what I've kind of come to think of it as.

I think the biggest takeaway has been my ability to let my players become players rather than me telling them what kind of players they're supposed to be and how they're supposed to play. And the best part of that's also the hardest part of that because I've had to give up a lot of freedom as a coach to be like, hey, you can have this responsibility.

Yeah.

it's actually not mine to control. And I, I think that was the hardest part, but it's also been the most freeing part.

Absolutely. You know, conceptual offense, it goes hand in hand with a constraint-led approach. And that's something we've spoken about, how it just helps make sense when you're using a CLA and you have a different lens to view the game and you're adopting more principles of play.

I think it actually makes it easier to know what you're doing, why you're creating small-sided games. So what would you say has been the biggest learning curve for you moving, you know, I guess from— I wouldn't even say traditional because you kind of did drills, maybe I'd say games approach to where you are now using a constraints-led approach.

And so, I mean, I came from a traditional background, like, um, I didn't know that very much. Yeah, I very much came from that. Um, and then it was probably, you know, 2016, 2017, I, I ended up starting to interact with Basketball Immersion, who, you know, very well, obviously.

Of course, an amazing, amazing—

and that's what led to like The whole idea, like, as I got into my own job as a coach, I started realizing that the things that I was doing weren't translating. We would run a drill in practice. We would run— my favorite example is we would run 5-on-0 offense, and we used to run a flex style of offense back in the day.

And we'd run our 5-on-0, and the kids would just— they would move perfect in it, and it looked beautiful. And then you would go into, you know, like an actual scrimmage-type setting, and none of it actually worked. And so, That's really kind of what got me started was I was just seeing all these things that weren't connecting.

And so I was just, I was on the look and on the prowl and kept finding things. And then when I got into, you know, first the idea with Basketball Immersion and the games approach really started to make those connections. And then when I moved all into this conceptual offense and the constraints-led approach, it really just made me realize

how kind of far back I was in terms of allowing kids to grow. And so as I've gone into it, the biggest thing that I've learned is that without actually deconstructing a ton of skills or without actually spending a ton of like individual time on one-on-oh or, or really one-on-oh stuff with kids, I've actually gotten players to be better quicker by doing one-on-ones, two-on-ones, three-on-ones, and putting them in game situations that actually translate back to live play.

And that's been my biggest, one of my absolute biggest takeaways from the conceptual offense constraints-led approach.

So I obviously, you know, I think so many coaches have benefited from Immersion and gone through, started to go through that journey of realizing there's another way. So let's maybe look at a practice with your high school team. What would you say maybe are some of your favorite kind of small-sided games and constraint manipulations from the conceptual offense and the ideas kind of we've spoken about over the last few years?

Yeah. So in terms of like the constraints, I will say that's probably been one of the biggest challenges. I think that's for most coaches. And for me in particular, that was one of the really big challenges was learning how to manipulate the constraints.

Because at first it seems like this just like big, huge pie to eat that you're like, there's no way that I can do it. But, you know, it's still the best way to eat the elephant is one bite at a time. And so like our first season, we were— we had a lot of mix of different things.

It wasn't purely constraint-led approach. It was conceptual, but it wasn't Constraint-led. So some of my favorite games that we do is I love the ability to take a disadvantage game that, you know, for example, one that we would do in the past would be like a 2-on-1 or a 1-on-2, 2-on-1.

And we would play with just that, that like buildup transition, right? And we wouldn't change really anything through it. We'd just run that 3 or 4 or 5 times a practice. And it was good. Don't get me wrong. Like, that was actually one of our better translation things.

Mm-hmm.

But then, you know, we start adding little things like taking away advantages for a team, or one that we saw this summer that I absolutely loved was we started changing the playing space. For example, we did that transition buildup and you would have them play in 2/3 of the court and just a turnover for any other side of the court.

But there's so many things like I love the shooting that we do out of it. I love like our 4-man shells actually taken a huge leap forward. Because we still use 4-man shell every day. It's just like a staple of our practice plan.

But because we can change so many constraints now and we can change the environment that the kids learn in just by making a few manipulations to what they can and can't do, it changes everything and it changes it a lot faster for them than it has in the past.

And I would say I wouldn't even call it a shell because I've seen it. You're just going live basically with different constraints. And it's like, that's the thing.

It's still that hard.

Yeah, that's it. Like, you know, you can take especially something like that, the shell drill, and it's so easy to turn it into a really easy task when you just think, okay, what can I do if we introduce this, if we change the space, if we change the starting position, the triggers, you know?

And now you have something that's really purposeful. So what challenges would you say, Ty, you've encountered understanding and getting to grips with a CLA? And, you know, not just within the Varsity program, but I'd say because you, you know, you're trying to implement this across your whole high school program, for middle school, JV feeder program, etc.?

I think if we go in terms of the overall program, the hardest part has been— indoctrination is the wrong word, but it's going to be what I use— the indoctrination of it all to all of my coaches. It can take some time. I mean, I've spent a lot of time in conversations with you, doing my own research on CLA, the ecological approach, differential learning, And so for me, it came a lot quicker.

But for some of my other coaches who maybe don't necessarily put in that time, and I mean, like, we're not all going to put in the same amount of time, dispersing that information to them and getting them to understand the basis behind it takes a little bit longer.

Now, I will say, as I get more familiar with it and like going in this year, I feel like I could teach a new coach within a season kind of what our approach is and how it is instead of feeling like They were maybe learning with me day by day.

Like, I feel like I could have them prepped as we go through the season well before they get to certain points of what we're trying to accomplish as we go through adding constraints. From a coaching perspective, I think one of the hardest challenges that I had, and it goes back to what I said earlier, is you really kind of have to give up a lot of that freedom and control.

And, you know, I think for, for so many of us, that's, that's probably the hardest thing to let go of because we feel like We're invaluable if we don't have— get players doing what we want them to do through that direct instruction sometimes, and that direct, like, you need to do this, you need to do this, you know, on this move, make it this way.

And, and so I think sometimes as coaches we feel that, that pressure. Well, if I let them just go out and play, then what's my job? But that's the beautiful thing about the constraints-led approach is, is you have so many options to make a simple change.

For example, like If I see my best player continuing to make the exact same move 4 times in a row, they're not trying anything else. All I have to do instead of telling them to make a different move is I could do something as simple as change where points are valuable at.

So for example, if they're just making the same post-up, then every post-up's worth 1 and every, let's say, drive to the basket's worth 3. And so that would be one constraint we could change, or we could just as simple as make, you know, a point that somebody else scores worth more so that it's getting out of people's hands.

Yeah.

Or if you just like, really, the other one that we've done is we've just made a certain move a turnover if they make that move because we want them to do something different with this.

Yeah.

Yeah. And so like, I don't have to— like, the thing that I've found is I don't have to get as irritated. I mean, as irritated or vocal or aggressive sometimes with players as I've had to in the past because like, I'm letting them build their own.

In fact, and I think we've talked about this, but I tell my players this all the time. Like, have you ever seen a baby get direct instruction to learn how to walk? And all my players look at me and they go, no, because they don't understand.

I'm like, well, in reality, it's the same way. Like, we're going to encourage and we're going to put you in environments that help you learn this, but really we want you to learn how to do it. And the fun thing is, is with all those challenges, the giving up freedom— this is the other challenge that I will say that comes kind of with the players— is a lot of players who come from a very traditional background struggle To also be creative, to also give themselves up to the, hey, I can just go try this and

it's okay. Because they're so used to, this is how we do it, don't do it any way, any other way. But once they figure it out, they play at a different level. It doesn't matter what their skill level is. I mean, that obviously still matters, but I can take a lesser competitive player and put them in this approach and within a short timeframe, Make them competitive pure and simply because they're better at making decisions on the fly than they would be if we broke down every skill individually for them.

Have you enrolled in our free skill acquisition workshop? This is a game-changing resource for you to apply the ideas discussed within the podcast. The workshop features some of the best snippets from previous podcast guests. In addition to illustrations and free small-sided games for you to use in your practice.

Click the link in the footnotes of this podcast episode to enroll in the workshop today and receive lots of instant ideas for your next practice. That's great, and it's really practical. In particular, Ty, I really loved what you said just about make something a turnover.

If it's done over and over again. And that could be a principle of play, such as maybe, you know, a player coming in and not being attuned to how to create an advantage in a pick and roll. And, you know, setting a really poor screening angle, popping every time, not looking to roll, slip, or do something decisive.

Or it could be, you know, some type of finish, some type of dribble move. And that's actually something I see a lot, especially at the youth level, where, you know, you get these players who are maybe doing quite well and they're, they're dominant youth players.

But then what you typically see is they resort to very similar— obviously we can't repeat the exact same move, you know, Nikolai Bernstein, but, you know, they resort to highly similar moves. And I, I had this today in a workout where a really good under-16 player, I noticed that he was just spin dribbling every spin, finishing every time to finish, or just using his power to overwhelm me.

And just, it was in a small group workout, I was playing defense, we just made it a turnover. And sure enough, What do you see? Loads of new finishing solutions, and suddenly starts missing way more because he wasn't comfortable with it. And that's a great example of using the CLA well.

So what I wanted to go back to is you spoke about introducing this to new staffs, and something I've been kind of encountering a lot just through transforming is we've got a lot of keen, maybe youth coaches, high school coaches, pro coaches even, who are all in on this.

They don't need to be sold. They're all in. They're learning about it. They're applying it. They're doing it. But then, you know, they're trying to think about, all right, how can we get the other staff on board? How can we get a new coach who's hearing about this for the first time rolling into this completely different approach?

So what have you done at Idaho Falls? Because I know, you know, just from my visit there, I realized how intentional you were with development of your staff.

Right. I think the first one was, is Biggest thing was I had to be all in. And what I mean by that is like, it, there were many times in that first season we ran this. I mean, just a little background, you know, for those that want to know, like it hasn't all been sunshine and rainbows on our journey through this.

We started out our first season doing this as a 2-7 team. You know, when we were, we were struggling to find ways to win. And so there were lots of opportunities for me in that first season and I got lots of Lots of fightback from my, even my coaches, like my assistant coaches at the varsity level who are my absolute closest friends.

I like, I rely on them for everything while we play, but they were like, I think we need to change it up. I think we need to go back. And I was like, I just, I'm not doing it. We're going to live and die on this sword this year.

And what happened is once, once they started seeing it actually making an effect on the players and the players started playing at a different level, even though we had lost some of the skill that we had been banking on. And once they started seeing it, I think that's it.

They have to be in it long enough to see the progression of it. And unfortunately for some of these things, like if you pick this up and try to run it your first season, it's going to take some of those growing curve, like learning curves in the season to experience it.

Where if you kind of have the summer to do it, but I think it's also hard if you just do it in the offseason because you can't see the exact growth of it as you go through a season. But that was the biggest thing is I had to be all in and I couldn't back out from it.

And I, and I would just continually keep letting them understand what we were trying to accomplish, like giving them the why, why, why we were doing this. Because in the end, I really believed it was going to make our players more unpredictable. It was going to make our offense harder to guard, and it was going to allow our players the freedom that we were going to need in order to be a successful team.

Well, turn to the last half of that season. We start 2-7 and we end up in the state championship game against the number 33 ranked guard in the United States, actually. And like, we held our own. We weren't quite in a spot to win, but, but we had gone from a 2-7 team to a 14-14 team.

Yeah.

So, you know, you look at that and you go, there had to be something to what we did because we didn't have, like, we lost our Division 1 player 6 weeks before the season. Like we just didn't have talent. We should never have been there.

But I really believe that it was us buying in all the way. And so once they see that, I mean, this was our exact conversation coming out of the state tournament as we were having our kind of our exit interviews as coaches. All of my assistant coaches go, as frustrating as it was, I wouldn't have changed a single thing that we did.

In fact, I'd probably be all in more next year. And we did that. And it's, you know, Like, it's been a great thing. Like, even though our season last year was a bit of a struggle, there were other components to that. But in terms of the players being able to play, like, this system, it's this, this way of coaching has freed them up so drastically.

It's, it's not even funny. And like, the other big challenge that was there was parents, because so many parents come from, and this is just what we deal with in basketball, right? Like, I do this because this is what my coach did and this is what his coach did.

And so Like a lot of the practices that we still practice are things that come from, you know, let's be honest, like things back in the '40s and '50s that were passed on to the coaches that we were coached by. And we don't know any different.

It was successful enough. So we just keep doing it. And so I think that's sometimes the challenge that the coaches have too, is you have to break away from some very normal feeling stuff into a very uncomfortable world in a world that is usually very comfortable for most people.

Like you and I could go to probably anybody's practice and we could probably talk to them about the drills that they run. And probably a third of them are the same things that we ran when we played. And they're, they're run exactly the same way we ran them when we, when we played.

And so that was, that's been the biggest thing is coaches seeing it. The other thing that I would say is take your time to study it. Like, go do some independent study on CLA, on the constraints-led approach. Go do some independent study on differential learning and really like find the science that you have behind all of this.

Why do people learn better this way than through skill decomposition? And make, and then it starts to make a lot more sense too. Yeah.

Absolutely. Very well said. So I want to kind of finish, Ty, looking at the transformational side of coaching. And you're a huge believer in the concept of transformational coaching. And just something I noticed with your girls is how a lot of environments I go into when I'm doing player clinics, camps, even coaching clinics, is it takes me like 5 minutes to unlock the players and for them to realize that this is different and that they can enjoy themselves, they can smile, they can have fun.

And then typically after that, you know, it's amazing just seeing the difference it has in the practice. And, you know, I remember from coming into your girls, you know, they were very comfortable with the CLA from the start. And a lot of places, you know, I come in and I see it can take a long time for players to come out of their shell.

And they might do very robotic things like pass and cut over and over, as opposed to playing freely even, and having the freedom that the principles of play approach provides. So I think your girls are a great example of being within a transformational environment and understanding that you're going to hold them accountable to high standards.

Absolutely. But it's not going to be through punishment, ruling through fear and all this stuff. So could you speak a little bit about that and just how you try and adopt a transformational approach within your practices?

Yeah, I think that was always a really important thing for me, even well before this. Being a transformational coach is, in my opinion, much harder than being your transactional coach where it's like, we're just here to get wins. We're here. I mean, for me, like, I'll steal a little bit.

I don't know if we can, you know, copy, take a copyrighted thing, but I'll steal a little bit from the Ted Lasso. Like, it's not really about the wins and losses for us here. And we practice that way and we play that way.

Now, that doesn't mean that I don't want to win. That doesn't mean that I'm not competitive. It just means that we focus on the things that lead to winning. And we teach them how to be good at those things rather than teach them how to focus on the actual result, because the result's so far out of our, our hands a lot of times.

I mean, you know, there's, there's another team on the other side, there's officials on the other side, there's, you know, how we like function as people day to day. So like, there's so many things that can sway what the result is. But if we can take care of the things and be very good and direct in the things that lead to winning, Which are things that we can control, then we should be good.

And so like, that was already part of my philosophy as a coach way back. And so again, like when I found the conceptual offense, the CLA approach, it really just connected with my soul for, you know, to, to really get deep into this because it made all the things that I believed in as a transformational coach.

It gave me a way to actually give that freedom, actually give that right to the players. Where it was really about them. And one of the things, and this is kind of going back to that struggle that I've seen, is one of the things that is a struggle is because we allow the players so much freedom to grow with inside of this transitional or this, yeah, this transformational learning environment, we don't always, we're not always the spears that push a kid.

So a lot of times we have a couple of the kids throughout a season that are just like, I don't really want to push myself that hard. And, you know, it's not that we don't try to push them. It's not that we don't try to encourage them, but We're not like, I'm not over them.

I'm not yelling at their face. I'm not, you know, if they want to take the opportunities that we're providing, they're going to take them. And those that have have grown tremendously. And those that kind of like look at it and go, ah, I'm just going to blame coach, then, you know, they just kind of stay behind everybody else.

And it, it has actually become more apparent who you are. And when I say good players, I'm not just talking about the talented ones, but the players that care about who they become. It really has expounded that ability within this. But the other thing that I would say with this is the way that we coach now, the way that we design practice, the intent with which we go into game planning and all of that stuff is so much more focused on the things that lead to winning versus the outcome.

Like I was saying before, that you could go into our practice and we'll talk about our wins and losses, but you would never Go into maybe one or two of my practices would have these elements, but most of the time, like, we're focused on them being better players, not them winning.

And, and I know that sounds a little backwards as a coach, but what I've also seen is the more we focus on them learning how to win and then being players that win and doing the things that win, wins have actually taken care of themselves a lot easier than before.

When we focus just on the wins and losses, So that's, that's been my biggest thing that, uh, like from the transformational side is it's, it's provided me a way to really shape my environment even better, that the players really have a huge responsibility in, in really what happens with everything, you know.

So it's been fun.

I love that. So maybe for other coaches, whether they're high school coaches, youth coaches, college, whatever, um, and they're interested in some of the things we discussed today, where could they find out more information about you? Maybe how could they reach out to you?

What's the best way?

But yeah, usually my Instagram, which is @coach_ty_keck, is usually the best place. That's where I have been adding all of my constraint stuff. We put some pieces from our practices, from our camps, from stuff like that. I'm hoping to this year, as we go through Open Gym, start adding some actual descriptions to some of the drills that we've been doing.

You know, and letting— I don't care. I think the world should see this. And this is what I tell people all the time. Like, I have no problem sharing what I know because, you know, if they take it and grow from it and can beat me, then I've got to get better myself.

So, you know, I have no problem letting everybody know what we're doing and how we're doing it. You still got to be prepared to play us.

So fantastic, Ty. Big thanks for jumping on the podcast and looking forward to seeing how next season goes for you.

Yeah, absolutely. It's going to be good. It's going to be good. Thank you.

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