Wanting to Know the Why with Ari Braun

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Hi and hello. Welcome to the Transforming Basketball Podcast. I'm Adam Omiecinski and I'm here with Ari Braun today. Ari, could you do us a favor and give us a little background on who you are?

Yeah. First of all, thanks for having me. It's really a thrill for me. I've gotten so much from Transforming Basketball that I'm really excited. If it's possible for me to help others, then I'm so happy to be able to do that. I coach in Baltimore, Maryland at a small private high school of varsity.

We're K through 12, so we have we do have middle school, JV, varsity. So it's a nice little program that we have going. But small school, we don't get to recruit a lot, so we kind of get the athletes that we have. And depending on the years we've had, we have up years, down years.

Always trying to do our best, obviously, with what we have. I've been coaching for twenty. 5 years or something. I've never done anything else. I don't know how to. When I met my wife early on, I said, are you gonna make me get a real job?

And she said no. So, you know, that worked out. She's the right one. And so here we are. I've been multiple places, but coaching basketball, I'm trying to learn as I go.

What levels have you coached at, like specifically, Ari?

Pretty much all been high school. I've done almost strictly boys. A few years, I've coached some girls and Also with some middle school experiences mixed in, but it's basically been boys varsity high school basketball, never at the, never at the college level.

So I'm curious, obviously you're a part of Transforming Basketball. How did you first discover the CLA and Transforming Basketball?

Well, I was introduced to the concepts on a very broad level through just coming across Chris Oliver's podcast and then hearing Alex on there. But to be honest, that was a few years ago. And at the time, you know, it, it was— the feeling was, oh, a lot of these ideas are really good, but what they're saying can't actually be across the board.

That's crazy, right? To all never do dry stuff, never do one-on-oh, never do, you know, form shooting, never do— right? It just seemed to me like at that point, without looking into it, that a lot of it sounded great. And some of it sounded a little bit crazy.

And what happened was in early in September, we get 2 hours a day to practice, 5 days a week, solid amount, but we don't get any really before or after time. And we're always trying to maximize our time in the gym. So we spend, you know, the first 5, 10 minutes of practice stretching like everybody else, not static, right?

We're doing a dynamic warmup. And I just thought, Can I take those five to ten minutes back from stretching and make them basketball activities in some way? So we were having a coaches meeting at the beginning of the year, like I said, early September, and I I proposed this idea to my coaches that we should research and see what we can come up with.

And my thought was, you know, instead of doing squats, we'll do jump stops and finishing. Instead of doing Lunges, we'll do defensive slides, whatever, right? But just some way to replace the, the benefits of the warm-up with basketball activities. And probably not surprising that pretty quickly I came across Alex's

video. I don't remember where it was, somewhere in Europe. He was doing a video with coaches on the court. Yeah. And he was taking them through a warm-up where it was CLA activities. And I said, wow, this is exactly what I'm looking for.

But again, I'm not one— I don't want to just, oh, I see a video and use it. And now I need to learn about it. I need to know why. I need to be able to say to my players, parents, administrators, if they ask, no, this is safe.

Not just this guy is— well, now he's with the Cavs. It probably makes it a little bit more to stand, you know, a little bit better leg to stand on. But still, it's just one guy. So I started to research it a little bit and quickly went into a 2-month deep dive into,

into the entire ecological psychology world. I shouldn't say entire because I probably scratched the surface, and I ended up. You know, I'm reading books and papers and videos. Papers, I should say, that I don't even understand. Right? I'm sure there are lots of people like that.

It's really hard to read. But I can't. But Rob Gray's podcast and Alex's podcast, and I'm listening to every day, right? Because we don't start practice till November, so I have plenty of time. So every day I'm listening to episodes of Alex and Rob's podcasts.

And then eventually I came across Emergence and, and I found their video of reconceptualizing the warmup and boom, right? This is exactly what I need, right? They have PhDs. Where else? What better? What better sources can I have? So I watched the video and I obviously learned a lot and it was great.

And I— but then I didn't want to give that video to my coaches straight off because what if you watch the video, I'm not sure if you've watched it, but if you watch the video, the way that they do it is they break it down, the warmup into 3 sections.

And the first section looks like dynamic warmup, but through a CLA. Approach, right? You know, repetition without repetition type stuff, but still stretching. And so I think I thought to myself, okay, well, here are guys who are telling me I could do it a different way.

But if I do it their way, then I actually lose more time from my practice than I gain. So before I shared it with my coaches, I just emailed, sent an email to Emergence asking, you know, my question. I just wanted to know if I could do it without those parts and really accomplish the goal that I wanted to.

And Tyler Yearby replied to me and essentially said, you know, short answer, yes, but if you have time, let's jump on a Zoom call, which was amazing. So yeah, of course. So I got on the Zoom call and that was incredibly enlightening and educational.

And, you know, he explained how I could do exactly what I was looking to do. And I continued just research, research, research. And yeah, that's my journey so far. Wow.

That's just a lesson for everybody, I guess. Just reach out. You never know. Just reach out.

Yeah.

People in this community, I think I can only speak from my experiences, like people are very receptive and want everybody to feel included and help out each other.

Yeah, I have found that to be true so much more in this community than in the rest of the coaching world. Yeah, I don't think you find coaches to be standoffish very often. People are willing to help a lot, but in this community more than anywhere else, and you find it on the Transforming members board a lot where people are just willing to help and you can post advice and ask questions.

You know, I emailed Rob Gray when you and I had a conversation. I don't remember exactly when it was at the beginning of November where you were maybe thinking of going somewhere. And, and so I asked Rob Gray if he could help me out in putting together a presentation and he didn't get back to me right away.

He had a backlog of emails. It's fine, right? I didn't expect it to. But, but then he did get back to me and say, yeah, if you need help in the future, just let me know. Right. And so like this guy, he doesn't have to give me the time of day, but he doesn't know me, but he's just willing to help because he wants to help people learn.

And it's incredible.

Beautiful. That's what we're trying to do at Transforming, man. I know that. I guess my follow-up question would be like, so after like this deep dive and now obviously the season has started, so how have things changed for you as a coach and perhaps even just as a human being in general?

I see things a lot differently, and I'll say this: when I got to the beginning of the season, I realized I had spent so much time on the science. I really wanted to understand things. I know I read Alex's book, and I spent a lot of time on transforming, but most of the time I'm trying to figure out the science so that I can say to myself, yes, this is what I believe.

That I got to the season and I was behind, behind in the basketball part. It's fine. It's been really educational. I find I'm a better coach right now because of the thought that goes into the preparation every day in practice. And I know I posted on the message board and you responded early where I was, you know, jokingly, sarcastically saying thanks for ruining my life too, because I spent so much time preparing.

But then I realized too much was going in. There was too much detail.

Mm-hmm.

I was getting to practice and And I was almost like that first week, I realized like, I'm confusing my players. I'm trying to be like a surgeon and like really plan out every little tiny detail. And you guys, that information is there. Don't do that, right?

You know, you come with the plan, you have an activity, you change it, right? The constraints have to change within the practice. You can't just come with a literal plan. You know, I'm trying to be John Wooden and Bobby Knight mixed in with CLA and it doesn't really work.

You have to have variability and flexibility within each practice. So I was doing too much, dialed it back. I'm trying all these different things and it really is making me a better— has made me a better coach, even while I've somewhat struggled to adapt to it, if that makes sense.

Adapt in what sense? In moment or leading up to practice?

Yeah, leading— like just trying to figure out how to best attack the things that I want to in practice, trying to figure out how not to put too much into an activity, trying to figure out, you know, you told me on the message board to put a constraint on the time that I put into a practice plan.

So trying to figure out how to get it done in not without spending 5 hours a day doing it. So I say it in a positive way and I say struggle, like not in a bad way, but in a way where I'm learning how to do it.

And just like I want, my players are going to make mistakes and I'm going to accept them and I'm going to make mistakes and I have to accept it as long as I'm seeing them and adapting and changing.

Yeah, I agree. It's, it's difficult. I mean, just like our players, it's going to take time and trial and error and slip-ups. And that's the thing with coaches. Often we don't have that support system. That's what we're basically trying to do with the Transforming Community and I hope for any coaches that is listening, like, to come be a part of that and be vulnerable about it and like ask for help and tell us what's going on struggle-wise, because everybody's been there or they're about to be there if they haven't been there before.

So like, these are all lessons that we need and we need the support to get through these things. It's definitely not easy and it's worth doing. I know that for sure.

Yeah, definitely. And I actually find it's really good for my players for me to come into a practice the next day and say, you know what, guys? I did too much yesterday, right? I threw too much at you. Like, for them to see that I'm willing to own it and adapt and change, or even within a practice, I'll have an activity and I'll put 15 minutes on the clock and we'll start it and I'll say 15 different constraints.

And then 3 minutes in, I'll say, guys, that's on me. Yeah, let's pull it back. We're taking this out. We're doing it this way. Let's go. I think it's important for them to see me make those mistakes and admit it. Absolutely.

I mean, to be frank, they're not foolish. They know if something's going really terrible too. For us to force it and say, no, no, no, we had this idea in our head and like, no, this is, this is gonna work, just give it time.

Now they're showing you with their behaviors if it's not working and it's on us to adapt.

Exactly. The other thing about our practices, I like, our players have mentioned it, you know, that 100% of our practice is live, you know, I talk about it with them on like the representative scale, right? You know, where, where 1-on-0 is, is a 0 and, and the game is a 10.

And so sometimes we're down at a 3 and oftentimes we're at an 8, but we're, we're, we're never at 0. The lowest we'll go is if we use like mosquito shooting for a warmup. And so, you know, okay, there's no decision-making, fine, but it's still above a 0.

But yeah. 100% of our practice is live and it's more fun. It's more fun for them. And they get, they get to play 5-on-5 full court, no stop. I told them early on that every day they were going to, we were going to go 5-on-5 and I, and I was just going to ref for a minimum time in practice, 10, 15 minutes.

So that way, you know, yeah, we'll do small-sided games. We'll do 3-on-3. We'll do 2-on-2. We'll do, you know, 1-plus-1 versus 1. All that kind of stuff. But at some point in practice, they have to be given time to take what we've done and try and put it in.

And they'll probably fail because it's not linear, right? But they have to have that time. And that's exciting for them because in the past, they don't— they haven't always had that. So—

How did you come about the decision to do that, to dedicate that much, that specific time period, every single practice to scrimmaging live?

Before we started recording, I was telling you like how our season has been going and some of the struggles that we've gone through as a team and how we've tried to attack them. And I wanted them to feel that they had freedom to make mistakes without thinking that I would ever stop it, right?

Because they thought that one way, and I was trying to get them To the other, to a different way. And so in a drill, that's I try not to use drill in an activity. I I'll stop it. I'll try not to, but it's it's a bad habit that is hard to die.

I'll stop it probably more often than I should, and I'm never giving them really the chance to self-correct or even to show me that something else might work. I don't think that you're capable of putting it on the floor every time you catch.

Well, I'm going to give you 10 minutes where I'm only going to coach, or I'm only going to ref. And if you do it, I'm not going to stop you. If it doesn't work, then that's the proof that I need. If it does work, then I'll accept it, right?

So there's multiple levels to the advantage of doing that. I think at the end of the day, it's also fun for them.

Yeah, that's interesting because, yeah, I think especially— I think it might be even more difficult for us to just simply referee and And really take that backseat and like, all right, like, you guys are gonna have like a pop quiz every single day in practice where you're gonna show me what you got.

And that's gonna just serve as our total feedback. And we're gonna have to basically build off of that. It's actually, it's a pretty good idea if you're afforded the time to do it. And yeah, you're willing to do it as a coach because, right, I would imagine that's the tricky part.

Yeah, no, it definitely is. And one idea that I had, I don't always have an assistant coach with me in practice, but one idea that, that was part of this thought process was where I can't remember it was a podcast or just on the members board or in one of the videos where somebody's talking about that you have to let them feel like it's a game at some point in practice, where in a game I can't constantly be stopping.

And I can't constantly be giving feedback, so I gotta let them play. So that's where like that came from. But then I thought, when I have an assistant in practice, I, I'm gonna let him ref the game. I will talk to players who are not in the game.

Mm-hmm.

That's game-like, cuz now I can give feedback when they sub in and out, when they're sitting and watching. So now I can have a conversation with them that I could have in a game, so I can still have an impact and help them, help guide them through this period of practice without actually stopping and making it feel not like a game.

So that was some part of that process as well. You mentioned if you have the time. The funny thing is that I've been a coach for, you know, 10+ years with practice plan down to the minute every day. I have them saved since 2014 in a file on my computer.

You know, just, and I'm proud of it, right? It's a source of pride. And, and I go in and my players see that I'm prepared, and I still do that every day. What, what I'm finding is that I'm able to accomplish so much more in such less time because of the offense-defense, the multitasking ability that I have within each drill.

I would have never written a practice plan for less than 2 hours. That's— time is precious, right? I'm trying to figure out how to take 5 minutes back from dynamic stretching, so I would never But I've found myself where I'm like, you know what, this plan is enough.

It's 1:50, it's 1:55. Well, maybe we'll go a little bit longer in this drill or that, this activity or that activity, but I can get through what I need to get through in so much less time because of the nature of the CLA activities.

And so then definitely have time to give them 10, 15 minutes to just play without me stopping it.

Well, I think that's exactly what you're bringing up there. It's like the simple design of the activities is we're always going to for the most part, have an offense and a defense. And what it does when you think about it is it just removes the need for a bunch of different resets for activities.

You just reshape the activity to suit what you're seeing and what you need at that particular moment in time. It can be a defensive emphasis, it can be an offensive emphasis, it can be passing, dribbling. And meanwhile, you're all still the same setup.

You're just making minor changes to it and boom, the activity completely evolves. to what you need.

Yeah, and we've actually found amazing benefits in some guided defensive drills. Sort of not literally guided, but some, let's say, you know, less live activities where we're working on screens. And let's just say it's an off-ball action and we're setting a down screen on the wing with the ball in the middle.

And so we'll go, let's say we'll go 2-on-2 with the passer. And the defense has to guard it in different ways, right? So we're going inside the screen, we're trailing the screen, we're trying to cheat it and forcing the backdoor. And now the offense has to make the reads based on what the defense is doing.

And we'll go, let's say we'll do a 3-possession burst, and the defense has to play each one of those coverages on a different possession in any order, and the offense has to figure out the coverage solution. Well, that's making us a better defensive team because we might— oh, sorry, I left out switching, right?

So it's 4 possession bursts, right? So we might only switch, but now we have a game where there's a guy we can't leave him open, and so we have to cheat a screen, whatever, you know, whatever. Well, now we've already worked on, even in a not fully live drill, we've worked on 4 different coverages.

And we can do the same with ball screens where we're doing 2-on-2 ball screens, and we're gonna hedge, switch, and drop. And we may— our normal coverage may be drop, but now we know how to hedge and switch, and it just makes us— and so the focus is, is the offense, right?

Because we're trying to get them the coverage solutions, but I have to teach them how to play the defense so that they can do it. And now when we need it, we can go to it. In the past, I would Really just work on our defense, like what we're doing, and it makes us this.

So this is going to make us a better defensive team, but also a better offensive team because we're facing multiple coverages. So there's so many benefits to the way that that the CLA is teaching you to do it.

Yeah, I agree. It just simply makes them more adaptable. I mean, you're going through all these situations that, and frankly, no matter what your coverage is, there are going to be times where there's slip-ups. And by providing them those different situations, they're actually getting a larger, a broader spectrum of what, like, what I could actually face based on what occurs on the floor.

I may actually be over here and now I have to figure out, all right, what do I do when that happens? Whereas if we're just simply focused on, no, this is what we do, it's, it's making them certainly much more fragile when they only learn one aspect of what could be possible on defense.

Yeah, and I actually pointed out to them during one of our early season games where it was halftime or whatever, and I said, and I walk in the locker room and I said, guys, let me ask you a question. Are we switching screens or not?

And everybody just looks at me and I'm like, I know, I don't know either because you guys just do it, right? We're not switching when we don't need to. We are switching when we need to. And obviously we'll come up with how we want to do it when we need to.

But this, you know, early in the season, because of the way we were practicing, we didn't have to define it. We just communicated through it. And yeah, if we can stay, if we cannot switch, that's probably best. So we keep the matchups that we want, but when we get stuck, we switch and it happens because we practice it every day.

I guess, like, I'm curious, like, how are— have the players experienced this type of practice environment and certainly game environment previously? And if not, like, how are they responding?

It's very interesting to see how the breakdown along the lines between our juniors and our seniors. Our juniors all played JV last year and our seniors all played varsity. They didn't get minutes on varsity, but they were in our— they were on our team in practices and they know how I do things.

And the CLA honestly is something that without knowing it I'd been moving towards. I mentioned coming across Alex and Chris Oliver on Chris's podcast a number of years ago, and so I was taking some ideas from there already. The ones that you know made sense to me without realizing, without knowing that you know muscle memory wasn't real and all of those kind of things.

So I had already been moving in this direction where I would say last year, last two years, our practices were probably 70% live, and our offense was already a conceptual offense. We were running a freelance motion. Players are deciding everything, and it's mostly off ball.

So the guys who are on varsity were already sort of ingrained in that type of and those type of ideas without again, just like me, without really knowing what we were doing. And then the JV players, while they're running somewhat of a conceptual offense, it's not the same.

Like I give a lot of autonomy to my JV coach especially, who's been with me for over ten years, and we think and see basketball very similarly. But obviously slight differences. And so, you know, their practices are a little less, or, you know, they're going to do more— I even forget what the drills are called.

You know, they'll do passing drills and they'll do miking drills and they'll do things where like the coach is trying to get them to work on their skills, individual skills. And so that's how he's attacking it. And so it's not as— it's a little bit more foreign.

To them than it is to the seniors, and when I was going through my learning process, which I still am, and before the season, so we would have some you know individual workouts with players who weren't playing fall sports. I would come in and I would you know I want to try something, guys.

Right?

I'm learning about this. Let's try. Let's try something again. So I set up an activity, and it's I just say, "What do you want to work on?" Do this. Let's just make let's make it up. What do you want to work on? Finishing.

Okay. Let's put a defender inside. You know, we don't have the smile, but we just— there's like, you know, the volleyball line dissects the— intersects the key. So I just use beneath the volleyball line inside the paint, right? So it's basically the area of the smile.

And I said, okay, defender's in there. We're going to do a closeout. Closeout defender has to allow shot or drive. If it's a drive, now you're driving into the defender and it's one-on-one in the paint. Right. Okay. So it's good, right? It's going well.

And then after about 5 or 10 minutes, I say, okay, I had— they split themselves up into groups, seniors on one end, juniors on the other end. And I go over, I call them, I say, okay, I want each basket, add something, add a constraint.

You can take away the original constraint for the defender. You could change something to the drill. And the seniors immediately, like, they just, they have a bet, they have a really good imagination. They're thinking about the game in a different way. They immediately come up with something.

I forget what they— the inside defender has to have his back to the ball until they hear it hit the ground. So like on the dribble. So now, right, and the other side, they were like trying to figure out how to get there.

And eventually, like, I kind of pushed them to putting the MIG defender outside the paint on the opposite side until the drive happens. So now he's got to come in and, you know, it makes it a little bit It changes the dynamic of the interaction down there a little bit.

But right away, I'm already seeing, you know, the imagination of the seniors versus the rigidness of the juniors. And whether that's because they— the seniors played with me or they just have a better imagination, it doesn't really matter. But there was this clear separation between them in the way that they approached and thought about these things.

So it's been interesting to see how that's developed as we've gone.

And I guess, like you said, you have meetings with the JV coach and stuff like that. Has he picked up on some of the stuff you're doing? And has his practices evolved at all?

Yes, definitely. When we started this process, it was right, we started having our coaches meetings. And we, we met, you know, I think it was every Wednesday for 4 or 5 weeks. And so I was coming and presenting stuff that I was learning as we were going and talking about degrees of freedom and all this other stuff that I was coming across.

And But the same reason why I didn't want to listen to Chris Oliver's podcast and just say, oh yeah, we're just going to go live with everything because that's what Chris said, right? That's what Alex said. I wanted to learn it. I needed to learn it and understand it.

I don't want to force him into it. I want to help him learn it and try and push him there, but he's got to go at his own pace and he has to be comfortable teaching the way that he's teaching. He's a fantastic coach.

And a great role model, and right, kids love him, and he's done amazing things for our program. So I need to help guide him along that path, but at his own pace. And so here's what I'm saying throughout these meetings, takes what makes sense, similar to the way that I did with Chris and Alex early on, like 3, 4 years ago when I started listening to them.

But there are certain things that he's like, you know, I'm just not ready to give up. Whatever it is, okay, right, you know, so I'll help him. I gave him— I, I bought, uh, I read, uh, Rob Gray's first book. I think it's called How We Learn to Move.

I thought that that actually was the simplest explanation of all of this ecological dynamics stuff, just the easiest to digest for me. Gave it to him. I think he's attacking it slowly. You know, we're sharing stuff. So yeah. It's a process for everybody.

They have to go at their own pace.

Just like the players, it's a guide by the side.

Exactly.

Or solutions. We can't force change in behavior.

Exactly. All right.

Well, thanks for coming on, Ari. I greatly appreciate it. If people want to reach out to you and leave any contact information or perhaps even like a message for fellow coaches.

Yeah. If anybody wants to contact me on the Transforming message board, certainly. My email address, I guess, is the best way right now because I'm not really active on social media. I'm one of those who just lurks and watches and reads, but I never post.

But, uh, it's abraun@btfiloh.org. That's abraun@btfiloh.org. And a message for other coaches— I don't know if I'm the right one to give a message. I'm in my journey, but I think it's Really important not to just accept things blindly. I think that learning the whys as best as you can is really important, and ask people in this space for help because they'll give it to you.

So many people have been generous with their time along my journey, and and it's only been two months, three months, and I honestly I love basketball. So I can't wait till it's over so I have more time to jump back into the science because I had to pause that as we go.

It's an ongoing process. Don't be freaked out when you come across something and you're like, wait, I need to go figure out how to do that. You know, I jump on the videos on Transforming all the time, you know, and maybe not daily, but just, you know, how do I teach that?

I need an idea. It's just ask for help, understand the whys as best as you can, and don't just accept blindly, right? You have to know why you're doing what you're doing.

That's a message I can take myself. So, get it, Ari.

All right, thanks a lot. Really appreciate it, Adam.

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