Basketball Coaching Clinics

In April 2023, Alex Sarama and Kareem Kalil ran player clinics and coaching workshops in Beirut. Two of the player camps were 25 minutes apart, with players of the same ages, and Alex ran the same activity in both: a half-court 3-on-2 dominoes burst.

The two groups showed completely different behaviors. One group was evasive and creative with the advantage, and was content to keep passing without much intent to score, so Alex shortened the shot clock. The other group was extremely physical and attacked the rim relentlessly, so he steered their attention toward open, balanced shots and added a points system that devalued heavily contested ones. His conclusion, in his Lebanon recap:

The activity itself is simple enough to run on Monday. In a version Alex shared on social media in 2022, the offense had 7 seconds to find a high-value shot and the defense rotated in shifts every minute. The Routledge book Alex co-wrote with Alex Lascu, George Vaz Rocha and Neil Houghton writes it up like this:

Any clinic is worth watching with that in mind. The activity on screen worked for those players, in that gym. What you're there to learn is why the coach manipulated each constraint and what made them change it. The first chapter of Transcending Basketball is titled "Why We Can't Copy and Paste", and it opens with a line from Joan Cortes:

Alex's first book opens its chapter of activities with the same warning:

Introduction to the Constraints-Led Approach ($49) is for coaches who want to understand how the Constraints-Led Approach applies to basketball. It suits coaches starting with the CLA and coaches reconsidering how they design practice. The on-demand clinic covers why the CLA matters, functional versus fundamental skills, designing small-sided games and applying the approach with youth players.

If you'd like to read first, our free constraints-led approach guide explains the player, task and environment and the ideas underneath them. The small-sided games guide shows what designing a game involves.

Free

Coaching Clinic with Alex Sarama

A coaching clinic session with founder Alex Sarama covering the Transforming Basketball approach.

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Implementing a Conceptual Offense ($49) is for coaches ready to take conceptual offense from theory into practice. It takes the free Conceptual Offense Starter Kit onto the court: Alex explains how to teach shared principles, triggers and coverage solutions through game examples and small-sided games. It suits coaches who want a focused introduction before a complete offense course such as Youth Conceptual Offense.

Before you watch, decide which problem your team has. A team that can't create an advantage against a neutral defense needs triggers, such as a ball screen. A team that gets one and then loses it needs dominoes, Ross McMains's concept that Transcending Basketball uses for playing with an advantage: drive, pass or shoot in zero seconds, space so one defender can't guard two, and get back out to space after a drive or cut. The conceptual offense guide covers both.

The rest of our on-demand clinics are narrower. Pick the one that matches your team's rate limiter, the specific thing holding your players back.

Playing With Advantage and Implementing a Conceptual Offense sit close together. If your players already create advantages but can't keep them, the narrower clinic is the better fit. If the whole offense needs shared principles, start with Implementing a Conceptual Offense.

Some of what a clinic teaches is easier to feel on the court. On EP13 of the podcast we released raw audio from a Transforming Basketball event in Egham, Surrey, where Alex introduced the constraints-led approach to coaches who hadn't come across it before. Early on, he told the room what he was there to do:

If you'd like to bring the approach to your club, academy or federation, our events, camps and clinics page explains how to host a multi-day player camp at your venue, led by Transforming Clinicians.

Online or in person, a clinic shows you a coach's decisions in real time, so watch the coach as much as the players. Three things are worth noting.

• How fast the activity starts. Transforming Basketball challenges coaches to start each activity in 20 seconds or less, using short prompts instead of long explanation and demonstration. If a clinician spends five minutes setting up a game, notice it.
• What the coach changes, and when. The point of a clinic is the constraint manipulation: the shorter shot clock in one gym, the points system in the other. Write down what the coach saw just before each change.
• Which kind of defense is in the game. The Routledge book separates scripted defense (the offense knows what's coming), guided defense (a menu of coverages the offense has to read) and live defense (full freedom). Scripted is the least representative and the book says to use it selectively; live transfers most, but players may struggle to see or act on the affordance.

The book also recommends writing every small-sided game down in the same three parts: the game and its possible constraints, the intention, and the scoring, with the cues you'll use. Those parts should line up. If the intention is creating advantages out of a get, the constraints and cues are about the get, not about off-ball movement or the defense. That alignment is what keeps a coach from confusing and overwhelming players while they're still learning, and it's the first thing to copy from any clinic.

Later in the same EP13 session, Alex showed a constraint called Octopus: a defender who can't move. Then one defender gets one step and another gets two. Each change keeps a defender in the activity and moves the challenge point, how hard the problem is for the offense. That kind of detail is worth writing down, more than the name of the game. Rather than running the whole clinic on Monday, take one activity:

1. Pick one activity and name its intention.
2. Record the starting positions, defensive restrictions and scoring rules that shape what players do.
3. Choose the start for your players' rate limiter. A defender starting beside the ball-handler creates a different finishing problem from a defender starting under the basket.
4. Adjust as you watch. If it's too hard, change where the defender starts or how freely they can move.
5. Note what you changed and what happened, so you know how to use the activity next time.

If you'd like to try one first, the free Coaching Clinic with Alex Sarama is a clinic session covering the Transforming Basketball approach. For more on building clinics into your own learning, read the basketball coach development guide.