Basketball Tryout Drills

At the NBA pre-draft combine, Kevin Durant couldn't lift 185 pounds. He was the only one who couldn't, and he remembered the strength coaches laughing. Alex Sarama quotes Durant's reaction in Transcending Basketball:

Durant's reaction points to the problem with most tryouts. A bench press, a vertical jump, a timed lane slide and an uncontested shooting drill all measure something. None of them shows you what a player does when there's a defender in front of them and a teammate cutting behind. Alex's chapter on the combine, and his earlier article NBA combine testing: why it fails to evaluate talent, make the case at the professional level. The same holds in a high school gym in November.

The combine sets out to measure "athleticism". Transcending Basketball prefers the term action capabilities: vertical jump, power, quickness and so on. They shape which movements a player is capable of, but they aren't skills. Skill is acting on the right affordance (an opportunity for action, like a gap to drive or a teammate coming open) at the right moment, and those affordances come from teammates and opponents.

The book's example is a 6-foot-11 player with an impressive vertical jump score. That score could mean nothing if the player can't perceive the affordances around them, while a player with a far lower score might be much better at finding space around the rim. Touching a vertical pole is a different task from anticipating a layup and timing a jump to contest it. In the game, players jump under time pressure, in fractions of a second. In the test, they can prepare.

Alex's article quotes Karamvir Gill, the athletic performance coach who has worked with RJ Barrett, on the sprint test: "You could have the fastest player in the world, but if they are not attuned to the opportunities to get behind the defense and accelerate in transition, then it accounts for nothing."

Physical qualities still matter. A bigger vertical can give a player more chances to finish above the rim, but those qualities can only be judged in the situations where players use them. A player who jumps higher doesn't automatically secure more contested rebounds, and a faster player doesn't automatically see the best opening.

Transforming Basketball puts the general rule in one line, written about player development but true of any evaluation:

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Chapter 5 of Transforming Basketball has a case study on reframing player evaluation, and most of it transfers straight to a school or club tryout. Draft combine data can tell a front office about a player's action capabilities, Alex writes, but the data alone means very little, because what decides a player's effectiveness is how they use those capabilities against the opportunities a game gives them. Predraft workouts are his example of decomposed practice tasks:

His alternative, when there's no live play to watch, is a more representative small-group workout linked to the team's own principles of play. He also suggests a different thing to look for. Instead of judging players against long-held opinions about what correct technique looks like, value dexterity and adaptability: a player who shows a variety of movement solutions to the same problem. In tryout terms, that's the player who finishes three different ways against three different defenders in jungle finishing, not the one with the tidiest two-step layup.

The chapter also warns about a bias. Research by Staw and Hoang on the NBA found that players drafted early tend to get more minutes and are less likely to be traded than later picks performing at the same level. A club can do the same thing on a smaller scale with last season's starters, so judge what you saw on the day.

On EP8, Alex told Dr. Alex Lascu that one of his biggest frustrations in Italy was how his players were evaluated: "all they were doing was looking at things like quickness, speed, height", not things like dexterity and attunement. Lascu, who did her PhD on talent identification, described pathways that picked players on gut feel, and noted that the people who end up in them are usually the ones who happened to fit the sport already.

Transcending Basketball is blunt about how much anyone can predict.

So treat your tryout as a record of what players did under the conditions you set, on that day. The more representative those conditions are of real basketball, the more the record tells you.

Tahj Holden's tryout plan for Ranney Boys Basketball, dated November 25, 2024, is a real example of a tryout built this way. Its stated intentions include a positive experience for players, lots of time playing and no excessive instruction. It combines short live tasks with bigger games.

The plan labels each activity with the TLC framework: teaching, learning or competing. In the competing parts, coaches observe and take notes instead of repeatedly stopping play. That way you see which affordances players act on. Two of its activities follow.

The plan then moves into full-court 4-on-4 with a third team rotating, which brings the same interactions into wider play. A burst means players stay in their roles for a fixed time instead of one rep and then the back of a line, so every offensive player gets a minute of decisions you can watch.

Don Showalter, who has worked with USA Basketball for more than 20 years, told George Vaz on EP153 that small games are where weaknesses show up. If a right-handed player struggles with their left hand, you'll pick it up immediately in a 3-on-3.

He also told George what he looks for first: "When I go evaluate players, one of the main things I look for is versatility." Can they play more than one position, and can they guard more than one? A small-sided game where the defense has to switch shows you both.

For 1-on-1 evaluation, Chameleon 1-on-1 from chapter 8 of Transforming Basketball gives every player three different starts and a new opponent each round, and it is scored only on defense, so you see both ends.

Live games with 60 or 100 players sound impossible. At a live clinic recorded for EP13, Alex said he'd run a tryout for around 120 players, maybe 140 on one day, with four hoops, "and we made it work." The first game he showed coaches was jungle finishing, which he said works with 10 or 12 players on a hoop.

With 12 players at a basket, Defensive Shutdown gives you three teams of four and a clear rotation. Our one-basket practice guide has more ways to fit a big group onto a few hoops, and Alex's large-numbers article was written for exactly this question: youth camps, tryouts and big turnouts.

Keep the explanations short. Mike MacKay's rule in Transcending Basketball is no more than 30 seconds to explain an activity: name it, say how it starts and how it's scored, and let them play. In chapter 8 of Transforming Basketball, Alex sets coaches an even tighter challenge: start each activity in 20 seconds or less. Demonstrate enough for players to begin, then let several possessions go by before you add anything.

"Good basketball IQ" isn't a note you can use. Record what a player did and in what situation: recognized the help and found the open teammate, recovered to contest a shot, moved so one defender couldn't guard two receivers. Note who they were playing with and against.

Vary teammates and opponents wherever you can. One great possession against your weakest defender tells you less than three ordinary ones against different players. A short tryout only samples some of the situations a player can face.

Give players a chance to show their defense as well as their offense. Rotating roles, as the bursts do, means everyone gets observed on both ends. Our player development guide covers what to do with these notes once the team is picked, and functional solutions in 1-on-1 explains why we judge a move by whether it works against a defender rather than by how it looks.