Value of Donor Sports and the Developmental Pyramid with Scott Peters

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Hello and welcome to the Transforming Basketball Podcast. On today's episode, I want to talk about the value of playing donor sports to improve basketball performance. And then also I have the conversation with Scott Peters, who's a basketball coach in Minnesota. And Scott developed this developmental period as a way that you can still play maybe your less skilled players meaningful minutes in real games, as opposed to just putting them at during blowouts.

Because at the end of the day, I think all basketball coaches, we all want to develop our players, but not at the expense of winning. So there is this very interesting development pyramid that he shared, and then we'll have that discussion and the second part of this episode as well.

So firstly, what is a donor sport? Put simply, a donor sport is any non-basketball sport or activity that donates transferable movement skills and athletic solutions to players. So I know maybe some of you have heard Joe Mazzulla speak about, you know, Nikola Jokic playing water polo.

He plays basketball like he's a water polo player. And because he has those, you know, very similar movement solutions that water polo players has. He's super physical. He doesn't mind, you know, players getting all over him and he, you know, holds the ball like a little water polo ball.

So that's an example of a donor sport. But of course we can't, you know, it's going to be very challenging for coaches to put players in swimming pools to train this. So there are other ways, more effective ways that coaches can apply different donor sports, whether that's, you know, in their practice or In the warmup.

Okay.

So what's the importance of the donor sport? For players to get really good at any skill, the best thing to do is practice variations of that skill. And by putting them in activities where they can do this, maybe outside of basketball context, where they're still practicing how to catch the ball, how to jump and catch the ball, how to fall safely, all within the context of making a decision.

Perception-action coupling, this is going to improve their basketball skills when they play the game. So it goes back to the concept of repetition without repetition. And of course, again, it is important to have context because what matters isn't general ability, you know, how fast a player goes, but how fast can they go while dribbling a basketball?

Or, you know, in the, let's say it's a 2-on-1 fast break. How fast can a player run, jump up in the air, catch the pass, and then decide whether he has to take 1, 2, and finish, or maybe he has to take a dribble to get around the defense and finish.

So that includes slowing down, reading where the defense is in front of him so he can make that decision. So again, it's not just generally about how fast a player can run, but how fast they can run in the context of the sport.

So before we get into how you can practically add donor sports into your practice, notably your warmups. I want to share a snippet from a conversation myself and Martina had from episode 125. So take a listen.

So we have this kind of the first step in ASM is working with our building block Fundamentals 10. And the first step that we say is like, make a basic movement analysis. So that basically means within your own sport, analyze all the specific skills that are within that sport and those that are not.

And then you use what we call the ASM continuum. So we have, within your practice, you have this specific practice that the skills in the context of the specific sport. So let's say basketball. So it's all the skills that you use in basketball.

Then you can move through the continuum to the concepts of adaptive, donor, and multi. The adaptive is most coaches do. So if you're playing basketball and then you do a drill, that's an adaptive of basketball.

Yeah.

But then the dono and the moti is what helps guide them in terms of thinking about the concentric approach and thinking about movements that are not in basketball. So let's say you did your basic movement analysis and you end up with a list of is-specific and non-specific.

Within the is-specific, if you change the context, like as you said, they are doing volleyball. And so they are using throwing, catching, hitting, and aiming, which is part of basketball.

So what's important, and I'm going to share some of my favorite donor sports that I use in my warmups, but what's important for coaches to consider is what are the skills that you're trying to develop? You know, similar to what Martinez spoke about, what do we want the players to do?

Right.

I think, you know, if you listen back to the conversation that Zay West and I had, a lot of it, I asked him the question, do you teach players how to fall? And he was like, you'd be surprised that you would teach professional athletes how to fall.

So it's the same thing. Like the better a player can get at falling, the more creative, maybe finishing solutions they can try because they're not going to be scared to fall down and get hurt. Right. So if they can functionally fall and not get hurt, they might be able to develop more finishing solutions and become better basketball players because of it.

So again, as coaches, we have to ask ourselves, what are we trying to help the player develop?

What skill?

Right. And whether that's working on balance, movement, safe landings, it's all about how can we incorporate these movements into the donor sports that we're trying to do.

Okay.

And we'll get into that a little bit specifically here. So I want to talk about some of my favorite games. So my all-time favorite donor sport game, I call it touchdown tag. You may have seen this in the Transforming socials as well. So all it is, you have 2 teams and you can play, you know, sideline to sideline, baseline to baseline, or any other kind of You know, space, but essentially have 2 teams.

So usually in my practice, it'd be like 7 on one team, 7 on the other, and the players can't travel with the ball. They can only pass it. And they're trying to get in the smile and put the ball down like a touchdown for a point, first to 3 points wins.

And what I really like about this game is that you can change a lot of the constraints to help you develop, you know, some of the, you know, different abilities that players can have. So for example, Let's talk about balance. Like maybe every time a player catches the ball, they have to stop with one foot.

So they have to brace themselves, brake, and stop with one foot. Maybe every time they pass the ball, they have to find a way to roll on the ground, right? It's crazy. And I actually haven't done that one yet, but it's just crazy enough to get them to experiment different solutions as part of the game, as part of this warmup game.

So touchdown tag is one of my favorites. Things like you have one dribble with every catch. Bounce passes only is a great way to work on passing solutions. One-hand catches, one-hand passes, also great, great ways. And then if you're doing this with younger players, you can simplify the task by saying, you know, if the player has the ball, netball rules where you can't steal it from them.

So you have to give them space to make the pass. You can only steal the ball when it's in the air and it's off a pass, exactly like netball. So you can always Find ways to make the game harder or make it easier.

Another thing is like maybe putting more defenders on one team and vice versa. Then other sports I've tried that I really enjoy is volleyball. And me and Martina spoke about this in our episode, but it's just a fun game for the players to try and they get to experiment different movement solutions, like actually hitting the ball with their palms.

Whereas in basketball, we don't do that. We're using our fingers and it's more finesse game. We played soccer or football, depending on what part of the world you're from. Dodgeball is a great one because you're having to throw the ball with maximum force.

Opposite, we use dodgeballs, not basketballs. We don't want anybody getting hurt. And also, it's a good way for players to practice catching these dodgeballs that get thrown as fast as possible. And then you can combine the skills like, all right, you're going to be dribbling while playing dodgeball.

And that's always a fun one and quite challenging for some of the players. And then, you know, other ways to modify the games as well is playing, for example, baseball, but changing the rules so it fits basketball. So with an under-10 group at London Lions I used to have, we would have the 4 spots, you know, the home base.

And then as soon as the player on the other team would shoot the ball, it would be live. So they'd have to shoot it from a further distance. So for the under-10, it'd be like a free throw line. Spot, and then the other player can start running, right?

And then I've done this with my under-21 group as well, and it's all— it just changed the rules a bit more. So it's like you shoot a 3-pointer and then you have to keep shooting for you to get the player out. Or you shoot, if you miss, that player's out.

It's like a strike, an automatic strike. Or you missed a shot and you have to pass the ball to the bases where the player's running at and tag them. Like if they're safe or not safe, exactly like you would in baseball. So again, it's just about finding sports and how can we adapt the sports to make it work.

And what I found with the baseball game is that players pass extremely hard. So it's like without me even having to tell them, all right, we want these laser passes, they're going to do it because they want to get the player out. And that's the best way to do it is to get the ball there before the player gets there.

If you know about baseball rules.

All right.

So those are some donor sports that I've used in the past. Of course, there's a lot of other donor sports you can use. Another one is like a kind of wrestling, but not really. Players, and I always do this for activation, or it's just like fight for the line.

So players are on a line and to win, you have to get both feet over the line while pushing the player back. So both, they're like, both players are fighting for the line. Then you can do the same thing. Both players are holding a basketball, but it's the opposite.

You're trying to get both feet of the other player. over the line. So like tug of war, and you can do this, you know, side to side. You can do this like just wrestling. They're in a circle and they're just trying to wrestle each other out of the space.

So you can, you know, it's great for teaching physicality and things like that. Again, it goes back to what skills am I trying to teach or do I want to teach? I know with young players, a lot of the coaches say we want our players to be more physical.

Well, this is a great way. You know, these wrestling games are a great way. To get players comfortable with physicality.

I'd like to welcome Scott Peters to the show today. Scott has come up with the idea of a developmental pyramid. And so I don't want to speak about it. I'm going to let Scott speak about it. But just before I do, I want to say Scott is one of the members in our community.

And we always interact in the community coming up with different ideas of how we can help ourselves and other coaches. And this is an idea. that Scott has come up with that we thought we'd share with the community as well. So Scott, welcome to the show.

And yeah, tell us more about this developmental pyramid.

George, thank you so much for having me. Yeah, it's really an idea that I started to formulate being a youth basketball coach and having to manage large rosters, typically 10, but sometimes as many as 12. So starting to think of a way to organize and thread the needle between being competitive and developing the lower skill kids and the kids that typically, you know, come in towards the end of the game and oftentimes are coming in in large groups.

So trying to figure all the ways that I could look at some of the negative trends that we see in playing time and how development is kind of managed and doled out specifically with, you know, rotation and minutes. So that's where the idea first started to come.

And, and I think you see the importance of this, like, even at the NBA level. And I was, I was watching Inside the NBA and Jalen Williams was talking about how Mark Dagnott, the Thunder coach, always throughout the season has always put players in the game.

So it's like when they're in a playoff game, they're used to it. It's not new. And then you see a lot of the times, you know, other teams, for example, the players, there's a lot of DNPs throughout the season. And they maybe don't get the same opportunity to develop.

And we're talking about, you know, NBA players here, players that have played a lot of games throughout their career. And now you scale this back, you know, to high school players and maybe players, just to go into a little more detail with the pyramid here, you have your 1A, your 2A, 2B, 3A, 3B, 3C, and so on there, as you can see.

Do you want to just tell us about like what those mean, what those are, and how you could apply them?

Yeah. And really for me, thinking about it started with bottom row, which are the tier 4 kids, which are usually your end of the bench kids. Those could be, you know, underclassmen on a varsity program. Like you were saying, you know, role players, trying to figure out a way to give coaches a tool to, so those kids don't kind of slip through the cracks.

And so that's kind of where Vampism started, but the idea of getting those kids playing time or Those players playing time, you know, when the team is more functional, like you were hinting at, you know, when it's not just kind of meaningless minutes and in garbage time.

So then I started, you know, kind of thinking of the different tier of players and how to, like I said, thread that needle between being competitive and development. So yeah, you would have your 1A, which is your best player, down to 2s, 3s, 3s, and 4s, 4s, but not necessarily always looking at that as just purely on skill, that could also be used in terms of position.

If you had like 3 bigs or something you wanted to, you know, rotate in and, and really trying to, again, create a tool to put guide rails in place to kind of fight some of the coaches. Sometimes they, you know, they, through a kid making a mistake or something happening and they, you know, they want to pull a kid in or out or say, you know, and you see that a lot.

And so that, you know, kind of give consistency to the players, the coaches.

Yeah.

And then taking inspiration from like an orchestra where you would have, you know, your first chair, second chair. And so having some sort of ranking system that, you know, can also be used as a motivational tool. It can be used to build camaraderie and just trying to think of all the different kind of permutations you can use, but which each corresponding, you know, spot on the pyramid where a player is slotted, there is a corresponding chart with Time in and time out for helping manage minutes.

And I think the really neat thing about having it written down is that you can play around with it, see what works, see what doesn't, see what kind of trends come up as you start using the chart there and get some results, some tangible results.

So Scott, another question I have for you, and I hope you're ready for this one. I know I sent you the questions beforehand, but what is one actionable step coaches could take tomorrow, maybe in the practice environment, to start applying this idea with their team straight away, even if that's at practice and maybe not in the game?

Yeah, I think if you look at it from practice side of it, really trying to make sure that when we're grouping players together, it's not just the, you know, 5 starters against the 5 bench. You know, how can you group those players in a similar fashion?

You know, if it's just a 1, 2, and a 3 in a drill, or 2, 3, and a 4, you know, finding ways to kind of make sure that you're, you're balanced so that everybody gets to interact in different ways. So, you know, if you're trying to enhance certain skills, you know, using the CLA, I think especially this could be a really helpful tool again of trying to make sure that you're striking balance and helping those lower skill players be a little bit more functional in their practices.

Absolutely. I think it's like the optimal challenge point, right? And you know, if you can create that practice environment where you're, like you said, you're not having the 5 best players versus the 5 worst players, because then maybe the 5 best players aren't gonna be challenged optimally.

And same for the 5 worst players, for the lack of a better term for them.

But then you can create equal teams and create practice environments where you can optimally challenge your players. 'Cause as the research has proven.

Yes.

That's the best way for learning, accelerated learning to occur. So I think, I think that's great, Scott. I think this is great. Hopefully coaches can look at this and take a lot out of it. Before I let you get out of here, my question that I always ask guests, and I didn't send this to you, so I hope you're ready for it, is the transformative tip.

So what is one piece of advice that you would give to other coaches that they can start applying in their practice environments or in their lives? Straight away.

You know, one thing that I, I think kind of always, kind of 2 points in what I, when I sent you that other sheet of coaching commandments, you know, your mouth is not a joystick. That's one of them that's on there, that you are not there to control the player.

You know, you shouldn't be there dictating decision-making. So I think that kind of little mantra or tip of your mouth is not a joystick. Let the kids figure it out and move the way they Perceive and make the decisions that they see fit and then, you know, come back and give them feedback.

But a lot of trying to dictate in real time is kind of a fool's errand. You know, I've been coaching for nearly 17 years and, you know, playing since I was a teenager and I still do really dumb things that I know better than, than I tell my players not to do.

And so, yeah, that'd be my, my most relevant tip.

Love it. Thank you so much. Thanks so much for stopping by as well and chatting to us.

Thank you so much. And I'm excited to get feedback from the community on what they think of the pyramid.

So I hope you've enjoyed the episode and I just want to wish everyone a happy holiday. As we close the year, I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you to everyone. It's been an incredible journey being on the podcast, obviously speaking to so many guests, learning so much during my time here.

And I'm looking forward to growing the podcast and having more insightful conversations next year. So whatever it is you're doing, whether you're doing basketball tournaments or you're taking a well-deserved break, I just wanted to take a moment to wish you happy holidays. And I really appreciate you tuning in and being part of the conversation.

Here's to an amazing year ahead.

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