George is joined by Chris Palmer, NBA and WNBA skills development coach and founder of Pure Performance Basketball, to discuss how coaches can design practice…
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In this episode, George is joined by Chris Palmer, NBA and WNBA skills development coach and founder of Pure Performance Basketball, to discuss how coaches can design practice environments that truly transfer to games. Chris explains how he uses film, data, and representative learning design to create individualized training sessions that develop better decision-makers, not just better technicians.
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This is the Transforming Basketball Podcast. This is the podcast helping coaches and practitioners change the way we think about basketball performance. Our goal is to provide the ultimate resource for making sense of applying contemporary skill acquisition ideas within basketball. Within this podcast, we unpack how an ecological dynamics framework impacts our perspective of the game.
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Welcome to the Transforming Basketball Podcast. Today's guest is Chris Palmer. Chris is an NBA and WNBA coach development— skills development coach, I should say. And not only that, he's the founder of Pure Performance Basketball. So Chris, welcome to the show. Today you're going to be sharing with us how you design your environments.
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George is joined by João Pacheco, a coach from Portugal who has been living and coaching in Germany for nearly 14 years.
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I know you have a big following on Instagram and you're going to be sharing with us how exactly you design it and everything that goes into that. Welcome to the show.
Yeah, thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to it.
Yeah. So Chris, I want to ask you, you know, you're somebody that designs representative learning environments. How do you use the constraints-led approach to inform what you do with player development and designing these environments?
Yeah, I think the first thing that I always want to do, especially with, you know, college and then more so with the guys at the professional level, is before I even design all of what I'm going to do for these guys is to make sure we know we have film, we have film on them of what they need, and we have the data points of what they need.
Yeah.
So all of my guys understand, like, it's one thing I'm not going to go to them and just say, hey, you need to work on your pickups off your left hand and not have any data, not have any film to show that evidence to them.
So, you know, we're very calculated about how we present to them what they might need and what the feedback is that they need. And then we make sure we're on the same page with that. And then after that, honestly, it's just, you know, deconstructing scenarios.
And putting them in those scenarios.
Can you talk a little bit more about that, deconstructing the scenarios? What does that look like?
Yeah, so specifically, like, if we have, you know, if we have a guy that really struggles at making the secondary read on the low man, you know, we want to, we want to put them in different situations. Rather, it's a playing out of a closeout to a baseline drive to understand when they're looking for Who they're reading.
Are they getting all the way to the rim with the low man being late? Is the low man showing up early now? Are they reading— now they're reading the sink man. They're playing a 2-on-1 situation. So now they got to make a decision.
Are they going to hit the 45? Are they going to hit the corner? Or are they going to get— try to make a counter to get all the way to the rim? You know, a lot of stuff kind of like that, making sure we're Attacking from different angles of the court, regardless of which hand we're driving the ball in, just providing some randomness to it.
And then maybe making it a, maybe starting it with a 1 versus 2, then getting on a 2 on 2 situation and kind of building up that way.
Yeah, I guess just to build on this a little bit. So it's essentially you're creating these environments for players to not only be able to recognize And see what's going on. Because I think a lot of the time when you talk about skill development, I think it's twofold, right?
Can the players see what's happening to be able to make the decision and act on it? And then can they act? Do they have the skills required to act on it at a high quality level? So what you're doing in deconstructing it to the point where, all right, we're going to take some of this information in the form that we're going to take out this strong side corner player.
And we're going to take out, you know, starting with the weak side 45 player. And then let's, let's just work on this 3-on-3 situation, you know, and let's get you better here. And then we can add on the 45 weak side player again.
And now it's a 4-on-4. And then you start to build it up like that for the skill development. Is that right?
Yeah, absolutely. And I, you know, also basketball is a random game. So I tell all of the guys, interns that I have with me playing defense or With my guy playing offense, like I tell them, like I get all the time about, you know, when they start out, they'll be like the low man.
And they'll usually the first time they work with me, they'll say, okay, you want me to come over every time? You want me to get over early every time? And I tell them same thing. I say, do whatever you want. Like sometimes get over really early, sometimes be late, sometimes be— meet them at the rim, make them finish off 2 feet.
Because that's how the game is going to be. And then sometimes, you know, if I have 2 offensive players that are playing that are like interns being the outlet reads to— for my player, you know, I'll tell them, you know, baseline drive, sometimes cut the 45, sometimes stay in the corner, sometimes you both stay.
Like now, now the player has to recognize, okay, now I'm driving baseline with my right hand. This guy's cutting. Is that sink man going to play to the corner where I have the drop-off to the 45, or is that sink man going to check the cutter?
And now I have that hammer pass to the baseline. Like, just creating all of these different scenarios. I feel like if we just— from something as simple as that, just creating randomness from a defensive standpoint and a cutter standpoint. We are getting so many different reads just in a short amount of time.
And we're making that player react to different things on every single rep, which I think is very valuable.
I couldn't agree more with you. It's like, instead, how can we add as much variability as possible so that it resembles the game as much as possible when the players are ready for that? I want to talk a little bit about pure performance.
You guys have, you know, NBA-level players, WNBA-level players. High school players. So the range of levels is different. What are some of the constraints you use to make sure that even though you're doing maybe the same activity with an NBA player that you're doing with a high school player, how do you make sure you match so you find that optimal challenge point for the players?
So, you know, starting out with like the NBA guys, you know, a couple years ago when I started to really put constraints more so heavily constraints into my training, that really improved the engagement of the guys. One, because even if we had less bodies, it made things challenging.
So if we did finishing drills, like one-on-one finishing, and we said, you know, something as simple as we're working on touch, not using the small square on the layup. So you got a high floater off the glass, put some spin on the ball.
All of that stuff that increased the challenge standpoint. And then also we put a game score on everything so they could go, you could be playing NBA guy against me and interns. I mean, we're playing to 7, so stops versus scores. So like ultimately all these guys are great competitors, so they want to compete in everything they do.
So from that standpoint, I think it's been very welcomed from them.
Yeah.
They've really enjoyed that. From a youth standpoint, you know, I think you got to, in my opinion, with the younger guys, I'm putting the same— I'm probably not as strict on the constraints. Like, I want to— naturally, it's better for them, like, they're engaged with the constraints I put onto the game and stuff.
But usually it'll usually be something as simple as We're playing an advantage finishing game. Everything's got to be off of 2 feet or everything's got to be off 1 foot. We'll mix it up and change up the variability of the drill. I just think with the youth level, you just got to kind of— they can usually do more than you think.
You just got to kind of monitor it and make sure you're designing it so they understand the simple concepts of what you want to do.
Yeah, I guess you want them to still have success. So by what you're saying, so that they don't get discouraged, or again, going back to it, like, so they're at that sweet spot, that flow state of learning by making sure you constrain, you know, intentionally, they're still able to find success in the drills versus adding so much variability.
They start to, maybe it becomes a bit too challenging for them. Is that, is that what you're saying?
Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, it's just different. I mean, these guys at the NBA level, They know it's a data-driven league. They know what's a good shot for them. They know what their strengths are, what their weaknesses are, like the back of their hand.
So we can push them. But then at the youth level, you know, they already have some bad habits. So now it's more about you're trying to break, you're trying to break some of those bad habits as well. So like you want to You're teaching more shot selection.
You're teaching more what's a good shot, what's a bad shot. You're teaching more playing off your pivots, playing off 2 feet. Whereas at the NBA level, depending on type of player, which there's only a few players that have full autonomy of their shots, as you know, there's 1 or 2 every team.
So like, we're very cognizant of making sure everything we're doing is matching what's a good shot for them and what's a good shot for their team.
Makes sense. It's like a holistic approach to player development. I want to maybe rewind a little bit here because you were talking about some of the, you know, team concepts in, you know, what we just spoke about in terms of, you know, is the take-2 defender going to stay with the 45 or they sink into the corner?
How important is it for player development, for coaches out there that are skills trainers, player development, and focus on that? How important is it? For you, I guess, what advice would you give for player development in terms of developing themselves as, as head coaches, as assistant coaches, as team coaches, so they know the tactical and strategic side of basketball as well to help their players improve?
Oh yeah, it's huge. I mean, the best player development coaches, the best trainers have coached teams like you. I think coaching from a team standpoint is instrumental to being able to be really good. In player development, because you have to understand what a team needs and you have to be able to fit that player inside of what, what would be valuable for a team.
You know, different teams have different things they like to do, but at the end of the day, like a lot of these things, what teams need is pretty consistent from a decision-making standpoint. So I think that's very valuable.
Yeah. You know, we're recording this, I think it's a week before the draft. You know, it's just so important. I think that it's not necessarily about what the best player, like when we talk about the draft, not about, all right, he's the best player, let's draft him.
But it's more about the fit for, you know, the team. And I think the way basketball is trending, it's so important that not everyone's going to be a number 1 overall pick. Not everyone's going to have the green light to, you know, take any shots they want.
So it's so important to not only be a star in your role, But also to learn how to play with advantages when you have advantages on the floor, to learn how defensive rotations work. To your point, when the guard's driving down and they, you know, that big defender has pulled up to pick them up, it's so important to be able to make the pass on time and on target.
So, you know, I think that's super key for player development.
Yeah, no doubt. And yeah, I'm glad you brought up like advantages. So, you know, I mean, I saw it even at Overtime Elite. At the high school level. So we had, I don't know, 7 of our players were in the top ESPN 100 for their class.
And, you know, we get there, we're watching all of this game film and stuff at the beginning of the season. I'm like, wow, this is, this is incredible. Every single possession we are breaking the first line of the defense, or we're drawing 2, or in transition we're playing with a 5-on-4, 3-on-2, something.
Some sort of an advantage situation and we just weren't converting. And so I'm like, and so that really got me thinking. I was like, this is it offensively. I mean, we have to convert advantages and, you know, younger guys. So they haven't really gone through like, what's an advantage?
What's a disadvantage? When are you in neutral? They were just kind of playing as themselves, just being super talented and creating advantages. But not knowing what to do when they created that advantage. We spent a lot of time on that. We broke it down.
We do transition advantages. We do midline defender advantages where we draw the low man. We did a pick and roll over advantage where the drop is playing 2-on-1 and he's got a tag and all of that. So that's kind of what it became because we could naturally, we were naturally talented enough to create all of those advantages.
And we weren't good enough yet to convert on those. We saw some benefit with doing that.
Absolutely. Especially when you get to the point, like you said, you had really talented players. So maybe, you know, I've coached players where they just, especially at younger levels, they're just taller, bigger, stronger than their peers. So it seems like they're making all the right decisions at that age.
That's just not necessarily the case. Sometimes, you know, they just overpower their opponents and they're able to score. So for me as a coach, I always like to praise the decision-making, whether it's, you know, taking it out to a shooter when they could, they probably have the advantage to go up and score.
It's just, I think for their development, it's going to be so much better. And then you spoke about the converting advantages. It's the hardest thing to do in basketball is create an advantage, right? Defenses, especially modern defenses, are getting so smart, so advanced, which is what I think one of the reasons why the game is rapidly changing because offenses are having to find different ways to score at an elite clip.
And I think the defense will catch up, in my opinion anyway. But to your point, you know, how can we put players in environments to learn those dominoes principles? So I'm curious, you know, especially when maybe you were working with Overtime Elite, but even in your, you know, skill development sessions, how do you, if it's a one-on-one session, how are you teaching players to play in it with an advantage and then convert that advantage?
Being especially one-on-one situation, or if it's just me and one other guy helping me, trying to— the first thing I always want to do is I try to get as creative as possible with always adding some sort of passing read. I always want to add a passing read, and I always try to do some sort of visual read.
So, I mean, I'll just give an example, like Okay, we'll go a— if I have one guy helping me in drop and I'm setting a ball screen, so maybe we don't have defense, but we're working through a snake situation off a ball screen.
He comes off that snake, maybe I'll give him cues from numbers. So I'll say, okay, so once you go off that snake, you gotta get your head back middle because you want to read that tag. Maybe you have the pocket, maybe that tag pulls all the way over, you have the throwback.
Or you attack that drop, get to a floater or a kick. So like, I may give— right as he comes off me as a screener, I may become— I may give a hand signal, 1, 2, or 3, 4, and give them what that means.
That could mean, okay, you got to react, pocket bounce. You got to attack the drop, get to a floater. You got to get to a pull-up, or you got to get to a throwback. So now, just with that simple cue, we are Working on our pace coming off the snake.
We're working on getting our head around to the middle to simulate reading a tag, and then we're reacting to something because the game is visual. And then we'll see how fast we can process that information. So, you know, obviously it's not perfectly ideal without a bunch of live defense, but I think any way you can add some sort of visual read and so any way you can add some variability.
Yeah.
to make them think, I think is beneficial.
And in terms of like, I would imagine in these situations, players mess up a lot. So how do you, like, what's your mindset as a coach with mistakes in practice? Are you, you know, I imagine what you're going to say, but how do you make it so that players are comfortable making mistakes so that they continue to explore and maximize their learning?
Yeah. So that goes, I think a lot of that goes back to film sessions. So like you see with me doing film with some of these NBA guys, like I'll show, you know, they'll always get like, they'll always hear, okay, good read, bad read.
Well, okay. So like I'll go through some pick and roll situations and, you know, it could be like an over into a deep drop and maybe he hits a short roll early.
Okay.
Depending on personnel, that's an okay read. Doesn't mean it's a bad read. Maybe you could have gone one more dribble. That tag defender pulls in. Now you have the corner read. Maybe you could have gone straight downhill. That tag does a pull. Now you have that lob.
So like, I think getting rid of the black and white helps with that a little bit because there's not always the perfect read and there's not always a bad read on a situation.
And I was just going to add to that. I think a lot of the times we have these, you know, coverage solutions where it's like, all right, well, if the defense is going over, then maybe a good coverage solution could be, to your point, you know, you're attacking the middle looking to score, or you're attacking the middle maybe looking for that pocket pass for the roller, or to your point, you know, you're looking for that pass over to the weak side corner if the tag defender's pulled over.
So it's like That's all true, but then sometimes the defender could die on the screen. So maybe it's an open shot that you have, right? If you're a great shooter. So it's like, to your point, it's not necessarily about black or white, but it's about reading the situation in real time and making the best decision there.
Absolutely. And it goes into the details. I mean, at that level, like, depending on who I have, like, if this is a guard coming off a ball screen, that's a 40% shooter. Naturally in the NBA, it's a 1-5 pick and roll. What are they going to have to do?
They're going to have to get over. They're going to have to play drop because they don't want to— usually don't want to switch that. So right off the advantage, just off of his shooting ability, we're playing off an advantage. Now my job going through film with this guy is making sure he sees all of the options and what is the optimal option for his team.
In terms of shot selection and in terms of, I mean, points per shot, to be honest with you. So like just making sure he kind of sees all the options and sees, and maybe there's a pattern that he's always reverting to over and over again that might not be ideal.
Yeah.
You know, just kind of opening up a window of possibilities. And then when we get on the court, you know, now he can really go through, okay, that was probably the best decision, or this was the late read, or, you know, just kind of self-correct a little bit on that.
Yeah. I want to ask a little bit about constraining the players so that they get out of these bad habits that you mentioned. I think there was a story, Kyrie Irving, you know, he's such an adaptable finisher at the basket. And one of the stories I heard is, of course, he was the godfather at the crossover.
His name escapes me, but that's his actual godfather as well. Right. But then also he practiced with a basket that didn't have the inside square. There was a hole in the backboard where the inside square was. So naturally this led to him using more spinning the ball off the glass, using English, so using the outside of the square.
So different adaptable finishes. When you design these environments for players to find multiple solutions to the same problem, you know, you spoke about it already, like, all right, maybe this time we're only going to use, we're not going to use the backboard. We're not going to use the inside square.
What other things are you doing to make sure players continue to explore? So they don't go back to these ingrained patterns that they're trying?
You hit on a few of them. I mean, it could be something, something as simple as no backboard, which we already talked about. You know, usually it's kind of, for me, it's more so about the specific player because every player has different tendencies that they'll go to, you know.
So from a, I guess from a finishing standpoint, that's a good one to talk about because A lot of guys love to shoot everything off one foot falling away. So, you know, maybe we're more heavy on 2-foot finishes against the primary defender, or if a secondary defender comes over to play off the pivot rather than just jumping off of one.
That kind of goes into getting a passing read in too. But I really like to do my due diligence on what that specific player needs.
Yeah.
Because like, I'm not gonna, you know, if you have Kyrie Irving, I'm not gonna go a whole practice and be like, oh, 2 feet, 2 feet, 2 feet. Like, what's the point of that? Some guys actually need more attention on the environment and comfortability of playing off 2 feet.
Other guys are pretty solid with both. They just need the different coverages and the variability and the opportunity to do both. Yeah.
Well said. I think it really reminds me of like the question I get a lot is like, oh, what are some of the best constraints? That you can add. And to your point, it depends, right? Because the whole point of you telling a player to play off 2 feet is so that they can learn to, you know, maybe be more patient, find different solutions instead of shooting it over and relying on their athleticism over a taller shot blocker.
But then, so the whole point of the constraint, whether, you know, in any small-sided game, is to really guide the learning depending on what you want the players to look for and discover. So I thought that was great. Spot on.
Yeah. And that's the other thing about like constraints, especially, I mean, I think finishing is a great example because, you know, we'll say you also can't just go into, especially at the youth level, I've learned you can't just go into a finishing drill and say, or a small-sided game and say, okay, everything off 2 feet because Now they're playing off of instincts.
So like now when they're in line waiting to go, in their mind, a lot of them are like, okay, so everything has to be a jump stop to a finish. It's not the case. So like you got to go over. Okay. You can go sweep over to a finish.
You can go sweep over, jump stop, step through. You could go spin move, finish strong off 2. Like there's so many solutions that maybe like in real time they're not thinking about.
Yeah.
So like you could go over them, just like, look at these 4 or 5 different things you can do. You're still playing off 2, you're still on balance, you're still playing powerful. So now they kind of are able to see all of the different options because I think a lot of times when we say play off 2 or put a different constraint, they're naturally just going to think I can only do one thing every time.
Yeah. And then I think as coaches, that is definitely something to be mindful of. So My rule of thumb is like, and there are like, you know, exceptions to every rule, but my rule of thumb is always instead of you can only do this, it's almost like I remove what they like to do.
So it's like, you can't do this, you know, keep finishing there. So there's a player that likes to go out right on the right side, right, left, jump over the defender and finish. So it's like, oh, you can't do that. You can do anything else.
So we can work on some 2-foot finishing.
Yeah.
Maybe we can Nash dribble under, maybe you can go off the opposite foot. So now they're, you know, they have different solutions, but they can't do the one that they're always trying. Because if they continue to, they won't explore, you know, and that's what we want from these constraints for them to explore.
No, exactly. And it's funny you mentioned, you know, the basic right-left layup, like they call that the fundamental way to shoot layups. So nowadays that's just Asking to get blocked. I mean, that timing is easy unless you're wide open in transition. Like it just doesn't happen often.
So no, that's a perfect example.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You saw that, you know, I thought a lot of people were talking about Brunson in the finals and they were just talking about his timing on his shot and you never know when he's going to shoot it, which is why it's so hard to block his shot, even though he's a smaller guard.
So that's a great example there for sure. Chris, I want to thank you for your time. Firstly, been great talking to you again. I want to ask you our transformative tip. If you could leave coaches one piece of advice that would instantly improve their practice environment, what would it be?
One thing I would say specifically early, like in the summer session or early in the fall, is explore more at the beginning. I think Even at the youth levels, I think a lot of kids can handle more information in a shorter amount of time than we give them credit for.
So I would— I think it's always easier to speed. It's always easier to get them going fast and then slow them down later than slow them down and get them to playing really fast or playing with a lot of concepts later on. So I would say early on, I would test players and give them credit And enough respect that they're able to pick up on more than you're able— than you think they can, that you might think they can.
So just add some variability, try to get as many decisions as you can every single practice from an offensive end and a defensive end. Everyone knows, like, you know, if you're going through 2 weeks of practice, you have 4 turnovers in your 2 weeks of practice and you get to a game and you have 20, you might have an issue.
So. Don't worry about things looking super pretty at the beginning. Like, push players, make them make decisions, let them make mistakes, and correct off of those.
I love that. It's almost like throwing everything at the wall to see what players gravitate towards, and then you can start to focus more as you get into the season and want to focus more on with your strategies and your tactics. Chris, thank you so much, man.
It's been, it's been wonderful talking to you.
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for having me.
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