How to Develop Skilled Basketball Players with Rob Gray

This is the Transforming Basketball Podcast, and I'm your host, Alex Sarama. This is the podcast where we help coaches and practitioners change the way we think about basketball performance. Our goal is to create the ultimate resource to help make sense of how contemporary skill acquisition ideas can be applied within the basketball world.

Throughout the podcast, we'll unpack how an ecological dynamics framework alters our perspective If you're ready to join us in our quest to transform the basketball world, then this is the podcast for you.

Welcome back to the Transforming Basketball Podcast. Absolutely delighted today to be joined by someone who's had probably the biggest influence on the way I view the game through an ecological perspective. Now, he's really doing just tremendous work in this field. 2 fantastic books who I'm sure a lot of you in this podcast will be familiar with— How We Learn to Move and Learning to Optimize Movement.

So it's a pleasure to welcome Rob Gray. Rob, thanks so much.

My pleasure, Alex. Thanks for having me.

Absolutely. So first question I wanted to start with, and this is something you've spoken about on your excellent Perception Action podcast too. A lot of people nowadays seeing everything kind of related to an ecological approach, to constraints-led approach, and they're saying It's merely old wine being rebranded in new bottles.

It's absolutely not that, but could you maybe speak a little bit as to why that's certainly not the case?

Yeah, I think it's on the one hand, I can see why people think that because on the surface, some of the methodologies are not new. I think that's one of the reasons I find people are so excited about this and adopt it is because good coaches have been using things like small-sided games and constraints for a long time.

Why it's not new is they're using it for different reasons and using a different approach to learning. Yes, the people have been doing some of these things for quite a while, but I don't think with the same goal of self-organization and giving problems to the athlete.

I think that is pretty new, even from the games-based approach, like the, you know, teaching games for understanding and games has been around for a long time, but that's more focused on kind of cognitive understanding principles that ecological, not on the same kind of thing we're talking about here.

Yeah.

That's great. And that actually leads onto another point, which is just differences between a games-based approach and the CLA. What would you say are some really kind of coherent differences? Because I think a lot of coaches maybe misinterpret the CLA just for being a games-based approach.

This is kind of a subtle sticking one that some people have trouble with. I think the key idea in the ecological approach is the idea of giving people movement problems to solve and having them representative of the environment. So Sometimes we're actually going to move way away from the game and make something that doesn't really look game-like at all.

In the ecological approach, that's okay. And actually we want to do that sometimes. I don't think in a games-based approach you would really do that. The games-based approach, the theory behind it, from my understanding, is very about understanding principles. And whereas ecological approach is much more about picking up information, affordances, opportunities, rather than thinking so much and understanding these higher-level principles that Being such a cognitive player, like always thinking about what you need to do.

That to me, those are the main things that I see as different.

Love that. Something you've spoken about is coaches setting up an activity and then you use the term, the real magic is what happens next. And I think this is really important for coaches to understand and kind of link to the point you just made about differences between the games approach.

It's so important to obviously see what's going on. Would you have Any advice for coaches as to maybe what they should be looking at in these activities and how that might inform what direction they move to next?

Yeah, I think this is a real, what I've been seeing, this is the kind of the next step in kind of scaling this up, right? Anybody can, oh, okay. I see some constraint, like watch your videos and, oh, there's a constraint I can put on, but what do you do after?

And so I think a couple of things. One is best is watching some other coach, watching as many opportunities as you can. Why even sometimes different sports, how they kind of make adjustments. But I think having a clear idea of what you want to see, you want to, what kind of exploration do you want to see?

What, what kind of, in setting up this constraint, what are you hoping it encourages? And are you seeing that? If not, how can we kind of push, try to guide people in the way? Sometimes, you know, the really good coaches I've worked, sometimes it's stepping in and saying something, even though that kind of sacrilegious almost seems like.

Yeah.

But yeah, sometimes it's why don't you try this? Sometimes adding another constraint or different. So I think that's part of it really being clear on what you're hoping it will encourage. Yeah.

That's it. I guess it's difficult because especially something I'm seeing is just how a lot of coaches have this very fixed practice plan where kind of everything is pre-planned and pre-thought out. And then I think it makes it very difficult for you to be adaptable as a coach and change because We don't always know what will happen when we're scaling, manipulating constraints.

So would you say that the practice plan needs to be a lot more flexible for coaches, basketball coaches who really want to go down this kind of route? They've got to be way more open and leave some things not completely predetermined and actually planned out.

Yeah, I think so. I think that's really the key. And I really, I like some of the things like some people like Craig Morris, who's a rowing coach, has written about like being open to and reaching out to what happens in front of you instead of almost everything we train, we want to do so many reps.

So many, we have like a little recipe we've written out beforehand. I think we want to kind of be a bit more flexible and responsive to and adaptive to what we see in front of us. I think we're missing a lot of opportunities if we don't.

Yeah, absolutely. I wanted to shift this a little bit to skill and what skill is. And I think you've done such a good job, obviously defining that in I think it was in How We Learn to Move, you made it really clear, obviously talking about Skill B and the relationship between the environment and the individual.

Something which I think is where some confusion is arising is the difference between skill and action capacities. Would you be able to talk a little bit about that, Rob? And I know you've got a great podcast episode, which I'll also direct coaches to in the show notes, because you covered this in a previous episode.

Yeah. Skill obviously is a functional goal relationship with the environment to achieve some goal. get the ball in the basket. The action capacity is kind of, it goes under Gibson's concept of effectivity, kind of the, your ability. And I think there's a lot of things that fall under both physical and also there's psychological, you know, how high can you jump?

How fast can you run? To me, the key thing that makes, for me is action capacities give you the potential to be more skillful, right? They're giving you a wider range of movement solutions you could use.

Yeah.

Right. If I can jump higher, I have more options for how to score in basketball. I myself cannot dunk. That's not a—

affordance.

It's so much. And the key thing in the ecological approach is it's not just that it's not an option. It's just the person will not even perceive it if it's not within their ability. I think we see that sometimes you see a player missing opportunity opportunities and you think there's something wrong.

It's they don't have the ability to execute. Or achieve that affordance, right? That opportunity. So I think that, so I think we have to be really, I like separating them because there's sometimes in training we want to focus on giving you more potential solutions.

That doesn't make you more skillful necessarily. You have to put them into the action, but I think we do want to focus on that sometime.

Definitely. And I think just on this note, Rob, I think a lot of coaches get confused maybe when we might decouple, such as using an Aqua Bag. Well, or something similar. And you've written about that with, you know, some of the stuff Bosch is doing now.

And the reason we're doing that is obviously to develop these capacities, but then we're using small-sided games where they might be able to attune to these affordances in a different way based on improved action capabilities. So could you maybe talk about that process in terms of what the rationale would be actually to using something like an Aqua Bag and why we might do that?

I think you, uh, in many ways you want to train action capacities a similar way to the way you train the skill, right? You want to be more variable, challenge the stability kind of rather than doing— and you want it than just doing squats or something that's very controlled.

And, um, I think you want to be able to put it in the skill that needs to have some of the same elements. Um, and I think, you know, developing for— be able to move force and transfer force is kind of what the action capacities we want.

Yeah.

So yeah, I think those are the kind of the main differences for me, you know, and I think we want, you want adaptability. So some of the same things we're looking for in skill, we want in our action capacity.

Yeah. Love that. So when it comes to skill, I think another misconception in basketball is it's all about acting quickly and acting fast. And yes, there might be moments when that is relevant, such as maybe when there's an advantage and moving the ball quickly, driving, shooting.

allows you to, you know, act on an affordance before the defense can actually recover back, back to neutral. But a lot of the times it's not about that. It's about, in your words, you know, waiting longer, exploring the affordance landscape and something better might emerge.

Could you just build on that a little bit if that's possible, Rob?

Yeah. So this falls under the umbrella of a big term, skilled intentionality, right? The ability to keep— the key concept here is the affordance, the opportunity for action, shooting, passing. Whatever, driving to the hoop are all affordances. Really skilled players keep as many of those open for as long as possible until one kind of jumps out as being stronger or more inviting.

I think sometimes that happens really early. You're right in a fast break or something. You might see a clear path to the hoop and you don't need to do any of this keeping everything open because this one is so inviting. You just take it.

But I think the ability, like in a 2-on-1 or like Keep your options open, I think is a real— I see this in the players I work in baseball, the ability to keep the option of stopping and going back to the bag and going forward, both open and hold them kind of— they're conflicting goals, but you can— really good players can keep them both alive for longer.

So I think that's, you know, waiting for something to come really inviting and then decision kind of emerges from that, I think is what is a large part of being really skillful is.

Yeah. Yeah, I love that. And it's just, just a practical example. You can imagine just a player coming off a pick and roll and, you know, like you just said, it would not be advantageous to always pass early. Maybe sometimes the affordance to do that might appear, but other times it's just being patient.

So that's a great example. So Rob, you're obviously doing, you know, so much in the coach development space and you've actually done some recent work with NBA teams, with the Spurs and the Thunder. And it's great to see that these ideas are starting to be explored in the basketball world.

But how would you go about meeting coaches where they're at? Because a lot of these ideas, they are very new to coaches and it can be quite intimidating sometimes for coaches to be exposed to the theory. So would you have any practical advice for the coaches out there who are maybe trying to get their colleagues on this approach, or how would you even start?

It's a challenge sometimes. So I always kind of start with whatever drill or whatever you're running. And can we, I always like to start with variability and can we add a little more variability into that? Can we make it game? One of the things that I really noticed in my NBA, I'm sure you've seen this many times, you watch practice and playing and even when they pick players shoot probably 80% 3-point throwing, their success rate, and then the game is 30%, right?

What's going on? What is that big difference? Right. There's something in practice we're missing that.

Yeah.

So can we add a little so you don't shoot from the exact same spot 10 times in a row? Can we make it a little more game-like? Can we, okay, so you want to work on pick and rolls. Okay. Can we start a play where we start in the position of a pick and roll, but give them option after that, make it go live to run a play.

So can we tweak a little bit of what you're doing and start from where you are and kind of add a little bit to, that's what I try to do, I think, rather than saying, okay, we need to jump right to this small-sided game and then—

Yeah.

You know, where people might be really kind of hesitant to make that big of a jump. What can we add to make it, you know, more representative?

Love that. And it's so easy, like just here in Portland, like you just said, we've done that, just players shooting from a different place every time. And we just, I give them the affordance to pass back. So I often have a +1. So it's like someone playing defense.

And then if they don't think they can shoot, they could dribble to create an option to shoot or pass and just get open. And it's It's so simple. Like the smallest things can make such a huge difference.

Yeah, for sure. Adding just a little bit, you know, sometimes it's the players too. Players like doing shooting practice in basketball, the same shots over and over. Add a little bit, right? Something to make it a little more like where I tried to start with.

That's it. And on that note, I mean, one of the most kind of frequent responses I get from coaches kind of seeing these ideas are, oh, but really successful coaches don't do this. But I think some of the most successful coaches of all time, I think they'd be intrigued by this.

And I mean, you presented to Popovich and I think you mentioned like, what was his feedback to seeing this?

He was, he was generally positive. He had me, came up and stood, came up at the end of my presentation and gave me an example and had me talk through it right in front of everyone, which was kind of intimidating a little bit.

Like training defense. I think he was talking about defenders, lateral movement and things like that. But yeah, I think so. I think a lot of the good coaches I've met have some of this in and have a natural, like kind of a tendency to let people, and particularly let them individual constraints, kind of let's see what this person can do rather than forcing something on them.

I've seen a lot of that and game, you know, games-based using small-sided games and things like that. So yeah, I think a lot of baseball coaches I've worked with, some of the really, they just have a natural, they figured this stuff out themselves, kind of experiential knowledge.

Yeah.

100%. It's interesting too, though, right? I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this, Rob, but my gut feeling is I think it's actually easier for the players to respond to this quicker maybe than coaches at first. Just seeing, I think just my experience here, like it took maybe 4 days for the players to get used to small-sided games because it was, they had kind of, they were just so not used to it, but then boom, straight away they loved it.

And I'm sure it's the same in baseball. Like a lot of times I think people say, oh, but pro players don't want to do that. But They've never actually been exposed to it. And just from what I've seen, I think they love it the moment they do something different.

Yeah, for sure. I think people like a bit of both, you know, some, especially when you get a little, maybe a little lower level, like minor league players, or they're a little so different than what they're used to. I have to almost, I have a, I give a presentation what learning really actually looks like.

So you were, you're not going to be talked to by your coach. They're not going to come over and correct your body position all the time.

Yeah.

We're not with how it's gonna be different. We're gonna challenge you. You're gonna fail sometimes. A lot of these people, players are not used to failing at the rate we want them to and things like that. So that's a little bit challenging. But I, yeah, I think they like the, you know, kind of freedom, the, the autonomy of it, right?

The, you know, I'm in control of what I'm, how I'm developing. I think people really like, they naturally go to that as well. Getting fee— no big, getting feedback. No, I think, I think so. I think players in general like the approach as well.

Definitely. And kind of, I guess, staying on this NBA topic for a little bit, Rob, there's huge use of performance analysis here, a lot of video. What do you think an ecological approach to performance analysis could look like, maybe to improve how we're actually using video within the basketball world?

So kind of, you're talking about kind of game, not individual, more—

Yeah, maybe, maybe in a team, or it could even be like a lot of coaches like show clips individually to players now at the NBA level. But also kind of team setting, you know, reviewing often it's like 20 minutes of video before practice of the previous game, stuff like that.

Yeah, I think it's just, I like the idea of kind of using it to guide attention. Like, okay, look, there's this opportunity we could, and especially I really like connecting it with practice as quickly as possible. Watch this video. Okay. Show me how you would do this differently.

Not just talk about it in the seat in a lecture or something. I think there's a lot of opportunity and, you know, to kind of point out opportunity, you know, direct people's attention to where the affordances might be and things like that, rather than using it in a very corrective, okay, you should have done that.

You should be here kind of way. So I think changing and as much as possible, you know, give knowledge of versus not, let's see you demonstrate, show me how you would do this differently rather than just talking about it.

Yeah.

Completely. Like, that's something here, just trying to actually get the same, maybe keeping the video really specific. So instead of this kind of smorgasbord of all these different things, like you said, effectively educate intention, just like 3 things and then design activities where they're actually doing it.

And it's not difficult to do that for sure.

Yeah. Yeah. I think there's a lot of, you know, one of the things I've been— challenges I've been finding in this stuff I've worked in is because you're, you know, basketball, you play fairly often, you have You have to kind of blend development and preparation game, you know, skill development and game preparation kind of blend into each other a lot.

So I think there's ways you can do that. For example, let's watch the opponent we're going to play. Okay, well, let's now put this into practice in some activities right now. I think there's some, some ways you can do that that would be really effective.

Love it. So Rob, I'm having some more discussions with colleagues here who are really keen on exploring this, but Kind of linked back to what we talked about earlier with where you start, and I think the variability just starting with the practical application is huge so they can see it.

When we do come to the theory, I think it's quite intimidating because we've got ecological dynamics, then obviously we've got nonlinear pedagogy and the CLA. Do you feel like it's the nonlinear— and I know you did another great podcast on this, I feel like I keep saying it— but do you feel like nonlinear pedagogy is Relevant?

I think there are bits of it which absolutely, like the design principles, which are key, but do you think sometimes it's just a little bit too much to be using all these terms straight away? Could we maybe just focus on maybe one part of the CLA or 2 parts of an ecological framework?

What would you advise?

Yeah, I know they're probably going to get mad at me for saying this, but I think I've never really liked the nonlinear pedagogy. I think it adds unnecessary complication. Nonlinear pedagogy is really just CLA, right? It's really just a teaching method underlying ecological, the practical teaching method that comes out of ecological dynamics.

I get nonlinear, you know, I guess that's important to emphasize that, you know, it's an important point to make, but that's not something completely separate. And I think people get confused sometimes. So, but some of that area, people that work in that area, like Rich, Vicki Lee Chow and Rick Shuttleworth.

Yeah.

Some of the best writing is in that area. Like I think so some of the best papers are easier to understand. I wouldn't dismiss it completely. There's definitely some good stuff there. A lot of it is very, you know, aligned with the other as well, for sure.

Yeah. Love that. So Rob, this is kind of like a whistle-stop tour on contemporary skill acquisition for basketball coaches. So we're covering a lot here. One, I wanted to cover kind of one last thing before I wrap up the last question. And that is differential learning.

And I think it's, it's been a little bit confusing over the last few months. Like Wolfgang Schoellhorn, who invented it, has reached out to me and it got me a little bit confused. I'd love just to hear your ideas aside from anything that's going on, on what you think, A, what DL is for coaches to listen to that, and maybe how that could supplement some of the things we've spoken about in the podcast today.

Yeah. So I agree. I've had similar struggles with that since. I think there's 2 kind of, there's what you get from the actual articles, which What I've tried to interpret and try to, and versus kind of what you hear from people, especially that do it directly, are a little bit different, I think.

But for me, it's just, so I always think it, it's getting you to explore the movement space and deliberately push you into areas that maybe you will never go back to, but you'll learn, you know, getting you to shoot off one foot with one eye closed, getting you to shoot with your hands this way.

So I think it's, to me, that's the fun of kind of learning about the movement space and the idea you'll be able to find a solution more easily that will work. It's a bit different than the CLA for me, which is more focused on kind of directing you to part of movement space more deliberately.

Yeah.

I still think it can be useful. I like it combining it with, with the CLA and adding it if it's— I find it the extreme version is a bit, I think I've said this a few times, a bit of a harder sell to elite athletes.

Like, I want you to hit with your one eye closed. Why?

Right.

I want you to hit with this heavier bat because it's going to make you— that's a bit easier of a sell. But there's definitely a lot of research and, you know, some of that you really, the theory behind it is it gets very heavy, like stochastic resonance and all this kind of stuff.

I think it's very valuable to kind of push people into movement solutions and things that they may not have tried before.

Yeah.

I think it can be useful. I definitely think it's a useful thing, even though, as I understand it, right, discussions that you've had and critiques, I think it's an interesting way to do it. Yeah.

I've been using a lot here in shooting, and I think it's trying to get over with coaches the idea that by doing this, we can get them using a different kind of movement solution or exploring a different part of the solution space, like you said, and we don't know what that could be.

Eventually, right? And it's being okay with that unknown. And I mean, I think the other thing, Rob, is knowing maybe what the L exercises to do so it's more, I guess, strategic variability as opposed to completely random. So for instance, I had a player yesterday struggling with like shot arc.

So he had a lot of front rim misses. So I was doing things to perturb the system, just things like shooting different stances, but then he couldn't bend his legs at all. And then the next rep he could bend it, over-exaggerate the bend.

And just doing little things like that. And then, like you said, you can combine it with CLA tasks, then you can mix in some one-on-one shooting off that easily. Would that be a good example of what you're talking about?

Yeah, I like that. I like kind of focusing the variability a little around a problem you identify. I think, I think that's a better way to use it than, yeah, I don't think anyone does completely, like, that's why I think the articles are a bit misleading.

Doing a pirouette before you start, no one's going to do that.

That's a bit too extreme. Exactly.

But, or playing, you know, soccer with your arms crossed and your hand on your head. Like, I think focusing it around more of a strategic thing. I think, you know, one of the things I think, the things that's hard for me, I've really recently tried to have to emphasize, hard for coaches to get over, is the idea that if I give you a movement problem, you having to solve that is incredibly valuable, even if it's a problem you'll never face ever in a game ever.

Yeah.

As long as it has the same, it's representative, has the same structure. Um, that's a kind of a hard sell sometimes to people. Differential learning has a bit of that, I think, in it. But yeah, I do like that, like kind of focusing around a specific, like smaller variations around a certain solution.

Love that. So I guess, Rob, my last question for today is what would you like to see in terms of the future, maybe of skill acquisition research and continuing to try and bridge the gap between practical application and theory. Is there anything you'd like to see maybe change within this space just to help more coaches continue to understand what this is actually all about?

Yeah, I think we've made a lot of headway. I think I love, you know, all the examples people are putting on yourself and people in other sports, you know, some of the really exciting ones like in martial arts now, jiu-jitsu, people posting great examples of how they're using it.

I really, I think that's really useful. The only thing hesitance I have with that is It's not, don't, it's more than just copying what they're doing, right? It's more about the actual using the principles rather than just copying a bunch of exercises you see.

That, you know, I think I'm from, as a researcher and I guess as a coaching, you know, one of the dirty secrets we've been hiding for a long time is everybody knows you have to individualize a coach, be an effective coach, right? You have to adapt to the individual in front of you.

You can't. And we have the challenge of you have a camp with 20 kids in front of you. How do you do that?

Yeah.

Both on a research level and a practical level, we have to figure out ways we can, I think more and more ways we can look at individual skill acquisition and adapt it to the individual because that's what good coaches do already. But I think we've been kind of not recognizing that for a while as people keep exploring this.

And in my last book, I like people, I love people that were willing to share as all along the way, right? Even if you don't have a full understanding of the theory and you So share what you're learning and how, you know, some things might change.

You know, some of my early podcasts, I'm sure I wouldn't want— some I say something very different than I do now. So I think that's really useful for people seeing your journey.

Definitely. Well, Rob, thank you so much. Obviously highly recommend your books and the podcast, which we'll link to in the show notes, but big thanks for taking the time today. I really enjoyed the discussion.

Thank you.

Great. Thank you so much for that.

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