EP 45Player development
Why Basketball Fundamentals are Outdated
Alex Sarama talks about the traditional notion of fundamentals in basketball. He discussed the concept of fundamentals, as commonly understood, holds back the…
22 min
0:0022:52
Alex Sarama talks about the traditional notion of fundamentals in basketball. He discussed the concept of fundamentals, as commonly understood, holds back the…
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In this episode, Alex Sarama talks about the traditional notion of fundamentals in basketball. He discussed the concept of fundamentals, as commonly understood, holds back the development of skillful and adaptive basketball players. Alex emphasizes the importance of reframing the idea of fundamentals and adopting a more ecological perspective on skill acquisition. He explores the problems with the traditional approach to teaching fundamentals and highlights the need for a more functional and adaptable approach to skill development in basketball.
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Esta transcripción corresponde al audio original en inglés.
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 Of the game, 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 podcast. You might have been drawn in by the somewhat clickbait title of this episode, and again, it's this isn't anything to do with.
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From really developing skillful, adaptive basketball players. So let's start with what fundamentals even are. And I want to just read a great tweet from Harjeev Singh from the Orlando Magic. And Harjeev, he shared this a year ago and he wrote, the issue is we have no idea what fundamentals are.
This typically stems from not knowing the difference between skill and technique. Especially at the elite level, this can make the difference between more optimal practices for learning and less optimal. So if I was to speak with all the coaches in your organization and I was to ask them what are fundamentals, I can guarantee you I'd receive extremely different answers from every coach, not only in regards to kind of the loose definition of what they are, but then the specific fundamentals given.
For instance, how a player should supposedly finish, how they should pass, how they should shoot. Again, fundamentals are basically mental models that different coaches have accumulated through their past experiences, such as playing days, coaches they work with, based on what they think a skill should look like.
And obviously everything I share from an ecological perspective here at Transforming Basketball is that skills should look different and should emerge differently. And obviously, from an ecological perspective, what I share here at Transforming Basketball is that we need to move away from this one-size-fits-all approach to viewing skill and understanding that skill is not a technique that's applied in a context.
It's something that emerges within the environment. Many times when these fundamentals, quote unquote, such as chest passing or finishing with right-left kind of overhand regular layup, the way these are taught make it very difficult for players to even use these in their environment because they never have an opportunity to use those techniques because the environment dictates what solutions are functional.
So that means as a coach, it makes little sense to say, okay, this is the solution that you must use because we don't control the environment. It's unpredictable and it's ever-changing. So I did a huge kind of a thread on fundamentals 2 years ago where I kind of spoke about how they're actually a limiting factor because many coaches believe that we need to kind of instill the fundamentals before players get a chance to play games.
And there's this very kind of linearistic perspective that players have to have the fundamentals before they can perform more advanced skills. And again, what I would say to that is have your players just play 3-on-3 in a practice, even if they're beginners. And what you're going to see is they're going to do things and they're going to move and interact in ways which have never been taught.
It's the basic kind of logic of how we move as human beings. If we believe that everything has to be taught before a player can do it, it simply makes no sense. I don't even need to bring in a research article to kind of back that up.
It's not even needed. Think about when you were younger and you were playing basketball. Maybe, you know, for me anyway, I know that the most kind of skillful moments I had, it wasn't really even in my team practices. It was in when I was just playing at the park or playing at my school with my friends.
And, you know, sometimes that transferred definitely to games and there'd be skillful moments, but Many times it was not in the practice environment because we rarely played. And I think this is— it's a huge problem when we think that we have to teach a fundamental to develop a basis for skilled performance, because what we know through an ecological perspective is that skills emerge in a context, and we want to have this rich context from the start because that is going to impact how the skill is performed.
So Really, I just believe that we're wasting time teaching fundamentals because the way they even appear within the game itself, it's so different to how they're practiced. And, you know, many in the basketball world have spoken about this long before me, but we really just need to consider, you know, moving beyond this very traditional paradigm.
Let's get a little bit deeper into 5 problems behind the traditional approach to teaching fundamentals. Number one, they occur in a stable vacuum. For instance, a line drill where players dribble out, pivot, pass straight back to their opponent. It's a very closed environment.
The game of basketball is an open environment. We have defenders, we have teammates, we have a time pressure, and very rarely will the defense allow the offense to unleash a pre-rehearsed technique as they wish. It will never happen. Okay? So instead of practicing in a vacuum, we need to practice in an environment which resembles the game.
If, you know, skills emerge within this environment, which is more representative, and we have defenders, the likelihood of players then becoming more successful when encountered by the same occurrence continuously throughout the game is obviously going to be more likely. Secondly, individuality. And a huge problem I have with fundamentals is we assume that every player is the same and that every player should be treated differently and that everyone learns at the same rates, which as we know is not true.
So what is a fundamental technique for one player probably makes no sense for another, and we want players naturally To move in ways where they can express their individuality. We don't want this bland one-size-fits-all approach. And I think, you know, a lot of basketball has been— coaching has been impacted by the military and this essence of drilling.
That's just the theory I have. But that's the opposite to sports. It's a very different environment. It's not a case of being drilled into these highly specific movements which we can unleash. It's a case of players being able to skillfully navigate their performance landscape.
And that's a very, very different thing. Thirdly, affordances. And you would've heard about these before on the podcast, opportunities or invitations for action. The whole reason that players move, even beginners within a game, is because they're perceiving and acting upon affordances that they deem as attractive and aligned with their intentions of scoring the basket.
That's the ultimate goal of basketball. Many fundamentals, there are no authentic affordances. It's predetermined and it's basically one affordance set by the coach where players must do it because the coach says to do it. And that's just not how the game of basketball works.
We need players to become skillful at understanding what affordances, what invitations advantageous, and maybe what affordances in particular instances may be disadvantageous. So the only way we can promote that is spending as much time as possible practicing in a representative setting. And this kind of leads into self-organization.
Well, as players perceive an affordance, for instance, space, and they decide to use that space to drive with the intention of scoring a layup, they're self-organizing at the same time during every fraction of a second during this possession. We want self-organization to be natural.
And when we suggest that in these instances, players must think about applying a pre-taught fundamental, it simply makes no sense for what we know about human movement and sport. It's actually impossible. So instead of teaching fundamentals, which actually many times go against functional self-organization, because we're basically trying to enforce a particular movement on a player.
which contradicts with how they would solve the problem. Let's just promote natural self-organization instead and appreciate that players are all gonna solve problems in different manners. And you know what we traditionally see in something like a zigzag drill, coaches teach a fundamental movement such as a step slide technique and this defensive slide, but that never happens in a game.
Why? Because players are self-organizing naturally. And if they were to do a step-slide movement, well, obviously the dribbler would just drive past them immediately. It would never work. So instead of fighting the surge, let's promote opportunities for effective self-organization to occur through constraint manipulations versus trying to apply these taught patterns, which players will simply not even be able to apply in the first instance.
And obviously a classic example to that too. would be something like the chest pass, which is never kind of performed within the game as it would be practiced in a passing line. And I think ultimately the biggest problem we have with fundamentals is their lack of game transfer.
You know, it's no wonder because of all the 4 things I've just mentioned, because all these things essentially missing when we approach a traditional drill-based approach, naturally the chances of players skillfully performing in the game is diminished. Whereas if we spend more time exposing them to what they actually need to be exposed to, to be successful, they're obviously going to become more skilled players.
Hey coach, I wanted to take a quick break from this episode to let you know that we just launched our new website at transformingbball.com. The goal of our site was to present basketball coaches and practitioners with the ultimate resource for applying evidence-based ideas It contains a number of free resources such as blogs, practice activity ideas, as well as some of our paid products including clinics, workshops, and courses.
The website contains everything you need to take your coaching to the next level. Find the website in our show notes or head to transformingbball.com. Let's bring in a research paper just to support some of the ideas I've shared in this episode. So I'm going to use a paper by Renshaw and co., based on advice for academics on how to apply ecological dynamics theory to practice design.
So I'm going to read this excerpt. Notably, the CLA and the nonlinear pedagogy have garnered significant attention among academics and practitioners to explore their use in supporting skill development. These pedagogical approaches are underpinned by the framework of ecological dynamics, where there is an emphasis on examining and for interaction among constraints to understand the emergence of movement skills.
Not surprisingly, such ideas are intuitive to practitioners as features of non-linearity during learning are easily identifiable. For example, there is non-proportional change in movement behaviors as a response to practice. For instance, sudden drops or leaps in performance. There are multiple ways of moving to achieve the same performance outcome, with learners responding to changes in constraints and the infusion of practice variability to support exploratory behaviors among learners.
So let's unpack that in basketball terms. I think the first thing to look at there is how skills and what skills really are. They're emergent features. So again, if we believe that fundamentals are taught techniques which players can kind of hold on to and store within their body, Well, that goes against the science of what skills actually are because skills emerge.
So there's no such thing as possessing or owning a skill. And that's very difficult to grasp because this idea of fundamentals has been so ingrained that the more we repeat them, the more players will be able to bring them out in the game.
But actually it doesn't work like that. The second part is learning is nonlinear. And again, this is kind of the biggest contradiction to linearized pedagogy, AKA fundamentals, because One player might make a huge jump in one practice within one small-sided game, whereas another player might learn very differently.
And then the next practice, the same player who learned really well might make a huge regression. That's learning. That's the nature of what learning is. So if we believe that, you know, there's a very kind of gradual relationship between the more practice we do, the better a player gradually becomes.
It's completely kind of at odds with this approach. You know, that's why coaches do fundamentals. They believe that the more they do them over time, the better their players will be. But if learning is a nonlinear process, then why do we adopt that approach?
And I think the last part of this, which I wanted to pick out, is how there are multiple ways of moving to achieve the same performance outcome. And this is probably the biggest one which challenges the notion of fundamentals, because instead of one fundamental which is applied in a specific moment in time, we want players who are functional, who can move in different ways, finish, pass in different ways, versus just applying one pre-taught fundamental in that specific moment.
Some common kind of rebuttals that I receive are, well, how can a beginner dribble well in the game if they're not explicitly taught it through static dribbling? Well, again, this is where we have to creatively use the CLA, and I'm not suggesting that we go to a complicated 1-on-3 task or even a 1-on-1 straight away, which is unconstrained with live defenders.
It's going to be very challenging. We've got to find and create activities where players can dribble in a functional manner, which is not too challenging for them, even if they're a beginner. So an easy example is dribble tag. Even beginners will have fun and start to develop their dribbling solutions in a dribble tag game.
So now you've got to think, all right, what are some different ways we could play dribble tag? And if we start thinking about that, very quickly you might have 10 different activity ideas with additional constraint manipulations which we can use as an alternative to fundamental dribbling drills such as dribbling through cones and static dribbling.
Another one I receive is kind of go in tandem. Number one, the CLA should be used after players have first developed good fundamentals. And secondly, teach the fundamentals first as these provide the basis for players to become more skillful. And again, it's just the whole essence of learning being nonlinear kind of really challenges these kind of beliefs.
And it's a case of, I'm not suggesting for one moment that I don't believe Technique is not important. It is important, but we don't need to isolate it to develop technique. And technique should be functional, and players should be able to use lots of different techniques and improve them while still having some type of context, aka a live defender in some form.
It requires, as a coach, us to be more creative. If we believe that players need good fundamentals, then we're never going to think differently and force ourselves to design activities where even kind of beginner-like players can solve problems, self-organize, and have success. So the biggest thing I would say is find ways to manipulate constraints where beginners can do it, and it's not going to look perfect.
We've got to be comfortable with it, but where beginners can still do it at a reasonable level of success. In a manner that will be somewhat functional within the performance environment. And of course, the last one we get is the best players in the game believed in fundamentals.
And again, this is just survivorship bias, and the CLA didn't exist when many of these players were growing up. So if we adopt that mindset, well, the basketball world will never change and it will never advance, and players will never receive the chance to know what they could have been if they actually trained in an alternative manner.
So this concept of functionality is really important because I believe this is how we move on from fundamentals. And personally, I don't use the word fundamental anymore because I just, I don't think it can be salvageable. And I'm going to come on to that in the next example.
So we want functional. And I've got a— for those of you following on YouTube, I have a diagram here of, uh, one of Mike McKay's diagrams. His, uh, Famous diagrams with the fountain pen ink. I love them. Learned a lot off these over the years, which he shared on Twitter.
So he's got this diagram of the traditional fundamental on the left, chest pass, bounce pass, overhead pass. Then on the right, he's got future of the game. And what he's showing is a player passing in loads of different ways, at different heights, different velocities, from different parts of their body, at different speeds, et cetera.
And this is essentially the concept of functionality. And if the pass solves the task, a.k.a. it goes to the intended player in a good location at the right speed, then it's functional. So we need to instead promote players and create environments where players can become skilled passers doing all these things, or else you're just teaching one chest pass over and over again.
So you can apply this concept to every part of basketball. So main takeaway here is let's start as a basketball community. Let's use the word functional instead of fundamental and think about how we can develop functionality in finishing, shooting, how we play defense and everything else.
So to finish this podcast, there's a great paper by Duarte Araújo and Keith Davids talking about what exactly is acquired during skill acquisition. And this is where it's actually a misleading term because skill acquisition arose during the days of information processing, which was the dominant theory at the time.
And if we believe that skills are things which are acquired, such as fundamentals, then we obviously are not viewing skills from the perspective of something that emerges and something that is an adaptive functional relationship between the organism and its environment. As written by Arujo and Davidson in this paper.
You know, they suggested that skill acquisition has been biased by an organismic asymmetry. So what this means is really looking at skills as being these internal states, which are acquired after lots of deliberate practice and rote repetition. So if we think about skills instead of things that are acquired, think about skills as adaptive entities.
Instead, think about skills as adaptive relation— instead, think about skills as elements which are adaptive and ever-changing as players continue to interact within their environment. So let's move away from fundamental and let's really find ways to, within our practices, promote variability and promote functionality.
So if you see a player who maybe resorts to the similar techniques over and over again, we know that we need to do something to get them exploring different solutions. And again, this is where we can use the constraint-led approach. So even if we have young players, they will have a huge benefit for the rest of their careers if they can learn to perform skills in different ways.
And it's exactly the same for professional players. If they're very robotic in movement and they've only been taught these, you know, very specific things in player development, then, you know, it's not increasing the odds of them becoming a better performer within their game environment.
So it applies— everything I've shared today, it applies to the practice environment, the game environment, and for players of all levels of the game, from beginner to professional. Thanks for listening to the podcast, and be sure to tune in for another episode as we continue to unpack the application of contemporary skill acquisition ideas within the basketball world.
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