Alex to Adam Transition

This is the Transforming Basketball Podcast hosted by Alex Sarama. 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, Alex and his guests unpack how an ecological dynamics framework impacts our perspective of the game.

If you're ready to Welcome back to the Transforming Basketball Podcast. This is a unique episode because it's the last one with myself as the host, and we're introducing our new Transforming Basketball host, Adam Omiecinski. And in today's episode, I want to go through why I've chosen Adam as the next host of the podcast, and it's really exciting because we've just hit 85 episodes and we've— we're now on 8,000 listeners a week, which is amazing given we started this in September.

But obviously with my new role, I'm dedicating all my time and attention to the Cavs, and I wanted to make sure the podcast can keep going and grow even bigger. And I felt like no better person to do that than Adam. So Adam, welcome on the show.

The next podcast is going to be you doing the introduction and all of that.

Yeah, that'll be slightly different. I don't think I'll be able to match the same energy nor the accent that you bring to the table here, but it'll be a change of pace. But I think for the most part, listeners will enjoy my company.

They will indeed. I think the most important thing, which we've always spoken about, is using this podcast to give as many tangible ideas as we can. And We know that every single minute of the Transforming Podcast, it's selfishly, it's like when I'm going to be listening, dialing in, I want to gain value every minute and be as efficient as it can be.

So we know we're not wasting people's times or having guests on where you don't learn anything. So we're going to continue to be as intentional as ever with every single podcast episode that we produce. So I want to go back to kind of why it's you, Adam, and, and really introducing what you've done and the impact you've had on me over the last several years.

But I think let's kick things off with a quick introduction as to what you've been doing over the last few months or the last year since we obviously had that year working together at college prep in Italy.

Um, basically I really helped like Transforming Basketball launch. Uh, I did a bunch of projects going through videos, so it was interesting to see the evolution of yourself as a coach throughout the years. And, uh, I helped put together projects, done some consulting work, currently helping out Drew Dunlap, who's been a guest on the podcast right now.

I'm helping him out in Milwaukee for a few months, and that's honestly pretty much it.

No, it's great. And I mean, you've been with the membership community helping us launch that, and it's amazing because we've got 400 coaches now in there. And I think the coolest thing is being all the community interaction, and you're going to be a big part of that.

And I think that's something we spoke about kind of where we take this podcast next. We want to hear from even more of some of those coaches and the transforming experience that they've gone through to really embrace all the ideas on the podcast, etc.

So I'm going to be very interested to see just where you take that in some of the upcoming episodes.

Yeah, I'll definitely be incorporating— I've already reached out to multiple community members, so I'll be taking them on. We'll still include like researchers, theorists, and maybe more prominent coaches as well, but it will definitely still be highly applicable stuff. But community will definitely play a big role in this, and I'm sure I'll get inspiration from the, the community themselves and perhaps do some episodes where I either see a post and maybe I riff on a topic, or I bring a person on that I just saw an idea and I'm just like, I want to discuss

this with you personally further.

I love that. And I think another important announcement is that we're going to be having Another podcast, which you'll be a co-host of, we'll introduce the other co-host soon, which is going to be Transforming Sports, dedicated to more multiple sport researchers, coaches from other sports, looking at things like ecological dynamics and jazz music, just really interesting things.

And then we're going to keep the basketball podcast focused on the basketball, still getting researchers in. But when we do have professors, researchers, you'll obviously be doing what I did and be always bringing it back into that basketball context. So I'm really excited.

I think if anything, It's another hugely valuable resource we'll be offering to the community. So getting to know the new host, which is you of course, Adam, for the listeners, what would you say are the biggest differences between you and I and the ways in which maybe we coach, see the game, etc.?

By far the biggest differences between myself and Alex is the fact that Alex always sees the game through a much more macro lens, whereas I am much more interested in the micro-level details. I've never even been head coach for a full season, nor do I really have an interest in doing so.

It'd be a good experience outside of that, but really I'm always focused on the individual athlete and like their rate limiters and how I can make a difference in those continuously. I'm, I watch the game possession by possession and just look for just little areas where players can improve.

So I'm always viewing the game through that lens, whereas Alex is much more macro. He's great at systematizing things and seeing, well, obviously he came up with the conceptual offense. So he's, he's much more comfortable putting people in roles. I'm not comfortable with that.

So I don't know, I guess we complement each other quite well. So it'll be interesting to see like how the podcast is different from the listener's point of view with the way I see the game in my lens versus Alex's.

I think it's going to be really interesting because, you know, we're still going to be obviously talking about things like conceptual offense and helping coaches with that. But, um, I think that really specific lens in player development with all the Rate Limiter components is going to be Really good.

And that's where I learned a lot of that stuff from you, from that time we had in Italy, which obviously I'm now doing at the NBA level. I'm kind of focused on that rate limiter piece. But no, I think that's a great answer and it's a really interesting one.

So I think with podcast direction, Adam, and obviously I touched on it a little bit, but what do you think will continue to be the most important things that we are committing to doing for all our listeners all over the world?

For me, I think it's important just having this conversation right now is to make it some sort of practical application is always involved in the podcast. Because I mean, that's something that seems to be a very, very big issue for people and just getting— it's very easy to get lost up in concepts and big ideas.

And I'll be honest, I tend to do that myself and kind of leave like the application up to the individual. But I think it'll be important to just keep coming back to that because that is a big barrier for folks is just like, what does this look like?

And I think that'll, that'll be my role no matter who we're talking to. It could be a coach, it could be a theorist, and just giving practical examples of, all right, this is this information, what can we do with that information? And make sure that's always incorporated in the podcast throughout.

I love that. That's really good. Now what I wanted to kind of finish with is you've been on court a lot recently and you've been so— I don't think people realize, Adam, how integral you've been in kind of creating a lot of the ideas that coaches are seeing in the membership and loving Like a lot of the unique constraint ideas, all of that.

So I'd love for you to kind of talk about some of the things you've been trying out recently, just because we had a long phone call yesterday and I just loved hearing all the different things you've been up to. And I thought it'd be really interesting for the listeners to just hear that.

And again, it goes back to what you just spoke about, practical application.

Well, what I've noticed the most, and I remember hearing Tyler Yearby, a previous guest on the podcast and a buddy of mine, talk about Is I really miss the bodies. Like when, if you have tons of bodies in there, that's never a problem.

It never should be a problem. It can be overwhelming at times, but you can still narrow your focus and just focus on a few individuals. But it's always preferable to have bodies to throw because it just makes life so much easier. And I've had to encounter, at least here a little bit, is a lot of situations where I have to either step in myself or come up with very different ideas For differential shooting, differential finishing, and differential dribbling.

Because often here in this environment, people are looking for that one-on-one attention. They feel like they're getting more value out of that. I'm making a push and Drew is making a push here as well for more group settings. So I've had to come up with different ideas as far as like different tasks for differential shooting, differential learning.

And I'll be quite frank, like it's quite— it's made me appreciate the team environment much more where, you know, you know exactly who's going to be in the gym. I, you really do take it for granted, the fact that you're gonna have even like 7 or 8 people in the gym that are players every single day.

And that's something that I'm not afforded in this environment. So you, and I don't really, don't know who's gonna show up and obviously what mood they're gonna show up in from day to day and what they wanna work on. So it is helping me as a coach be a little bit more adaptable, but I still have basically a general outline of what I'm gonna, like my go-tos, and then based off whatever they're performing that day.

I can just riff off that. But I think it's, for me, it's been important to have like a finishing activity that I know I can do no matter what the environment, a shooting activity I know I can do no matter what the environment, and then just riff off that based off how they're performing.

Love it. So Adam, I can't wait to see, uh, what guest you decide to go with for the next episode. We've, uh, we obviously been working on, on a list, but co-design, final, uh, choice autonomy is over to you. And I do want to take this opportunity to just to thank everyone in our community for their support since the news came out with myself joining the Cavs.

I think it's obviously something very exciting for everyone in the Transforming community, just seeing where the future of basketball is going and that everything happens so quickly. But yeah, I think it's just only exciting times for Transforming as we kind of continue to roll.

And, and the best thing is it's becoming a real community where it's not just one person. And that's what I always wanted from the start, I wanted Transforming to be about the idea and not about me. And I'm really glad that we're now getting to that where we've got yourself, Adam, running the podcast.

We've got 5 amazing Transforming clinicians starting to run events all over the world. For the first time, we've just had a simultaneous event where we had coaching clinics in Luxembourg, player camps in Belgium. So it's really interesting. We've taken bookings in Australia, in the States.

for frequent player camps, coaching clinics. It's really taking off. And the best thing is we're doing that as a community. So it's only onwards and upwards. And obviously now I'm looking forward to listening to the podcast to get ideas as opposed to having to plan it as the host.

Be a different role for the both of us. We'll see what happens.

So, Adam, I guess I'll do my last sign-off for a while and it's over to you on the next one. But a big thanks to everyone for listening. And obviously we will continue to incorporate all your ideas, all your feedback. on the podcast.

We want to make sure this is the best one in the, in the basketball coaching space in terms of skill ideas, conceptual offense, and just giving you things for your next practice. So thanks everyone for dialing in, and I'm definitely looking forward to the next episode as much as you guys.

Thank you.

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