Exploring a Contemporary Approach with Nabil Murad

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 join us in our quest to transform the basketball world, this is the podcast for you.

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I am joined today by Nabil Murad, coaching in Austria but from Ireland originally. Nabil, it's great to have you on.

Yeah, thanks, mate. It's good to be on.

Could you just, uh, briefly kind of outline your background? I know you've coached in a bunch of different places. And obviously Barceló now taking you near the Alps in a beautiful part of the world.

Yeah, I'm originally from Ireland and I coached at every level in Ireland and I was fortunate enough to get an opportunity to go to the States. I worked with their coach Joe Wooden at Bishop O'Connell in Arlington. Yeah, I got, you know, one door opened another door and I got to work with the Irish national team after working at Bishop O'Connell.

Then I got to the UK, worked with Leicester Riders for a bit there. And yeah, then I got an offer from Austria at Basket Swans Gmunden in Upper Austria. And I'm just entering my 6th season with them now. So, you know, I've been on a 15, 16 year journey and I feel like I'm just getting started.

Love that. So I'd like to, to dive in a little bit to how your kind of journey first began discovering a contemporary approach. And, you know, I think you, I've really liked, you were really more active, I think, on Twitter over the last couple of years and you had some great threads on there.

But how did you first kind of discover this approach?

I think I discovered the contemporary approach just by— obviously Twitter made the world smaller and you just saw different people talking about different things. I always felt there was something missing with the way we were coaching and it was, uh, do exactly what I say.

And I did that, obviously. I think we've all been through that journey. And I was just very open to looking for a better way. I think that's what attracts people inside, just having an open mind and trying new things and When people talk about you get better by playing the game, I could see that, you know, I started playing basketball at 17, 18.

So obviously I did not have a big background. And yes, I guess just the more people talked about the CLA ecological dynamics, the more it made sense. You know, I'm not fully in, which is obviously the difficult thing because I can see the other, I can see the benefits of the other side a little bit, but yeah, it's just making more and more sense and I'm eager to continue this journey and exploring it.

So I think this is, you know, one of the reasons I wanted to get you on. I had the pleasure of you hosting me for a coaching clinic through your company Red Sports back in Dublin in the summer. And, you know, I thought it was a great clinic.

I really enjoyed it. But I think that what you just described is one of the realities for coaches, you know, and I don't think anyone is ever going to be 100% ecological when you're first exposed to these ideas. You know, what do you think could be some of the reasons why maybe coaches are maybe at 30%, 50%, 60%?

What's Preventing them from maybe becoming more and more ecological.

I don't know if you know that meme where you have somebody stranded on an island and they want to be saved and there's a boat, but you know, there's a risk to it. I know that I'm on an island. It's not pleasurable, but it's safe.

It's, it's land. Or I could take, jump on this boat where I might be saved. I might get out to sea and get lost. And I think for a lot of people, it's just that idea of this is a known. It could be a bad unknown, but it's known.

I know what this is and I'm in my comfort zone and everybody talks about it. And there's this obviously this research where everybody bets on IBM. You know, you got to be willing to take risks and you know the Pete Carroll Super Bowl thing, right?

He makes a great decision, but everybody's slating him. So I'd rather play it safe. I feel like that's what a lot of coaches get held back by. We'd rather play it safe. Everybody. is on board with this method, so let's just do it.

And if we fail, at least we're failing with status quo. Yeah, as opposed to stepping out on this, you know, taking a chance and failing, and everybody then, you know, talking about you and saying how ridiculous you were to, to take this chance.

Totally get that. I think that was a nice response. So maybe let's get into this practically now. So, you know, either— I don't know, as you were discovering this approach, Nabil, Were there any areas, like very specific areas of basketball, which you struggled to kind of realize how the CLA, you know, underpinned by ecological dynamics, could be used?

Like, for instance, for me, shooting was the last frontier for me, and it took me a while until I did it. And now it's one of the areas I'm most confident in using an ecological approach. So I don't know if you had any specific things like that.

I think it's everything, to be honest, mate. I'm not being funny. I'm not generalizing, but obviously the technical tactical skills for me is something like, okay, well, how much time, like, how can I really, you know, zone in on his footwork or his technical proficiency, which when we talk about it, we know it's not the be-all end-all, right?

It's about letting them discover solutions and stuff. But you've got certain movement patterns where it's just like, well, how can I help refine? How can I change the parameters? How can I— Yeah. Adapt it. And, you know, it's the same when you first start creating a practice plan, and you have that plan in front of you, comfort zone, it's your failsafe, right?

With the CLA, it's almost like, you know, I need that plan. After a while, you can kind of have that practice plan being more, you know, guiding principles-based, I can adapt with the practice. But, and after a while with the CLA, you get comfortable enough, I'm sure, where, you know, you'd have all these drills and these ideas and know how to adapt things on the fly.

Whereas I'm not there yet. So it's, it's challenging to, to work with concepts, tactics, technical stuff, mental stuff, like how do I adapt a drill to get the response I want from a mental component? You know, it's, I guess I'm at that stage where it's, I'm struggling with a lot, to be honest.

It's completely normal. I think for me anyway, it's like one of the most important things is like when I first started using the CLA, I'd say I was way more generic, more games-based approach, and I was way more kind of small-sided games in the form of 3-on-3, 2-on-2, 5-on-5.

And then I just realized that type of environment was never going to be specific enough to develop skilled players. Because like you said, things like footwork, the affordances to drive or attack in different ways out of static or moving starts. Well, guess what?

If you're just playing 3-on-3 the whole time, you're not gonna get enough affordances. Also, at the same time, you're not gonna get enough affordances to do it in different ways, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, so I think for me it's like the real way to get the most out of the CLA, it's all in the different types of one-on-one and one-on-one plus one. I think for me it's like I just have several hundred different types of one-on-one, you know.

And I used to be very rudimentary, like ball on the back, go, right? And then, but you know, that could be good for developing some footwork solutions, but we need something way more specific and we need to do that in different ways. We have to have different starts, different constraints.

So, you know, it could be as simple as just starting, having some type of constrained defender in front, and maybe a player has 2 dribbles. They have to find a footwork solution to attack without traveling. But maybe they have 3 reps and they have to do it a different way every time, right?

Like, you've hit the nail on the head. I mean, you're talking about a bunch of stuff, which is— it's great that Especially with resources like yours where you are putting coaches in a position where they actually have to think. And the coaches that I feel do a good job don't just take the stuff that's out there and use it.

They adapt it to their own specific situation, which it's another skill in itself.

Absolutely. Absolutely. So I want to go back to the clinic we had in Dublin. I thought it was a great event. Had some really good speakers there. Obviously I was just there for the one day, so I only got a chance to catch Simon Turner's presentation, but it was awesome.

Really good stuff, you know, how we approach practices. But, you know, I wanted to go into that. Was there anything, you know, from the conversations we had over that day and anything I shared in the practices, was there anything that made you think differently or something you thought that would be really beneficial to head into the season in Austria with your— it's under-16s?

Under-19s. They were under-16s.

My bad.

Yeah, there's a ton of stuff that was on show that weekend. And obviously, you obviously know it. So I guess The listeners will know my, my players were there with you and they had a chance to work with you and they were the demonstrators.

So them seeing some of the things that we had done, but obviously being done with me would be more in the form of small-sided games and, you know, the stuff where it's a natural progression to where we want to get to. Whereas you then took it a step further and you adjusted the constraints and the guys could see how specific things could be used or merged together.

Yeah.

One of the ones that jumps out to me was how you took the concepts of the actions and you kind of put them together. So you ran pistol with the get action into the flare action. And then if I remember this correctly, you went from a get to a flare to a pin down.

Was it? I'm not entirely sure, but it was also them seeing those situations. So I'm at that stage of the season now where I'm like, okay, we want to work on our transition because that has to go in first. Well, how do we flow from our transition offense going from full speed trying to beat everybody down the floor to then realizing there's no advantage here.

Let's slow down. And then how do we flow naturally into the next action? And so that's kind of where I'm exploring what kind of constraints and stuff, but I'm, I'm looking and falling back to what you showed over that weekend in Ireland to guide me.

Love that. So obviously, you know, one of the things I speak the most about is principles of play and, you know, adopting a conceptual framework versus all the kind of rigid offenses we've seen in the past, et cetera. I think what you just alluded to there, Nabil, that's one of the hardest things within a conceptual offense, the recognition of neutral and then the flow into the first trigger.

And that's a lot of coaches ask me, you know, do you have calls? Do you call it as the coach? And I think it's, you know, having the players empowered to perceive kind of space where their teammates are and what trigger is best for that moment.

I think the only way they can do that is them getting into it themselves. And obviously, if you need a one-word call for that, fine. Something I've done to help connect it is if I see they're neutral after transition, I call it the 4-second countdown.

I will just start counting down from 4, either silently or out loud. And if the trigger isn't being run by that time, it's a turnover. And that's just something I've done to try and get them into the trigger easier versus, you know, what we've all seen, dribbling, dribbling, dribbling, getting pressured.

done. Is there anything you've been exploring just in that regard with that kind of transition from transition to half court?

Yeah, well, what we've been doing this week actually has been if you score in under 5 seconds, we're going to give you 4 points for the score regardless if it's a layup or a 3, right? So you're going to get a couple of points, whereas— and we're counting out loud so the guys will hear the count.

And it's not we get to 3, 2, 1, chuck up a bad shot. It's understand that The bonus count is gone. So now let's flow into something else. It's challenging, obviously, because now all of a sudden the guys are still in the early stages where it's like, oh, 3-2-1, I gotta chuck up a shot.

Or they'll kind of dribble the ball and wait for a ball screen because that's the easiest thing for the guys to do. So we're limiting them to get actions and pin downs right now. We're only using these 2 actions to get us into that advantage, into that domino flow.

It's challenging because next thing you have right now is it's a get, get, get, get. And now it's just kind of, you know, it's, we're trying to be patient with them. I'm trying to be patient with myself because as a coach, you can get easily frustrated.

Well, this isn't working and throw it all out the window, go back to what works. Because in practice, it's easy to make things look good. In practice, it's really easy if you just step in, put players exactly where you want them to.

Yeah.

It can look good. And like you said, empowering players, well, it takes a certain level of confidence and security to be able to step back, watch the utter chaos in front of you, and still kind of keep knocking down on that one nail just to make sure you get it before you move on to the next one.

Absolutely. So I was just scrolling in preparation for the podcast. I just took a look at your Medium blog page. You got some really good things. We'll include the link there in the show notes. I want to touch on a few of the really kind of good little articles you had on there.

And one of those, you spoke about kind of the death of rote repetition within the youth sports space. You know, I'd love if you could just share your thoughts on that. And also, Nabil, maybe the alternate— a 2-part question— the alternative. So maybe that would mean some of your favorite CLA activities that you're using, you know, with your team in Austria.

It's funny because I just look at it right now and Not even from a learning perspective, but if I look at it from an engagement perspective, right? We want players to come in, be engaged, have fun. And we know that when, when players are engaged, they're attentive, they're participating in their development.

Not only are they more focused, they're going to continue to be motivated for longer. They're going to develop the confidence and they're going to learn faster. And we can look back at how we learned group projects versus teacher lecturing, right? That's the most simplest one that jumps out.

How we learn to speak. You know, you could get on Duolingo, or you could— like, when we were children, we just spoke and we made a bunch of mistakes. So I think I see it a lot where— not to get off track, but I've seen a lot where coach is going to come in and do a shooting drill with the group.

Okay, the first player does it right, the second player does it right— not the shot made, but the footwork that he's looking for. Third player does it right, fourth player does it right, fifth one makes a mistake. Now this is a block practice, and all of a sudden he stops the entire group and gets on a lecture.

Yeah.

That's boring for the players, but then we'll get frustrated with the players. Why are they not listening? Why are they frustrated? Well, I mean, we're designing the environment in a way that either bores players or frustrates them, and then we get upset when they're not engaged, you know?

So it's something that I've been trying to learn more about, how to get players engaged in my practices. When it comes to CLA, I guess it's small-sided games that I'm using a lot. 3v3, for example, FIBA 3v3 is one I'm using right now.

But in order to be able to work on dominoes, and also one of the things we're working on is baseline drives and help side defense rotating. So what we do is after the 3v3, the offense has to go around a chair on the wing.

So get the ball, dribble it out on the wing, but we have a second chair about a foot away from the first, and the defense has to go around that. So it automatically creates an advantage for the offense on a baseline drive, which forces defense to rotate over.

But it also allows us to work on our dribble penetration, which is a big part of our game. Are we rotating? Is somebody filling the baseline spot? Is somebody cutting from the 45? It gives us a chance to work on that. So that's one thing we do with FIBA 3v3.

Other ones we do is 3-on-3 cutthroat, which is something I like because I can put the constraints how I want. Okay, we're only playing with pin downs today. We're only playing with flare screens. We're only playing with pistol. So those are some that I like.

When it comes to the CLA part, it's depending on the emphasis, offensive rebounding worth 4 points, or if we score with a give and go, if we get an advantage off this. Yeah, there's a bunch of different ideas and I'll just get off tangent, but you know, it's me experimenting really to see which ones are hitting home.

Like the one from this season, which is only 2 weeks in, is chaos shooting, which I think it's from you actually.

Yeah.

You showed it in Ireland. I really liked it. So we put it in. It's great for offense and defense now. So guys are actually shooting under pressure, game-like shots. Defensively, you're closing out hard. And so I really like chaos shooting as well. And, um, I'm just going to look to expand that library and the different emphasis.

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Love that, Nabil. On the first part of your answer, I think that's where there's actually research done by Ian Renshaw, and I just pulled the paper up because I read it a couple months ago and it— you kind of brought it back to my attention.

And it talks about how nonlinear pedagogy underpins intrinsic motivation in sports coaching. And that's the name of the paper. It's open access, coaches, so you can download it. So there's actual research now which is showing us that, you know, using a CLA in the practice environment has all these extra benefits other than just developing more skillful players.

It develops these things which is way more important in life. And that was, you know, exactly as you alluded to. Second part, I loved how you mentioned cutthroat because I was thinking about this over the summer. I saw a lot of camps in the US kind of posted on Twitter, you know, and they showed how they're doing cutthroat, et cetera, et cetera.

The rules, that's an example of the CLA, but for me, it's not an effective example of how they used it because of the rules they had.

Yeah.

It was things like, you must square up every time you catch the ball, you must cut after every pass, et cetera, et cetera. So actually what we're seeing in that, that's more of a game model. It's a highly controlled way of playing basketball, which actually is unnatural and it's counterproductive because if players are having to do those things, it's simply they're not acting on more attractive affordances, AKA opportunities to create dominoes and start an advantage earlier.

So I love how you spoke about how we can take— let's be honest, cutball is something that's been done for decades, right? It's an old-school drill. But by adding our theoretical knowledge of the CLA, you've completely improved it and you've got a really useful CLA activity.

Are there any other constraints you've done within that, Nabil? I know I loved how you spoke about constraining the triggers. Like, I was just thinking you can easily add something like floor is lava to that where they can't catch it in the mid-range.

know, to encourage optimal spacing?

Yeah, well, one of the ones we do is obviously, well, there's so many different ones. I think this one I got from Brian McCormack, actually. It's playing in a way that, okay, if a guy catches it clean on outside the perimeter, defense loses a point.

So now we're trying to really force that kind of denial or, you know, but it also kind of helps us represent when teams are being really aggressive. Do we keep kind of moving Towards the halfway line, or can we encourage that backdoor cut, which is something my guys really struggle with.

So by changing the emphasis for the defense, you know, we're forcing those backdoor cuts, and then we're hoping that the guys get it, which is still early days. I haven't done the floor is lava. I saw you do that in Ireland, and that's something I definitely want to add to my card to try it out, but I haven't done that.

Another one that we do is like 4-on-4 transition, but I'm struggling with this because it's like We try to get the defense, it's the old school drill like you mentioned, to try and touch the line. So now we've got a natural advantage. But what I'm trying to do, especially when we talk about transition, is get the spacing right.

So passing the ball over before we get to the halfway, before you get over the halfway line. But the constraints to shape this drill is still kind of like a work in progress.

Gotcha.

So you're still looking for different ways to be able to recognize, you know, but the other thing is if the defense Isn't constrained too sometimes, then it's very hard to shape the offense because in transition defense doesn't rotate to the first pass. Well, he's got a clean layup.

Okay, I really want to work on recognizing advantages, but the defense keeps falling asleep. And I think that's one of the other parts where you can work on both at the same time.

I love that. Like, just on that example, something I know, like when I often introduce dominoes to younger players, They help. They have no concept of the low defender and their positioning. But I like doing it and seeing if they can actually figure that out without me saying, you must stand here, you must help.

So actually what I've done is I let them play and obviously frequently the offense will, first time they do it, they get like 2 or 3 layups in a row. Then some of the teammates start speaking. Then I say at that point, okay, if they score on the first layup and the layup is open and it's not somewhat contested, the defense, you get -5 points.

What do you see straight away? An active help defender. And that's with beginners, right? So it's like you said, you can add those points to offense, defense, really shaping both. I've actually been experimenting on the line one that you mentioned, Nabil. So just for clarity, it's the one where you have like 4 offense on the baseline and 4 defense kind of 3-point line extended, right?

Yeah.

So something I've done, so I was actually going through this problem Where I was thinking about it and I just felt like I still think it's a useful activity, but I think we can use the CLA to make it even better. To make it more variable, what I've done is I've actually just— it's really simple— started the players in completely different depths and even widths.

So as opposed to, you know, that neat and tidy boom, boom, boom, and the defenders right in front of them, I might sometimes put one offense in the defender's line, 2 offense, I might have them completely different, like one at halfway, one at baseline, one off the court, just completely different every time.

And just what I've noticed, what we see in transition is Mike McKay speaks about this vertical and horizontal spacing is always variable. It's Bernstein's repetition without repetition, right? Whereas when we do that line drill as we've seen it, it's not that rep without rep just because of the spacings.

And what I think we see is when it goes live, I feel like some of those possessions that unravel, they're not kind of containing the affordances that players will really have, you know, in transition. So I think that's a really good one, which, you know, we can just experiment more with and just literally changing the starting locations.

You immediately, I think you improve the representativeness of the activity.

I mean, that's great. That's something definitely I want to add. Just something you said kind of brought 2 things up to the front of my mind. The first one is. You know, when we look at these kind of activities we're talking about, the rotations can take a lot longer initially because, you know, everybody get on the baseline is really simple, right?

Everybody across the free throw line is really simple. Now when you start changing the depth and width, like you mentioned, I can already anticipate this. Well, well, who goes on the baseline? Who goes up? And all of a sudden it's slower, which leads me to the second point we talked about.

One, I gotta suffer through the chaos a little bit, but two, Yeah. By doing this, and coaches love it when their teams communicate and bring energy and talk, and but by doing this, we're actually facilitating conversations. And when you play through constraints, this is something I've noticed: the guys talk a lot more.

Like you just mentioned with the kids right now, all of a sudden, who's rotating over? But we can shape that conversation. So I've seen it with kids who don't know how to communicate, and they start getting on their teammate. Okay, so here's somebody who.

Whereas some other guys would be very nice, but they're talking. And this is something that I've seen a lot in previous practices where guys do not want to talk and they can do a drill mindlessly because everything is solved for them. Everybody's positioned.

And so it really presents the coach with a really unique picture. And coming back all the way to the start, it can make you as a coach feel really incompetent and make you question, do I actually know how to coach? And that's another thing that's really, really It really puts you in a bad place.

You kind of, holy crap, do I actually know how to coach? You know? So that's kind of what I feel like sometimes.

We've all been there, man. And I think if you actually don't go through that process, Nabil, I don't think that you're actually using the CLA effectively. If you haven't at least considered that, you know, I don't think that you're making the most of what CLA is, right?

Here's a question for you. I think you're someone who everyone I get on the Transforming Basketball podcast, I would class as someone who is a continuous learner. And, you know, those are the type of guests that I want on. And that's what I think we need for the basketball world to change.

We need to, you know, develop more of a mentality where self-education and development is really important, as opposed to relying on the same old paradigms. But you're really busy. Not only obviously you coaching full-time, but you have a family. You're raising young kids, and obviously you're living in a country, you know, that's not your native country.

So how do you do it? Like, how are you finding time to study? Have you got any hacks for, you know, what you're looking at, how you're doing it, and then how you're applying it?

I think the hacks thing is the first one we got to throw out the window. I don't think there's any hacks. I think the trouble with finding time is you'll never find time. I can't remember whose rule it is, but if you dedicate 10 hours to create a practice plan, well, that's how long it's going to take you to create a practice plan.

So one thing that I've tried to be disciplined with is my own kind of personal routine and personal time. You know, I try to wake up early in the day before my kids get up so I can have 1 or 2 hours to myself.

I go through, you know, a meditation routine. It's kind of this way since I came back from vacation. It takes a while to get back into it, but I go through a meditation routine, a stretching routine, a movement routine. Then make a cup of coffee and read.

So I definitely try to put an hour to reading and 30 minutes to writing every day. And I'd say my best days are when I get that, when I schedule my time to read and schedule my time to write. Because with all the information we have in the world these days, and everything's at the fingertips, you know, Twitter, online blogs, articles, YouTube videos, I think you have to make time to write or whatever way to gain clarity in your thinking.

And my way is writing. By writing, I gain clarity in my thinking. And that's kind of the dedicated time to learning. But of course, with that, I will also have dedicated time for my family, dedicated time for my wife. It's a challenge to get right.

And I don't think there's a balance. Instead, what I strive for is a rhythm to be able to, okay, we're in season right now. The rhythm will be a little bit different. But when we come towards postseason, the rhythm will change. When it comes to school breaks and vacations, the rhythm will change.

Offseason, completely different rhythm. So I try to communicate that with my family to the best of my abilities. And yeah, like I said, not, not trying to balance it because I don't think we can balance it. That's my own personal opinion. So I just try to strive for a rhythm with that.

Nabil, I want to say thanks so much for taking the time to join us today. I think, you know, some really good practical takeaways for coaches, and that's the most important thing in my mind and the reason why I'm doing this podcast. Could you just share how coaches can reach out or get a hold of you to discuss the stuff we discussed today?

What's the easiest way for coaches to get in touch?

Yeah, Instagram and Twitter. Firstly, thanks for having me on. It's been amazing and I appreciate this. So yeah, Twitter and Instagram @NabilRend, N-A-B-double-E-L-R-E-N-D. That's where you can find me and that's probably the easiest way to get in touch with me.

Great stuff, Nabil. Thanks so much. Can't wait to hear how the season goes in Austria.

Thanks, mate, for having me on.

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