What on earth is an affordance?!

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Head to the show notes to access this incredible free resource. Welcome back to the podcast, Adam. I'm gonna do you dirty here, man. This is gonna be a fun start. So I'm gonna read a quote, and this whole podcast is on affordances, and I'm just gonna pass over to you.

So This is from, uh, of course, the renowned ecological psychologist J.J. Gibson, who of course coined the term affordance. And, you know, I think this is one of the words that a lot of coaches struggle to understand. So we felt we'd just shoot a podcast on it and just see where it goes, see if we can make better sense of it.

So let's begin with this. And this comes from, uh, chapter 8, The Theory of Affordances, in Gibson's The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. The affordances of the environment are what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes, either for good or ill.

The verb to afford is found in the dictionary, but the noun affordance is not. I have made it up. I mean by it something that refers to both the environment and the animal in a way that no existing term does. It implies the complementarity of the animal and the environment.

The antecedents of the term and the history of the concept will be treated later. For the present, let us consider examples of an affordance. So Adam, the high school coach coaching in Kentucky, what the fuck does that mean?

Okay. An affordance in very simple terms is an opportunity for action. There, I put it down to 3 words. So what does that mean? Let's explore that a little bit deeper. An opportunity for action is a better way to describe it is simply through talking through examples like this laptop for that I'm talking on right now affords me the opportunity to speak to somebody that's currently, I don't know, a 6-hour flight away from me.

It's an opportunity that without the laptop or without Wi-Fi, I would not have that opportunity. And it is the same thing that we see like on the basketball court itself. Like, and another, let's just keep with it, like a gap perhaps affords One's ability to pass to a teammate through or drive through space between the defender.

It depends. Here's where it's tricky because again, and that's what Gibson was saying, the animal and the environment, animal being singular, because again, each of these affordances, these opportunities for action, we, I think we all know this inherently, are different for each and every individual.

It's going to change. And that's, it's scaled to both, not only their, say for instance, their Physical features, but also their level of skill. And that's not just simply skill as in, oh, shooting ability. How perceptually skilled are they? Are they actually able to pick up information?

And that's essentially what affordance is. It's taking this whole notion that we interact with an environment and everything within the environment provides us all we need in order to behave in that environment. We don't need to interpret anything. We don't need a coach shouting instructions.

The information is right there in front of us. We just need to explore it and interact with it.

Adam, that was wonderfully done. That was immense. So let's keep making this practical for the listeners. So I think for me, one of the biggest implications when we understand affordances is we have to think as coaches, as coaches, how can we design in affordances to the practice environment.

And I think the biggest takeaway here is there's no one-size-fits-all approach. And you hinted at why that is, because affordances are all acted upon and perceived differently by different players. And the reason why is because obviously every player is unique. So what this means is that when we are doing practice activities where we are all teaching players the same move, or giving them the same feedback to act in maybe very similar ways.

What we're not doing is considering the complexity of the affordance landscape in terms of how players are all gonna solve the same problem in different ways. As they move to solve the problem, even that, that's always gonna be different because obviously every player is so different.

So there was a good quote here I just pulled from Rob Gray in his latest book, How We Learn to Optimize Movement. And he wrote, effective coaching is all about manipulating affordances, changing the invitations an athlete receives from the environment. While we can't tell an athlete what to do, we can change the practice environment such that some invitations never arrive while others come in bright pink envelopes.

I think that's a really, really nice way of phrasing it. And what that means in basketball terms is We have to have knowledge as coaches as to what affordances exist within the environment. For instance, if we are running a pick and roll against the switch, what are some advantageous affordances for us as the offensive team that could maybe start an advantage creating dominoes?

But then it's an instance of, okay, if we understand, you know, what affordances might present themselves, We gotta understand that still the players are gonna act on those in different ways. There's no one way to do it. And then we gotta think about how may we solicit these in a natural way within the practice environment as opposed to using drills.

What would you say to that, Adam?

What I would say is there's 2 aspects of that quote that I really, really stuck with me. There was initially, we can't tell them what to do. Which is something like, I think that's very difficult for most coaches to accept. And even me from time to time, because it'd be so much easier if I could just tell them what to do sometimes, but it's not helpful when it comes to transfer to the game.

And then the pink envelopes, making that, making it bright and shiny. So the bright and shiny is actually easier to riff off of when it comes to affordances. And that is because Say you're in that situation where you're doing like a switch versus a pick and roll.

Say, like, they're just gonna do the same thing over and over and over again. Well, they're clearly not attuning to other options that are available. Why? That could be for many different reasons. What you can do, you certainly cannot change their past history, and it's very difficult to change how they specifically move their, like, their action capacities at that point in time.

So you just start playing around with different variables in the environment. What would make these other potential avenues more advantageous? Or another way to do it is to actually make the one they're currently doing way less appetizing.

Yeah.

I think that tends to be the easier way instead of, again, trying to say, hey, come over here, come do this. Make them feel the pain of like, no, you can't do this anymore.

Yeah.

And that will elicit new behaviors. Now, preferably you don't tell them, hey, you can't do this anymore. You just make it very difficult by, say, for instance, adding a defender in that area or telling or having the opposition do something in specific that will take away that solution, which I hope if the defense is live, they're doing that naturally, because if they're having success, they should be like seeking to stop that solution from occurring.

But I think that is essentially— I kind of drifted off there, but I think that is less what we're thinking there.

Let's keep making this practical. Maybe let's stay on the example of pick and roll against the switch, just because we've already mentioned that. So what I'm thinking about immediately is this: when we prep, right, when we first started, our 2 main guards, Jamie and Linus, were very attuned to the affordance to reject.

in a pick and roll, and they were very good at it. So often when they were against each other, I'd say that our defense protecting against Rejects was better because they both looked at it and they were aware of that. But when our other guards were defending them in practice defensively, you know, that team would often get killed by Rejects.

And often what happened was You know, early in the season, the first week I saw that happening, I'd go blue in the face talking about the importance of not allowing a reject within our pick and roll coverages. And then I think this was before you came even.

And then I reflected on it watching the practice back, and I was like, this is stupid. I can't believe I've kept talking about this all week, and I haven't done an effective job actually trying to change the environment or do something within our, you know, how we're playing.

to directly change this. And then what we said was, what we had within all the small-sided games and scrimmages when we needed to was, you won the game through points, or if you got rejected on twice, you lost. Sure enough, and this was before you came, that problem, you know, it really kind of was resolved within 2 days, basically.

So I think that's a good practical example. Can you think of any others just from You know, things we obviously— there's so much we did at prep, but I'm just trying to think if we could give another example for coaches in regards to maybe amplifying an affordance, how we could do that, making one affordance more enticing.

Well, just wanted to say, like, that was like— that's perfect. I immediately smiled. If, like, people don't see that on the video, if we're doing a video, is like the consequence. That's what came up to me in my head as soon as you said that.

There's a clear consequence. You shouting at me is not a clear consequence. I don't, like, my body doesn't give a crap if you're yelling at me. Like, it holds no bearing on the situation. So I think even just when we were talking about like the wall pick and roll, you're not gonna hold the screen super long in the wall pick and roll, or the, the ball handler's gonna be very upset if you do.

Great example. So what coaches listening, what we really struggled with, so all our players were brand new. They basically had no— I can say this honestly— that they had no clue how to play pick and roll. And it's not their fault. They were not attuned to affordances when pick and roll.

So what they often did was the pickers would come in, they'd set a pick from a really kind of poor angle, and they'd just hang about in the pick.

They'd pop.

If they did roll, it would be very kind of haphazard, and no advantage would consistently be created. So obviously, we had to solve that problem and find a way to help our players attune to all the affordances that exist in a pick and roll.

So all we did was we created a pick and roll situation, 2-on-2 in a narrow space. That's our wall. And we had a very short shot clock. We had a 4-second shot clock, and they could only score a 3-pointer or a finish in the smile.

That was it. Well, what emerged? Well, we saw slips where the picker, you know, didn't make contact and fight. They came to pick and boom, they were out of there. We saw harder rolls, so they might make contact, but then they rolled before that defender could get under if they were switching.

We saw the ball handlers looking to reject or looking to drive around quickly. And so all we did, just within the constraints of that game, it changed everything. Versus, you know, we see a generic small-sided game which isn't really properly constrained. Well, how players act within that, aka the other affordances that appear, it's just generic, you know, and it's, it's not going to be specific enough for learning, as we've spoken about, Adam.

And it's, you know, where to finish. I'm just thinking, you know, we gave examples of pick and roll, but maybe let's leave one for some youth coaches out there, and maybe they're not playing with pick and roll yet. So let's maybe do a really simple one in terms of Maybe consider it's like an under-12s or under-14s team.

And maybe we're talking about affordances to create advantages on offense without doing something very robotic and pre-programmed like a pass and cut.

I mean, we can just take like many of the different like constraints that give a small advantage to start the action, whether it's a 3-on-3 game, 5-on-5, or can be even just literally like a 1-on-1 race type to the rim where like the ball's on the back or they're passing back and forth and They get to essentially just go at a certain point whenever the defender initially moves, or like the case where the ball's on the back, as soon as the ball's— it's live and you don't have to do anything.

Easy. So basically we're just amplifying affordances to use an advantage on offense. That's it. You know, that's the episode, coaches. So just, we hope that this clarified what an affordance is. So obviously if you hear us say the term affordance landscape, All we mean is the affordances that, you know, may exist within a particular moment in a possession.

But obviously it's changing the whole time. And that's what basketball is. The affordance landscape is ever-changing. Affordances appear and disappear. And, you know, a player might act on one affordance and then they're confronted by several new ones. And that's just the nature of the game.

So obviously, if that's what happens within the game, The ultimate takeaway is how can we practice where players are experiencing some of these same problems within the practice environment. So thanks for listening, and we'll see you on another episode shortly.

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