How OTE are Developing The Next Generation of Pro Players with Markus Klusemann

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Welcome back to the Transforming Podcast, joined by return guest Marcus Kluseman. Marcus, thanks so much for coming back on the show.

Thanks for having me back, Alex. Glad to be here.

Of course, always good conversations to be had. with you, and there's something really exciting coming up, which is why we're doing this. One of many reasons we wanted to get you on the show again. And firstly, I mean, big respect for organizing this because I think for North American basketball, it's huge.

Do you want to talk a little bit about what's coming up, uh, with what you're doing there over time?

So one thing we've been talking about a lot is player development. Obviously, with our age group in our league, part of our operation and our business is to make these players better. And my role has always been to bridge the gap between a science world from a health performance perspective, but also from a coaching perspective with what's being applied on the court.

And we came up with this workshop idea to bring, bridge that gap, to bring experts from different areas. And provide a holistic overview of what player development means or what it can entail. And then also what coaches can actually apply. And that's why we're calling it a workshop and not a clinic or a conference, because we want participants to really interact with the information they're, they're getting from the different speakers.

So it's going to be a whole bunch of fun because we'll have a whole bunch of coaches who Won't be just sitting around and listening to people talk, but they'll be able to talk to other coaches and think about new ideas, creative ideas to implement the information into their own environment, which I think is super important.

Love it, Marcus. Personally, I can't wait and obviously really honored to be, to be asked as a speaker. I think we've always spoken about it when, you know, talking about ideas like the CLA, it kind of is counterproductive to then deliver that in a just a lecture environment.

And, you know, you, you've always given me lots of ideas in terms of how to spice presentations up, get, you know, get coaches more active. Could you talk more about just what you envision for the future of coach education and what we're going to be doing during that weekend in Atlanta in terms of like the interactions, how we're actually gonna facilitate that on the court?

Yeah, and this workshop will be an experiment in that direction of more interactive coach education, where the coaches get introduced to a topic, and just like we would with players, we introduce them to a topic, and then we let— we create an environment where they can interact with that topic and try it out.

So that's what we're trying to do on the coaches' end as well, is introduce the topic, introduce a challenge. Now interact with this challenge, interact with and come up with new solutions, how you can find solutions for your environment and your situation. Because one principle might look completely different to me if I'm coaching a certain age group in a certain environment compared to you in a different country, different place, different types of players.

And so being aware of there's not one size fits all, but there's some principles we can follow. And then The trick is finding out how you can apply that in your space. So having coach education follow those same principles and have coaches try things out, get feedback from their peers, give feedback to their peers, I think is going to be a lot more fun and hopefully also more valuable as well.

Great stuff, Markus. I'm really excited for it and I'm planning on presenting some unique things which I haven't shown yet. I think it's great timing because it's going to be only a few weeks after the book comes out. So I think There's going to be a wave of interest in CLA, which is exciting.

I want to get to kind of looking at forms of life culture because you've coached in some really different places now, obviously Australia, Europe, and now North America. And I think we see a lot of conversation. Adam Silver was speaking about it a few weeks ago when he was talking about youth development in the US, and he was saying how with the NBA, they wanted to get involved younger and things of that nature.

But what would you say when it comes specifically to player development, would be some of the challenges and differences just in these different environments, North America, Europe, Australia, et cetera?

I think we can't underestimate the importance of context and the overall environment. So with the overall environment, I mean the country, the cultural background in that country, And how players grow up playing sports in general, and then basketball specifically. That really shapes a lot of what players experience and then how they develop through that.

So I think having an understanding of that first will help with the decision-making processes or the guiding how to shape a player development framework for that space. Specifically to the different countries, I can give you some of my experiences. You know, Australia, the biggest challenge there is that they're an island on the far end of the world.

So getting meaningful competition against different styles of basketball is a huge challenge. The advantages, Australians love sport, they love team sport, and that is instilled at a young age, how to play, being a great teammate, how to play together, how to play with great effort.

Those are all things that I coach. So the coach puts great emphasis on team behaviors. That's a general theme in Australia that they, all coaches do there very well. And I think they take coaching very seriously and spend time on their development there.

So I think those are the pros and cons in Australia. In Europe, also a whole bunch of coaches and the advantage there from all different types of backgrounds, from all different countries, all together in a close vicinity of each other. And I'm sure you've seen and experienced this more than me.

So I think that's a huge advantage there. The challenge I think in Europe is that the competition demands are really, really high. So for example, I was working with under-14 players in my previous role and they would have basketball 365 days of the year, pretty much.

And it was challenging finding windows where they could work on skill development specifically as an emphasis, or even have time off to recover. To mentally and physically recover because there's your club competition, which starts around August with preseason when you just come back from your summer holidays and then goes all the way till April, May when, if you're going to the playoffs and then in June, July, if you're a good player, you're playing for your national team.

So every, all year round, you've got basketball at a high level. And that also means you're training at a higher level, 5, 6 times a week with multiple games a week. So I think finding that balance, balancing act, especially in junior players, is a challenge there.

And then in North America, I've only been here a couple of years now, so mainly in one environment, namely the OTE environment. So my experience is limited to that. But here, you know, one of the great things I see here is how competitive the players are.

Like, they're all They want to win, especially when it comes to game time. And there is value in players just being so confident in themselves and going, I'm going to beat you and make this shot, even if the hand's in my face. And I think the downside to the whole, you know, one-on-one emphasis, AU emphasis that many have mentioned is that team concepts are are not touched on until late, once they get closer to college age or going towards pros.

So things like spacing, moving the ball, they're not as heavily emphasized here as much from what I've experienced so far in the couple of years I've been here.

Absolutely. I think it's so interesting for just coaches to look at these forms of life and think about how it impacts how they coach. So let me ask you this then, Mark, especially since you've been in In working at OTE, how would you go about introducing topics like the CLA with— let's start maybe with the coaches.

How have you, you know, experienced that? What, what are often the entry points to being able to explain some of these ideas?

The main entry point I've used is decision-making, because I think every— a lot of basketball IQ, as some people call it as well, I think a lot of people recognize Even at the NBA level, that, that's what differentiates a lot of the great players from, from the other players, especially when we're looking at some of the European superstars.

Then my next question is, well, what does that mean to you? And then discussing what is decision-making and what is basketball IQ. Then we quickly get into things, topics like, okay, it's people reading the environment and making great decisions. on the fly. And if we agree, okay, that is great decision-making, or that is great basketball IQ, well, how can we work on that?

And then quickly you get to a CLA type of activity without actually mentioning the word CLA. And then it goes more, and then the discussion goes more towards, okay, how can we create more of these kinds of activities to work on specific decision-making aspects?

And I like to think of certain areas of decision-making to help make that big topic Easier to understand. So I think of like catch decisions. When a player catches the ball, how quickly can they decide to shoot, pass, or dribble? This is a specific element.

Or when I'm attacking the hoop on dribble penetration, that's also a decision-making element, seeing where rotation is coming from, if there is rotation, et cetera. And then a third element would be, you know, creating advantages and decisions around that. So whether that's pick and roll or off-ball screens.

And so then you can talk specifically about those kinds of scenarios and the decisions that happen within those and create activities that target that kind of decision-making. So now we're not talking about decision-making in general as this broad theme that, that might be ambiguous.

We're talking about really specific parts of the game that involve specific decisions, and then we create activities to work on those.

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No, that's great, Marcus. I think maybe I'm wrong, but it's also obviously my year working extensively in the States, and something I've noticed is I think with American players, some entrenched ideas and drills are more present than what I've seen in Europe. For instance, a lot of things like players having 2-ball dribble routines, finishing, like finishing moves that they rep out before practice.

Have you noticed any, anything like that with the players and any barriers? And if so, how you overcame them in terms of actually being able to use the CLA with the players there?

This is actually something I noticed that another coach here do, which I thought was smart. He called a part of his workout, he called workout shots. He was doing a shooting workout and he called, okay, these are going to be your workout shots.

So it was more blocked on zero. And they were for like, if he has to do an NBA workout in front of GMs and they just want to see the ball go through the net. So he just framed that like, these are just workout shots.

And they did that for a short amount of time. And then they said, okay, now we're going to do game.

Yeah.

Game transfer shots, something along those lines. And then it was, you know, with me closing out and out of different game actions. And that way the player bought in completely because he understood what one part of the practice was for and what the other part of the practice was for.

I think that's potentially a good way to introduce to players, hey, this is— these things that are a bit more variable and you might see the ball miss a bit more is actually what's going to transfer to the competition and make you a better basketball player.

100%. So in our first podcast discussion, we spoke about this concept of, uh, an MEI. Could you just remind the listeners what that is, Marcus? Because we, we wanted to build a little bit more on that in this podcast today.

Sure. So we were talking about minimal effective instructions, um, so finding an effective instruction that brings a message across in the least amount of words to Allow the coach to talk less and the players to play more.

Just to jump in there, Marcus, because I've been thinking about this a lot recently. And, you know, the area I've actually been thinking about the biggest relevance of this, and it's the game coaching. It's really kind of stood out to me why I wanted to revisit this, because I've seen a lot nowadays in game coaching where coaches go in, it's kind of like telling a story, and it's often very emotive.

And it's loads of words, loads of different things, and just becomes a complete mixed, mixed bag of messages for players. I think that's where it could be so useful if coaches had this as a framework for delivering feedback in the game. It could really help them as well as practice.

Yeah, exactly. And I think creating a catalog of cues and verbiage is super helpful to not only make sure you use that in a game and that the players understand what those words mean and those cues mean, but that also your staff understand that They're using the same language, and that way you're coming across as a cohesive coaching staff as well.

There's a good point another colleague mentioned to me when I was visiting was, I asked, what do you think is the most important for a coaching staff to do? And the first thing he mentioned is everyone speaking the same verbiage, because that's the first thing the players notice.

That was an interesting point. And I do think there's a place for storytelling too. I've given that feedback once. Where I felt like a coach would only talk in cues and bullet points. But I also feel like times maybe at the end of practice, or maybe to give you the theme at the start of a practice, that's potentially a time where you throw MEI out the window and you tell a story.

And obviously there's an art to telling stories as well and making them succinct and meaningful and eliciting some kind of emotion as well to make them memorable. I think there's a time and place for All those things.

Yeah, I think that's really well put. I think it's just getting that balance right. And I think coaches do a good job telling stories anyway, for the most part. And I think it's knowing when to tell the story and when to be more specific.

How would you say this links using the MEIs to where players are looking? Because I think this is something we've always been interested in, Marcus. And in just our last conversation, I think last week, we just spoke about this off air, and I thought it'd be good to bring up on the podcast.

Yeah.

What are your latest thoughts in this area?

Yeah, so when we're cueing or giving instructions, we're trying to guide the attention of our players to a specific area of focus. And we know there's a lot of research out there on external focus versus internal focus, and that generally external focus, attention of focus seems to be more effective in a lot of things.

So just being, again, being aware of when we're cueing within a practice. Are we using more external cues? And one experiment I did here too was working for a media company. You're often wearing a mic or sometimes you're wearing a mic. So one session I was wearing a microphone and then I transcribed, had my audio transcribed after the session and I threw it into ChatGPT and had it analyzed for me.

How much positive versus negative criticism? How many, if it could discern whether I had external versus internal cues. I think that would be, you know, is the next step of coach feedback is being able to actually get objective data on what kind of cues and instructions we're giving, which would help guide us as teachers as well.

The other way I'm thinking of it is not only looking external versus internal, but also at narrow versus wide and making that, those cues specific to the task. So if I'm thinking of shooting, for example, I might really want a narrow cue because That's what I'm trying to focus on.

And we know that good shooters are able to focus on a very specific target for longer durations than novice shooters. So being aware of using a cue that's very specific and very narrow for a task like shooting. But conversely, if we're working on something like pick and roll in offense, and we want the person using the pick and roll not only to see their own defender, but also see where rotation is coming from, then we might want them to have a wider attention and using cues like, can you find the open teammate?

Or can you find the advantage? Can you see where the defense is helping from?

Right.

Wider attention of focus and help guide them finding the solution better than, hey, just look at what your defender is doing in front of you.

That's really good. And you mentioned, Marcus, you got some cool Analogies for cueing some of this. I think it was like launchpad. Can you talk a little bit about those? Yeah.

Yeah. So this is something I picked up from a mentor of mine who also suggested to put verbs or analogies into your cues. So what a lot of people call the seam or the slot, you know, from the elbows extended above the 3-point line, those words describe that spot, but they don't really describe any, anything else.

This coach suggested this spot be called launch pad because that's where they'd want players to launch from to attack the rim. So they would call that spot a launch pad. You know, you could call the corner 3 spot something that would encourage your players to go into those spots and shoot corner 3s because it's a high value shot.

So calling that something like the money spot. I've heard you say, mention the ghost cut, which I think came from Mike McKay, right?

Absolutely.

That's a great analogy that players can understand. Another one I heard just recently from one of our coaches here who was encouraging our players to roll hard to the rim, he would call it steamroll. So it doesn't matter who's in your way, you get to the rim, you do everything you can to get to the rim.

And he would use the cue steamroll. So I think being creative and with your cueing that way is super helpful as well.

Love it, Marcus. And last question, this actually came up from, uh, I can't remember the coach's name, but it was after we released the first podcast. And they're asking about your title, Director of Health Performance Development, OTE. And the question was, how does a CLA lens maybe impact some of those other areas, not just the coaching, but more so maybe the health and performance?

Yeah, great question. And also a challenge because the forms of life in that space is, is being very reductionist and breaking movements down into their smallest pieces. And so that's the general view and aspect in that area as well. The way I've tried to introduce the topic again is through showing the motor learning research and showing that when players are on the court, their movements are actually very opposite to being just in the frontal or sagittal planes, but they're in all those at all the same time and in different combinations.

So that's sort of the starting point. And then also finding areas where that can be incorporated. So at the end stage of rehabs or in the weight room, having variability in the, in the movements and the exercises, essentially coming from a motor learning perspective and, and seeing where those principles can be embedded within the existing environment, whether that be in the weight room or during activations or during rehabs.

Love it, love it. So Marcus, let's bring it back now to the Coaching Science Workshop being hosted by, by OTE. I think, you know, all the things we've spoken about today, I think it's just an amazing chance for coaches listening to this to come and actually see what this is like in person and hang out with both of us over a few days and really just dive into what the CLA is and just enhance the practical application of Doing this, you know, on a, on a daily setting with teams of all age groups.

So where's there more information on how coaches can sign up for this event?

Yeah. Um, we've got a link where people can sign up, so maybe we can share that in the show notes.

Yep.

Yeah. And then, uh, it's May 18th and 19th, uh, this year in Atlanta. If you haven't been to Atlanta, can only encourage you to visit. And like you said, yeah, we'll be spending a weekend together going through a lot of these topics. Also lots of other topics that are super interesting.

But if you click on that link, you'll see all the information there. There's also a flyer we can link to. If you have any other questions, always reach out to me.

Excellent. We might have to do a Transforming Live podcast edition from, uh, from Atlanta, man, and go through some of the ideas that we're sharing that weekend.

Well, as long as the people don't get sick of my voice, I'm happy with that.

Marcus, thanks so much.

No worries.

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