George is joined once again by Adam Omiecinski to discuss how coaches should approach player development during the off-season versus the in-season.
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In this episode, George is joined once again by Adam Omiecinski to discuss how coaches should approach player development during the off-season versus the in-season. Adam explains why the off-season is the ideal time to encourage exploration, experimentation, and failure, allowing players to expand their solution space without the pressure of winning games.
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This transcript follows the original English audio.
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Welcome to the Transforming Basketball Podcast. We have back again, Adam. How are you?
I'm good, brother. I'm good.
All right. So let's get into this offseason workouts. I know now is the, you know, a time for offseason workouts. What is your perspective, your point of view? On what coaches should be focusing on during the offseason versus what should they be focusing on in season?
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Well, for me, the offseason is my favorite time of the year as a player development guy, because to me, now we have the bandwidth where we can actually change the landscape for players and allow them to really explore and see what they're capable of.
This is the time where we have the runway and the time afforded to us to try new things, work on different skills, and not really have to worry about performing in a game because these are different, these are, you know, these are different tasks.
When it comes to in-season, we're trying to maximize wins and efficiency and all these things, as understandably we should, because wins are quite important for coaches, players, and all parties alike. So that's a time for exploitation, and that's when we more or less just try and lock in and become as efficient as we can with what we already have.
Whereas in the offseason, this time we can not necessarily concern ourselves with, hate to term it like traditional success, like made basket or winning a pickup game. This is a time where we can put on different hats and really try and see what we're capable of and go to places that are a little bit uncomfortable and where we're actually going to experience a lot more failure.
And that's okay. It's going to be necessary in order to actually build that skill where we can utilize it when it comes to that in-season time.
So, so you're saying basically we should be looking to almost fail more during the offseason by trying new things, exploring concepts, ideas, maybe small-sided games, different constraints that we haven't tried yet. And this is a great time for it because obviously it's, you know, we don't have a game coming up.
So it's just about development and skill development for not only the players, but for coaches as well in terms of How can we manipulate constraints to make it work?
100%. And actually, like, as I just finished up and was kind of more or less reflecting on what I just said was it actually makes basketball more enjoyable for— I know it's a time of specialization and, you know, I myself just like to play hoops.
So I don't necessarily play a ton of different sports. If you don't have that time period where you're trying different stuff or new activities and really like getting back to the joy of like, oh, let's see what can happen. You'll probably burn out physiologically and psychologically if you're not having some exploration time.
And it can really serve as like an element of recovery from what you just did in the season where you were kind of probably in a, you were situated in a role and you weren't encountering as much variation as you could potentially right now in the offseason.
And I think, you know, as players, if you play different locations, you're going to have different roles that you're going to be experiencing in your actual team. You play different formats, whether that's 3-on-3, 1-on-1s in a free play environment, you're just naturally going to have different roles.
Now, my question is maybe for yourself and for other coaches that are maybe more skill acquisition experts and want to help players develop their game holistically. Myself as a coach, I'm working with a team, but now it's the offseason. So I still have the same core group of players that are coming into practice, working on their skills.
So for me as a coach, My focus is, all right, how can we explore and do all the things that you mentioned while also keeping considering the principles of play that these guys are going to be coming into for the season? So I'll be designing activities where, yeah, they can try new things, but it's still going to be around the principles of play.
So yeah, we can try different contested shooting games, but I still want them to kind of shoot from the spots that they might see more in the games. So how did, like, what kind of discussion would you have with me about that point of view, that mindset?
For me, what comes up is, all right, so what are our non-negotiables? What are those principles that, no, we're going to have these in place? You can, you can, you can maintain those and still allow the exploration. Again, you can have somebody go in a different role now.
Now, now let's say this player wasn't necessarily a very freaking or high volume 3-point shooter. I would imagine 3-point shooting is still part of your principles and you want open catch and shoots, you can encourage that player, hey, plus it's, you know, double points if this particular player knocks down a catch and shoot 3 or gets X amount of catch and shoot 3s off in our scrimmage, in a 3-on-3, and all these different things.
So it's a matter of just like moving the dial towards, hey, this is what you're going to experience within our principles of play. We're not changing our principles of play. We're not going to take Very difficult shots and stuff like that. Now there can be a time for that if you want to do one-on-one exploration, but when we're playing together as a unit, this is what we're searching for and this is why.
So then, so my thing is then, you know, I could still come in with that same mindset, but the whole thing, the whole point is, so, you know, I always say like in the team practices, I like to have target players and then I like to have the players that are going to be, you know, the connectors or the pickers on the floor.
And then maybe the players that aren't, we don't want the ball in their hands because You know, they're not as efficient playmaking, but in the offseason, that script kind of flips. I really want the target players to be comfortable playing without the ball, and I really want to see how well we can develop the other players to see maybe if they can take on different roles.
And it's still within the principles of play, but it's just allowing them to expand their solution space. So, you know, that's my mindset when I go into the offseason, preparing players for the following season. And not only that, but the rest of their careers, depending on You know, I've had off-seasons where I've worked with under-14s and, you know, they're not going to be playing for me for the rest of their lives.
So it's very important that they're able to develop their entire game to the next stop in their lives.
That's right in alignment with where I was thinking.
And then you get, you know, we spoke a little bit about the off-season. Now in-season, you spoke about this and you gave a great example here. In the off-season, you really want to explore. And then in the In, in season, you really want to exploit.
So that's really being even more specific about what you're trying to do and how can you get even better and nail that down.
Kind of just like a foundational thing from dynamic systems. I mean, we're constantly building an attractor. We have a landscape of options available to us, and the more we do something in across different contexts, the deeper the attractor well is that we're going to be drawn to that specific behavior.
So we want to make that and The offseason is a time where we can actually flatten out some of the attractor wells and kind of maybe build some new wells that we can drop into for our behavior. In season, we're not trying to change the landscape because again, we have these competitions where we are trying to make the most of what our current landscape is.
We don't have as much time and bandwidth to explore if we want to exploit our current capabilities. Because again, as we just discussed to open this podcast was like, you're going to experience a lot of failure. When you're trying to build new behaviors, that's just simply part of it.
However, we don't really want that necessarily when it comes to 5-on-5 competition against our rival school. So in-season, we're going to take our current capabilities are, we're going to perturb them and try to make them as strong as possible. That becomes the focus of in-season as opposed to the offseason where we're trying to build newer skills and build off of our current capabilities.
So I guess my last question for you, what is the implication with what you say? Can you also provide a practical example? In terms of, you know, we're trying to level out these attractor states for the players. So let's say a player in, like, we just gone through a whole entire season and there's certain players that like to do certain moves.
So there's certain players that likes to, you know, go right and spin back left. There's certain players that, that likes to, you know, catch the ball and their kind of initial reaction is like rip through, drive right. And the reason I say that is I'm trying to get this practical example from you.
So we're trying to help them find different ways that they can catch, rip left, or catch, jab right, go left, jab right, shoot. Different ways they can be effective doing the same move and also experimenting different solutions by leveling out their attractor states.
Is that what you mean?
Could you go on a little bit further, George?
You know, certain players in season, like you said, they're kind of already, they're good at what they're good at. And then maybe they're not so good at Certain things. And there's just not enough time in a lot of environments, especially in the ones I work in, to fix all the— maybe target the rate limiters of the players in maybe a more specific context.
So maybe one-on-ones, two-on-ones, two-on-twos to really target the specific rate limiter. 'Cause there's just not enough practice time. There's a lot of games going on. So what happens is players generally, they just kind of default back to these moves. So my question then is, in the offseason, is this a time to, all right, well, listen, you coming off the pick and roll, you really like 2 dribble pull-ups, but now can we work on creating a situation for you where you're working on 3 dribbles?
It could still be a pull-up, but you're adding that extra dribble with the intention of trying to get into the paint for a bronze medal or for a layup finish. How can we add, how can we give you different tools so that you don't just have to have the 2 dribble pull up for a mid-range shot, even if that is, you know, an efficient to high efficiency shot for you.
How can we expand your game even further with your skill set? And then once you do that, now the player, when they get back into the new season, now they can 2 dribble pull up. Now they can 3 dribble pull up or get into the paint, attract the defense, kick out, and then they're able to have more solutions for what the defense is trying to do against them.
Yes. And I'm not sure what the question is in there now, but that's more or less what I'm talking about is the offseason is the time to more or less expand their solution space. Whereas in season, it's going to be a little bit more difficult.
And now you can do some of that with very targeted things if you have the time allotted to you. But again, like you said, context may not have that time. Whereas in season, the job of the coach and the coaching staff is more or less like, How do we put them in a position to exploit what their current behaviors more or less map onto?
So if that player is not really comfortable outside of 2 dribbles, then how can we position them within our offensive scheme to allow that to be an effective solution for him? We're not trying to change that solution. We're trying to highlight that and make that useful for our team.
Yeah. Improve what they're already good at and then, you know, get them even better at the things that they're not good at and get them exploring that as well, I think is important. Adam, thank you so much. Another great conversation. Really appreciate your time.
Thank you, George. Appreciate it, man.
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