Thread by @AlexJSarama

This is a🧵on how ecological dynamics forms the framework of our player development at College Prep. This begins with the shared understanding amongst our staff that the goal is to design activities that allow our players to self-organise and co-adapt to changing constraints.

The goal of our "vitamins" (player dev sessions) AND team practices are to allow our players to become skilfully attuned to the perceptual variables which are used to regulate their actions. We want to help our players develop effective perception-action couplings.

If the practice is going to be beneficial in regulating the players' behaviours and actions, the information sources in our vitamin sessions must be similar to a real basketball game This is severely limited through the use of 1-on-0, cones, training mats etc.

Without information from movements and locations of opposing defenders, teammates etc, there is little strengthening of functional perception-action couplings that are required to be successful.

The 1st video provides an example of what we do in vitamins, and we also approach our player development plans (PDPs) through an ecological lens. This includes creating a specific profile for each player aligned to our game principles, while identifying key rate limiters.

This PDP allows our staff to prepare activities with amplified affordances (invitations for action) to focus on the areas within each player's plan. A rate limiter is something important as it inhibits a player from fully exploiting the opportunities available to them.

A passive attractor (coordination pattern) acts as a rate limiter. This is a suboptimal or in some cases injurious pattern that is highly stable and reduces performance. The problem in this instance was a tendency shown over time to finish in a very low and extended position...

Using the CLA purposefully is NOT a case of just setting up some random SSG's and letting players play. It goes far deeper than that, as we design activities with the aim of nudging the player out of this attractor and self organizing into a more performance enhancing solution.

This requires the coach to be adaptive rather than adapted, expertly knowing their players and observing how they interact within their environment. Then the coach can go off-script to facilitate their development vs solely continuing to execute pre-planned drills.

One activity we designed to work on this is below. We get a good amount of rep without rep, and by using the prop to block shots it encourages Aksel to explore different solutions. Low finishes are less likely to occur due to the task design and threat of the shot being blocked.

I would of course prefer a live player, but we don't have another 6ft 10 big! I don't want this attractor to limit Aksel's ability to finish at the NCAA D1 level, where he will be playing against bigger and more athletic defenders. Another example here in "Smile 1-on-1."

We would then increase complexity. For instance, a 2-on-2 live PNR whereby there is also a +1 acting as a help defender in the paint. There are other affordances, for instance to pop rather than slip / roll. But when he does get to the rim, he faces the same problem with the +1.

This is also a great example of how drills don't transfer to the game. Working with lots of players at varied levels over the years, I really believe that many of these attractor states develop due to all the unopposed practice activities they have previously participated in.

Another one I see frequently encounter is players with extremely slow release speeds on their shot. Using lots of 1-on-1 shooting games with various task constraints forces them to adapt and get their shot off in-time.

I wanted to share this thread to show how impactful an ecological approach can be on player development. Player dev is something NBA & professional organisations are extremely focused on, but to date is is a field that has been based on assumptions and experiential knowledge.

By having a robust theoretical understanding of what player development is and how skills emerge, it allows coaches to base their approach on empirical evidence. This mitigates risk as there is an evidence-based rationale for how decisions and practices are conducted.

The implications for this are huge. Imagine if you can turn 2nd round and undrafted players into rotation pieces, developing assets at-hand vs trying to get lucky through the draft / trades! I really believe this can be realised through adopting an ecological dynamics rationale.

Big thanks to our skill acquisition coach at College Prep, @PolkaAdam, who has helped me embed these ideas into our day to day practice. Really exciting space to be in where to get to learn new things each day and then immediately apply.