🔍Reframing the NBA Draft Combine
👉How relevant are the current evaluative strategies used in the basketball world?
💡I make the case for how many of the current testing methods bias, rather than inform, front office decision-makers. The combine is traditionally used to measure and quantity "athleticism". Athleticism in itself is a subjective term and I prefer to use the term "action capabilities." Within an ecological dynamics framework, these shape the potential movement solutions a player is capable of…

🇱🇧This is a thread outlining some of my recent ideas and the concepts I shared during my week in Lebanon.

💡I ran coach workshops and player camps. The focus was on helping show alternatives to the dominant approach while making sense of the CLA in a practical manner. Firstly, starting with the wider-context. Lebanon is one of a few countries in the world where basketball is the number one sport. It is incredibly popular, and the Lebanese take enormous pride in the national teams.

💡1-on-1 can be one of the simplest but most effective ways to improve functional solutions in driving, shooting and finishing.

👉6ft 9 @CoryLovell17 demonstrates how you do not have to conform to the expectations of how a forward is meant to play! 🧵 What I loved about this is that the players self-organized into the 1-on-1 after a practice. This type of simple activity is a much better alternative to all the traditional drills prevalent within 🏀

🔍"Learning is characterised by a search for functional performance solutions, where the learner is challenged beyond mere repetition and imitation of a putative classic action" - Nonlinear Pedagogy in Skill Acquisition. Within this specific context of Pick and Roll, we can see how every single possession is unique. Carefully designed practice tasks within the video, consisting of different forms of 2-on-2, 3-on-3 and 4-on-4, have facilitated the emergence of skills within Pick and Roll.

One of the most important concepts we emphasise is to NOT run the play!

Set plays are merely opportunities to disorganise the defense. If the defense is already in a state of disorganisation, then players should act on the relevant affordance(s) to convert the advantage. This is great example in this clip. We were about to execute a very simple SOB play, but @LinusholmstromR was able to perceive the over-help on the weak side. Subsequently, the skip pass emerged and we obtained a high value shot within our shot spectrum (C&S Corner 3PT)

🏀Thread on how we manipulated constraints in @Franz_NanniBK's practice today.
💡Began with 2-on-1+1. The offense had an eight second shot clock as soon as the defense moved.
👉Let's take a deeper look at the task design and the affordances this activity provides... Affordances are invitations for action. Opportunities for action emerge, persist and dissolve (Button et al., 2020). Potential affordances for the offense within this SSG include driving, passing, shooting and/or calling for a trigger...

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.

🏀Shield Tag 1-on-1+1 in varied playing areas.

👉Playing inside the lane affords different movement solutions vs playing in the centre circle.

🛡️Eventually restricted the ability of the shield to use their hands to obstruct by giving them the ball to hold. I love the fun factor we get out of every single warm-up. Having all the players and staff smiling is such a fun way to start practice as opposed to watching players stretching. Just observe in this clip all the different ways the players are moving...

This is a thread on how traditional positions and stereotypical player roles prohibits varied functional solutions emerging in 🏀. Using one of our players @AkselBrifk as an example, a 6ft 10 Class of 23 from Estonia who has improved enormously in the 1 half of the season... Positionless basketball is nothing new and has been spoken about for years. But I often wonder why young bigs in basketball are so limited when observing their movement solutions in different areas of the game. Most notably with their movement and shooting capabilities.

👉 Small changes can lead to big differences. Within shooting, there are three incredibly simple changes that can be applied to traditional shooting practice to enhance variability. Our players do this whenever we’re about to start practice… 1️⃣ Range. The shooter constantly changes range by moving between mid-range, FIBA 3PT, NBA and Deep 3PT.

The Swedish Basketball Federation are the first🏀 federation in the world to adopt an ecological framework with their coach and player development. What does this mean in-context, and how can coaches, teams and other organisations benefit from incorporating these ideas? Sweden's coach educators @RikardAspegren and @AndrewPleick just had @markstkhlm on their Coachteamet podcast. It was a fantastic episode, with Mark giving excellent responses in an easily digestible manner: open.spotify.com/episode/0JGg0S…

I frequently get asked why I don’t do 1-on-0 dribbling activities, including two ball dribbling, as well as why I don’t teach specific dribble moves such as cross-jabs, dribble counters etc. The reason is due to the fact that none of these practice activities align with... skill acquisition ideas. There is no “central controller” in the brain which determines what movements to use and when. Basketball players do not store techniques in their body and then magically pull these out at the right times in the game!

Tag is one of the best ways to improve dribbling, warm-up and start practice on a fun note. This is obstacle team tag, ⏰ stops when last player gets tagged. Great for beginners and pros, and everyone in-between. Read on for more from today’s camp with Joliet Academy in Chicago… 3 on 2 off the get using the pitch and slip. Snap it like a 🏈 to pitch early and get underneath the D vs waiting for the hand-off. Played around with the spacing, with off-ball teammate always in a new location, creating different opportunities for action every time.

Looking for a player development intern at my academy in Italy next season! All accommodation, meals and other expenses will be provided. This is perfect for someone passionate about evidence-informed ideas and transformational coaching. Read on for more... @BBallImmersion Unfortunately due to visa regulations, we are restricted to candidates from the European Union or Canada. That said, this is still a really exciting chance to be part of something unique within the basketball world.

Why is it conducive for basketball coaches to explore evidence-informed approaches? Why not just continue spending time watching games, making X & O breakdowns, recruiting or spending time doing other things? These are some of my ideas and reflections. I've been spending a lot of time recently going deeper into the research. I can understand why some coaches are skeptical of the time investment in this. But there's no other period where I've felt more confident in my coaching. I'm able to learn and then immediately apply.

🎬Conceptual Offense Clips from Today’s Practice
👉 No possession is ever the same. Being deceptive through combining different triggers and using a variety of coverage solutions to relentlessly create advantages
🗣 This is all done without any verbal call on the triggers In Sweden I will be presenting on conceptual offense 2.0 and all the new ideas I’ve been working on this year. Some of these are included on this thread.

We talk about repetition without repetition in the practice environment, but can that extend to how we play offense? This a thread on conceptual offense and how I believe ecological dynamics is a perfect match for this style of play. In the previous video, you see my players run Spain Pick and Roll. Every outcome is slightly different because the task constraints are different: positions, off players involved, def match-ups, coverages, timings etc. Running the same pattern each time on O is simply impossible.

💡 Around the Arc 1-on-1
👉 Defense is either side of 3PT line. Offense can drive at anytime as they go around the arc, live once they enter 3PT
🏀 Extra point if they trick the D to go early OR if the D touches them while going around. Let’s explore the affordances within this… Firstly, the offense explores ways to get their bonus points. This could lead to a sudden change of speeds to get the D to collide. Also this naturally promotes faking through hesitations, jabs etc to get the D to false start.

🎮 Thread on Basketball Fortnite - incorporating video games into practice!
💡Collect your weapons using various pick & roll coverage solutions to punish the defense
👉 First team to stockpile the specified number of weapons wins the Battle Royale Some of the ideas written about by S. Robertson & C. Woods in “Learning by Design: What Sports Coaches can Learn from Video Game Designs”are embedded in this thread. The origins for this game came as a build on my Battleship game with @mikedekraker

Taylorism, Henry Ford, Traditional Drills & Conceptual Offense!

This is a long thread hitting on many conversation points. I also want to address some of the confusion and misunderstanding as to what constraints are within the basketball coaching community. Let's start with Taylorism. This was a system of scientific management used in factories created by Fred W. Taylor. The most notable proponent of Taylorism was Henry Ford, who used Taylor's ideas to mass produce the iconic Ford Model T.

➡️Thanks to @VanjaCernivec for reintroducing me last weekend to some Fighting Monkey concepts! I like the concept behind FM (founders have a dance/ martial arts/ gymnastic background). I’ve added my own ideas to more closely align it with what we do from 🏀 standpoint. Firstly why are we doing this? I see a huge value in the FM concepts for developing more fluid movers, promoting coordination and rhythm etc. This is how I’ve adapted some of the coordinations…