This week, as you watch Oklahoma City and Kevin Durant in the 2012 NBA Finals and read about prodigious performances in NBA teams’ individual workouts, remember that Kevin Durant tested as the 78th out of 80 athletes tested in 2007. Durant famously could not lift 185lbs a single time, and also failed to excel in any of the other tests. Of course, none of those 77 players who were “better athletes” than Durant won the 2007-08 NBA Rookie of the Year, and Durant is the only three-time NBA scoring champ among his draft class.
May and June might be the most frustrating months for me as a basketball fan. These are the months when I receive an email asking if Duke’s Miles Plumlee’s 41-inch vertical jump makes him a 1st Round Draft pick despite an underwhelming six points per game in college or read a report about a player making five consecutive three-pointers in a workout with no defensive players on the court. By this time, basketball scouts, coaches, fans, and the media have forgotten about NCAA performances and are focused solely on workout performances. Of course, as illustrated by Durant, these workout performances tell us very little about future NBA performance. While other 2007 draftees were becoming workout warriors to prepare for the NBA combine and team workouts, Durant was preparing to dominate the NBA.
Basketball is not the amalgamation of tests. Performing better in isolated tests does not transfer automatically to better on-court performance. Increasing one’s vertical jump or box-agility test score says very little about one’s basketball performance. Trainers and NBA decision-makers (apparently) believe that improving many isolated tests equals better performance. However, as Durant, illustrates that is not the case.
Basketball is not played in isolation. Basketball is an open skill; these tests are closed skills. Closed skills are unchanging and self-paced: When Plumlee performs his VJ test, he initiates the movement. When he jumps in a game, he has to react to an external stimulus, generally the ball or an opponent or both. This is a different skill. Someone with a higher max VJ will have the potential to jump higher in relation to the ball or opponents, but not if he reacts slowly or is affected by movement or contact. Also, is a maximum VJ as important as a quick jump? How many jumps in a game start from a static starting position with a self-initiated countermovement to start?
Nobody who watches Durant would question his athleticism despite his test scores. He augments his athletic gifts with cognitive-perceptual skills. He reads patterns in the defense, recalls situations based on experience, and anticipates his teammates’ and opponents’ movements. He reacts quicker to the ball despite his box-agility test score because of these cognitive-perceptual skills. In the individual workouts and combines, these skills are untested.
The combine and individual workouts would be like watching a baseball player hit in a batter’s cage and evaluate him based on his performance against the pitching machine. How much can you really learn about a hitter from a batting cage? In a baseball game, hitters read the pitcher and have to determine the type of pitch and the location in tenths of seconds. In a batting cage, the hitter knows the speed of the pitch and the general location. There is no decision-making process in the batting cage, as every pitch is a strike. The workouts are like the batting cage because experienced trainers prepare players specifically for specific tests, and there is no decision-making required. Is running around a cone and receiving a perfect pass for a jump shot the same as skill as shooting in a game against a defense within the context of an offense, time, and score?
I imagine that Durant excelled in the basketball portion of the workouts, as his shot is effortless, and he proved that was was an expert shooter while at the University of Texas. However, the more important skill is his ability to read the defense to create openings to use his effortless release. When competing against a cone in a workout, how does one measure this ability? In a batting cage, how does a scout evaluate a hitter’s ability to read a pitch or hit a slider?
Because NBA decision makers put such an emphasis on these workouts, there is a cottage industry of trainers who specialize in preparing players to look good and perform well in these planned workouts. The concern is not game performance. The media write about players working on their “point-guard skills” by doing stationary two-ball drills. How does that improve a player’s “point-guard skills”? A point guard is more than an adept ball handler: A point guard must control the tempo, read the defense, understand his teammates, understand his coach, and make decisions based on all these factors and more while dribbling the ball at full speed in a confined space with multiple defensive players. Stationary two-ball drills do not prepare a player for these situations even though they look good.
Even worse, because the NBA uses these workouts to make decisions, the combine idea is filtering down to the college, high school, and youth levels. Now, skill trainers run their own combines and invite scouts (or do their own rankings) because the players that they train will excel in these closed skills because they have prepared for the exact drills. The specificity principle states that to improve in something, you must do that thing. To improve in playing basketball, you should play basketball. However, because of these combines, where players are evaluated on specific drills, the focus changes, as players have to practice the specific drills to improve their performance on the specific tests. Because these tests are basketball-related, we assume that improvement on the drills or the tests transfers to improvement in a basketball game. The transfer is not guaranteed.
Playing basketball is the best way to improve in basketball because expert players possess skill and athleticism, but most importantly the skill to navigate the constantly changing game environment. Five-on-five short-changes players in terms of skill repetitions, which is why small-sided games have such value from a developmental standpoint for young players. Individual and isolated skill practice has some value to improve skills or develop better athletic qualities. However, the improved skills and athletic qualities have to transfer to the game. Isolated block practice has been shown to have limited transfer to new or changing environments, and the combine tests and workouts utilize primarily block-practice conditions.
Working out is not bad. The problem is the goal. We have moved too far away from the game and celebrate feats which may not transfer to improved game performance, while ignoring actual game performance. Individual practice and tests have a place. However, for practice to have value, it must transfer to improved game performance, and these isolated combine tests and workouts are suspect in terms of predicting or improving performance, and nobody illustrates that better than Durant.
Really good stuff Brian. Thanks for what you’re doing. As a HS coach I feel pulled in so many directions when it comes to “trianing”. What you say just makes sense and really resonates. Anxious to see where you go with this as far as a training program goes.
My frustration is that so much time is wasted chasing the wrong things. Coaches/trainers doing 25 minutes of three-man weaves for conditioning and “skill development”. Please. If you want to condition, play a small-sided game with constraints to ensure a certain intensity. If you want to develop passing skills, do something that will improve passing skills in game situations. Just because a ball is involved does not mean that the training is basketball-specific or effective in terms of improving performance.
Great piece Brian..hits the nail right on the head. I think the “physical” aspects of preparation have taken a new level of importance in many sports and this has happened at the expense of the mental, technical, tactical aspects of performance. It may be because the physical is an easy sell insofar as it makes for great video shots and strong endorsement campaigns. Also another factor is that the physical elements sit better within the training/preparation “industry”, as opposed to the “profession” that it’s supposed to be; something which Vern Gambetta continually speaks about. That’s not to say that physical prep and training isn’t important…I feel it’s of huge importance (given my profession!!) but only in the context of meeting the demands of the sport, the development of the player and being woven into a preparation matrix in an integrated fashion with the mental, technical etc requirements….essentially it’s easy to prescribe sets, reps and drills but not so easy to blend them together with mental demands, tactical demands etc in an effort to replicate real-game situations that create a player who has the full armoury to think and make decisions on his/her feet…..it used to be called coaching!!!…keep up the good work.
Paul:
I think a lot has to do with people in decision-making roles who do not really understand the science behind motor learning, but they understand physical measurements.
On TV, it’s laughable how former players attribute success to the “eyes in the back of the head” as if they believe that great decision makers actually have grown an extra set of eyes. When we don’t understand something, we try to put a physical explanation. We can’t see inside the brain, and most do not understand what goes on inside the brain, so we want to attribute these skills to something understandable, and the physical – the muscles – are understandable.
Then, at lower levels, we just copy the highest levels, forgetting that children are not miniature adults. With such little understanding, the physical tends to dominate the mental because we don’t know how to develop the mental, so we favor the physically dominant (taller, faster, stronger).
I am soccer coach and there is the same problem in our sport. Coaches creating drills where players work around cones or without opposition. The top coaches at the elite and youth level use small sided games which teach decision making and awareness skills. This way we create intelligent players.
Some exercises I use in soccer are a normal game but once you cross the halfway line you can score at either end. Another one put two baskets at each corner of the court. One team attacks the 2 baskets at one end and the other team the two at the other. A These are just a couple of examples but I would be interested to see how they would work in basketball. They aim to teach awareness of space and create situations of numerical advantage and disadvantage. Just an idea!!
Coach DR:
I’ve seen the goals in the corner game done at a college soccer practice. For that coach, it was to encourage wide play rather than constant direct play to their star striker. The biggest issue with basketball would be that most facilities lack movable baskets. I know in my gym, I couldn’t do something like that. But, there are plenty of other ways to manipulate the game to practice various skills.
The issue in regards to the NBA combines, and maybe I was not clear about this, is that agents and trainers create artificial situations where their athlete is unlikely to fail (block practice) because all of the training, workouts, and testing is observed. It’s not about improving; it’s about looking good. So, they do things like post moves against a 5’9 manager holding a blocking pad – it looks like a drill that is practicing a real skill, but is it? Is a 6’10 post player making a move against a 5’9 manager really practicing the important aspects of post play, which to me are reading the defender quickly, making an appropriate move, and finishing over length and through contact?
The second, and maybe biggest, problem is that few people seem concerned with this type of evaluation. It serves the agents and trainers well. Top players rarely play games at the combine events anymore because they risk having a bad game or being outplayed. It’s safer for them to work out individually through a scripted workout where they know what is coming, and somehow we’ve decided that this gives a fair evaluation of their skills that they will have to perform in games in more constrained spaces against quicker, bigger, more athletic defenders.
What type of mindset does this create in rookies when trainers and agents are afraid to put them into positions where they might make a mistake?
If I was an NBA decision-maker, the two things that I’d want to see would be the ability to handle mistakes or the unknown and desire to improve. The size, skill, and talent differences between players at the top of the draft are so small, it’s not the 39-inch vertical or the 41-inch vertical that’s going to separate them ultimately, it’s their adaptability, ability to handle adversity, and desire to improve. I’d want to see them in situations that are unplanned or that mess up their routine or throw them off their game to see their reactions. By now, you have enough video of players playing in college that you know who projects as a shooter or who rebounds out of his area. I want to see how they handle situations that do not go as expected, as that’s what their rookie year is going to be like.
Great points Brian. I don’t even understand why they air these combines on TV. Seems like a waste of time. I was intrigued to watch them at first, but turned it off after a couple of minutes.
Also, I’ve been coaching and training for the past two years and look up different “skill trainers” for ideas. A lot of my training sessions have been inspired by my personal experience as an aspiring basketball player, and a lot of these “basketball trainers” on the web. I feel that there are some very good trainers out there, however since being introduced to your blog I have begun to understand the importance of small-sided games and game-like scenarios. I agree with you in that there is a time and place for isolated skill work, but if that is ALL that a program consists of, I feel that the we as coaches/trainers are short changing our kids. I’d be okay with seeing more players understand different game situations and be able to react appropriately rather than having a nation of players who can do all of the closed-skills in the world.
Thanks for opening my eyes.
The key is the time and place. Not everything has to transfer directly to the game or we would play games and never train. However, we need to understand the purpose of the drill. I see a lot of coaches who go to a coaching clinic or see something on youtube and think it’s the “answer”, while it’s only a small, small part of the process. There are things that I do that I believe the direct transfer is very low to improved game performance, but I want to train the players hand-eye coordination or rhythm or some other more general skill, especially with younger players. Then, I see the same drill described as a “point guard development drill” and I am confused. Dribbling a basketball and a tennis ball at the same time is not a “point-guard drill” though it is one way to develop hand-eye coordination and possibly peripheral vision which may ultimately transfer to improved point-guard performance indirectly.
Good article and I agree with many points. As a basketball teacher myself I struggle with the concept of working players out 1 on 0. I mean i look at Rob Mcclanaghan and he’s really helped some of the top players in the NBA. In their workouts, they are doing alot of drills with cones. So i guess for me is if it works it works! but I understand your point with these draft workouts
Not to take anything away from Rob, but we have to be careful with how we attribute success and improvement. I know trainers who train players just as hey trained as they were coming up because they attribute their success to their training. However, their success was due more to their work ethic, size, and athleticism than their skill training. In fact, one could argue better skill training may have kept them playing longer. But, it’s easy to say this guy played at X school so he must be good, or this guy trained this player so he must be good, even though many of the “name” trainers don’t work with players until they are already good.
1v0 drills have a place, like anything else. Also, as I have written previously, an NBA player has the game experience to make sense of a cone, while most young players do not. The NBA player can visualize a situation, a tough defender, etc., while the young player just dribbles around a cone. The NBA player also gets 100+ games of intense basketball + film work already, and most of these trainers are trying to improve one very specific thing. If I’m working on Westbrook’s jump shot, as McClanaghan has, I don’t want him in a competitive environment where he will maintain his habits and train for immediate performance, like the draft workouts, rather than improvement. These guys are too competitive to risk losing a game or competition because they are trying something new. But, to improve, they often have to try something new, and an isolated drill is often the first step in the learning or re-learning process.
Just catching up on all the exciting NBA combine news from today. Just remember: http://t.co/sUo6LPazz0
.@brianmccormick does a superb job exposing “Combines” – in this case NBA, but probably all team sports that run them http://t.co/g2anIezC8F