The Basketball Podcast: EP349 with Chris Oliver on a Basketball Knowledge Brain Dump

Chris Oliver Quotes:

“I use this all the time, this concept of establishing a shot thought for each player . . And this gets into the difference between an internal and an external cue. External cues are generally more effective than internal cues . . because they direct the athlete’s focus outward towards the outcome of the movement rather than the mechanics of the movement itself.”

“[An external clue] helps in several ways. It reduces cognitive load . . this focusing externally helps athletes move more instinctively and less consciously.”

“I think a big problem in shooting is that we give them too many cues and too much feedback . . They tend to shoot better when they have that shot thought with it. So just consider that for some of your players, especially in season, instead of giving them too much information, focus on giving them, say, one shot thought that’ll help them. And incidentally, this applies to shooting, but it applies to so many other things as well.”

“The basic concept of a close-out is run as fast as you can and stop as fast as you can . . where you stop relative to the player you’re covering is obviously arguably the most important part of the closeout. And then hand position where you force the ball, et cetera, that becomes the next part of it.”

“The defense has to control the first second. So, the defense wants to be able to be there on the catch . . and we want to be able to control that first second. Meaning we want to be close enough that we’re going to disrupt the shot but far enough that we’re going to be able to gap the dribble. And that’s very much an individual constraint for each player.”

“On conceptual defense, the framework of this is the concept of who is your check and what is your responsibility? To me, these are the two things that build conceptual players individually and collectively as a group. Who is your check? So, who are you covering? And then within that, what is your responsibility?  There are some exceptions to that [but] . . usually, all responsibilities are relative to the basketball. They’re not relative to your check. Whether you’re one pass away or two passes away, you have a responsibility relative to the ball because the ball scores. So, we want players to understand that.”

“[Conceptual defense] also promotes this awareness and engagement at preventing defensive breakdowns because they [the players] are constantly scanning. To be able to cue players, I’m going to talk about fixed gaze behaviors . . because I notice it so much with young players. I believe if we coach this better at the youth age, that will do a great job at improving basketball IQ because players have this really fixed gaze behavior on defense. Fixed gaze behavior tends to be towards your check or towards the ball and not both.”

“’What is your responsibility?’ extends beyond guarding a specific player. It encompasses positioning, rotations, help defense and communication. And players learn by these cues. They learn to read the game contextually and adjust their actions accordingly according to where their check is and according to what their responsibility is relative to where their teammates are and relative to where the ball is.”

“The goal isn’t robotic repetition, it’s adaptability. Players learn to apply principles rather than rigid rules . . This concept of building adaptable players, [means] that adaptability is more important than repeatability because we can’t memorize a solution and apply it in a game context because the environment’s always different.”

“What is basketball IQ? To me, there’s obviously really complex ways to explain it . . but to go to simplest terms . . basketball IQ means that a player has the ability to solve more problems. It’s problem solving . . this ability to be able to be adaptable relative to different things. We do that within a game-based environment.”

“Teaching conceptual offense is a series of three and two player actions. Trios are three player actions, duets are two player actions and then [teaching these actions] out of variable shapes.”

“We taught a three-player action and now we just said, ‘Each time down the floor you must run a different entry into this three player trio action.’  That was a way to be able to shape it differently so that it didn’t look like the same play. It’s just had to be a different entry. And then we could put in a constraint where it must be run out of different shapes or different locations. So, it can’t be run out of just perfect spacing out of five out. We’ve got to sometimes run it out of a four out.”

“Let’s say I teach, you know, a new play five-on-five. It’s going to be slow learning initially when they learn the pattern but when we’re playing, I’m not going to go break down something that doesn’t need to be broken down. Now there probably will be some things that need to be break down or could be broken down to be able to get to more detail within the technique or within the tactics. But I’m going to try and avoid progression unless I need to use progression because progression is a time waster because it disconnects every time I remove something, whether it’s defense or a player.”

“I’ve heard so many great coaches talk about this, that doing ball screen defense without five players on the floor is a time waster. Unless you’re just focused maybe on the point of the ball screen where it’s those two players and they’re working on their technique . . as soon as you remove a player, you distort your own rotations.”

“Technique and decisions go hand in hand and progressions often don’t do that, but they take time away from the things that you want players to retain and transfer to the game.”

“I think is the number one place to build cohesion is within practice. Build cohesion within practice, supporting your teammates and being able to be there together to be able to compete and have a shared experience, whether it’s winning or losing.”

“It’s widely understood that the most important thing in so much of our teaching is connecting perception and decision to technique and that we can’t separate them. So, every time we do anything by itself in isolation, [we are] essentially removing the two most important parts, which are perception and decision, from applying it in a game. So, to me, we’ve got to move away from this mindset of not embracing evidence-based ideas.”

“Scanning is the ability to quickly and efficiently gather visual information from the environment and make informed decisions. If you think about a lot of the player development stuff that we do, players literally don’t have to scan. They don’t have to scan because they know exactly what they’re going to do. There’s no distracting information or visual stimuli.”

“What are perturbations? They’re deliberate disruptions or changes introduced into the environment to challenge a performer’s motor control and adaptability . . I’m trying to disrupt the player so that they have to become adaptable. These disruptions force the player to adjust their technique, their timing, their decision making in real time.”

“The hard part about dribbling is dribbling and making decisions. So, perceiving and deciding. And the hard thing when you miss a dribble is being able to regain control. So, the idea of her dribbling beside me and me trying to touch the ball gently, where it literally disrupts her flow or rhythm or dribble or the timing or the technique, this perturbation, the deliberate disruption, causes her to have to fight for her learning to regain control of the ball.”

“I do nothing in a player development workout where the player doesn’t end it in a shot. It just makes no sense to me to do something isolated. So all of our dribbling ends in a shot. All of our movements end in a shot. Everything we do in a workout ends in a shot. What type of shot? What type of situation? Usually it’s variable. Sometimes I’ll give a possibility. It can be either this or this. So, if I want to shape some things, I don’t just work on repetition of the same thing.”

“I want to share a few things . . to consider in your game coaching. What can you actually influence as a game coach? . . Consider, before you give feedback . . is it going to make a difference? Some of the best coaches in the world, from the NBA especially, . . they’re not saying much, but when they do say something, it’s important. And that’s the point that you want to get to as a game coach. Instead of saying a lot, what you want to say are things that are important and can actually influence things.”

“Decisions supersede basketball plays. Even though I’ve got the greatest inbound play in the world and we’re going to run it and I’m going to look good, if they’re not covering us properly and we can just pass it into a back door, just do that.”

“Thank you for challenging me and challenging each other with this constant learning environment that we’ve all created online . . each piece of insight, every conversation, all the experiences we gather contribute to making us better coaches, players, enthusiasts of the game.”

Chris Oliver Breakdown:

Chris Oliver Selected Links from the Podcast:

Chris Oliver
Jordy Fernandez
Joey Burton
Chris Steed
Stephen Silas