The Basketball Podcast: EP384 with Chris Oliver on Basketball Knowledge Brain Dump 2

Chris Oliver Quotes:

“So much has changed in the world . . why would the way we teach and coach not have changed in the last 30 years? That very foundational question is what led into the EYBL coaches clinic to be able to help coaches frame an understanding of . . being somewhat divergent from the way that they were coached . . and challenging them to think constantly, ‘Is there a better way?’”

“If there’s a defender, you wouldn’t run the three-man weave pattern . . then why are you doing the drill? Why are you doing a drill that doesn’t help a player individually improve and help your team succeed?  To me, if you just add a defender to a lot of your traditional drills that you do on air . . and the defender’s live, the drill is no longer the drill you think it is.”

“List your master plan for the season. Go through every one of those drills that you traditionally use and say, ‘If I added a defender, would they be able to follow this pattern? And this only applies to those type of drills that are rote learning, memorization, isolated practice, technique-based practice, etc.”

“Technique is important. It matters. Modern coaching skill acquisition definitely does not say technique doesn’t matter, but it does say that it is individual and molded by context . . Add a defender to the dribble move that you just had them regurgitate 20 straight times on air versus a pylon or a cone. Of course, it doesn’t transfer because now the player has to come up with a solution within this ever-changing environment based on a defender. And the complexity increases when we add more defenders and we add more offensive players and there’s less space. So, exploration of techniques, absolutely, is key.”

“So, rather than doing this isolated dribble move, I’m just going to give them the constraint . . You have space, the defender is approaching you and closing that space. And now we’re going to play live out of that . . and you can’t take two dribbles in a direction, not towards the rim . . We’re not prescribing a dribble limit because the dribble limit leads to players picking up the ball without a decision. We’re talking about a direction limit . .

“We coach in these isolated environments then we say, ‘Now go do that technique in the game.’ But the game environment is totally different.”

“I had a chance to do this with some very high-level players, some future NBA and WNBA draft picks . . this is the methodology that I now share around the world with coaches about what I do and how I coach within a practice . . the three E’s . . First, I want to create the Environment for learning. The second part is, I want them to Explore the drill with as little information from me as possible. And then thirdly, I can use Explicit teaching, explicit instruction to be able to help them understand how they can do better. And that’s what coaching is.”

“Why do I have this great technique? We have this technique so that you can score as effectively and as efficiently as possible . . Too many players are approaching players in space and making a dribble move when they already have an advantage, which is space for speed. Space is an advantage. We don’t have to teach a move in space. We have to teach them how to attack a defender in a straight line.”

“Skill is about recognizing an advantage . . to exploit an advantage, or to get out of trouble when they don’t have an advantage, or to create an advantage out of neutral . . Skill is recognizing that. So, if we don’t have those situations represented in our on-air practice or memorized drills, then players aren’t going to recognize them as fast. Can players still get there? For sure they can, because players have a lot of different ways beyond our practices to be able to improve. But, if we want to accelerate learning, then there is a better way. And that is always connecting everything that you do, whether it’s technique or tactics, to the context of the game.”

“Can we do better? That would be a way that I could ask some questions. I could say, ‘Okay,  awesome job getting to the gold medal spot. Now how can you create a bigger advantage?’  You already created a small advantage, but can it be better? And that’s ultimately what coaching is. Coaching is . . solution based. It’s, ‘We’re doing this well, now how we can do it better?’”

“We shared those things everywhere this summer with players from all around the world at different levels of basketball. It all affords them the opportunity to be able to be the best version of themselves. You don’t need 100 moves to be a great basketball player. You need to understand how to take advantage of space and take advantage of angles . . and we really do need to teach that more.”

“The goal for all training and all practice is adaptability . . And this is all back to evidence-based research . . Routines build repeatability but not reliability. The key for consistent performance isn’t repetition, it’s adaptability . . what happens when conditions change?”

“I would rather have parents be quiet and I would rather be quiet as a coach in a game so that it affords the opportunities for a player to be able to explore. Meaning that they get to make a decision without being told what the decision is. This connects for me because that’s how we’re trying to practice . . But even if you are more of a drill-based coach and you tell them what to do within the drills, when they go into game situations and you’re telling them, ‘shoot, shoot, pass, pass, pass, drive, drive, drive,’ you’re taking away their opportunity to be able to perceive, decide and execute and we’re taking away learning reps from them . . this holds players back in their development, especially at the youth level.”

“When parents are shouting from the sideline, what is a player going to do? They’re ultimately going to try and please their parent. But there’s a myriad of reasons why constant instruction is not beneficial to development . . You’re stealing learning reps instead of players making their own decisions. Your player is simply reacting to you, you as a parent or you as a coach. So, they are losing the chance to develop their basketball IQ. And if there’s one thing that every single coach or every single parent seems to want to improve for their player, it’s their basketball IQ.”

Chris Oliver Breakdown:

Chris Oliver Selected Links from the Podcast:

Dennis Gates