Angel Reese and Deliberate Practice

Moving beyond automaticity to improve shooting percentages.

Social media distorted our concept of skill acquisition and development. Coaches, fans, media, players, and trainers post small promotional clips, and we see these as examples of skill development, and not the marketing they are.

This week, I saw several pre-draft workout videos and a short Angel Reese video, and each had people praising the work. We exaggerate the importance of work because work, intensity, and effort are immediate and relatively easy to see. Improvement, and especially learning, require time. We can see Reese or a potential draft pick work hard, run with intensity, and demonstrate effort now, but we only see the improvements in the future. Performance is temporary; learning requires permanence.

Pre-draft workouts, especially with audiences and posted to social media, are not about the work or skill development; they are marketing videos. Agents and trainers carefully control the content posted online. The activities are crafted to appear hard, and highlight the player’s strengths and skills. The aspects that appear hard to the uninvolved are rehearsed behind closed doors or are edited to show only the good repetitions. These videos serve their purpose — promotional content — but they are performances, not skill development. These are not the practices that positioned these players to be drafted. Consequently, copying the videos for purposes of skill development will not lead to similar outcomes.

The Angel Reese video showed her shooting layups while one coach used a foam blocking stick and another coach pushed her. These drills are popular for post workouts, as we imagine the biggest problem is contact, and the solution is to inoculate the player. This was the only video shown, and I imagine the coaching staff and player do more than this one drill to improve. My point is not to criticize them or her or even to suggest the drill is bad. However, the responses and praise demonstrate a consistent misunderstanding.

The drill practices something from a game: Reese shoots contested layups. Therefore, we label the drill game-like and believe practice improvements will transfer to game performance. Our path to improvement is to do more: More repetitions, more drills, more contact. We trust the work. Mamba mentality.

Reese is a professional basketball player. She has attempted hundreds of thousands of layups in her lifetime. The problem with relying on more is nothing changes. More is fine when you shoot like Stephen Curry. However, improving upon 31% shooting on shots close to the basket requires something different, not more. Inoculation and repetitions are insufficient. Improvement requires more than work.

I do not know Reese, nor have I watched her play this season. There are many possible paths to improvement depending on an evaluation of her game and skills. However, she finishes with a fairly low release and often appears off-balance, even on the made baskets included in the promotional video. These may or may not be flaws. She may have finished like this her entire career with great success. There may be other issues (injury) affecting performance.

However, for sake of explanation, the low finish, balance and body control appear to impact her finishing. Does more practice improve these aspects? Possibly. Again, we do not know the full context of the practice. Possibly, the contact is used to exaggerate her balance and body control problems, forcing her to concentrate to maintain balance and control her movements against his contact. Exaggerating a problem is one method of addressing an issue to improve.

Possibly, the lower, quicker finish is an asset due to her shorter size for a post player, not a flaw. Therefore, they could be practicing to quicken the release while increasing the angle on her shots to shoot over shot blockers. Focusing on the quick release and the angle could be a path to improvement.

Often, however, we depend on more and the work. The practice is not purposeful. Shouting Mamba Mentality to emphasize the time and effort ignores Kobe Bryant’s more important quote about practice: “It's not about the number of hours you practice, it's about the number of hours your mind is present during the practice.” Players must concentrate on the details they want to improve, especially once they have reached a near-expert level, such as a professional player. Without the concentration and attention to detail, players practice in the same manner in which they perform, which in Reese’s case is suboptimal. The activities designed for improvement do not address the limiting factors; they are too general.

The problem is finishing. Why? Is contact the limiting factor? What about balance? What about her body control? What about the low release? Does the drill address these issues specifically? Did a previous drill break down these issues and this is the next step before adding live defenders? Does the physical preparation coach concentrate on balance and control, while the skill development coach integrates these improvements into basketball-specific practice? These are the questions to ask. In the little I have seen, finishing practice without addressing her balance and body control — whether on court or with the physical performance coach — is unlikely to create significant change or improvement (of course, if the problem is mental or an injury or some other factor, this must be addressed first).

K. Anders Ericsson studied expert performance; his research was reduced to the 10,000-hour rule by Malcolm Gladwell and others. He did not study practice or repetitions, per se. He studied expertise, and he found the differentiator between experts and near-experts to be deliberate practice, not practice or practice repetitions. Experts engaged in more deliberate practice, which is highly-focused, designed for specific improvements, and effortful because of the required concentration and attention. Essentially, Ericsson found that deliberate practice enabled experts to continue improving, whereas most people reach a plateau and their performance levels off. Reese’s finishing, one might say, has reached a plateau; she is a great player with many great qualities, but this deficiency reduces her overall impact. Ericsson believed deliberate practice was the key to pushing beyond the plateaus, and potentially the key for Reese to reach her ceiling as a player.

Expertise is not a matter of reaching automaticity, as everyone who participates in an activity for years reaches an automatic level of performance. Instead, expertise is determined by the level at which one’s skills become automatic. Reese’s finishing has reached automaticity at a suboptimal level; she does not lack experience or repetitions; she is not learning her layup techniques. She needs to push past this plateau and change her skill performance, and this requires a different type of practice: Deliberate practice.

A short video is insufficient to determine whether or not her practice is deliberate or purposeful but more than reps on reps on reps or the work being it, she needs deliberate practice (or improved health, as performance decrements often are due to injuries) to improve her performance. Too often, we rely on work and repetitions when we need to address weaknesses more specifically and systematically. Every workout should not be the same. The activities must change to address specific weaknesses to challenge the player and move beyond plateaus to better performance and expertise.