Moving Beyond Fake Fundamentals in Practice Design

Coaching is more than copying and repeating drills

Team USA is preparing for the Olympics, and the few videos posted by USA Basketball provided content for those who dislike American teens to post about the NBA players’ work ethics, doing simple drills, and more. Numerous posts reminded readers of Kobe Bryant denigrating AAU basketball, on the very day a bunch of AAU players won the 2024 FIBA U17 World Championships by 41 points after an 80-point win in the semifinals.

Of course, facts, such as another U17 world championship or 17-year-old Copper Flagg participating at the USA Basketball training camp, cannot override strong opinions made by celebrities, especially when the audience is biased toward the beliefs espoused by former players. American players lack fundamentals; AAU is bad; teens today don’t work hard; yada yada yada.

Coaches post and retweet videos of NBA players confirming their beliefs with comments such as, “If it’s good enough for an NBA player, everyone should do it.” However, when the videos contradict their beliefs, coaches argue “NBA players can get away with it because they are so athletic or talented, but that does not mean everyone should do the same.” We see what we want to see, and ignore things opposing our opinions. We are not online to learn or be challenged, but to find additional support for our current beliefs. We create content for likes and retweets, not to spur discussions or debate ideas.

One tweet showed the Brooklyn Nets running sprints with the headline: “If running line drills are good enough for NBA players in training camp, no high school or college player should be complaining.” Fake Fundamentals, Volume 4 included a chapter on “Mindless Conditioning” which referenced a visit to an NBA team’s (also Brooklyn) offseason workout. Although my visit was several years ago, I noticed the same mindlessness as seen in the video: Players nearly-always change directions to their left shoulders, which right-handers prefer as virtually every transverse-plane sports movement is performed in this direction: Swinging a golf club, baseball bat, golf club; throwing a ball or spiking a volleyball; and more. Why not practice their weakness?

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Who knows what happened in training camp this year? Maybe the coaches corrected or instructed the players. When I visited, I questioned the coaching staff and strength coaches, and nobody noticed anything. Even when I pointed out the turns in one direction, they ignored it. These were just sprints. Mindless conditioning.

Improving change-of-direction skills may not matter for NBA or near-NBA players. I am not an NBA coach; possibly they are concerned with much bigger things. I attended voluntary workouts, primarily guys trying out for the last invites to training camp. Maybe they instructed more once the starters were present. For sub-NBA players, however, improving such a weakness may make a difference between making a team, playing better defense, suffering an injury, or not.

The players worked out for over two hours with weights before or after when I visited. Some players stayed after to work out more with the staff’s coaches and player development guys. Players had plenty of time to do mindless conditioning and have extra time with coaches to work on skills. They were well-compensated for their time investment.

I was limited to eight hours per week at the same time with my college team: Team, individual conditioning, weight room. Eight hours total. I could not afford to just sprint. I needed players to improve their change-of-direction skills during our running or I would sacrifice time somewhere else. Incorporating skill work into the sprints does not add a lot of time or increase repetitions. We did the same sprints we would do normally, but we had greater attention and focus on our sprints. The practice was purposeful.

A second post showed some fake fundamental closeouts (Volume 1) in a form of a shell drill (Volume 3) with the headline: “These type of defensive drills are good enough for the best players in the world. You will still have high-school and middle-school kids going through the motions like they are a waste of time.”

NBA players have a million plus reasons to perform these drills. They are paid to be there; children choose to play sports because they want to have fun, be with friends, be engaged, and more. Children and teens need to understand the purpose.

Numerous former NCAA Division 1 players characterized their practices as boring. They were not afraid of hard work; these players work as personal trainers, compete in CrossFit, run marathons for fun, and more now. They enjoyed practicing and training. I had to kick them out of the gym, not beg them to practice.

Their practices were boring, according to them, because they did the same things every practice, they never scrimmaged, and they did things they felt did not relate to or prepare them for the games. Essentially, their practices were filled with fake fundamentals, which they found boring because they did not improve their skills or their game performance.

NBA players are paid to do these drills. Who cares if they are bored or de-motivated? Furthermore, they have mastered the skills; these group drills are not teaching them anything new. They are mostly exercise, training the movements they will use in the upcoming competition. They are short drills to increase intensity and prepare players for the scrimmages and the games.

Sub-NBA players need more than exercise. They have not mastered the skills; they need more than movement rehearsal.

LeBron James features prominently in the video; he has played nearly 1800 games in his professional career, not to mention however many games he played in high school and AAU. He does not need more live drills to learn to read an opponent correctly. He gets hundreds of thousands of game repetitions each season, and has a photographic memory. He is elite, and no 15-year-old’s practice should be based on what he does now.

Sub-NBA players are not experts; they lack the same volume of experience and repetitions in these live situations. These players need more practice incorporating anticipation and decision-making with the physical actions. They must learn to play defense.

Players should not necessarily practice the same drills and exercises as professional players because they are not professionals. They need different practices. Watching the elite practice in this environment may be educational in terms of seeing practice habits, routines, intensity, and more. There are lessons sub-elites can learn from watching and talking to elites. Watching and learning from these players, or staring, is a key to talent development, according to Dan Coyle, because of mimicry, high-quality feedback, and igniting motivation. This does not, however, necessitate doing the same exact activities.

The non-elites have not reached the same level of mastery. They need other drills or potentially different feedback to reach the same skill level. They may need more interesting drills to fuel their motivation, and more competitive drills to learn to read the game in the same way as a player who has over 1800 NBA games of experience reads the game.

Coaches need to do more than copy drills because a famous coach used the drill. A drill is not good or bad based on the person who uses it, but how it is used. Does it meet the coach’s needs? Is it a good drill with a different group of players? Is it a good drill in a different environment? Coaches need to ask questions. They need to understand. Relying on a short clip from a professional practice with little to no context is lazy coaching, not learning. That does not mean one should never use the drill; it simply means a coach needs a better reason for including a drill than seeing an NBA coach use it on Twitter.