Transforming Basketball: Changing How We Think About Basketball Performance

by Alex Sarama

Despite the game of basketball frequently evolving, many coaching and organisational approaches have remained unchanged across the last several decades. Coaching practices within the basketball world are often based upon entrenched traditions, social norms and the way things have always been done.

In recent times, pseudoscientific beliefs have been framed as ‘best practice’ ideas in basketball, despite such approaches often contradicting the science of motor learning. The potential to optimise basketball performance and access large competitive advantages through an evidence-based approach have not been harnessed. Until now.

Transforming Basketball provides the complete vision for how practitioners serving in any role can benefit from a contemporary approach. Written with a primary focus on coaching, the book provides tangible strategies which have the potential to transform the basketball world and reconceptualise how we view the role of the coach. These ideas can be applied to virtually every area of an organisation including the front office, athletic performance, physical therapy, analytics and more.

Transforming Basketball goes deep into the theory, making sense of an ecological dynamics framework and the constraints-led approach by providing numerous practical examples. Within the book, readers will discover the true essence of skill while learning how to incorporate contemporary skill acquisition research into both coaching and wider-ranging organisational approaches. The gap is bridged between the research and its practical application through numerous illustrations, case studies, guest author contributions, links to interactive material and reflective tasks.

For coaches at all levels of the game - from volunteers working with beginners through to NBA coaches training the best players in the world - Transforming Basketball offers something for everyone. This book will leave every reader reflecting deeply on how they think and operate, while laying the foundation for how contemporary organisations of the future may operate.

Genres: Sports

374 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 9, 2024

Reviews

[Stephen Halstead · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book did a great job of challenging the way we think about athletes developing & improving. The old style of coaching (yelling, screaming, controlling) has slowly started to fade. However, coaches today still don’t maximize their time with plays in practice or workouts. While I don’t believe in everything Alex says, I do love the idea that players learn at different speeds and we need to have players make as many decisions as possible!

Overall, this was a really good book. It went a little too deep in the weeds in its research but I loved all of the SSG’s, coaches comments, & overall concept.

[jonas · Rating 5 out of 5]

absolutes essential für coaches und ambitionierte educator im sportbereich

[Guido Lüdecke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mindblowing and Ball is life- canging

[Damon Belloni · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is life-changing, probably

[Clay Kallam · Rating 4 out of 5]

A disclaimer: I naturally like this book because I agree with everything Alex Sarama says. I've been coaching a long time, and over the years I've slowly shifted to doing pretty much all he recommends, and for the most part, did so many years ago. But I didn't have the conceptual framework he uses, so in that regard "Transforming Basketball" was valuable in that it helped me frame my coaching philosophy more precisely.

And what exactly does Sarama suggest? Make practice like games. Don't do drills with chairs and cones. Don't dribble with two basketballs. Don't put a tennis ball on a basketball court. Don't run a lot of plays. Don't teach detailed movements from specific spots on the floor.

In short, he suggests that players learn the game best by playing the game -- and up to a point, he's right. That point, however, is at the college and pro level, where players have already mastered many physical skills, and have learned basic footwork and movement patterns. Younger players, though, need the kind of fundamental instruction (footwork and arm position for shooting, for example) Sarama wants to eliminate. He believes young players will "self-organize" into proper fundamentals, which any long-time youth coach knows is unlikely to happen.

Sarama is correct that once players are given the basics, they should find their own way, to an extent. There is, after all, no perfect shooting form, but all good shooters begin with the same principles before adjusting for their own skills and body type.

Sarama does not believe in spending time running plays in practice, though I think even he would acknowledge that every team needs some quick hitters and/or patterns to revert to.

The other major issue with this book is its dry, boring academic style. "Transforming Basketball" looks to be self-published, and really could have used a ghost writer to make it more accessible. (Then again, its message could have been delivered in a hundred pages, not the 350 in this version.)

Still, "Transforming Basketball" is an extremely valuable bucket of cold water thrown on long-time coaching traditions that hang around only because things have always been done that way. Any coach who reads the book with an open mind will soon begin altering practice plans and game preparation, and though she may not adopt every precept Sarama suggests, she will never coach the same way again.

And you can't say that about many coaching books.

[Jared Meyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book changes your perception on the traditional coaching approach most of, if not everyone was taught growing up. As best explained in the book… If a medical field had new and improved technology for the same price as the old version, why wouldn’t you look to upgrade? The game is ever evolving just like life and this book opens a new dynamic to the realm of coaching. There are no absolutes about the future of basketball, but this takes a major step in the right direction of exploration.

[Kareem Kalil · Rating 5 out of 5]

I coached with Alex for four months at his academy in Italy and he is one of my close friends. I love the set-up of this book. He mixes the evidence of skill acquisition and player development with anecdotal accounts of how these techniques are being used across the basketball world and offers a vision for the future of basketball performance. Highly recommend!

[Kyle Dupic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can’t wait for the 2nd one. Basketball is rife with examples of rote repetition that when you think for 15 seconds, don’t make a ton of sense in terms of quality transfer to the game. It’s very exciting to read and learn how to do it better.

[Jake Lindell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I already knew a lot about this so it was not as helpful as desired, but for a beginner it’s very helpful

[Sergio Torres · Rating 5 out of 5]

Expectacular!!

Expectacular, su poder de síntesis y de rescatar las ideas relevantes y llevar todo eso a la práctica es admirable