A Competency-Based Approach to Basketball
If 'be good at what you do frequently' is a motto to live life by, let's boil down modern basketball to a simplified form to better understand where prospects need to thrive
As an educator and teacher first, I spend time in staff meetings and curriculum development sessions with my colleagues. Many of them, who are far more advanced than I am in brain development and making difficult concepts simple for kids, are starting to buy into this idea of competency-based learning, or CBL.
The idea sounds more simple than it is, but in its simplicity comes tangibility for its application: learn how to be competent in broader areas as opposed to continually drilling the smaller skills that make up those areas. It’s part about teaching how interconnected our learned skills are across different disciplines and part about being transparent with students about why we learn what we do — to build specific areas in which they can become competent.
For basketball scouting, I’m trying to take a page out of this book. Microskills have long been a piece of the trained eye for coaches and scouts alike to focus on. I love guys who can snake ball screens, execute a stampede drive, contest shots with verticality — those are important traits to master. But they are too niche or specific to be categories for success that are needed. If we can define the main categories of what is needed for success in a clear and concise manner, then identifying the micro skills that are most important becomes clearer afterward.
With that in mind, I’ve boiled down the game of basketball (perhaps to an oversimplification) into five categories of half-court success that lead to team success. When evaluating a player, I’m looking for a guy who can be competent in all five of these areas (or, defensively, in limiting or taking away those areas).
Context with reference to the microskills that make them up will be added. The ‘drills’ section is what coaches who subscribe to this viewpoint might want to focus on most in getting players to become competent in these key areas. The ‘scouted traits’ section points to the individual traits a prospect can show to illuminate their understanding/ mastery of this area.
Finally, I will also briefly mention what defensive traits are able to limit those areas and are most important for making the competent more difficult to accomplish. I believe that great offense trumps great defense, but because the game is played on both ends, being competent on both ends is important.
1. Spacing the floor
Great teams understand how to space the floor, and great players instinctually know where to cut off-ball. A wise coach once said to me “offense is spacing and spacing is offense”. No advantages get created in the half-court (or even the full court) if one defender can guard multiple offensive players simultaneously. Being in the right positions is vital to allowing your team to get an advantage.
Drills:
Read-and-react spacing drills (for bigs, it’s reading penetration while in the dunker spot, for guards it’s looping/ sliding around penetration).
5-on-0 and Playbook Review sessions (to get the team on the same page)
Transition drills (to flow into each spot naturally off of a miss/ turnover)
Scouted traits:
Big men: understanding of reacting to dribble penetration (loop/ slide/ patience along baseline). Direct rolls to the rim?
Guards: understanding of perimeter relocation around penetration, demonstration of timely 45-cuts or backdoor cuts out of corner, IQ within offense to read those plays
Shooting ability vs. how are you guarded (“does the defense react to you like a shooter?”)
Defensive traits that challenge offensive competence:
Length and size (eating up space)
Ground coverage (covering space if it’s open)
2. Creating an advantage
