Raptors analytics... and an internal rift? [post #67]

[JimiCliff]

Bold #1: Studies show that people (in general, not specific to athletes or basketball players) learn best with immediate correction. Waiting until the next day or after the game is missing the opportunity to have the greatest impact.
You use the film room to reinforce what you preach in practice, but you need to point things out at the time they happened for the player to have the best understanding.

Bold #2: NBA players learn the same way regular people learn, they just happen to be taller, faster and have more time to spend on refining the skills. But at the end of the day, a player learns the same way as any other person. Being in the NBA doesn't grant you omniscient awareness of basketball and often times these players lack the self-awareness because they have been insulated from criticism their whole lives. That is why role players and point guards typically go on to be successful head coaches while stars can't make the transition.

Perspective is everything and it is nearly impossible to gain it while running up and down the court. If JV spends his time trying to figure out the rotation assignment on the pick and roll with a corner 3 threat, then he is likely to miss the action right now and screw up another assignment. He needs the chance to process what is happening and that simply cannot happen in game at the NBA level. The game is way too fast. What is the #1 thing rookies say about the transition from NCAA to NBA? The speed of the game. You don't have time to think about what just happened because you need to be focused on the now at all times.

Will pulling them out after a single missed play to correct their mistake better help them with that specific mistake? Maybe (and this specific case is actually very, very complicated compared to the studies you're mentioning) but that circumstance (mistake, hook, quickly re-inserted into game) essentially never happens in the NBA anyways, so I'm not sure that we're even arguing about anything real anymore. My point was that Casey just wasn't playing him enough in general. So then it becomes the case of, are we going to pull him out after every little mistake, or are we going to give him a little rope? I'd give rope. But I'll bet that neither of us could find definitive proof for either of our arguments, so I'm just going to agree to disagree