Basketball Study: You Can't Stop One Move Done a Million Ways (Patreon)

• LMA Curriculum

It is not about knowing 10,000 different moves or practicing one move 10,000 times or 10,000 hours; it's about knowing how to do a few moves 10,000 different ways.

The best performers don't have a million moves, they have a few moves they can hit from just about any position.

In this interview, Kobe Bryant was asked who was the toughest NBA player to defend.

Bryant replied:

"Kevin Durant. That was the one that I retired without really having to, being able to figure [him] out. You know, how I can stop him. ... When he first came into the league, he was easy to defend cause he couldn't go right and shoot.

He used to kind of shoot across his face. So that was a weakness that he had. Also, in the post, he couldn't turn left shoulder. Everything was right shoulder. So that gave me areas that I could shut off. And then he started developing it. So now he pulls up left. He can shoot the long ball.

He has runners, left hand, right hand. Before, he had a left-hand finish at the rim. I could always send him left, force him all the way to the basket. Even with the advantage of his size, he was still uncomfortable finishing with his left, so I could clamp the right hand and now force him into tough situations, and now he developed that.

So I retired, not being able to figure him out."

In basketball, there are a million techniques called the jump shot because to truly maximize performance, you must understand that skills are open-ended.

Believing that skills are closed-ended assumes they will be performed in a stable, predictable environment where the conditions do not change. It also falsely assumes the performer is a programmable machine that can replicate a skill identically over and over.

In contrast, an open skill is a skill that is performed in an unpredictable, dynamic environment where the conditions can change. The performer must constantly adapt to the changing environment to successfully execute the skill. Open skills require not only technical proficiency but also human perception, decision-making, and strategic abilities.

Knowing a few skills that can be adapted to every situation is more valuable than learning a different skill for every situation or generalizing a skill and applying it to all situations.

Let's define some terms from the context of skill acquisition and performance.

Generalization: make a general or broad inference from specific cases. I.e., do it this way every time.

Adaptability: adjusting to new conditions. I.e., adapt it so it works every time.

Variability: the quality of being subject to change. I.e., you can never have the same match twice.

Context: the complex, dynamic set of environmental conditions and interactions that influence the behavior and performance of a performer. Context includes factors such as physical surroundings, social and ecological relationships, task demands, and other situational factors that may impact a performer's behavior. I.e., the same behavior may result in different outcomes depending on the context in which it occurs.

Context emphasizes the importance of considering the interplay between a performer and their environment and the need for a systems-level approach to understanding performance.

In the example of the jump shot, generalization would be generalizing the jump shot into one method done the same way every time.

But to maximize performance, the performer must adapt to changing environmental conditions. Not only modifying behaviors but also developing new behaviors in response to changing circumstances. For example, when Kevin Durant adapted to the level of the NBA by developing the ability to go forward, back, left, right, fake, feint, and alter his rhythm, he became an extremely difficult offensive player to defend. Rather than memorizing fixed and rigid responses, he developed a range of variable behaviors.

Variability is bidirectional. Not only can your conditions be variable, but you, too, can be variable. Changing with the variability of your conditions is adaptation, but making your conditions adapt to you is variability.

Variability is about having multiple solutions to a given problem. Adaptability is about each solution having a broad range of execution. This means not only having open skills but a variety of open skills.

Having a diverse set of flexible options makes you hard to defend. For example, if you go to your defender's left and right at varying speeds, they will have difficulty predicting which way you will go next and when.

As far as skill acquisition and performance, generalization is the false assumption that you can transfer a behavior identically across different situations. Adaptability describes the ability to adjust behaviors in response to changing conditions. Variability represents the diversity of responses a performer can produce in a given situation. Context is the circumstances in which everything takes place.

Returning to why we study MMA, MMA is open compared to singular arts that are confined by their domains. A specific art, by its very nature, is closed-ended. Otherwise, it wouldn't remain specific and true to its domain and traditions.

MMA is loose, broad, open-ended, and undefinable other than that it must not be defined by any one specific art.

There are varying degrees of openness and closedness, but even within a singular martial art, a competition or live event is much more open than its training. Real-life scenarios are, by their very nature, even more open. "Real life" is an open world.

To prepare for open situations, you don't necessarily have to train MMA or more open arts, but you do need to train skills openly.

If you view skills as being open, you can learn from any activity, which is why we pull lessons from whatever domain best highlights a concept. The concept is more important than domain-specificity. In fact, specificity is a hindrance to adaptability and openness.

If you view skills as being closed, you're limited to learning only from your specific domain in the exact same context. There is no adaptability nor ability to draw patterns, which means every situation is a new, never-before-seen unrelated, and mysterious problem. Rather than seeing broad systemic patterns, everything is atomized and every problem individualized. As a result, every lesson must be learned one at a time rather than one systemic lesson that can be applied broadly.

If we apply the Taoism of how we do one thing is how we do all things, it's the difference between a liberatory Marxist approach to martial arts and a traditional, liberal, conservative, confined, limited, individualized, domain-specific, assembly line, alienated, and closed-ended approach to martial arts.

Limited, case-by-case change is called reform, which ultimately gets undermined by the underlying unaddressed systemic problems.

Performance is about going beyond what's on the page, which requires openness, adaptability, variability, and capacity. Capitalism and Western hegemony want you to be good at one thing in one specific context, assume that quality is inborn, and to define yourself and your self-worth by that. Closed-ended individualism is not freedom, it's alienation. Open-ended communitarianism is freedom.

– Sam