The Cross Over Movement

Throughout Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development, I argue for the importance of small-sided games in training, but caution against too many competitive games and the length of today’s competitive season.

To some, this appears to be a contradiction. After all, if some games are good, why are other games, against a real opponent, bad?

There are, in my mind several reasons. Most importantly, I favor small-sided games because of the number of repetitions each player gets as opposed to a “real” game. In a practice setting, a 12-player team can easily have every player involved with a 3v3 game at each main basket. All players are involved in the action, and each player receives more touches, which means more shots, more passing, more ball handling, more on-ball defense, etc. In a “real” game, only five players play at a time and 2-3 players usually dominate the ball meaning fewer touches and opportunities for the non-star players.

While researching different things today, I found an outline of a Sports Psychology course. The outline included a description of Zajonc’s Theory of Social Facilitation. The three main points:

Audiences increase arousal

Arousal inhibits learning new responses

Arousal facilitates the performance of well-rehearsed responses.

Therefore, if we want players to learn and develop, a practice setting is best, as there is no audience to increase arousal. During games, players do what they know they can do well. However, only doing what you can already do does not lead to growth, improvement or development.

A game, even an off-season game, is a performance. As long as a crowd is present, and arousal increases, players strive to perform. Players want to look good.

Developing a new skill or improving is a series of mistakes. You try something over and over until you finally get it right. A game is not a condusive environment for this type of trial and error process, but small-sided games in a practice setting provide a competitive atmosphere for development.