Practice Games

The power of varied, targeted practice

One of the top NBA rookies this year attributes a lot of his success to old men.

Kon Kneuppel’s Dad invited him to play in a rec league, where, as a 14-year-old, he played with “grizzled clock-punchers, retirees and guys reliving their college glory days.”

That’s not typical of most top NBA prospects, who, according to this excellent piece in the Wall Street Journal, “drill go-to moves over and over in empty gyms.” That kind of practice is “garbage,” according to one of his former opponents: “You could work on a move for 100 straight reps, but it doesn’t fit in the flow of the game…it doesn’t matter.”

You can’t argue with Kneuppel’s results. As of today, he leads the NBA (not just rookies) in three-point shooting.

It’s a great illustration of a type of practice that’s somewhat different than the approach I described in 22 Spots. Bernard King figured out that no matter how he was defended, he would always be able to get to one of 22 spots on the floor. So he worked on those shots, and on the moves he’d need in order to get to them.

That work happened alone in a gym (not with grizzled clock-punchers). And it’s a form of what learning experts call targeted practice. You figure out a skill that will help you perform better, and then you practice it over and over.

But Kneuppel’s type of practice is just as important. It’s not quite a real game, and it’s not quite pure practice – it’s a sort of practice game.

In Kneuppel’s rec league, they often didn’t call fouls: “He was getting beat up,” according to one of the players. These rec games often don’t have the same time limits as regular games. You probably won’t have any subs. The scoring might not even be the same: maybe it’s first to ten. Or maybe it’s a half-court game where you keep possession after you make a basket. And the games often have no ramifications outside of the league. Nobody else would know or care about how many games you won or the points you scored. It’s not a “real” game, in the sense that it’s not leading to any kind of state championship or national tournament.

But it’s not pure targeted practice either. As the man said earlier, everything has to be done “in the flow of the game.”

That makes it a great bridge between isolated practice and real games. There are some stakes – you don’t want to lose or let down your team – but there’s room for experimentation. If you’ve been working on a new post move, you can try it out. If it doesn’t work, you can analyze why and change the way you practice.

Crucially, the practice is varied. Maybe you’ve got a hand in your face when you try to hit that three. Maybe you’re a little more tired when you try to execute that crossover-stepback. You’re getting reps, but they’re a little bit different every time, and that allows you to truly master the skill.

When you go to play a real game, it’s still different. The stakes are higher, and certain features of the game may be different (the minutes you play, the people you play with, the point system). But it’s not as different. You’ve honed your skills alone, but you’ve also honed them in the flow of a practice game, and that makes it easier to execute them in real games.

Many test prep students don’t realize they need this type of practice. They know they need to take real tests (play real games). They know they need to work on their weaknesses, even if they hate it (review missed questions, target weak skills). But the only practice games most students play are full sections from official practice tests.

These are important, but they aren’t varied or targeted enough. For example, an ACT student who is scoring around 30 on the Math section and is struggling with time pressure may need to make a practice game out of the last 15 questions: Give yourself 15 minutes and see if you can get 12 right. You could do two of these in the time you’d spend taking a full section.

If he’s struggling with timing and accuracy on the Science, he might benefit from this game: Give yourself one minute per question on a passage. If you get them all right, you’re done for the day. If not, you have to do another passage.

Here’s one for ~700-level R/W students on the SAT who struggle with hard reading and time pressure. They often don’t know which questions to skip, so I give them this drill: Here are 6 hard reading questions. You have 10 minutes. Get 4 correct.

These are just examples – you can vary the source material, the timing, the point systems, the punishments/rewards, and any other elements you want. But you must target highly relevant content, replicate “the flow of the game,” and provide some stakes.

The practice is more fun, it’s often shorter, and you improve more quickly, because you’re spending a higher percentage of the time on the skills that will help you the most.