Collecting Data and Assessment
Now that you know what the Grammar of Games is and how you can implement it in training, we’ll look at how we can assess players’ how developed players are in the GoG concepts.
The assessment process gives us information on what players should focus on learning so that we can maximise their development and help them meet learning outcomes (if applicable). This helps us get the most out of the GoG’s learning benefits.
How do we assess the GoG?
We need to collect data, which is gathering information. This can be informal, like watching how players perform in training or practice, but it could be more formal too, like collecting stats or grading players against a certain criteria.
What we do with the information is Assessment. The information we collected tells us what we should focus on and guides future learning action (what we’ll do next session to help players learn and develop.) It can also be used for grading/selection purposes – think Basketball tryouts: you gather information by watching the players perform in games and drills, and then with that information you make a decision on who the best players are, and which ones are selected for your team.
This whole cycle is the assessment process and we can use it for the GoG concepts when we implement it into our training regime/learning curriculum.
Here’s an example of this process in action:
You’re a coach observing your team during a game (collecting data) and you see that your team are making poor decisions on offense. You determine that offensive decision-making needs to be a learning focus, then in the next training session you have activities/drills that focus on improving your players’ offensive decision-making (assessment.)
But…
The information we collect should line up with what we’re assessing, there’s no point grading our players on just their field goals made/missed, when it doesn’t tell us anything about their Decision-Making, Strategy and Tactics or Communication and Concentration.
So, what do we look for when assessing the Grammar of Games Concepts?
Things we can look at when assessing the GoG (Observable characteristics)
You can focus on all four Grammar of Games concepts or focus on a specific concept during assessment, depending on what you want to assess. The following are specific characteristics of the 4 concepts that you can observe, to assess your players and how developed they are regarding the 4 GoG concepts.
You could observe specific movement skills in Movement Skill Execution and Acquisition (MSE) like shooting, passing or dribbling, and how well your team or individual players executes those skills in training or a live game – either focus on makes/misses or the actual technique and execution of the shot, etc.
For Decision-Making, you could observe decision-making characteristics on defense or offense. For example, offensive decision-making: whether passes are being made to open players or risky passes are being made to heavily-defended players, whether open shots are being taken or contested shots are being taken, etc.
For Communication and Concentration – you could observe specific cues, and whether players are identifying them successfully or missing them. For example, non-verbal defensive cues, you can observe if players are successfully identifying these cues, and if they’re missing or making their defensive rotations as a result.
For Strategy and Tactics – you might observe certain offensive/defensive plays, and which ones are more effective than others. For example, you could observe offensive plays and see if your team is scoring more points off pick-and-rolls than post-up plays or isolation, etc. Or you could observe whether your team is playing better defense in a man-to-man defense or a zone.
These are all just suggestions of things you can look for in each of the 4 concepts when collecting data for assessment, if you’ve come up with some information you want to collect in any of the concepts that wasn’t listed above, then by all means go for it!
Sample Assessment Tool(s)
These are sample tools/resources that can be used for assessment, along with suggestions of ways they can be adjusted to suit your individual coaching/teaching needs.
GPAI
One Assessment tool we can use to assess the 4 concepts in action in Basketball is the Game Play Assessment Instrument (GPAI). One benefit of this tool is that it allows us to look at different observable characteristics – similar to the things we just looked at. The GPAI provides individual indices of player performance to measure that relate to GoG concepts – Decision-Making and Skill Execution, and provides a learning criteria with the scoring key.
Depending on what individual observable characteristics you want to assess, you can adjust the GPAI indices and/or criteria or create your own data sheet.
Customised GPAI for a specific concept (Offensive Decision-Making) in Basketball
This is an example of a custom assessment tool for data collection, using elements of the GPAI, to focus on a specific concept, using Decision-Making as an example. It provides individual indices of player/team performance regarding decision-making with the Positive and Negative Decisions.
This assessment tool can be adapted to team or individual decision-making, so coaches/educators can either choose to focus on a specific player or the whole team when collecting data.
For the tool’s success criteria, the overall decision-making grades are measured on this grading scale from a continuum of very poor to elite.
(Grading scale adapted from PFF – Pro Football Focus)
Customised GPAI for all 4 concepts on offense in Basketball
This is an example of a custom assessment tool for data collection, using elements of the GPAI, to focus on all 4 GoG concepts. It provides individual indices of player/team performance regarding the 4 concepts with negative/positive indices.
This assessment tool can be adapted to a team or individual’s performance regarding the 4 concepts in action, so coaches/educators can either choose to focus on a specific player or the whole team when collecting data.
The same grading scale as the previous customised assessment tool is used, from a continuum of very poor to elite.
Grading Descriptor
It also helps to helps to have a descriptor of your grades to help you get a better understanding of what a certain grade should look like and what attributes players graded as such should display.
This is an example of a grade descriptor, that we’ll use for our Basketball GPAI. You can adjust it, create something similar or create your own from scratch to suit your own coaching needs.
Sample Assessment Tool in Action
Now we’ll see an example of the customised GPAI assessment tool for all 4 concepts being applied to a real game, with a video showing the characteristics observed and a filled-out data sheet from the video evidence.
(Note – scoring criteria was adjusted from +1/-1 for positive/negative observable characteristics to +5/-5, to match the sample size of the gameplay being observed and also considering the importance of the close game towards grading.)
Knicks GPAI Assessment
Knicks GPAI Assessment Video Evidence
Try it yourself
Now you’ve gotten an idea of how you can use collect information and assess the Grammar of Games concepts in action. The following resources are videos from NBA games for you to practice collecting data and assessing. If you already have another video in mind or real film/practice footage to practice observing and assessing on, then you can use that as well.
