What is the Grammar of Games?
Before we try applying the Grammar of Games into Basketball, we have to learn what it actually is. This page gives an overview and glossary of what the Grammar of Games is, as well as its Key Concepts, Principles and Terminology.
So, what is the Grammar of Games and why are we using it for Basketball?
The Grammar of Games is a PE model that was developed to improve teaching and coaching practices in physical education and sports. One flaw of the way sports is taught often from a young age, is there’s a large focus on developing movement skills and cognitive (mental) aspects of sports are neglected. This can lead to poor transfer for some learners – This is how you translate and apply what you learn into a real or new situation. Some of us might know players who may practice well and look skilled, but struggle when they get into a game.
The Grammar of Games covers these cognitive aspects AND movement skills, dividing them into 4 concepts. Understanding all these concepts allows you to become a more aware player, and featuring it in your training as a coach can allow your players to translate what they learn in practice to a game better.
The Grammar of Games can be applied to any movement context (sport), including Basketball, and this web resource was developed to help you integrate it into your Basketball training, as a player or a coach.
What are the 4 Concepts and why do they matter?
The Grammar of Games is supported by 4 concepts: Decision-Making, Strategy and Tactics, Communication and Concentration, and Movement Skill Execution.
These 4 concepts are the main pillars of content knowledge in the Grammar of Games (the four foundations of the Grammar of Games model.) These 4 concepts are always interacting during gameplay, which means they’re affecting the game constantly. So, when you’re either watching a game of Basketball on the TV, playing a game of Basketball or observing your team (or your opponent’s team as a coach) as a coach, these four concepts will always be affecting the game, you just may not be realizing it.
The 4 concepts also interact with each other during gameplay, which means the 4 concepts are linked, and that one concept can affect another concept or be affected by others during gameplay
This diagram is a visual representation of the GoG model and how it works.
Key Features
Before we get into the 4 concepts, there are some aspects of sports and games that are key features in the Grammar of Games model.
Primary Rules are the rules/parameters that make up a game. Examples of Primary Rules in Basketball include the 24-second shot clock, traveling and double-dribble rules. We can adjust these to focus on learning specific concepts.
Action Rules are the unwritten rules that tell you how to play a game, and helps players/teams achieve their objectives/goals in a game. Examples of these in Basketball include: Don’t foul a 3-point shooter, don’t leave your feet when you pass the ball, space out evenly and don’t all go to one area on offense, etc. These aren’t part of the actual rules of the game, but following these rules helps you play better in Basketball.
Game Play Configuration is what the playing area looks like: how things are arranged, where players are in the playing area, etc. How things are arranged in the Game Play Configuration can affect aspects of play, such as what strategies you choose and what decisions you make.
This image is an example of a Game Play Configuration (GPC).
Overview of Concepts and Principles
Concepts – Strategy and Tactics
When we talk about Strategy and Tactics, we talk about the potential actions and decisions that occur before, during or after a game.
Strategy and Tactics are two different things, but they’re grouped together in the same concept because you can’t have one without the other.
Strategy is what you plan to do in a game, your intended actions to achieve the goal/objective of the game. In Basketball, it’d be to score more points than the other team by the end of regulation, so how do you plan to do that offensively (to make you score more points) and defensively (to make the other team score less points)?
Tactics are what you actually do in-game, how you react and adapt in live gameplay
Principles of Strategy and Tactics
All concepts, including Strategy and Tactics, have underlying principles which affect how those concepts interact during gameplay. Here are the principles with definitions and examples of how they could be applied to basketball.
Cohesion is the level of coordination or smoothness individual players, teams or teammates/sub-teams have in game. Cohesion is similar to what you might call “chemistry”, if you’re a play on a team with players you don’t know that well or coach a roster that’s unfamiliar with one another, you wouldn’t have that much cohesion. This would probably affect your strategy if you’re a coach as you’d likely run a basic offense or defensive scheme initially, and as your team’s cohesion builds, you’d start implementing more complex offensive plays or defensive looks into your team’s strategy.
Competency is the roles individuals have as players, the best ballhandler or passer on a team will probably have a role in their team’s strategy as a ballhandler or facilitator.
Improvement is pretty self-explanatory, it’s how you or your team gets better, you might be a poor 3 point shooting team at the beginning of the season but improve as the season goes on.
Mobility is using numbers to create an advantage for your team. For example, you could try to put a defender in a 2 on 1 situation on offense with a pick and roll, or you could double-team on defense and then switch so whoever has the ball is seeing 2 defenders whilst still not leaving anyone open.
Deception is gameplay which is designed to trick your opponents into disadvantageous responses. Deception can be pump-faking to make the defender jump so you can blow by them or using a player as a decoy in an offensive play to draw defenders and get an open look somewhere else on the court.
Opportunity is plays which take advantage of opponent’s mistake. Think of NBA games, when teams turn the ball over, the opposition will quickly go down the other end and get easy transition points.
Reserve/Layers – Reserve is the ability to adapt when things don’t go to plan during the game, having a plan B or being prepared for different situations.
Economy – Economy is gameplay that doesn’t assist with achieving the intended outcome of your sport. Think of a blowout game, where the gap is 20+ points, both coaches will empty the bench and put in their reserves, even though it doesn’t contribute to winning the game, or a young team which doesn’t expect to be competitive during a season focus more on the individual improvement of players than winning games. Economy is a part of strategy in many sports, including Basketball.
Strategy and Tactics in action
Now that you know what the concept of Strategy and Tactics are, along with its underlying principles, here’s a video of Strategy and Tactics in action during a basketball game.
Concepts – Decision-Making
The concept of decision-making is about making the right decisions at the right time, from the potential options/decisions available in game.
There are key principles, on team and individual levels, that influence the decisions players make during games.
Principles of Decision-Making (Individual)
Posture and Position is how where players are (position) and what their body posture looks like (posture) influences their decisions in game. For example, if a player gets the ball in a position where they’re open and they’re set and ready to shoot when they get the ball, they’ll likely make the decision to shoot. If they get the ball in a position where they’re being heavily defended or doubled and their body posture is awkward, they’ll likely make the decision to pass the ball.
Resources are decisions made based on the skills a player thinks they possess. For example, if a player thinks they’re a skilled 3-point shooter, they’ll probably decide to shoot often when they get the ball at the 3-point line during a game.
Cognitive Map is the existing level of knowledge a player has in a specific sport/context (in this case, Basketball) and how it affects decision-making.
Individual Strategy is how players’ understanding of their roles affect their decisions. For example, a player who thinks rebounding is a part of their role would make the decision to go after rebounds.
Individual Tactics is how players’ ability to adapt to changes in live gameplay affects their decision-making. A player who’s able to adapt well in their individual tactics can still make good decisions, even when the game changes (ie – if the defense changes what they’re doing from a man to zone, or increases their pressure/intensity, etc).
Principles of Decision-Making (Team)
The principle of force ratio is about how numbers influence players’ decisions’, and how decisions can be made to manage the numbers in a game. For example, when playing against a zone-defense, teams will make more decisions to get the ball into the ‘gap’ of a zone defense, where there are less numbers on defense.
Collective Strategy is how a team’s strategy affects decisions made. For example, if a point guard is the team’s main ballhandler and runs the team’s offense in the team’s collective strategy, this will affect the team’s decision-making and the players will decide to give the ball to the point guard often.
The principle of competency network is about how players’ status or perceived value affects team decision-making. In college, you might see a highly rated recruit get more playing time, or in the NBA you might see players who are on bigger contracts get more playing time and be used more on offense, both due to their elevated status and perceived value on the team.
Principles of Decision-Making in action
Using the same game we looked at for Strategy and Tactics, we can also see Decision-Making in action in the video below.
Concepts – Communication and Concentration
Communication refers to the thoughts, feelings and messages shared throughout a game and the coordination of those messages being shared or relayed.
Concentration is the ability to focus on relevant cues and stimulus during a game, as well as being able to block out irrelevant cues and distractions.
(What cues does Steph Curry focus on when he shoots? What does he ignore?)
Similarly to Strategy and Tactics, Communication and Concentration are two different things, but are grouped together in the same concept as you can’t have one without the other. Communication goes both ways. You need to be able to not just deliver, but also receive messages to communicate effectively. Concentration allows you to pick up the cues someone sent so you can receive their message.
For example, when players are on defense, they have to communicate with their teammates on where they should be. Someone could point to a space where a teammate should cover or rotate but if the teammate doesn’t have the concentration to pick up these cues, they won’t receive the message and cover the space.
It could end up like this play here, where Phoenix misses their rotations and give up a wide open 3 to the Celtics.
Aspects of Communication and Concentration
Non-verbal cues are one of the cues that can be received during a game. As the name states, these cues are non-verbal in nature, such as physical signals and body language. You can pick up non-verbal cues from your teammates, who might be trying to communicate something to you (ie – pointing to a spot on the court on defense for you to cover it), or you can pick them up from opponents (ie – if you’re guarding someone 1-on-1, you can read their body language to guess where they’ll go with the ball or when they’re ready to shoot). These are the most common types of cues being delivered during games.
Verbal Cues are the other type of cues players can receive during a game. These are more explicit and verbal in nature such as verbal instructions being yelled (ie – “Box out!”, “I’m open!”, etc).
The Length, Height, Width, Depth of objects or elements in the game are all cues you could focus on when performing a skill. For example, some shooters might focus on looking at a certain height or arc when releasing a shot (some shooters may look at a certain height above the rim and aim for that, etc). On defense, some big men could concentrate on depth as a cue and will drop back a certain depth on defense, to either protect the paint or to recover against a quicker, lighter player dribbling past them.
Another cue or stimulus you could concentrate on is how Broad or Narrow your focus or vision is. It can depend on the situation but you could narrow or broaden your focus during a game to help focus on a cue. For example, if you’re running the offense, you might broaden your focus so you see the whole court and don’t miss the cue of someone getting open. You might’ve heard players get criticized for having “tunnel vision” when they don’t pass to someone who’s wide open on offense, which could be a result of the player’s focus being too narrow.
(Maybe you get a pass for having tunnel vision/focus too narrow and not seeing your wide-open teammate’s non-verbal cue if you’re Lebron James.)
However, you can also narrow your focus for your benefit. For example, narrowing your focus to the hoop when you shoot so you don’t get distracted by everything else that’s going on.
Concepts – Movement Skill Execution/Acquisition
The concept of Movement Skill Execution/Acquisition relates to the process of learning and acquiring movement skills and executing them during gameplay.
The Process of Skill Acquisition
Skills are acquired through practice, where repeated training occurs to develop or improve the skill. Mistakes/errors are common when a new skill is practiced, but it’s a part of the learning process.
There are 3 stages of learning/development. when learning a new skill
Cognitive is the 1st stage where you begin learning and have to think about what you have to do when performing the skill.
Associative is the 2nd stage where you can perform the skill and begin to refine your technique, though errors still occur.
Autonomous is the 3rd and final stage of movement skill acquisition, where the skill can be performed smoothly and with minimal effort/thought.
Most elite athletes we watch on TV have reached the autonomous stage with most of the movement skills associated with Basketball.
(When it comes to the movement skill of dribbling, Kyrie is definitely autonomous.)
Execution
Movement Skill Execution is a key part of Basketball. The movement skills learnt (shooting, passing, dribbling, rebounding, etc,) are the same skills performed during games and require a level of skill that can be achieved through practice to execute them successfully in game.
However, movement skill execution isn’t the end-all be-all. As stated earlier, all 4 concepts are linked and aspects from other concepts can affect a players’ ability to perform skills in game – which is why some players who may seem skilled
For example, if a player can’t tactically adapt, make good decisions under pressure or concentrate on what’s relevant with all the distractions present during a game, their movement skill execution might be affected negatively and their execution of the skill in a game might be poor or worse than usual, even if they’re skilled at performing the skill on its own. Someone who’s good at shooting the ball might struggle to do it in a game with defenders contesting and everything going on around them in a game, which is why it’s important to focus on developing the other 3 concepts in your players/learners as well as movement skill, to allow them to develop into the best, most complete players they can be.
