We all love to see players who generate original and surprising responses in their play to the problems that arise in the course of a game.

We all have in mind Alba Torrens, Doncic, Ricky Rubio, Navarro, Amaya Valdemoro and so many others. They are what we call talented players, CREATIVE PLAYERS.

The questions immediately arise: is that talent innate? Do they perhaps come “factory-equipped” with it? The most recent research shows that creativity is not a genetic and inherent construct of an individual from birth. It can be taught and enhanced; indeed, it should be taught and enhanced.

Teaching and Enhancing Creativity in Basketball

Enhancing creativity in basketball involves training a player to develop their ability to develop responses to the problems that the game continually creates, such as winning or losing a game, and to make those responses effective.

A game takes place in an absolutely “chaotic” scenario in which there is uncertainty generated by the actions of teammates, opponents, times, spaces, etc., consequently projecting an unstable environment in which the player has to be able to perform as efficiently as possible.

In order to develop creativity in basketball, it would be the coach’s goal to help and guide their players to come up with appropriate solutions and, moreover, to do so in a creative and intelligent way.

But how? Is it possible that, through our training sessions and with our teaching intervention, we can enhance the creative capacity of our players? I am convinced that it is possible.

The first thing we must consider is that the player we have in our hands IS NOT A PASSIVE SUBJECT OF LEARNING into whom we simply place knowledge that we generate ourselves or that comes from content provided by our club.

We need their active participation in learning and need to get them out of that space in which the same thing is always repeated. And we encourage them to provide other answers to the game and to experiment with them because from that experimentation they will learn to make increasingly better decisions. 

And you ask me again, how is this done? The answer would require much more space than is available, but I can give you some ideas on how we work on this creativity in basketball within Campus Wob Basket Pro.

I believe that this enhancement of creativity in basketball can be developed, among other ways, at two levels of action: in the design of our training tasks and exercises and in how our teaching intervention with the players is carried out.

Levels of action to enhance creativity

In the first case, I believe that we should abandon repetitive, tedious and decontextualised exercises for two reasons: the child’s motivation decreases and cognitive activity is conspicuous due to its absence.

Doing it that way we will repeat a lot, but it is impossible to create. Conversely, I would try to include the following in our tasks and exercises:

• A certain level of uncertainty should always be considered, where there are different stimuli to pay attention to (logically depending on the characteristics of the boys and girls we are teaching).
• The complexity should be modified, therefore providing more and different stimuli, reducing the time available for execution, modifying the space for action, etc.
• During the development of a task, it is very interesting to have unexpected stimuli appear, to which the player has to give an immediate response.
• Modify the rules to achieve a certain objective.
• Try to ensure that the player has to change their attentional focus in order to handle two or more stimuli simultaneously.
• Try to ensure that they are modified at the beginning of the task, during the course of the task or at its end.

In short, the players must think, decide, analyse, experiment, discover, etc.