How To Build A Player Development Plan: Malik Beasley's 2018/19 Plan

** I’ve worked almost exclusively with NBA players for the past 6 years. My first client was Malik Beasley; we worked together from 2018 to 2020. This piece uses his Development Plan for the 2018/19 NBA Season as a reference point. The plan was built from the previous season's film and executed over 48 on-court sessions during the Summer of 2018.

In 2017/18, Malik played 583 minutes over 62 games and scored 196 points, averaging 3.1 points per game. He made 28 three-pointers at an average of 34.1 percent.

The following season, 2018/19, Malik played 1,878 minutes over 81 games and scored 917 points, averaging 11.3 points per game. He also led the Nuggets in three-pointers, making 163 at an average of 40.2 percent.

This piece is meant to serve as a reference point for future player development and scouting pieces.

The Calls:

There are always two calls.

The first call is with a mutual contact; at some point during that call, this line will always be said: “Hey, what do you think about “Player X”?”

The second call is with “Player X.” This is the call when they will determine if you’re full of shit or if they are going to trust you with their livelihood. Because, after all, they are paying you, not the team, so it’s their choice. These are my favorite calls; you find out very quickly if the two of you see the game through the same lens. If we do, then it’s time to get to work. 

My job is to help basketball players find the META for their careers, which means identifying problems and implementing solutions to their issues on the basketball court. They are professionals, the CEOs of their companies, and they are trying to build generational wealth for themselves and their families. 

At this time, Richard Gray, Malik’s agent, was the first to give me a “Player X” call. We have since become good friends. It’s pretty cool to look back and know that even though this project is over, that call has led to a good friend in my life.

Basketball is a small and fascinating world.

Floor, Swing, and Ceiling Skills:

Most first-round picks have a specific skill that FOs believe can translate to the NBA. That skill can set the floor for a player; if they can translate this one particular skill while becoming competent enough defensively, they will have a long career as an NBA player. It's a fantastic job, and the pay is decent.

If you can translate your floor skill to the NBA game, you are given the opportunity to develop the swing skill. The swing skill is almost always a byproduct of defenders trying to shut off the already-established floor skill. For instance, if the floor skill is shooting, then the swing skill might be effectively driving “oh shit” closeouts for finishes or to play make vs. help defenders. 

Finally, the ceiling skill. This is the skill that takes the player's game to its apex. The most important thing to understand about a player’s ceiling is that it’s unique to them; just because you reach your ceiling as a player doesn’t mean you’re an All-Star in the league. 

If you can get any combination of these three skills down as a first-round pick, then the odds are in your favor to have a long and prosperous career leading to generational wealth.

The Process Behind Building A Plan:

Every player is unique in skill, athleticism, team role, and how they see the game. Development plans must represent this uniqueness. Creating a process for building the plan is the most vital aspect of the equation. The details inside each plan will be unique to the player, but the process of constructing the plan will stay consistent no matter the circumstances.

My process centers around the concept of epicenters; I always try to find the epicenter of the player’s game. When building a plan, that’s what I’m looking for: the core, the place where everything builds from. 

In basketball, a player’s epicenter is the high-leverage inflection point moment they find themselves in more often than any other moment. If we can get this epicenter right, it will start a chain reaction leading to improved play, more playing time, better stats, and more money when the time comes! 

1. Start watching the tape: 

   You have to dig into the film to find the player’s epicenter. Depending on the player, this part leads to hundreds, sometimes thousands of clips. Through trial and error, I have created a simple system to keep all the clips in an order that works for me. Finding the best way to maintain order is vital when operating with this type of volume.

2. Prioritization: 

   Malik’s epicenter was and still is spot-up actions. Attacking closeouts is at the core of his game. Everything else builds around that particular action; it’s his epicenter. According to Synergy, his offense featured a whopping 41.4% of spot-ups during his second season. 

3. Details: 

   Once you have the epicenter, you must narrow the focus onto the coverages inside the epicenter that are problematic for the player. Why are they offering the player problems, and how can the player develop corresponding solutions? Focus on the details here. Winning at this level is all about what happens in the margins; a razor's edge separates success and failure; the details determine what side of that edge you will fall on.

4. Efficiency:

   Finally, it’s time to get on the court. Once you’re here, it’s all about efficiency. The more prepared you are, the more efficient you can be with the time. Players can smell it from a mile away if you aren't prepared, and they will never fully trust you enough to lean in if they ever get a whiff of it.

The key to player development success is no different than how to succeed in almost anything else; it’s all about doing your work early and being prepared. I think 90% of my work with the player is done before we step on the court together. 

Shooting Interlude:

I consider shooting to be the META skill of basketball. It exists inside every possible epicenter on the offensive end of the floor and is always the top priority in any plan I build. Improving this skill makes everything else easier on the court. Shooting is the tide that raises all other ships.

I’ve worked with three NBA players on changing their shots; all played different positions and had various roles on their teams. Changing a shot at the NBA level takes gaining absolute trust from the player. This is why being prepared is so important; if you do not have the player's trust, you will never be able to speak into their shot.

Changes to a player's shot show up the most in their three-point shot; the distance allows for inefficiencies in the shooting mechanics to reveal themselves more clearly than in any other shot. The players I have worked with have experienced an average jump of 6.1% in their three-point shooting during our first year working together, all on career high volume. The volume is never a result of me telling them to shoot more but of the natural way of basketball: if you’re shooting it better, you will be on the court more and want to shoot more, too.

Shooting is an exercise of transferring energy. When working with a player on their shot, my primary goal is to get their mechanics to a place where they consistently load the shot's power in ideal spots to efficiently transfer energy from the body to the basketball. 

We are hunting the player's unique biomechanical shooting fingerprint that keeps them in rhythm and on balance to transfer the energy efficiently. Not every player's shot will have the same mechanics; after all, each player has a different body; we are striving for the mechanics that fit their body's rhythm and balance the best.

Every shot is different. The changes to Malik’s shot during the summer of 2018 focused on where the power of his shot was loaded before the point of no-return moment. This is when the hips begin to drive up, and the power must initiate its transfer from the body to the basketball. 

Where you load the shot’s power matters almost as much as anything else in shooting.

In 2017/18, Malik's red flag habit is that most of his power is loaded forward in the toes & knees, ahead of his hips at the point-of-no-return moment. This led to an inefficient transfer of power.

Malik’s inefficiency can be seen in his massive jump forward while twisting ninety degrees to the left and trying to shoot simultaneously. I call this having a “loud body.”

In 2018/19, you can see by Malik’s shin angle that less power is loaded forward in the toes & knees than in the prior year. This allows for a more efficient transition of energy through the body. There is no longer the massive jump forward, much less of a twist, and an overall much “quieter body.”

I firmly believe that anyone can improve their shot, and there are no lost causes in regards to shooting the basketball. Shooting mechanics are comprised of many simple machines working together in rhythm to create one giant machine, quite similar to a car engine. If you are missing a part or if they are not functioning together in rhythm, it will create a chain reaction that will affect the whole machine.

If you’re enjoying Low Man Help and want to support my work, please feel free to buy me a coffee or 20! LMH runs exclusively on Intelligentsia House Blend and a lot of it!

Epicenter & Problematic Coverages In Malik’s First Plan:

Malik was entering his 3rd season in the league as a first-round pick and had yet to translate his identifiable floor skill of attacking closeouts via shot or drive from college to the NBA game. He needed to show that this floor skill could translate to stick in the league.

Shooting is at the core of any project I am working on, and Malik was no different. It was the most significant area of concentration and was the linchpin to opening up space on the court for himself and his teammates. You can use the skill of elite shooting to leverage advantages inside any and all epicenters.

1. Attacking BOTH “Dare You” and “Oh Shit” Closeouts:

In Malik’s second season, he almost exclusively saw “Dare You” to shoot closeouts. He was not shooting the ball well enough to demand an “Oh Shit” closeout. 

Malik had a bad habit of not getting his last foot down on his shot prep footwork; this kept him from being able to shoot in rhythm and on balance on the catch or have any directional optionality to attack downhill.

Once you have identified the problematic coverage within the spot-up epicenter, you can focus on the details that will lead to an effective solution. We did this in two steps:

Step 1 - Getting Malik’s shot to the level where he could punish “Dare You” closeouts. Shooting… META skill… Raises all tides. 

Step one is the most important part; this is the foundation needed to build the rest of the game. Step two is all about understanding that basketball is a game of if/then decisions. So if you are beating “Dare You” closeouts with shots, then the defense will switch to “Oh Shit” closeouts to run you off the line. 

Step 2 - Be prepared for when the closeouts flipped from “Dare you” to “Oh Shit.” This meant installing great storytelling pump fake footwork and improved finishing footwork and handwork. - - I wrote a whole piece about storytelling pump fake footwork. Please check this link to it out

Malik’s third season was filled with under-control attacks that led to finishes from an array of footwork, especially goofy foot (same foot-same hand) while using both his left and right hands.

Malik’s finishing around the basket was very predictable in his second season. Everything was a right-hand finish, and his footwork was either 1-2 (outside-inside) or off two feet, which made it easy for defenders to time up his finishes and block or disrupt them. 

The two-foot thing is a hot-button topic for most, so I’ll say this. There is a difference between stopping on two feet and launching your body off two feet. Everything must be viewed in context, and in the NBA, the context of whether the player is under control or out of control usually determines success vs. failure and foul calls vs. no calls when trying to finish drives.

In 2018/19, Synergy classified his spot-up usage as 33.3% of his offense; he scored 1.216 PPP, shot 62.2% eFG in his epicenter, and ranked in the 93rd percentile among players in the league. 

2. Extra Opportunities in DHOs by beating “Unders”:

If you’ve ever watched the Jokic era Nuggets, you know that DHOs are a core action of the team's offense. 

The goal of any two-man game is to create panic thinking in the defense, leading to optionality for the offense. For a panic-thinking moment to happen, you have to create fear, and if you can’t shoot when defenders go under screens, it’s challenging to create any sliver of fear that would lead to a panic-thinking moment. - - I wrote a piece on how Steph Curry and Draymond Green create panic thinking in their two-man game. Please click this link to check it out.

In 2017/18, Malik was almost exclusively guarded in DHOs by defenders going “under” the handoff. He rarely shot when this happened and seldomly ran a re-screen. Because of that, Synergy classified his Handoff usage as only 3.7% of his offense. The opportunities were there, but he wasn’t taking advantage of them.

Another two-step improvement concept.

Step 1 -  Raising the level of Malik’s shooting. Do you see the theme here?

2018/19 DHOs vs. “Unders.”

Again, step one is the most critical part, but if you are beating the “under” with shots, then the defense will switch to “over” to run you off the line. 

Step 2 -  Install one specific footwork, catching on a skip, that would put him in rhythm and on balance to shoot vs. “under” coverages while also positioning him a half step ahead to attack once defenders started to play Lock & Trail on him in DHOs. This allowed Malik to play downhill from an advantage. At this point, the game becomes about making simple “Yes or No” reads vs. a drop big.

Does the big break his coverage to you and help up the lane? 

• If the answer is yes, then lob. 

• If the answer is no, then finish.

2018/19 DHOs vs. Lock & Trail coverage.

In 2018/19, Synergy classified his Handoff usage as 12.5% of his offense; it became his 3rd most significant epicenter behind spot-up and transition. He ran 94 more handoff actions than the prior season. To get playing time for the Jokic-era Nuggets, Malik needed to make himself a player who could play in handoff actions.

Identifying the correct epicenters, problematic coverages, and the proper “why” details within the player's mechanics is the key to using your on-court time efficiently. 

In-Season:

In-season time will always be unique and different for every player on every team. There is only one thing that will be the same: the games. They’ll play them, and that means there will be tape.

At this point, everyone involved in the development plan knows the epicenters and problematic coverages. The time on-court has been put in. It’s all about ensuring the player remembers that the games are the fun part. When the lights come on, this is when all the work in the dark pays off.

I never grade tape on results; I only grade process. I care more about the player’s read within the epicenter actions than I do about whether one specific shot goes in or not. I also do my best not to look at their season-long average stats and only use their “process grade statistics” as the ones I focus on. I have found this allows me to coach in a way that is authentic to me and connects to the player.

Keys To Building A Development Plan:

1. Do your work early. 

   If you fail to prepare, then you prepare to fail.

2. Understand the “Why.”

   Details matter. The deeper your level of understanding of The “why.” The more efficient you can be on the court.

3. Be Yourself & Have Fun

   Don’t try to be something you’re not.