PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — As the expansion Portland Fire prepared for their first WNBA season, players were introduced to a new training concept.
Fire coach Alex Sarama has written a book on the method, called the Constraints-Led Approach, and the Fire have become something of an incubator for its use in the league.
So what is it?
It means no more repetitive drills or step-by-step routines. Players are forced to think and be creative, to problem-solve under
duress. Think controlled chaos.
“Essentially, it’s all about, how can we practice with the most variability to replicate what players have to do in the game? Because as soon as they go into a game, we don’t know what the opponent is going to do, and we don’t know what’s going to happen in the next repetition. So the players have to make their own decisions, and they have to problem-solve the whole time for the environments that they find," Sarama said. "CLA is all about very specifically, very intentionally, putting them in these environments in practice instead of doing drills.”
So far, the Fire players are intrigued.
“The main part is he puts us in situations in practice that are so game-like, so that when someone throws something at us in a game, we’ve already seen it,” said guard Sarah Ashlee Barker. “It’s a lot of read and reacting. But he’s teaching us how to do it, because he puts us in those situations to do it every single day at practice."
Sarama was hired as the Fire's head coach in October. He came to the expansion team from the Cleveland Cavaliers, where he was an assistant under Kenny Atkinson.
“I figured there was amazing potential and just such a unique opportunity to do this and show the world what happens when you think a little bit differently and you don’t follow tradition and do things the way they’ve always been done," Sarama said about leaving the NBA for a startup project in the WNBA.
The Fire and the league's other expansion franchise, the Toronto Tempo, had a shortened timeline to prepare for the season because of the drawn-out negotiations over a new collective bargaining agreement. So Portland's quickly assembled roster has had little time to absorb Sarama's philosophy.
At Fire practices, small-sided games are the norm, shot clocks are shortened and the emphasis is on speed. During one drill he told players: “We’re going a million miles an hour, but that’s by design.”
Sarama wrote a book about the method: “Transforming Basketball: Changing How We Think About Basketball Performance.” And he's certainly not the only one to employ CLA.
Los Angeles-based skills trainer Noah LaRoche has worked with Kelsey Plum and Russell Westbrook, as well as NBA teams.
And CLA is not limited to basketball; The method has been used in other sports, including baseball and soccer.
“With a CLA approach, it’s all about giving the players more autonomy," Sarama said. "Instead of saying you must do this movement, or I want to teach you this two-ball dribbling and do the same dribble over and over, or do this move to finish, it’s more we’re creating opportunities for them to be the decision-makers. We’re going to create environments where you’ve got to find the best solutions. I’m not always going to tell you what they are as the coach.”
And that's part of Sarama's approach, too, letting the players lead.
“He knows what he’s talking about,” guard Sug Sutton said. “He has a lot of intent to what he does, and that’s just going to carry over to us, and it’s just going to continue to allow us to have fun and bring that intent to practice.”
In theory, the training results in better adaptability to different offenses and defenses during games. Los Angeles Sparks coach Lynne Roberts said many WNBA teams employ some aspects of CLA within practice, but Sarama is all-in.
“They play a very unique style, and credit to them, they kind of take you out of what you're doing,” said Roberts, whose team faced the Fire in the preseason.
Whether Sarama's approach yields results during the first season remains to be seen. The Fire intentionally signed players who fit within that vision, including many with experience overseas. Portland opens the season on Saturday at home against the Chicago Sky.
Sarama sees the Fire as a long-term project. As with any expansion team, the results might not be there at first.
“I think as an expansion team, if we want to be the most competitive team we can be, we have to be doing things differently,” he said. “If we’re copying every other team in the league, we’re probably doing something wrong. So if we want to get the community of Portland behind us, and we want to become the best team we can in the shortest amount of time, we need to push the boundaries of innovation.”
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