Episode 249: Ben Taylor, Challenging New and Old Basketball Concept

Guest: Ben Taylor, Founder of Thinking Basketball

The founder of Thinking Basketball Ben Taylor joins the Basketball Podcast to challenge and dive deeper into new and old basketball concepts that can help our coaching.

Ben Taylor is the founder of the Thinking Basketball YouTube channel, podcast and author of Thinking Basketball the book. In all his platforms, Taylor goes deeper on basketball analysis, history, philosophy and theory. Thinking Basketball challenges a number of common beliefs about the game by taking a deep dive into the patterns and history of the NBA. He explores how certain myths arose while using our own cognition as a window into the game's popular narratives.

He is a behavioral scientist who loves basketball. He has had his blog in some form or another since 2011. Since then he has developed a bunch of historical metrics, hand-tracked hundreds of games, tried to start a basketball data company, written a book about basketball and cognition, and started creating podcasts / YouTube content about the NBA.

Breakdown

1:00 - Difficult Concepts

5:00 - Cognitive Scientist

8:00 - Applied Science

11:00 - Not Connecting Perception

13:30 - Data Gathering

15:00 - Evaluating Their Defense

17:00 - Old vs New School Thinking

20:00 - Advocating Coaches

22:00 - Lob Pass

24:30 - Passing

28:30 - Yoga