Ultimate and basketball
How my skills transferred between sports
What's the best sport to play to build ultimate-related skills?
Back in 2020, on his Coach Speak podcast, Jody Avirgan asked Stanford coach Robin Davis about how skills from other sports transfer to ultimate:
In your opinion, is there a particular kind of athlete that best translates to ultimate, from a particular sport?
Robin replies:
Lots of athletes make good ultimate players. But I will say, if I had to choose, I would choose a basketball player...
And I'm not even thinking the tall basketball players. I'm more thinking about, I love the way basketball players play defense. I love their footwork, and the way they can shuffle and drop step. I feel like basketball players have good footwork that translates well to small space defense.
A number of my blog posts are tagged "ultimate and basketball". I'm not going to argue that basketball is the best background to have—it's a subjective question and there are lots of sports out there. But I thought it would be interesting to talk in depth about how basketball skills transfer to ultimate frisbee. Many of these skills aren't unique to basketball. So understand that I'm not saying "other sports don't have this"—I'm just saying "basketball has this" (and this and this and...).
The concepts below are in no particular order—feel free to skip around if you'd like.
Getting open on offense
Many of my posts that mention basketball talk about getting open on offense.
2023 Mixed Offensive Player of the Year Travis Dunn plays basketball multiple times a week, including during frisbee season. I asked him what skills he thinks translate to ultimate and the first thing he replied was "I think the most notable connection is body positioning..."
That's a really fitting answer, because I've already posted an example on my blog of how Travis uses great body positioning. (see: Walking before cutting)
Basketball taught me to set up my cuts before I start running. Walking or jogging can be used to draw your defender away from the space you later want to attack, and can be used to subtly gain a positional advantage before the cut even starts. Getting in close to a defender can 'seal them off' from the space you eventually want to cut into. Watch this clip of Travis setting up his cut in an AUDL game:
Now compare that to NBA star Jayson Tatum:
They both get on the 'deep' side of their defender (the side closer to the goal). Then they slow down and get close to their defender's body, sealing their defender off from the space. Finally they burst into the space as the pass is released and get an easy goal (bucket, in Tatum's case).
I think The box-out dump cut is one of the best articles I've written. Although I don't use any basketball examples in the article, the concept is very basketball-adjacent. Using the shape of your cut to box out your defender is a subtle skill—it's rarely taught but it separates the best players from the ones who can't consistently get open.
Here are a few more subtle cutting skills that I've written about:
Basketball players learn to cut hard when their defender looks away from them (see: Notice when your defender isn't noticing you).
Basketball players learn to get into positions where their defender will have trouble tracking both them and the ball. (see: Walking before cutting II)
Basketball taught me that I needed to be paying attention at all times—there are no good times to mentally zone out when there's a good passer on your team. (see: Be ready for the pass at all times)
Basketball players know that sometimes the best way to get open is to start by lulling your defender to sleep before exploding. (see Feign boredom to keep the defense unprepared)
Basketball helped me learn to tailor the speed of my fakes to the speed of my defenders — quick defenders might fall for a quick fake, but you should simply blow by a slow defender. (see: You can only fake at your defender's speed)
One cutting skill that I've never written about is attacking a certain side based on the angle of your defender's body.
I couldn't quickly find a perfect example of this in a frisbee context, but here's a Reddit thread where one commenter's cutting tip is "...attack my [i.e. the defender's] hips and feet...". Here's an Ultiworld article that suggests "Turn a defender’s hips and you almost always gain two steps on them". So this is a relatively well-known concept, though perhaps no one has written an optimally clear explainer (should I?).
This skill is familiar to anyone who's played basketball at a high level. In basketball, we talk about attacking the defender's "top foot":
To explain briefly: if you run across the front of the defender's body, parallel to their chest, they can slide along mirroring you without changing the direction their body is facing. But if you run past their shoulder (perpendicular to their chest), they'll be forced to swivel their whole body around to stay with you, as highlighted a few seconds into the clip above.
The give-and-go is effective both on the basketball court and on the frisbee field. I was running give-and-gos when I was in third grade. I have a post on the give-and-go — The go-to give-go resource — although basketball isn't mentioned in that post.
YouTuber/frisbee star Jack Williams has a video called "The BEST Way to get Open Upline in Ultimate Frisbee". He points out the similarity between the hesitation/stop-and-go move used in basketball and the effectiveness of a similar move in Ultimate. Start with a forward motion, then convince your defender you're backing up—get them to commit to defending your backwards motion. When they do, you sprint forward again towards the goal.
On a more abstract level of playing offense, basketball—among other sports—taught me the value of an offense having open space and using fast breaks. (see: Putting your whole offense in the endzone is bad, actually)
They say that in basketball, it's easier to score playing 2v2 than 5v5. The same is true in frisbee—good offenses should use space advantages whenever they can.
Playing defense
Robin Davis focuses on the defensive skills that transfer from the basketball court. I've written about a few of those skills, as well. This section will have less examples, but more important examples—huge, overarching concepts instead of small tricks.
The one skill I haven't written about (but tentatively plan to) is the one Robin mentions—footwork. Being able to shuffle, backpedal, and switch your hips quickly lets you stay in good position and continue to observe multiple parts of the field. As I wrote in How to avoid injury: my best guesses, tracking data suggests that NBA players spend only 15% of their time sprinting forwards, and the other 85% moving in other ways — shuffling and backpedaling, mainly.
I absolutely believe that I spend more time backpedaling/shuffling than the vast majority of frisbee players I know. This skill is huge for my ability to make an impact on defense. It's so much easier to take in the whole field when I can face the whole field (or, as Travis Norsen says in Play With Your Brain, face the space). Basketball gave me the skills to do that while still moving fast enough to guard my assignment.
The next big defensive concept is playing help defense. If you haven't already, read my essay/rant Defense is for stopping the other *team*. Frisbee is a team sport—playing defense is a team activity. If the other team scores, you haven't succeeded, even if the person you were "assigned" to "guard" didn't catch the disc.
Recently, Ian at bettereverydaycoaching posted 2 Advanced Defensive Concepts. The article's first concept is, in his words "One and a half person defence", or as he explains it, "fully concentrating on guarding your own player but when they are inactive giving as much help as you can while still being able to recover."
I couldn't help myself from continuing my rant in his comment section, saying:
#1 isn't (or perhaps I should say: "shouldn't be") an "advanced" defensive concept. It's just defense. The only thing that matters on defense is getting a turnover before the other team scores. No one gets brownie points for staying arbitrarily close to their matchup for long enough. If the other team scores, you don't get brownie points because it wasn't *your matchup* who scored. Defense is inherently help defense. You have to evaluate the entire offense's best options and take them away.
If they can teach help defense to 12-year-old basketball players, it shouldn't be that hard for college-age frisbee players to learn help defense.
As I show in Defense is for stopping the other *team*, help defense—exactly the "sagging off inactive players" concept he's talking about—is taught to middle school basketball players.
It's a concept so simple it's taught to 12-year-olds in basketball, but in frisbee, a guy who's coached some of the best adult club teams in Europe thinks it counts as an "advanced" concept! I feel like I'm taking crazy pills, as they say.
When I first started playing frisbee, my first year practicing with a club team, the captain said I was "one of the best poachers [he's] ever seen". I had been playing frisbee for about a year. All I was doing was positioning myself the way I would in a basketball game.
Travis Dunn agreed, telling me, "The way you play lanes defensively is very similar...I learned it as 'ball you man' principle, which basically meant being between the ball and the guy you're guarding while being able to see both".
In basketball, another basic rule of playing defense is "stay between your man and the basket". See, for example, this article. This article and this YouTube video go into a bit more detail about the way basketball players triangulate between their assignment, the ball, and the basket (as in 'ball you man').
I don't deny that forcing cutters deep can be an appropriate choice (especially against certain throwers). But so many frisbee players give up goals because they don't appropriately value protecting the endzone way more than protecting less valuable the parts of the field. I've written about this briefly both in Defense is for stopping the other *team* and in Be good at frisbee, not just frisbee-like things.
I mentioned above that I've been told I'm pretty good at poaching. My poaching style uses "stay between your man and the basket" as a core principle. I get way more blocks playing help defense on a deep cut than I do guarding my own assignment on a dump cut. It's worth giving something up to make it harder for the other team to catch it in the endzone.
Robin Davis talks about basketball players having excellent "small space defense", and think that's true. One specific example comes to mind given the theme of this section. Basketball taught me to be good at playing dump defense as well as I could without making it too easy to get beat for an upline cut.
In basketball there's something we call a backdoor cut. If the defender tries too hard to keep you from getting the ball far from the basket (in frisbee: the dump space), you can make a hard cut to the basket (in frisbee: upline/towards the endzone) and get an easy score with your defender out of position. Here's an example:
Years of basketball taught me over and over again to ask myself, "how hard can I play defense here without risking getting burned for something easier over there?"
Another defensive concept that relates to help defense is constantly checking in on both the ball (or disc) and your assignment. Look at the way NBA player Draymond Green plays defense in Oodles of OODAs (another essay that I think is one of my best). Because help defense is expected in basketball, you need to split your attention between multiple points. This basic ability to just notice things is often lacking in frisbee players.
Sagging off your assignment without losing track of them. Noticing a deep cut start at the same time as your assignment starts cutting towards the disc. Seeing where the thrower is looking without losing track of the cutter you're guarding. Noticing more things enables great plays on the frisbee field.
I think basketball is the near-optimal sport for this skill. Sports where the teams are separated, like tennis or volleyball, won't really build this skill. American football is too complex and chaotic, and while there are opportunities to notice-and-help, most players do fine just focusing on their assigned task. Soccer is similar to basketball, but because the field is so large, the opportunities for help defense are reduced—in basketball you might end up playing defense on opposite corners of the court with a couple seconds, as in this recent clip on r/NBA. The smaller playing space encourages more switching, and so requires more noticing and constant adapting (but I encourage you soccer nerds to convince me I'm wrong!).
On a strategic level, the way I like to play zone defense is influenced by what I saw NBA teams doing. (see: My summer league zone defense). "Guarding the other team's best player" isn't the only thing you can do with your best defender. Sometimes it can work even better to have your all-star defender guard a weaker player on the other team—freeing them up to wreak havoc playing help defense.
Miscellaneous
Let's end with an assortment of smaller ideas.
First of all, basketball is one of the few sports that use a pivot foot. Basketball players pivot the roughly same way we do in ultimate — a righty pivots on their left foot. Pivoting is used differently in the two sports but as a general introduction to the concept, basketball may be better than any other sport. I believe frisbee players with a basketball background are better than average at not traveling—dragging their foot when they pivot to throw—because basketball forces you to actually pivot cleanly or risk an immediate turnover.
Another concept that is shared-but-different is boxing out. Of course, boxing out in ultimate is non-contact and thus there will be a learning period for basketball players to learn to box out well in ultimate settings. But any player who has learned good box-out technique in basketball will have an advantage over many frisbee players in positioning to catch deep throws.
The wrist flick of shooting a basketball probably translates reasonably well to throwing a forehand in frisbee:
I'm not saying a flick is all that much like shooting a basketball! The larger motion it's contained within is obviously very different. It'll still take a lot of practice to learn to throw a frisbee. I'm just saying basketball players probably have relatively good "wrist flicking muscles" and good touch when using a wrist flick motion—with enough practice that'll eventually transfer.
Above I talked a lot about getting open but not about decision making with the disc. Basketball helps me on the frisbee field because it strongly encourages split second choices between a number of options. Too many frisbee players are only able to consider one option at a time. They're either looking to the open side, or they're looking to throw a dump pass.
Every basketball player is expected to be able to consider multiple options at once: do I shoot, or pass to the left, or pass to the right? (Not to mention that you have to do all that while dribbling a ball you're not looking at!) You need to be able to read the defense and choose your best option at the last moment, as Chris Paul does in this clip:
I use a similar skill with the disc in my hands: I'm never completely focused on any one option. Instead, I'm observing both multiple teammates and multiple opponents, considering all my best options at once and deciding at the appropriate moment. I'm comfortable keeping all my options open as long as necessary, just as a basketball player does when deciding to shoot or pass.
This decision-making-when-passing is probably most similar to a quarterback in American football. But in football, quarterback is one of twenty-ish positions. In basketball, every player is expected to engage in this sort of decision making.
Another disc-in-hand skill: basketball (along with American football) taught me how to use my eyes when passing to draw defenders to the wrong position, before throwing it somewhere they weren't expecting. (see: You, too, can look off defenders)
And basketball, obviously, teaches you to jump. What could be more like skying for a disc in ultimate than jumping to rebound a basketball at its highest point? I can jump higher and time my jumps better than most frisbee players without a basketball background.
Update (2023-12-06):
Here are a few more connections I either forgot or didn’t think of until after I posted the article:
In basketball, there’s a baseline expectation that everyone will be capable of using their off hand—at least for layups. Ultimate frisbee could use more of that energy. I think the expectation of being able to shoot off hand layups helped inspire me to become more ambidextrous before I ever started playing frisbee.
In the section on getting open on offense, I forgot to include my article Pretending to call for the disc—a trick I first learned in basketball and use often in frisbee.
I also forgot to include that boxing out for a rebound in basketball taught me to focus on my man even when there’s a temptation to ball watch, as I discuss in Defending the dribble.
It turns out I’m not the first person to suggest throwing a flick is like shooting a basketball. Ben Wiggins mentions it in the RISE UP Ultimate episode on throwing forehand: