Tuomas Iisalo reveals practice concept that changed Paris Basketball / News - Basketnews.com

Going all-out for a short period of time both in matches and practices to then rest and do it against later on has changed Paris Basketball's game, Iisalo says, providing an example with TJ Shorts, who recently became the EuroCup MVP.

Credit: Paulius Peleckis/BNS Credit Paulius Peleckis/BNS

Paris Basketball is one of the most dominant EuroCup teams in recent memory, losing only one match throughout the entire season. Their head coach, Tuomas Iisalo, says one practice concept helped the team change its ways.

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When Iisalo left Telekom Baskets Bonn last year after getting to the Basketball Champions League (BCL) final, he brought a number of his players to Paris Basketball. With them already familiar with Iisalo's practice concepts, it helped the team flourish.

Namely, the Finnish coach demands his players to give maximum effort for shorter periods of time and substitutes them, so they can do it again later in the game.

"It depends on what you're used to. You'll get used to basically anything. I think that's a good definition of human beings. Our practices imitate this, so we also work in this type of fashion," Iisalo said in an interview with SKWEEK. "In practices, very intense effort is required for a certain amount of time. Then, you rest, and then you do it again, and rest, and do it again. I know when we first started doing it last year in this extreme way, the players were somewhat surprised by this."

Coached by Iisalo, TJ Shorts became the BCL MVP in 2023 and the EuroCup MVP this season, even though he was initially doubted by many due to his seemingly lackluster height for top competitions.

Shorts has told Iisalo that this method of practicing helped bring the best out of him.

"I talked with TJ, for example. He thought it was crazy at the beginning. At the end of the season, he said it was a complete game-changer once you got used to it when you could give everything you had, and you never had to think about saving [yourself]," the coach explained. "It kind of turbocharged the whole idea, and it made a lot of those concepts like on steroids. Because of that factor, it's not fatigue, it's not muscles, it's quite multi-dimentional. That was one of the things that helped in that regard."

Full Iisalo's interview with SKWEEK:

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