The NBA's shooting surgeon comes to Killarney with a mantra: The best can still get better

Embiid, Tatum, Beal...Drew Hanlen is the right-hand man for a host of basketball's sharpest shooters. He's ready to share his expertise here

Trusting the process: Philadelphia 76ers star Joel Embiid has raised his game to new heights this season — thanks to the help of Drew Hanlen. Picture: Getty Images

A bit like Paul Young, wherever Drew Hanlen lays his baseball cap that’s his home, which means this particular afternoon that we catch him it’s Philadelphia.

Joel Embiid, who is on course to be the NBA’s leading scorer this season, just as another client of Hanlen’s — Bradley Beal — was last year, has a game in a few hours against one of the other titans of the league, Giannis Antetokounmpo and his reigning world champions, the Milwaukee Bucks. Like with every player on his books, Hanlen communicates daily with Embiid, over Facetime or Zoom, chatting, texting, breaking down video together but the pair of them figured it would be a neat time for the leading personal strategic skills coach in the sport to meet up and see in person why many believe his Frankenstein is the most valuable player in the league this year.

Last night they met in Embiid’s house to go through some more game film. And once Hanlen is off this call promoting his upcoming coaching tour of Ireland, he’ll be taking another from Daryl Morey, president of basketball operations of Embiid’s Philadelphia 76ers and considered the most influential and leading analytics head in the sport. To again break down the figures, discuss and explore the most nuanced of details, to help one of the best in Embiid get even better. Both on and off the floor Embiid has openly canvassed to be recognised as the season’s MVP and Hanlen is similarly committed to giving the Cameroonian the best possible chance so that can become a reality.

“I always say my clients are trusting me with their biggest dream,” says Hanlen, who with his bearded look and affable demeanour could pass onscreen for Kevin Love, another but more recognisable NBA head also approaching the age of Christ. 

“I take that responsibility very seriously. It’s why I don’t sleep much at night, why I do all this film study. When you have people that are trusting you with their biggest dream, you feel obliged to do everything in your power not to let them down.”

That’s why today home is Philly. And tomorrow it’ll be Boston where another client and MVP candidate, Jayson Tatum, plays.

It used to be St Louis, Missouri. It’s where he grew up, went to high school and won a state championship, and then played in college where in his senior year he shot the second-highest percentage from three-point range in all of Division One college basketball. But when he started to teach and show others, like a teenaged Beal, the workouts he’d do to become such a deadeye shooter, he soon found he was only spending about 20 days a year in St Louis.

The bed he sleeps in most is in LA. That’s where most NBA players gravitate to during the summer. Those like Beal whose teams missed out on the playoffs (which start this week) usually are ready to get back in a gym and work on their game by mid-June, about the same time whoever wins the title are being showered in tickertape and champagne. And even those champions are good to go again in some LA gym shortly after the fourth of July, a full three months before the whole show starts up again and Hanlen finds “I’m just on the road with whichever client needs me most at that time”.

Next week his cap will be in Ireland; first on a hotel bed in Dublin, then in Killarney. During the first lockdown James Weldon, coach of the Irish senior women’s team, connected with him to the point Hanlen gave a brilliant online workshop to Claire Melia and Co. on how he and Beal broke down nine distinct ways he could score the ball. Now Weldon is bringing Hanlen over to Ireland. Not only does he believe that basketball coaches and players can benefit from his expertise and methods but so could those from other sports.

Hanlen himself agrees, having borrowed from and studied other sports. “I’m a nerd when it comes to that. And when you look at the practice habits Tiger Woods had on the golf course or Michael Phelps had in the pool or Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant had on the court, the thing they all had in common was that they relentlessly worked on game skills and then got game results. They relentlessly mastered the fundamentals so they could excel when they were out there in competition. The best way to gain confidence is by consistently practising and doing the things that you’re going to need to do in games over and over again.

“So my whole thing is game skills gets game results. Work on your game skills and you’ll get game results. Everything I do with a player is super-game-like, very game simulated-based.”

It’s how he used to practise himself. By his own admission he wasn’t the most athletic or the tallest, but he carved out a great high school career and a good college one by outworking or at least outsmarting others in how he practised. Before he ever heard skill acquisition terms like ‘deliberate practice’ and ‘purposeful practice’ he intuitively applied them. Then he taught them to a young teenager from his own town: Beal. He would then vouch for another kid from their home state: Tatum.

“I shot 48.2 percent from three in my senior year in college simply because my practice was more purposeful than most guys,” says Hanlen. “It doesn’t matter if you look better in a workout. It doesn’t even matter if you do better in practice. All that matters is when it’s game time are you producing? Are you improving?

“All I did was simulate exactly what was going to occur in a game. Go at exactly the same pace, at exactly the same angles, with the exact same physicality. I’d use live defenders. And that’s what I do with the guys now. Every year we prioritise what areas of the game they want to improve on to take their game to the next level and then break it down into very small chunks, what we call the microskills. The skills within the skills, the little nuances of each skill.

“I think a lot of players go through the motions. They go through drills but they don’t master all the ins and outs of the moves. They think of workouts as getting a sweat, working hard, getting up shots. Whereas what we try to do is have a very detailed focus so that we don’t leave the process up for chance. We know what the work is going to produce and that’s why the guys get results.”

They certainly are. Beal was last season’s leading scorer while this season Hanlen has another six players among the top 40 scorers in the entire league. Leading the way is Embiid. Tatum became the first player since LeBron James to win three Player of the Week awards in the space of the month. Tyler Herro, who only started working with Hanlen last summer, is expected to win the league’s Sixth Man of the Year award as the most impactful bench player. Zach Lavine became an All Star for the first time this year. RJ Barrett was the one shining light of New York’s season.

It hasn’t been all smooth for them. Earlier in the season Barrett hit a slump. Boston too were in a rut with commentators like Bill Simmons theorising that Tatum was aping too much the midrange game of his idol Kobe Bryant. Hanlen though helped guide them through the storm.

“I always say I’m like a basketball surgeon where whenever they need to fix something they fly me in and we make those corrections and adjustments. All through the season I’ll send them a video breakdown with voiceovers after every game to basically explain what they did well, what they could do better, but sometimes you’ve to go further. At the start of the season Jayson was struggling with his jump shot so I spent a lot of time in Boston. JJ was struggling for a bit so I went up to New York. Tyler felt he needed a bit of a tune-up during the [February] All Star break so I went down to Miami.

“Sometimes it can be because there’s a different scheme or adjustment that teams are now throwing at you. Jayson has gone on this run and so teams are now throwing double-teams at him that he hasn’t seen. So that’s where we dive deep into the film so he can make sure that he’s ready for anything that’s thrown at him.

“Obviously through the years we’ve looked at the analytics just like everyone else know it’s more valuable to get layups and free throws and threes than take midrange shots. But I always laugh when people say Jayson has studied Kobe Bryant too much. Kobe won five championships. Is that not the goal – to win championships? Michael Jordan, Dirk Nowitzki, Dwyane Wade: they were all midrange dominant players. The best players on championship teams carry their teams. And Jayson can do that, because he can score from everywhere, including the midrange. But how he’s now really impacting winning is by being a playmaker for his teammates.”

That’s where he likes to get with a player: That it’s less about fixing and simply maintain, tweaking, improving. Embiid has been on a tear all season yet wanted Hanlen in town for the visit of Giannis because, as they like to say, the best time to fix the roof isn’t when it’s raining.

So that’s why the pair of them will meet up on a day the 76ers aren’t playing; after the team might train from 10am to about lunchtime, Hanlen and Embiid will return to the facility that night, possibly with a couple of 76ers player development coaches who Hanlen liaises with (“It’s important we’re pushing the same messages”). And it’s why David Clifford, a big hoops fan and a Fossa man like Weldon, might pop in to see Hanlen when he’s in their neck of the woods on Sunday week. Because as Hanlen says: “The best can and want to still get better.”

· Drew Hanlen will coach and present in the Oblate Hall, Dublin on Saturday April 23 (2.45-5pm) and in the Killarney Sports and Leisure Centre on Sunday April 24 (5.15-7.30pm). For more details contact [e-mail]