Welcome to the KAI Report - the deepest study of Kyrie Irving’s skill-sets ever performed. We tracked 10 consecutive games, 649 possessions, and reported every skill used. Amazingly, Kyrie Irving performed 176 unique skills in just 10 games.

Each possession, every dribble, every step, and every technique was tracked and reported, allowing us to better understand the skills and techniques used by the world's most skilled basketball player.

 

THE PUNCH DRAG

Drag Stop: "The ability to stop on the outside leg, while leaving the inside foot behind as an anchor."

Punch: "An urgent, reactive, protective, and shortened pound dribble."

One of the reasons we conducted this study, was to compare what a player like Kyrie Irving uses in the game, to what we most often train for in the game.

For this reason, we are calling attention to the Punch Drag. Now, a Punch Drag is the act of punching the ball down during a Drag Stop, and is a skill we certainly train for in our program.

But to our surprise, Kyrie Irving, who is often considered the most skilled player on the planet, didn't use the Punch Drag all that much. Consider the numbers below, as you watch the video:

Total Drag Stops: 38

Punch Drag: 12

Punch Drags per game: 1.2

In a span of 10 games, Kyrie Irving used a total of 176 unique skills. In my opinion, this means that all 176 of those skills have value. But what should our approach be when we discover that a skill we most often train for, might actually be low on the list of usage?

Well, for me, I'm proud to say that this finding even further backs up our Checklist Training System. You see, in a span of 10 games Kyrie stopped just around 25 times per game and he used 19 different kinds. That means a player like Kyrie can't overly rely on any kind of stop footwork. That's one of the reasons we have had so much success with our Checklist Training System and our Footwork Checklist.

We don't pick and choose our favorite footworks, but instead make sure all players experience the variety needed to play the game of basketball with freedom. And as it relates to the Drag Stop, we should make sure that players are working on all the varieties of Drag Stops possible.

Instead of singling out our favorite "Punch Drag" footwork, we should recognize that 14.8% of Kyrie's stops utilized some kind of Drag stop. It's the variety that seems to matter the most!

This suggests that players should work on normal Drag stops, Inverted Drags, Under Drags, Cross Drags, Drag Pickups, and of course, Punch Drags, and should check them off one by one so that they can better respond in the flow of the game.

For more on these footworks, you might want to take a look at our Footwork Checklist #1, where we work on these varieties in detail.

With all that said, however, if we do in fact come face to face with a set of footwork that has usage which dominates the rest, it is our responsibility to make sure we prioritize that footwork in our training.

But we will go over that next!