Ethan Khoza explains that players perceive the game only through their own capabilities—'affordances'—and that physical traits and experience change what actions are visible. He advises expanding perceived opportunities by watching skilled players (e.g., Chris Paul) to add solutions to your repertoire and increase your capacity to act.
Chapters
You only see the game of basketball through your own capabilities. You don't see past your own limitations. This is due to a term called affordances. Basically an opportunity for you to act. A seven footer has different affordances than somebody who's five, eight. Shaq had different affordances. He had different opportunities to act than Isaiah Thomas did. An experienced web developer is going to see a piece of website code way differently than I'm going to see it. They're going to see opportunity in that. I'm going to see nothing. We're looking at the same exact thing, but we see see completely different opportunities. An average high school point guard, they're not going to see the same opportunities that Chris Paul is going to see. How can you expand your capabilities and give yourself more affordances to act on? Watch how certain players handle different situations. You're going to start to recognize more opportunities to act. Watch how Chris Paul handles a ball screen situation. You might have been in a similar situation. You've never seen a solution that he saw and now you've noticed it and now, boom, that's something you can put into that solution bank. And now you've expanded your capacity to perform right there and now you might have another affordance.
