What happens when one career takes you from college basketball and the NBA development system to Hollywood movie sets and an NBA Basketball School in Dubai?
Hernando Planells joins Nick Elam to share one of the most unusual sports career journeys we’ve featured on Sports Rule Pod.
Today, Planells serves as Technical Director of the NBA Basketball School in Dubai, where he oversees hundreds of young athletes and a large coaching staff. His approach goes well beyond skills and X’s and O’s, focusing on decision-making, character development, confidence, adaptability, and helping coaches become better leaders.
His path to Dubai was anything but linear. Planels has coached at the professional, college, international, developmental, and national-team levels, with stops including Duke University, the NBA D-League, Japan, New Zealand, the Philippines, and Illinois. Along the way, he experienced wins, firings, career changes, and moments that forced him to rethink what effective coaching actually looks like.
Then the conversation takes another turn.
Planels is also a sports creative director who has helped make athletic scenes look authentic in movies and television. His credits include Coach Carter, Semi-Pro, Spider-Man 3, Grown Ups, Swagger, Running Point, and many others. He explains how actors are trained, how sports action is choreographed for the camera, and why even a few seconds of basketball on screen can require days of preparation.
He also shares stories about working with stars including Samuel L. Jackson, Channing Tatum, Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell, Ben Affleck, and Tobey Maguire, while explaining the surprisingly complicated process of making sports look natural on screen.
In the Innovation Segment, Nick relays one of the simplest sports rule changes yet: ban yellow shoes and yellow gloves in the NFL and college football so viewers stop mistaking them for penalty flags. He gives the proposal a +9 on the Sports Rule Pod Good Idea Scale.
The Unlayered segment looks at how New York Giants teammates Jaxson Dart and Abdul Carter navigated a political disagreement without allowing it to divide their relationship or their team. And in the Next-to-Last segment, Nick steps outside the world of sports to revisit the intense penultimate scene of the 2007 film Michael Clayton.
#BasketballCoaching #SportsCareers #SportsMovies #SportsInnovation #NBABasketball #SportsRulePod
What You’ll Learn:
How Hernando Planells built a basketball career across multiple countries and levels
Why he believes coaches need to keep evolving just as much as players do
What the NBA Basketball School in Dubai is trying to teach beyond basketball skills
How sports scenes are choreographed for movies and television
What it takes to make an actor look believable playing a sport
Why Nick wants yellow shoes and gloves banned from football
How disagreement can stay civil without either person abandoning their beliefs
Timestamps & Chapters:
00:00 – A Dreamer’s Finish Line
00:38 - What’s ahead on Sports Rule Pod
02:20 – Hernando Planels and the NBA Basketball School in Dubai
06:30 – Developing players and coaching coaches
13:00 – A basketball career across the world
22:00 – Duke, the NBA system and international coaching
31:00 – How coaching philosophies change over time
36:30 – Breaking into sports choreography
41:00 – Coach Carter, Hollywood and training actors
47:00 – Making sports scenes look authentic
44:42 – Ban yellow shoes and gloves from football?
47:19 – How teammates can disagree without creating division
53:19 – The next-to-last scene of Michael Clayton
About Hernando Planells:
Hernando Planells is the Technical Director of the NBA Basketball School in Dubai and a longtime basketball coach whose career has included college, professional, developmental, international, and national-team roles. He is also a sports creative director who has helped choreograph and produce authentic sports scenes for movies, television shows, and commercials.
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