The son of a coach, Alec Peters of Anadolu Efes Istanbul spent his childhood doing drills for his father's coaching clinics and all that worked helped him become the player he is today.
Alec Peters, Efes: 'I was my dad's guinea pig'
Interviews
4 mins read
Alec Peters of Anadolu Efes Istanbul always wanted to play basketball. As a kid he played, but his future career would take a giant step forward, one that he did realize at the time, when his father, Jeff, volunteered to run a recreational program for 32 basketball teams in the Chicago area.
When Jeff Peters started creating coaching guides for those teams, he knew he needed someone to practice the drills with so that he could teach them around the area. Enter Alec.
"My dad ran a lot of basketball coaching clinics for coaches in the area that I am from," Peters said. "And I was always his test subject, his guinea pig, in terms of showing coaches different drills. Doing a lot of practice stuff with him, I was always the one that had to tag along and perform everything!"
"Honestly, it felt like we did a hundred of those practices!"
During those years, Peters would perform some drills that were designed for kids a couple of years older than him. He would follow his dad around and do them all, no questions asked. They practiced the drills in private until they were perfect to be presented in public to the coaches that attended the clinics.
"Honestly, it felt like we did a hundred of those practices! It felt like every weekend growing up, until I went to college, we were always doing something," Peters recalled. "He was heavily involved in the local sports programs, especially basketball. So we were always involved in doing something with them."
As they say, practice makes perfect, and the sheer repetition of those drills helped Peters build solid foundations that would step up his game, little by little.
"It would be very similar each time. But each time I did it I knew I was getting better at it," Peters said. "All the ball-handling drills, the shooting drills... being able to move your body in different ways. We were doing it over and over again and it almost made itself happen. That's why a lot of those things I did with my dad are sort of habits today."
Peters grew and was recruited to play college basketball at Valparaiso University starting in 2013. His numbers there rose season after season until he finished his senior year in 2016-17 with 23.0 points and 10.1 rebounds, to the point where University of Kentucky coach John Calipari said that to guard Peters one had to "go to church and light candles and stuff".
"It's something I've been doing since I was really young. I will always do it."
All those drills he practiced with his dad in those sessions not only made him a standout college athlete, but have carried over to the present day. His career progression was a slow burn, but his methodic approach to the game and his hard work took him to the professional level, where he still uses those old drills he memorized as a teenager.
"Warm-up is still some basic stuff and a lot of the guys do similar things, ball-handling wise, shooting wise," Peters explained. "It's something I've been doing since I was really young. I will always do it."
Peters regards his warm-up routines before games almost as a ritual and he makes sure that everything is in place before starting the action, just like he has been doing since he was a young player helping his dad teach basketball.
"Making sure I have the same amount of shots, the right amount to go off for the game. Practice wise it depends on... sometimes you get there late and it varies a bit."
Jeff Peters has since retired from coaching. He helped Alec get to college and did the same with his younger sister Anne. However, Jeff still follows the game, especially his son's career in Europe, where he made his debut with CSKA Moscow in 2018-19.
"It's all new to him. It's something that he never watched or experienced before," Alec said of his dad. "But he's very smart, he loves the game of basketball and he's enjoying it, he enjoys watching me play and he's always there to criticize me when I need it and also to pick me up when I need it as well."