About This Site

Building a Curriculum, One Question at a Time

This website documents my journey to better understand Indonesian basketball and, eventually, to build a basketball development curriculum built for Indonesia.

I'm a medical doctor who returned to Indonesia in 2026 after spending more than a decade in Chicago. Having been away from Indonesia for so long, I also understand that I cannot simply return and assume that I already know what Indonesian basketball needs.

Before I can write about how players should be developed, I first need to understand how basketball is being taught, practiced, and experienced here today.

So I decided to take on a project that I know cannot-and should not-be completed quickly: to develop a basketball curriculum that is systematic, evidence-informed, practical, and relevant to the realities of Indonesian basketball.

I expect this journey to take three to five years.

And I don't want to spend those years simply sitting behind a desk and writing.

Before Writing, I Need to Understand

Indonesia is a large country with different basketball cultures, coaching environment, facilities, resources, athletes, and ways of teaching the game.

A curriculum built for Indonesian basketball should begin by understanding Indonesian basketball as it actually exists.

That means reading research, studying established basketball and athlete-development systems, and learning from coaches and practicioners who have spent years working on the court.

But research papers and textbooks can only tell part of the story.

I also need to observe.

Over the coming years, I plan to visit basketball clubs, academies, schools, practices, tournaments, and basketball communities across Indonesia. Some visits may be arranged. Others may be unannounced and anonymous, allowing me to observe training environments as naturally as possible.

The purpose is not to judge individual coaches, academies, or programs.

It is to understand.

What are young players being taught?

How are fundamentals introduced?

How does a coach progress a skill from beginner to advanced?

What problems appear repeatedly?

What are we already doing well?

What might be missing?

And where might we do better?

Those observations will create questions.

The questions will lead to research.

Research will influence practice.

Practice will create new questions.

That process is what this website is about.

This Is Not a Finished Curriculum

What you read here should not be treated as the final answer.

It is work in progress.

I will publish ideas while they are still being developed. I will share chapters from the curriculum, observations from the court, research that changes my thinking, coaching concepts I'm experimenting with, and occasionally ideas that I may later discover were incomplete-or simply wrong.

Some chapters will be rewritten.

Some terminology will change.

Some ideas will survive years of testing.

Others will not.

I think that is how this project should be built.

Rather than disappearing for five years and returning with a finished book, I want to document the process as it happens, so that players, coaches, trainers, parents, researchers, and anyone who cares about Indonesian basketball can follow the journey.

Research. Observe. Question. Test. Refine.

My medical background taught me to respect evidence.

Basketball taught me that evidence alone is not enough.

What works in a laboratory, a textbook, a professional organization, or another counter still has to survive contact with the court, the athlete, the coach and the environment in which it is being applied.

So the curriculum I'm trying to build will sit somewhere between science and the basketball court.

Research will provide the foundation.

Observation will provide context.

Coaches and athletes will provide experience.

Practice will test the ideas.

And time will tell us which ideas deserve to remain.

The goal is to make it useful.

Integrity. Discipline. Rigor.

Three principles guide how I want to approach this work.

Integrity - Who You Are.

To stay honest with myself, my work, and the people I serve. To be clear about what I know, what I don't know, and what the evidence can and cannot support. If an idea I believe in turns out to be wrong, I should be willing to change it.

Discipline - What You Do.

To keep showing up and doing the work, especially when the work is repetitive, difficult, or unnoticed. Reading, observing, documenting, testing, revising, and returning to the court again and again.

Rigor - How You Think.

To question assumptions, examine evidence carefully, compare ideas, look for weakness, and avoid accepting something simply because it is popular, traditional, or sounds convincing.

These principles are not standards I claim to have perfected.

They are standards I intend to hold this project to.

Integrity in who I am.

Discipline in what I do.

Rigor in how I think.

Why Document the Journey?

Because I believe the process may eventually become as valuable as the curriculum itself.

If this project takes five years, this website will become a record of those five years-the questions, mistakes, conversations, observations, revisions, disagreements, discoveries, and lessons that shaped the final work.

And perhaps, along the way, someone reading this will ask a better question than I did.

Perhaps a coach will disagree with something I write.

Perhaps an athlete will show me something I failed to understand.

Perhaps an idea that looks food on paper will fall apart the moment in reaches the court.

That is part of the process too.

This website is not meant to document someone who already has all the answers.

It is meant to document the work of finding better ones.

You are not arriving here at the end of the story.

You are arriving while it is still being written.

Welcome to the journey.