As the Detroit Pistons make a run at their first NBA playoff appearance since the 2007-08 season, one Wayne State University alum was on the court for the team’s last NBA Championship in 2004.

Arnie Kander spent 23 seasons as the Pistons’ strength and conditioning coach, an innovator in the field who designed and developed the team’s training area in its practice facility to meet the physical conditioning and developmental needs of NBA players. And it all began with an interest in WSU’s physical therapy program.

“I loved the physical therapy program because it was very neurologically based,” said Kander, who graduated in 1987. “I was especially intrigued by the way the mind connects with the nervous system to create muscular movement. And I appreciated Mabel Sharpe, the director of the program at that time, who was a very open and direct teacher.”

Kander, who left the Pistons in 2015, is now vice president of sports performance for the Minnesota Timberwolves, where he focuses on keeping healthy a Timberwolves team that has struggled with injuries to key players over the past several seasons. In the 2014-15 season, Minnesota’s record was 16-66, the worst in the NBA. The team is marginally better this year.

“Some people may see my job as a challenge, but I look at it as an exciting opportunity,” Kander said from his office in Target Center, the T-Wolves’ home arena. “I see myself doing more teaching than anything else.”

That teaching involves instructing players about everything from basic movement patterns to healthy eating. Kander has been a vegetarian for the past 10 years, and recently has been studying the benefits of a raw food diet.

“Cooking vegetables kills off vitamins and minerals,” he said. “Research has shown that a raw food diet brings remarkable changes in people with cancer, diabetes and auto-immune diseases. I’d like to be totally vegan, but I’ll occasionally eat salmon or other fish,” he said, then adds a laugh. “Sometimes it’s hard to get good protein on the road.”

The Dance of Sports

If Kander had his way, ballet lessons would be mandatory for every basketball player.

When Kander was a high school athlete, he read that Willie Gault, a wide receiver for the Chicago Bears, credited ballet classes with improving his vertical jump by 5½ inches. Intrigued, Kander checked out a ballet class offered by a local troupe.

“I watched the leaping and glissades (a gliding step) and thought, ‘This is how basketball players jump.’ Except basketball players end their jump with their feet parallel, whereas in ballet, the dancer’s feet are turned out. Plus, ballet and basketball have the same fluidity of movement.”

Kander joined the Virginia Ballet Company, but left after three years due to a knee injury. During rehab, he bombarded his physical therapist with many questions about muscle movements that the specialist couldn’t answer. Determined to find out more about muscle action, he began researching the biomechanics of movement, which led him to study physical therapy at Wayne State.

After graduation at WSU, Kander interned at California’s Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center, a neurological hospital that specializes in treating patients with brain and spinal cord injuries. Later, after working as a physical therapist in several clinics, the Pistons hired Kander in 1992 to be the team’s first strength and conditioning coach. In addition to working for the Pistons, he consulted and developed conditioning programs for several Detroit-area professional and amateur athletes and entertainers.

Building a better athlete

Kander’s work on isokinetic (training at a constant speed) strength testing and jump training has appeared in physical therapy journals, and he has contributed to research projects at Oakland University, Michigan State University and other schools.

Using his system and exercises he developed, he’s asked if it is possible to “build” a better basketball player. “Of course, everything can be improved,” Kander said. “You literally slow everything down to reinforce movement patterns.”

The key, he explains, is — like the punchline to the old joke: practice, practice, practice.

“A good player continues to practice the simple movements that many younger players today wouldn’t think about doing, because they think it’s beneath them,” he said. “Every day, the great players go over the simple movements – passing the ball, dribbling, jumping and running. And they keep doing those things at slow speeds, so when they’re in games where everything’s speeded up, they’re ready to move with the flow.”

Warming up before games is just as important for professional athletes as it is for weekend warriors who play friendly pickup games. Most injuries he sees — ankle sprains and lower back soreness — occur because people don’t warm up properly before exercising.

“So many people literally run out the door and start jogging,” he said. “They don’t give their soft tissues a chance to get pliable. A good warm-up is to jog in place, or do some spinal twists while standing to lubricate the spine. Then, afterward, do some simple calf and hamstring stretches.”

Andy Miller, founder and president ASM Sports, a sports agency, said he is glad Kander came to the Timberwolves – after all, one of his biggest clients, 15-time All-Star Kevin Garnett, plays for the team.

“In my opinion Arnie Kander is in a class by himself as an athletic trainer,” Miller said in a press statement issued by the team. “He has been a major contributor to the physical and mental well-being of all the players he has worked with. I have been most impressed with his dedication and the level of care he has provided my clients.”

Kander reflects on those words, and then said, “My biggest compliment is when I see players that I’ve coached become coaches themselves, and are teaching the things I’ve taught them. That’s awesome – they’ve internalized my ideas and made them their own.”