the "hoops whisperer"

A nickname which leads to the end of a corny title from an interesting WSJ piece by Hannah Karp on Idan Ravin, a personal trainer for NBA players...

Idan Ravin, a soft-spoken, intensely private 38-year-old former lawyer from New York with no formal basketball playing or coaching experience has achieved an unlikely distinction. He's one of the NBA's most sought-after personal trainers....

Though he doesn't know who started it, Mr. Ravin's nickname in NBA circles is "The Hoops Whisperer."...

Ravin works with many NBA'ers, including Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul, Gilbert Arenas, Jason Richardson, Steve Francis (his first client), and Elton Brand.

Mr. Ravin's goal is to create so much chaos and stress on a player during workouts that the physical game becomes less cerebral and more automatic. He uses a combination of humbling psychological tactics and exhausting, unorthodox and sometimes spontaneous drills. He's been known to fire tennis balls at players while they're dribbling or make them stare straight ahead while dribbling two balls in each hand in uneven rhythms and walking from side to side. In one particularly exhausting drill, Mr. Ravin throws 25 balls, one at a time, in different directions. The player's job is to catch them after only one bounce and then shoot....

Raised as an orthodox Jew by an Israeli mother and a Russian father in Washington, the 6-foot Mr. Ravin played pickup games while studying finance and marketing at University of Maryland. After law school he started coaching boys basketball at the local YMCA in San Diego to take his mind off his dreary day job as an attorney. Soon, jealous kids from other teams began infiltrating his practices, and parents began calling to thank him.

Three years later after moving back East, he began working out with a group of basketball players he'd known in college and putting them through some of the drills he'd devised for his 12-year-olds....

Mr. Ravin, doesn't own a gym. He doesn't have employees and advertises his services on a modest Web site. He doesn't offer weights or strength exercises and focuses only on a client's weaknesses. He works on a sliding scale, asking his clients to pay what they think is fair. Some players say they might pay $1,000 to $2,000 to keep him on retainer for a week, though Mr. Ravin says occasionally he gets paid in meals or shoes.

Lance Young, Mr. Paul's agent at Octagon, now foots the bill for most of his young clients to train with Mr. Ravin before the draft. The agency pays Mr. Ravin roughly $5,000 per player.

To make ends meet, Mr. Ravin operates a group of ethnic dating sites from his laptop -- including Ethiopian Personals and Eligible Greeks....