Have you seen many practices?
Some guys on here used to go for years and years, and write about it on this board and its predecessors.
They stayed open for a very long time, really until the Melo Center.
I'm not one of the hard core guys (and you know who they are ...), but I've seen enough practices to know some things. In my experience, practices have a lot of sameness to them. A surprising amount, really.
I think part of the advantage of keeping the system the same is to try to allow the players to play naturally on offense, and cohesively on defense. It's about moving as a group on defense, and its about running the break and running simple, but repetitive sets on offense.
They scrimmage a fair amount, as you might expect, especially if the "teaching" part of the practice is going to be mostly drills and seemingly basketball "basics".
I guess he knows what he's looking for in practice, but I think you learn more when they are scrimmaging, and even more still when they are playing in real games. That's why I think it's important to play your bench more than he has been willing to do these past few years.
A big part of it is continuity from class to class. In our glory years, we seemed to always have 3 key guys coming back from the previous year - a big who might take the next step but was reasonably decent, a guard who can either score or handle the ball (or both), and a wing who can attack on the dribble, run the break and hit the 3.
For years and years, we returned those kinds of building blocks to establish the next year's foundation.
Lately, it seems like a couple kids who we could use the next year always leave early - and gallingly, seldom get drafted! I mean, it kills your continuity, and we see what we (and much of college basketball) have become.