3 Reasons You’re Underperforming (And How to Fix It)

So you're in the gym, you're putting in the work, you're staying committed and consistent, but it still feels like your game isn't where you know it should be. I myself dealt with this as a player, and it wasn't until years later, when I can look back at what I was doing, be able to pinpoint certain mistakes, that I was able to figure it out. And I hear from players every single day who have this same problem. So if you feel like you're capable of more and you can't figure out what's holding you back, this video is going to change how you approach your training and playing in your game so that you see actual, real results on the court. So let's talk about the real reasons why you're not playing up to your potential, and then I'll tell you exactly what you can do about it. And I guarantee you, if you shore up these three areas that we're going to talk about, it's going to completely change your in game results. There's a saying that says in order to get what you want, you have to deserve what you want. So all three of these things are about developing you into the player that deserves that success, whether that means you want to score more points, you want to create more consistently for yourself or for your team teammates, you want to play with a high level of confidence, and you want to have consistent success on the court. In order to get those things, you have to first become that person who's deserving of that. And if you do these three things, you'll be on that path. So the first question that you have to ask yourself is, are you good at the situations that happen the most. Chances are when you're training, you're working on your shooting, you're working on your ball handling, working on your finishing. So when I ask this question, I. I'm not talking about those general things where you can say, yeah, I work on my shooting, work on my ball handling, and if I do those things, then I just play better in games. But if you can't get specific and you can't pinpoint and say, okay, these are the situations that happen the most frequently in games, and here's how I've prepared myself to be successful doing those things. If you can't answer that question, then you're really at the mercy of luck and that's a horrible place to be. The first question that you have to ask yourself, you have to get really, really clear on, is if you're hunting the right opportunities when you're playing different situations that make up the game of basketball. Now I even continue. The biggest problem, and a problem that I had for sure as a player and that a lot of players have now is that their answer to this question is that they don't know. They don't know what they're hunting, they don't know what their purpose is on offense. They're just kind of going out there and hoping that what they've worked on is going to lead to them having in game success. And that's, like I said, a terrible place to be. If you have a lack of purpose on offense, it's going to lead to inconsistent results at best, and at worst, it's going to lead to insane amounts of frustration because you're not going to be achieving at the level that you're probably capable of. Now this can sometimes depend on what it is that you're good at and what type of player you are. So if you're a point guard, the situations that you're going to hunt because of whether it be your, the skills that you have or maybe you don't have a lot of height is going to be different than what somebody who's a five is going to hunt because they're going to have a different set of skills, they're going to have a different physical profile. And so this can, this can change a little bit depending on what your position is and how athletic you are, how big you are. But in general, there's a lot of situations that are going to happen over and over and over and over again that you have to get really good at identifying and knowing how to take advantage of. Probably the two areas that are the most important to be able to identify and to be able to hunt are catch and shoot threes, first of all. So this can come off of a driving kick, come off of an extra pass, could come in transition. There's a million ways to get to it. But that is the most important shot in basketball for you to be able to make, especially if you are a guard or a wing or somebody who's on the perimeter consistently. So you have to make sure that the work that you're putting in has that in mind. And this is why I've been on the tangent of saying that 80% of your skill work should be focused on shooting, should be focused on shot making. It should be very purposeful as well. So making sure that you're not just getting up volume, but that all the shots that you take in your workouts are purposeful. So is there pressure Involved, Are you saying, okay, I got to make three shots in a row, adding that level of, of pressure and weight to the shots that you're taking, Are you working on shots in different game situations? So pin downs, coming off of an extra pass, coming in transition, pull ups, are you working on those things? And then are there constraints to add challenge and to help help improve your ability to be adaptable and handle imperfections? Are you working on shots coming off of bad passes, shots you know, where you're shooting a little bit faster as if someone was closing out to you, shots where your feet are a little bit off, maybe your hand placement's a little bit off. And if you can check all those boxes in your shooting drills, that's going to translate to more in game success as a shooter. And like I said, cash and shoot. The number one opportunity that you should be hunting, and if you don't feel comfort, confident yet in your ability to make that shot, then that should be priority number one for you in your training. The second area that's so important to hunt and the opportunity that is going to present itself all the time, every possession, usually multiple times a possession, is that you have to hunt closeouts to attack. Players will DM me or, you know, players that I coach will say, coach, I, you know, I'm struggling to drive to the basket. You know, I don't know what to do. I need to work on my ball handling more. Like, what am I like? I don't know what to do. And a lot of times it's because these players don't go out hunting specific opportunities to do that. They just think that they should be able to do it whenever and they don't know. So if you go out there not knowing when to apply your skills, having the skills doesn't matter. And players will say this to me and they have great ball handling ability and they're good athletes and they still are frustrated trying to figure that out. The best time to drive is when a closet's coming at you. You've got to look to hunt those opportunities. That's how you're going to get downhill, get to the rim. How do you get downhill, get fouled on your drive, make it to the free throw line and the bonus or whatever. That's how you get downhill, get paint touches and get kickouts to your teammates for open shots. And that's how you become a really good creator for your entire team right there. And if you get good at doing that, you're going to be a super valuable player on offense. I Can almost stop the video there. If you're a great catch and shoot three point shooter and you're really good at recognizing and attacking closeouts, then you're going to be successful on offense. You're going to be valuable in any team you play on. Now, like I said, going from this, it can depend a little bit on what you're good at, what position you play. So you know, if you're a point guard and use a lot of ball screens and you can make that three pointer coming off a ball screen, well, that's an opportunity for you to hunt right there. Maybe you're really good in the mid range, so you look to get to mid range, pull ups coming off of a ball screen, whatever. You have to be able to assay yourself. But when you go into your games, there needs to be two or three things at least. And for most players starting out, probably two or three things that you have in the front of your mind that you're hunting. All right, I'm looking to do this and that might mean you're not going to do everything. But the thing is, if you focus on trying to do everything and trying to recognize every single thing that's going on, you're probably going to miss a lot more than you're going to actually recognize. Another huge opportunity for you to hunt if you want to score more points is looking for opportunities to move without the basketball. So it starts off with being able to use pin downs effectively off ball screens, recognizing when to tight curl when your defender is chasing you over, understanding when to backdoor when they overplay it, when, when to flare out to the the perimeter when you have those opportunities, knowing when to 45 cut to the basket, knowing when to back door cut when you see that your defender is in help and is focused on the ball. Great opportunities for you to hunt as well, to be able to steal easy points every single game. And then running in transition is another great way, another great opportunity for you to hunt, especially if you're a more athletic player and it's something that you already do. But looking for opportunities to say, hey, we pull a defensive rebound, I'm going to win. The first three steps towards half court, put myself ahead of everybody else and I going to see if I could steal some points and hunt those opportunities as well. You have to go into your games with a purpose, with a focus. You have to know what it is you're trying to hunt that's going to lead to you being able to apply your skills, apply things you work on at a Much higher, much more consistent level. Now, if you want to learn how to hunt these things, you want some more examples of that. I have a free basketball IQ masterclass link down below where we dive into these things and even, even more in depth. We talk about a couple more things. They're going to help you to be more purposeful on offense and find more ways to score, to create for yourself, for others, and to go into games with the confidence of knowing that you understand, hey, I'm not going in here hoping that things work out for me. I'm going in here with a purpose, knowing that if I can execute, I'm going to score points, I'm going to be able to be consistent. So like I said, that's top link down below in the description. Completely free. Now, the next way that you can make sure that you play up to potential in games is, is it's almost backwards and it almost seems counterintuitive. But I think the expression that really works for this is that the harder you try, the harder it becomes to actually do that thing. There's a million examples of this in life. The harder you try to get somebody to like you, the more they're going to dislike you. The more they're going to distance themselves from you. The harder you try to force an opportunity to happen, the more likely that the opportunity isn't going to happen. And so a lot of times what you have to do is you have to take pressure off of yourself to be this insane scorer and score 20 a game, be the best player and never make mistakes and always be consistent. You have to find ways to take that pressure off of yourself. Because when you put all that pressure on yourself, you're going to try really, really hard, and it's probably going to be less likely that, that those opportunities naturally find you. So one of your big focuses should be on how you impact the game without scoring points. The reality of it is if you can find multiple ways to impact the game without scoring points, it's a twofold thing. First of all, scoring is going to come more naturally to you. You're going to have more opportunities come your way. You probably had a coach that told you that, hey, the ball finds energy or points find energy, where the more that you're doing, the more likely that good things are going to happen to you. But even bigger and going back to what it is that you want, which is to have a good offensive performance, more that you impact the game without scoring, the longer you're going to have to be on the floor because you're adding value. And when you're on the floor longer and you gain momentum doing these other things, you get more opportunities, you're going to be there, you're going to be around more, and you're just going to have more things that come your way. So can you defend at a high level against your position? Can you switch on to different positions and and still play with a high level of toughness on defense, a high level of energy? Do you rebound well? Are you really technical? Do you make sure that you box out? Keep your man off the offensive boards? Do you finish possessions on that end? Do you do a good job making quick decisions with the ball? When the extra pass is open, do you make that pass? When the advanced pass is open in transition, do you advance the ball? Do you space the floor well on offense, do you relocate well to open up driving lanes for your teammates? Coaches love players who impact the game without scoring because a lot of times those things go unnoticed to the outside world, but to the people who are around. They understand that players who impact the game in a variety of different ways that aren't scoring usually are the players who have the biggest impact on winning consistently at a high level. And that means there's less pressure on you. Because even if you're playing horrible on offense, you can't make a shot. You're missing layups. If you are still on the other end getting stops, getting rebounds, moving the ball well, making the right decisions, you're still adding value. So now all of a sudden your floor becomes still good. Even if offensively you're not making shots, you're still going to be a net positive for your team because you do all these other things well as well. And a lot of those things are very controllable. You don't ultimately control the ball going in the basket because I always use the example, you know, you might be in one gym and the hoop is 9 foot 10 and on a 10 foot rim the shot would have gone in, but on that rim you missed it or you know, and this is kind of a facetious example, but imagine that, you know, you're in a gym and the air, the AC is on really high and so you know, it blows the ball out of the way when you shoot it. And in a different gym where the AC is not on, the ball would have gone in, but in this gym it happened to miss. There's a lot of external factors that you don't control that can go into you making or missing a shot, but you can always control your Effort on the boards, your effort defensively, your ability to move the ball, make the right decision. Those things are stuff that you control and that you can be great rate at every time you're on the court. And the third way to make sure that you start to play up to your potential in games is to see defense more often. You can do all the training in the world and it's important that you do, and you can be in the weight room getting better. But if you're not actually going against defense, playing pickup games, playing one on one, being able to learn how to apply those things, you'll have all those incredible tools in your toolbox and you're going to get to the job site, you're not going to know when do I use that tool, when do I use that one, when do I change to the other one? Because you haven't actually learned how to apply those things. And that that's what you do whenever you play, live play is when you learn what actually works for you. Because what works for one player might not work for you. Everybody's a little bit different in terms of how big they are, how athletic, just how your brain works in general. So if you go and you're working on the same moves as, as your teammate, well, they might go and be able to execute those things, but you might have to execute it slightly differently because it works better for you. But you only learn that through the experience of seeing a defender and having to make that adjustment for yourself. You need to spend more time in the lab. And I want to like, define that because everyone says, oh, I'm getting in the lab to do the work, but you have to actually approach it like that. Where the lab is, is where you conduct your experiments and you're going to figure out a lot of what works for you and a lot of what doesn't work for you. But then when you figure out what doesn't work, you, you can ask yourself, how do I adjust that? Or what could I have done a little bit different when I'm in that same situation? And then you learn again how to apply those skills that you've been working on so hard, how to actually make that turn into in game results. If you don't do this, you're always going to feel a step behind. You're always going to be inconsistent in one slight change in a game or in the way a defense plays. You can completely throw you off. And like I said, the game of basketball is so chaotic and it's so unpredictable and it's so imperfect. And so you got to learn how to handle those things. Handling that is a skill in and of itself, just like shooting is, just like ball handling is Being able to handle chaos and imperfection is a skill. And you develop that in the lab, experimenting, figuring out what works for you. That's how you become an expert and somebody who sees results consistently. So if you do all three of those things, it's going to allow you to unlock that potential that you have. You're putting in the work and you're not seeing the result that you want. A lot of times it just goes deeper down to changing the way that you approach things and then changing who you are. In order to get what you want, you have to deserve what you want and you have to become the person, the player who's deserving of those things. Like I mentioned earlier, check out my free basketball IQ masterclass down below to learn how to hunt the right opportunities, develop your basketball IQ and your confidence overall to completely new level. Top link down below. Appreciate you for watching. Talk soon. Peace.