34 Basketball Lessons That Will Change Your Life (Brutal Truths)

I've been able to see the game from so many different perspectives. As a player, as a coach and a trainer who's worked with players from the middle school level, high school level, all the way up to college and professional players, I've made a ton of mistakes and I've seen a ton of mistakes. So in this video, I'm going to give you 34 basketball lessons that are going to completely change the way that you think, the way that you play the game. And if you apply even a few of these lessons, it's going to put you ahead of 90% of players. Let's get into it. Lesson number one is to train perception and not just action. This is one of the biggest mistakes that players make when they're training. They get so focused on the action, which is the actual physical part of making the shot or dribbling the ball or making the layup, and they don't pay any sort of attention to the perception aspect of it. Every skill that you apply in a game, first you have to perceive what's going on. You've got to see the situation you're in. Then you have to make a decision on what the best course of action is going to be for you to be successful. And then the third part is the action. So you want to make sure you put yourself in a position to train the perception and action coupling is what it's called. And as much as possible, this means playing as much as you can. This means playing one on one. This means if you have a group of friends or teammates setting up different in game situations to be able to work on those things. If you want to get better at handling the basketball against pressure, just work one on one full court against somebody. And that way you not only work the action, but you work the perception, which is going to make your skills translate way better into games. The second lesson is that one on one with structure beats any drill. Play a ton of one on one, but get give yourself restrictions with time or with dribbles. I prefer to use time so a shot clocks. You might play one on one on the wing and you have five seconds to score, or you play one on one at the top of the key off a closeout and you have four seconds to score. But you can also go with a 3 dribble, 4 dribble, 5 dribble limit, depending on what you're trying to work on. But playing one on one is such a great way for, like we talked about, to work on that perception, action coupling. And it's really the Best way in my opinion, to get more skill as a player because of that defense that you're going to have to react to. Lesson number three, don't fear your coach's opinion. Players get so concerned about what their coaches think of them. They don't want to do something to upset their coach. They don't want to take risks in games because they're afraid that their coach is going to hate them. What you have to understand is that your coach's opinion is very temporary. It changes daily. It almost always relies on what have you done for me lately. So even if you have a bad day or a bad moment, showing up and having a couple good days can completely change the way that they think of you, can completely change the way that they treat you. And, and so you have to understand that everything is temporary. You just got to focus on stacking good days as much as possible. Lesson number four, you are always being judged. When you're on the court or even when you're off the court. People are always watching you and making split second assessments of you. I've had coaches talk to me about certain guys that they've watched on my teams play once and a lot of times they'll develop a really strong opinion on them one way or the other. Sometimes it's a negative opinion where they say I hate that this guy does this or I don't like that. They, they don't even know him, they've only seen him play one time, but they make that judgment based on the one time that they did. So always keep that in mind, is that you're constantly being assessed and even one mistake, one slip up, can take an opportunity from you. Lesson number five is handle criticism like a winner. The number one sign of weakness is being unable to take criticism or coaching specifically when that criticism comes from people who are around you a lot and have a vested interest in you being better. The coach that coaches you is going to win more games if you play better. So their criticism is usually pushing you in that direction. So if you're unable to to accept that or to hear it or to get better from it, then you're going to struggle to ever become as good as you could be. Lesson number six is master attacking closeouts. If you get really good at recognizing and attacking closeouts, you're going to get really good at driving to the paint, getting layups, collapsing the defense in for kickouts. This is one of the best ways to become an elite offensive player is to get really, really good at attacking closeouts. Lesson number seven. Is that not everybody's opinion matters. What you have to keep in mind is that if someone who's giving you advice on a team situation or on a situation that's very personal to you and they're not in practice every day with you, they're not in the locker room before and after games, they don't see everything that goes into it. They likely are missing information to actually be able to give you the correct advice or the correct direction. So anybody who doesn't check those boxes, they. Their input on a team situation for you probably won't be super helpful. Lesson number eight is to embrace difficulty. If it was easy to be great at anything, then everybody would do it. And what you have to love is the fact that it is difficult. It's really hard to be great at basketball, but that should also be really exciting to you because you know that if you're willing to subject yourself to the difficulty, not many other players are also willing to do that. So you're going to get ahead of a lot of people when you embrace the difficulty that comes with trying to be great. Lesson number nine is to accept responsibility for playing time. If you're not playing as much as you want to or feel like you should, it's probably on you. So you need to ask yourself, what can I do to make it really hard for my coach to not play me? Maybe you go and talk to your coach and ask them what you can do. But a lot of times, you know, deep down, if you ask yourself, I need to be better at this, always take ownership of these situations. That's how you actually achieve the things that you want. Lesson number 10 is that improvement usually isn't comfortable. If all your workouts and all your practices are really easy and they're comfortable and they don't challenge you that much, you're probably not getting better. A lot of times, players will brag about how much time they spend in the gym, but the stuff that they're doing isn't challenging them. So there's no. There's no reason for growth. There's no reason for improvement. So subject yourself, like we talked about earlier, to the difficulty of things and challenge yourself in your workouts, and that's how you get a lot better. Lesson number 11 is to play against older and better players as much as possible, Especially if you're a high school player. Go play against adults as. As often as you possibly can, because it's going to help you to, first of all, be playing at a disadvantage physically a lot of times, but you're also going to learn a lot about how to play the game, basketball iq, all that sort of stuff, by being around players who are more experienced than you. And then when you get back to playing at your level, you're going to be so much better for it. So as much as you can go play against older, better players, and even if you can't play with older players, or always try and find the best players you can, you can play against, make it your goal to try and be the worst player in the gym every time that you play, because you're trying to surround yourself with great players and you're going to get really, really good. Lesson number 12 is to move without the ball 95% of the time on offense, you're not going to have the ball in your hand. So if you want to score more, you want to be more impactful, you've got to get really good at this. And also, coaches love players who know how to move up the ball. They know when to cut, they know you know how to screen, all those sorts of things. And your teammates are going to love playing with you as well, because you're not just going to create for yourself, but you're going to create opportunities for them as well. Lesson number 13 is that basketball IQ can compensate for physical limitations that you may have. So if you are smart and you know how to play the game, you can overcome a lack of size or athleticism. And it's very much in your control, which is why every player should spend so much of their time focusing on improving their basketball iq. And if you want something that can help you with that, I have a free guide down below on how to get better twice as fast. We really dive into how to develop your basketball iq. And when you do that, combine that with the stuff that you're working on on the court, you're going to get better way faster. That is linked down below, completely free. Make sure you check that out. Lesson number 14 is that confidence is built through action. So if you have a lack of confidence in any sort of situation, the reason for that is because you don't have the belief that you have what it takes to be successful in that situation. That's all that confidence is, is the. The belief that you have what it takes. So what you need to do is subject yourself to that situation over and over and over and over again until you start to recognize how to be successful, until you develop that belief that you have what it takes. That's where confidence comes from, is going back to that. The difficulty piece. It's hard to do that. It's hard to go into a situation that you're uncomfortable in until you find a way to be successful. But that's what it takes right there if you want to build confidence. Lesson number 15 is that relationships matter most. The relationships you build with your coaches and your teammates are matter so much. Don't let this be something that's on the back burner for you. When I think about where I'm at now and a lot of the opportunities that I've had, it's come from coaches that I had back when I was playing, coaches that I met through coaching and the teammates that I had playing. And so understand that if you really press into building good relationships with those people, you never know what could come from that and how valuable that could be to you down the line. Lesson number 16 is that game skills are what matters. So if you can be in an empty gym and make a bunch of shots and do all these crazy dribbling drills, but you go into a game, you're not making shots and you struggle to handle the ball, you're not skilled. So you have to make sure going back to the first point, the perception, action, coupling, you've got to play more, play more one on one, go against defense more often. That's how you build skills that are going to translate into in game success. Lesson number 17 is that pressure and training is what leads to growth. So give yourself goals, give yourself pressure in your drills. I, I've got to make this amount of shots, I've got to go three for five at this spot. I've got to make three in a row. I've got to get this done in this amount of time. And that way you learn to play through pressure because basketball games are filled with pressure. And you know that if you play in a game, there's a lot riding on every shot you take, every move you make. So apply these same things to your training so that you learn how to handle them so you are better at executing those things you get into games. Lesson number 18 is that failure is necessary. A lot of players are so afraid of failing and they don't want to to go into a game and mess up because they don't want their coach to bench them. They don't want to, you know, not make the team. They don't want to not get another opportunity. And so they avoid putting those in positions where they might fail. But you have to be willing to run towards failure. And the best players, like I mentioned, are willing to run towards things that are uncomfortable and do it over and over and over again, even when they do fail, until they find a way to succeed. So you've got to be willing to run through that uncomfortable situation or opportunity. You have to change your mindset to understand that failure is a part of it. It's a necessary part of it. You got to run towards it. Lesson number 19 is that shooting is not about perfection. One of the biggest mistakes that players make when they, when they work on their shooting is that all they do is work on perfect situation shots. So their feet are perfect, the speed they shoot at is perfect, the pass is perfect. They're in an empty gym with no defense, and then they wonder why. They get into games and all these different factors can go wrong. There's pressure, the pass comes from a different angle. It's a little high, it's a little low, There's a closeout. So the shots a little bit rushed. They catch it and their feet aren't quite clean or, or their hands aren't quite clean. And they wonder why they struggle to make shots and games because they don't work on shooting through imperfection. You should spend a lot of time working on shooting shots that are imperfect. They're rushed off a bad pass with your feet kind of messed up. And adding those constraints to your shooting drills is going to make them apply. It's going to make your shooting work much more applicable to your games. Lesson number 20 is the three pillars of success. If you can shoot, if you can defend, and if you can make good decisions consistently, you. You're going to be a good player. Those are the areas that you have to ask yourself, hey, can I do these three things? And is everything that I do working towards being great at these three things? And if so, you're probably going to be pretty good. Lesson number 21 is constant ball handling. If you want to get really good at handling the basketball, the ball has to be in your hands all the time. So just constantly freestyling, constantly experimenting with the ball every single day, just taking 10 minutes and just dribbling around, dribbling in a general area, working on dribbling full court. The more time that you just spend with the ball in your hands, freestyling, experimenting, mixing things up, the better you're going to be. Lesson number 22 is to be grateful. You have opportunities, and you're probably in a position that a lot of players would love to be in. And it's very easy to overlook that when you look around and you see, oh, I want what that guy has, I want what that girl has. And it's easy to to overlook the things that you do have. And when you don't appreciate those things, a lot of times you don't maximize them. And so you give up the power that you do have in your situation. So you always want to be grateful for the things that you have in the position that you're in. Lesson number 23 is train explosively. So if you want to get really athletic and basketball athletic, lift heavy weights, compound movements, bench press, shoulder press, squats, those sorts of things. And as often as you can, work on sprinting, work on jumping really high, trying to touch something as high as you can. If you do those things consistently, you're going to become a way better athlete. Lesson number 24 is to keep going. The players that succeed are not the ones who are necessarily just given everything. It's the players who are are able to put themselves in a uncomfortable spot and maybe fail, maybe struggle through it. But even when they have a bad day, they're able to show up the next day and do it again. And even if they're bad that day, they show up and they just keep on going. The ones who succeed at the end are the ones who are able to just keep going, even when things are difficult and they don't see the light at the end of the tunnel. Be that player who just always shows up day after day. Lesson number 25 is to know everyone's job. If you really want to be impactful on the court and you want to be a player that has to play and that makes everybody better, know everybody's job. Know your own job first of all. But then be able to say, I know that that guy's supposed to do that on this play, and he's supposed to do that. And on this defense, he's supposed to do that. When you do that, it makes you so much more valuable as a player. Lesson number 26 is that teaching deepens learning. They say to teach us to learn twice. So how you can use that is that if you are able to teach something to somebody else, whether it's one of your teammates, whether it's, you know, a younger player or a player who maybe is a little bit behind you, just taking times to do that is going to allow you to understand that thing better, and it's going to make you a better player. I always talk about how I've gotten better at basketball since I stopped playing and I stopped training myself because I spend so much time teaching it and learning it that I've had to really understand it at a deep level and allows me to better apply myself when I'm actually on the court. You can use that same thing to your own benefit if you find opportunities to teach as well. Lesson number 27 is to communicate with your coaches. So ask for feedback, ask questions. When you do this from a genuine perspective of wanting to be better or wanting to understand things more, your coaches will appreciate that, they'll respect it, and they'll trust you more because they know that you're invested. Lesson number 28 is that visualization is incredibly powerful. So just visualizing yourself having success on the court, making shots, making plays, whatever, getting stops on defense is such a great way for you to be able to get those mental reps which are going to translate to better performance on the court, a higher level of confidence. So this should be something that's part of your daily routine. Taking five, 10 minutes and just visualizing being successful in different situations is something that can absolutely transform things for you. Lesson number 29 is that in season strength training matters. A lot of players will lift all offseason and they get to November and practice starts and games start and they stop lifting. But then as the season goes on, they get weaker and weaker. So when you're, you get to the playoffs and you're February or March and you're supposed to be at your best, you're actually at your worst that you've been the whole season because you're at your, your physical weakest point. So you're continue to maintain what you have throughout the season, lifting once or twice a week, probably lighter if you're playing a lot or practicing a lot. But you want to make sure that you don't just let that go by the wayside when the season starts because you want to be at your best the whole year. Lesson number 30 is that drills don't replace playing. A lot of times players want to get better and they say, okay, I'm going to lock myself in an empty gym the whole summer and then I'm going to come back and be way better. But drills don't replace playing. Like I said, the best way to get better is by playing one on one with constraints and going out and playing as older and better players. So don't think that drills by yourself are a replacement for playing. You're ultimately trying to get better at the game of basketball, and we do that by getting really, really good at playing. So you got to play as much as you as you can to, to be prepared when you get back to your games. Number 31 is that purpose drives consistency. If you feel like you are not consistent on offense, you don't score at the level you want to score at. It's probably because you don't have a purpose. You're not playing with purpose. Are you looking for opportunities to cut off the ball with purpose? Are you looking for opportunities to use screens purposefully? Are you, are you hunting closeouts to attack? Trying to create advantages for your team? When you do those things, you become way more consistent and offense becomes so much easier. Lesson number 32 is that basketball builds life skills. There's other things failing when it comes to the game of basketball. Even if you don't achieve the things that you want to achieve. If you work really hard, you learn how to chase after a goal, you learn how to show up when things are difficult, how to work through adversity, you learn how to be coachable and how to take advice and criticism and use it to your advantage. That's going to translate to you being a really productive human being in any area for the rest of your Life. Lesson number 33 is to value people who tell you the truth. A lot of times your friends, your family members are in your corner and they might not always tell you the truth in order to protect the way that you feel about something. So you got to understand that a lot of people aren't going to tell you the truth. So when you find people who tell you the truth, whether it's a coach, whether it's a certain person that you know, value that person and seek that person's advice as much as possible because the truth is ultimately what's going to help you the most. And lesson number 34 is to read books. By far the best way for you to develop yourself mentally is to read books about basketball. Read books that you think are interesting, read self help books. That's what is really going to help you develop yourself mentally and that's going to translate to more success on the court. A couple good examples are how to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday, Toughness by Jay Bilis. Books like Atomic Habits or the Inner Game of Tennis are also great. But really reading anything that you find interesting is a great way to develop yourself mentally. Hopefully these lessons resonated with you. Drop in the comments down below if anything stuck out to you specifically. And like I mentioned earlier, top link down below in the description I've got a guide that's going to help you to get better at twice the rate you're currently getting better at. Completely free. So make sure you check that out. Talk soon. Peace.