4 Reasons You’re Underperforming in Games (And What to Do About It)

One of the most frustrating feelings as a player is underperforming in games. If you're struggling to play your best, we're going to go through four reasons that are causing that for you. Maybe you've put in a ton of work in the offseason, your team is relying on you, maybe people believe in you, maybe people don't believe in you, and you feel like you have a job to prove them wrong or show them what you're capable of doing. And yet you feel like every time you go on the court, you're not quite playing up to what you're capable of doing. Right now we're going to talk about four things you can do to fix this problem so that you can go out and play with a high level of confidence. You can score more points, make more plays, and at the end of the day bring your best performance every single time that you step on the court. Let's get into it. The first reason why you underperform on the court is because you don't make enough of the easy plays. So I think when players specifically think about underperforming with shooting or with scoring just points in general, they think about, oh, I'm missing shots or, you know, I'm not able to create for myself or, you know, they think about stuff like that. In reality, the best scorers are the ones who can score simple points most frequently. The players who can score layups and free throws the most frequently tend to be the best scorers. They tend to put up the best numbers because scoring is easier. And the easier it is, the more consistent you're going to be doing it. Right? So if you lack consistency scoring the basketball, chances are you're just not creating enough or getting enough simple scoring opportunities. And so that's the first thing we have to fix. We have to start scoring easy points. We have to think about creating what's called a scoring baseline. So we essentially want to be able to say, hey, we can bank on for Most players like 6 to 8 points per game on easy points. Now we'll dive into a little bit on how to do this, but if you want like a full in depth resource that's going to tell you exactly how to add 6, 8 points per game to your scoring average. Right now I, I have a free basketball IQ Masterclass, top link in the description down below. It's an hour long and you can easily add six to eight points per game right now just by applying the stuff that we talk about inside this masterclass. So completely free. Check that out. Down below, we go even more in depth into some of these things right here, really. When I think about creating this scoring baseline, though, and scoring more easy points, there's three areas that I think you need to be focused on if you want to make sure that this happens. Number one is, as a player, when you catch the ball, your goal has got to be to get as many paint touches as you can. Okay? So a lot of players struggle to score consistently, but they never get to the paint. And if you want to start scoring easy points, which is free throws and layups, you're going to have to go to the paint at some point. Okay? So your goal needs to go from, well, I got to score this amount of points or that amount of points or this. You got to start thinking, okay, I got to get two paint touches each quarter. And what this will lead to is sometimes when you get to the paint, you get a paint touch. You're going to be able to shoot it and you're going to get a layup, you're going to get fouled or whatever. But a lot of times when you get to the paint, someone's going to draw in on you, you're going to have help in there, and then you're going to kick out and create for your teammates. Okay? So not only are we talking about scoring here, but just making you more valuable in terms of creating plays for your teammates. You have to get more paint touches. So if that's not something you've thought about, just. Just giving yourself a challenge of saying, hey, I got to get three paint touches per quarter and just watch how many more points you score, how many more plays you create for your teammates. When you make that, your goal of getting to the paint, drawing in the defense, and if they don't come in, lay up or foul, and if they do, you can kick it out. The second area that we can look at when it comes to creating that scoring baseline is transition. Specifically, when you don't have the basketball, we want to think about if your teammate pulls a rebound or they outlit it, to know whoever the point guard is or just somebody else on your team and you don't have the ball, you want to think about winning the first three steps to the other end of the floor, right? If you can be the fastest with those first three steps, you're going to be ahead of a lot of people. You're going to be open for some advanced passes in transition, right? You've got to treat that early, that initial, like, split second that your team gets the Defensive rebound, It's like the most important part of the game for you because what matters is you winning those first three steps, that race to half court, you, you got to win that in that first split second, you guys get that rebound and it's going to put you in a position to, to, to catch advanced passes, get layups, and again, easy points in transition. And if we can do that once a quarter, all of a sudden there's eight points that come fairly easily, fairly uncontested a lot of times, because you're committed to winning that race to half courts. That's the second thing right there. The third thing that's super important to look at if you want to create more easy points is, is to understand when to drive. A lot of times players struggle with driving because they don't know when to drive. They just say, hey, I can't get past my defender, I'm struggling to get to the rim, all this sort of stuff. But if you don't approach this with a certain level of, of understanding, you don't approach it in a smart, purposeful way, then you're just going to be kind of throwing darts at a dartboard blind and hope that you hit the bullseye. Right. We want to make sure that we're super purposeful and we recognize, oh, that's a good opportunity to drive and, and we take advantage of it. And one of the best times to do this is attacking closeouts. So when a defender is coming to you because the ball gets moved to you, whether it's a skip pass or just a pass from one away, whatever the defense has to come from, help rotate all the way over to you and take away the shot first of all. And then on top of that, they have to try to not get beat. That's a lot of things to have to do in a very short amount of time. And that's the hardest thing that a defender is ever going to do in a defensive possession, is close out effectively, meaning this is the most vulnerable time for them and the best time for you to drive. So if we think about trying to hunt closeouts to attack, when the defendant closed out at you attacking that closeout, it's going to put you in a position to go back to our first point, get more paint touches, which is going to lead to more layups, more free throws, more opportunities created for your teammates as well. And that's ultimately going to put you in the best position to create that scoring baseline, that six to eight points per game that you can bank on having every single game because you score easy points and then on top of that, you know, you add in a catch and shoot three here and there or you know, a take off of a ball screen or, you know, all the other stuff. And that's where we start to see that you're consistently in the in double digits. And then as you get better and better, you have more opportunities to score even more points than that. So the first thing that you need to do if you're underperforming is, is find a way to create that scoring baseline. And those three ways are a great way to do it. Like I said, you want to go more in depth into that. Check out my free basketball cube masterclass top link in the description down below. Going to help you a ton to be able to implement those things and immediately see results in your games. The second reason why you're underperforming in your games is because you're too focused on things that are outside of your control. One of the things that I tell my players, and the point I try to try to hammer home to them, is that the best players, the most successful players, are the ones who can spend as close to 100% of the time in the present moment. What I mean by that is that so many players get caught up in the past or a mistake they made a shot they missed, and they spend so much time focusing on that in a game. They're worried about the turnover that they committed two possessions ago or they're sitting there upset because they missed their last three shots and they're focused on the past. So when they are actually in the present moment, they're not able to best take advantage of the opportunities that they're given. We talked about already trying to hunt different opportunities to score and create plays. You're less able to do that when you're not able to give 100% of your focus to the present moment and being great in the present moment. There's nothing you're going to do to fix the past. A lot of players are so focused on and worried about the future and they're worried about, well, you know, what if I get in and mess up, or what if I miss my next shot or, or what if I lose the ball when I drive? And they're worried about making mistakes, they're worried about failure, they're worried about what their coach will think if they do this. They're worried about what the people in the stands will think if they do this or don't do this. And so they're caught up in what could happen. And again, their focus isn't on the present moment and being able to do as much as they can to impact where they're at right now. Like I just mentioned to you, the best players are the ones who can spend as close to 100% of the time in the present moment. Because you can't impact the past and you can't impact the future. You can impact the present moment. Meaning in a game, you should only ever be focused on what is currently happening, the possession that you're in the. The next play, right? That's what matters. Having that next play mindset. And so, so many players get caught up on makes and misses. For example, you ultimately don't control makes and misses, right? And it might seem like, well, I do if I work on it. And, well, doesn't matter, right? In one gym, and you've probably experienced this, you have one gym where there's super soft rims, you're going to get a great bounce and you're going to make a shot. In a different gym, you're not going to get the bounce that it's going to miss. You didn't do anything different. You did nothing different. But the shots, the shot missed and one shot made it, right? That's outside of your control. You might be in a gy, use this joke all the time. You could be in a gym and maybe the ACS turned up a little high, and because of that, it moves the ball just a fraction of an inch and. And that's enough that it makes you miss a shot. But in a different gym, you would have made it because the AC is not as high. Right? Those are things you don't control. Sometimes you just miss a shot. So when you get so hung up on makes and misses and all that sort of stuff, you're going to allow yourself to be focused on the past moment and not focus on the present. You're ultimately going to struggle to be consistent when you get so caught up in makes and misses, because you don't control those things. You don't. You don't control that. You don't control what the refs call what your coach does. 100% of your energy needs to be focused on what you control, which is your focus on what you're trying to do. So we talked about, like hunting those. Those three things that are going to allow us to create that scoring baseline. Your focus should be on doing that. Okay, how do I get a paint touches possession? Okay, how do I make. Like, I got to make sure I get out in Transition right here, like those opportunities. Oh, I see a close out coming, I got to make sure I attack it or hey, this possession, I'm looking to attack a close out if it comes at me, okay? Your energy, your effort, those are the things that you control. And when you get out of the living in the past moment and mistakes and mess ups and all that, you also get out of living in the future being worried about what could happen, what could go wrong, and you just focus all your attention on what you're doing right now. You're going to be ahead of so many players who can't give their attention completely to the present moment. And it's going to allow you to be way more consistent because you're going to have way more control over things that happen to you. So the second thing that prevents you from being able to play at your best and cause you to underperform is not being focused on the present moment and being worried about things that you don't control. The third thing that leads to you underperforming is you lacking confidence. So many players think that basketball should be perfect and they think that everything should go well for them if they put in work, if they show up and everything's going to go well. And if not, the world is ending and everything is on fire. Right? You have to, you have to change the way that you think about things. Things are never going to be 100% great. They never will be. Right? There's a saying that things are never as good as you think they are and they're never as bad as you think that they are. That's a very true statement. Right? You will, you will almost never be at 100% in terms of how you feel, how you're playing, how you're shooting, all those things, right? You might have some rare moments where you are, but by and large, you won't be there. So first of all, you got to get out of the expectation of that. You can't go into a game thinking that you're gonna make every single shot, you're never gonna turn the ball over, you're never gonna make a mistake on defense. Those are things that are going to happen. Not that you want those things to happen, of course, but that's just reality, is that they're going to happen. So that's, that's as simple as that sounds. The first step, you have to tell yourself, hey, things are not going to be perfect for me today and I have to be okay with that, meaning when I miss a shot. Going back to what we talked about. I can't get in my own head and leave myself in the past because of a couple of missed shots or a couple of turnovers. I've got to understand that bad things are going to happen. One of the things that I told my players is we want to adopt what's called the 8020 mindset. So we want to think about 20% of the time when we're going to mess up. So you're going to make the wrong decision. You're going to turn the ball over. Things are just going to go wrong for you. You're going to miss an assignment on defense. As, as great as you might be at basketball, 20% of the time, you're going to mess it up. Meaning we, once that 20% happens, we just got to let it go because that's. It's inevitable. It's going to. It's going to happen. There's no point in being upset about it or allowing it to hurt our confidence. Um, negative things are going to happen. And when you allow yourself to expect that, it actually completely changes the way that you play. Because you don't feel like the whole world is ending when you make a mistake. Because you know that it's going to happen, right? That 8020 mindset, 20% of the time is going to be bad. You're going to miss an open layup, right? You're going to miss a free throw that, you know, you. You felt really, really good. You're going to make a bad pass, you're going to dribble the ball off your foot. That stuff is going to happen to you, and you have to be able to. To prep yourself and be okay with it. The second thing is that a lot of players have a lack of true experience in some of the situations that they find themselves in. So one of the biggest things that I say, and this goes for a lot of things with basketball, but specifically when it comes to playing and scoring and playing consistently. And is that a lot of times it's about doing it more, being willing to put yourself in these situations that maybe you struggle in and just being willing to fail and look bad and struggle through things. And this is obviously something that you want to have a big focus in when it comes to your workouts and in the off season, is saying, hey, I want to make sure that I put myself in this situation to work on attacking a closeout or to work on being in a ball screen or to work on, you know, catch and shoot in the corner off of a driving kick. Like, those are Situations that you want to put yourself in as much as possible. And it's going to allow you to become comfortable and prepared to, to, to succeed on situations there. And then on top of that is just studying the game. So if you're struggling with something in a certain situation, like watching college basketball, watching the NBA, watching international basketball, and you'll see a lot of overlapping situations and a lot of solutions to problems that, that other players have that you can add to your game. Okay. When we focus on studying, and then the last thing with being confident is you have to allow the law of averages to work for you, right? They say in baseball, if you're a.280 hitter, you're a.280 hitter, meaning you might bat.500 for a month, but that means that you're probably going to bat really poorly to, to make, to. To you balance out that average, right? Because you're not all of a sudden overnight a.500 hitter. And in basketball, it's the same way if you're a 35 shooter from 3, you're not a 0% shooter. So if you go over 10 the next game, what that means is that eventually you're gonna have to make a lot of shots to balance that out, because you're not a zero percent shooter. So it's almost like flipping your mindset when it comes to misses, right? If I miss shots, I know I'm not a zero percent shooter. So the more that I miss, it just means I'm getting closer to that hot streak that's coming for me to balance everything out. And as, as, like, as crazy as it might sound, it's. It's just math. It's just how it works, right? So reminding yourself that, hey, I'm not a zero percent shooter, so it means that a make is going to come here. Even when I'm in a dry spell, cold streak, whatever. It's important to understand the law of averages and to let it work for you. And then the fourth reason why you're underperforming is because you don't have a focus. Whenever we scout and we game plan for teams that we play against, we're thinking about what does this player do well and how do we take it away? For each player, we want to get a focus for them. We want to figure out what their focus is. And if you're a player, you don't have a focus well, it becomes really hard for you to consistently perform because you're just kind of out there aimless and you're hoping that good things are going to happen to you. Really, it's as simple as understanding what you're good at and what you're not good at. So if you're not good at shooting well, then your focus has got to be on attacking closeouts or, or cutting off the ball or setting really good screens, running in transition to get opportunities at the rim. Okay? That's got to be your focus. If you're a great shooter and maybe not great at putting the ball on the floor, well, then your. Your goal has got to be the flip. How do I consistently hunt the shots that I want to take? Well, maybe that means that I need to make sure that I use screens really well off the ball. Maybe it means I need to make sure that I relocate and give my teammates a good angle to pass to me when they drive and they want to kick the ball out to me. These are all things you have to think about when we talk about having a focus. What are you good at? What are you not good at? And when you know what you're not good at, are you. Are you avoiding doing that thing? Because that's probably what you should do if you're not a good shooter. Don't waste possession shooting the basketball because you're going to sit there wondering, why are you struggling? Well, you're not doing what you're good at. You're not doing what you should be focused on, and that alone is going to allow you to be so much more targeted in your efforts, and your efforts are going to matter a lot more on the court right there. So there's four reasons why you're underperforming. With most players that I'm around that I talk to who are underperforming. It's generally something in this realm here. Let me know down below if one of these jumps out to you. Like I mentioned earlier, make sure you check out that Basketball IQ masterclass in my top link down below, click completely free. It's going to help you to add, like I said, points per game to your average. It's going to help you to score more, create more for your team overall, play with way more confidence, way more success, and continue to get really, really good feedback on that. So make sure you check that out down below. Appreciate you for watching. Talk soon. Peace.