Basketball Is Supposed To Feel Easy — Here's Why It Doesn’t (Yet)

This video can completely change the rest of your basketball career because the way that things have been done and the way that people tell you to achieve your goals as a player hasn't worked for a lot of players. You're constantly told, hey, work harder, grind more, find a way to put more time in. Go change your form, Go add this to your game. Go spend more time in the gym. And despite that, as somebody who's created content for basketball players over the last five plus years, we still have the same problems. The game has not progressed past that, and I think it's because a lot of players are still stuck with this advice. This is not me telling you to not work hard and not go chase after your goals and put in the necessary work that's required for it. But I would argue that maybe this isn't the answer. And like I said, it's not that working hard is bad, but I think that a lot of players are working hard and. But they're missing the most important piece of all of this. This might sound kind of crazy, or maybe you think that I'm completely wrong when I say this, but basketball is supposed to feel easy when you watch the best players play or you talk to the best players and you say, hey, hey, how did you do that on the court? A lot of times the answer is just. It just happened. Like, I just did it. And there's not some sort of super crazy difficult answer. They get on the court and instead of doing, they're just being. And by being who they are, it leads to them having success. It's like when you go outside and you look at the sidewalk and you see cracks in the sidewalk and there's these plants, these weeds that have sprouted up and are growing in between those cracks. It wasn't as if nature said, all right, well, I don't know how we're going to be able to, you know, grow anything right there, because there. There's a sidewalk, okay, now we got to work really hard and we got to just make sure there's a crack on the sidewalk so we can grow. It just kind of happens over time. There's a crack on the sidewalk, and nature manages to plant a weed or a plant right there and it. It sprouts up. There's no difficulty. There's no trying. It's just being the biggest thing that players are missing when it comes to achieving their goals as players, making improvements, seeing results on the court, is understanding who they are and playing to that strength. Because you have to understand that you are the Only player like you who's ever played the game of basketball. So when you look at somebody else and you say, well, I want to be more like them or how do I achieve that? There's certainly merit in that. But you have to ultimately recognize the fact that you've been blessed, you've been given different strengths, and that's the greatest gift that you've been given. And it starts off with you recognizing those things. A lot of times this is what people tell you you do well. You've probably had people say these things to you and you probably, if not, you have just, you know it, right? So it could be some of the physical things maybe are a great perimeter defender, maybe you're a great rebounder, whatever. Those are kind of the obvious, like surface level things. But maybe people have communicated to you that, oh, hey, you know, you have a really high basketball iq or you know, you have a great ability to lead. You communicate at a high level, you're super positive, you're a great teammate. There are things that you do well, things that you have that you haven't had to work for, that you, they just kind of are what you are. They just kind of are a part of you. And like I said, people probably have told you these things before. Coaches, people that have watched you, maybe your teammates. Now here circles back to the point that I made earlier about the game is supposed to feel easy. When you really lock in and you focus on being elite with these strengths that you naturally have, the game starts to make sense, it starts to click, it starts to feel easy for you because you're just doing what you're meant to do. We're told that we have to hustle, we have to grind in order to make any sort of impact on the court. And if you don't do those things, then you have no chance. I think a great story that illustrates this is actually my senior year of high school. So my senior year was the best team in our school's history. Won 20 games and I was a starter on that team. I was a two year starter in high school. I was all conference as a senior. But when I. When I think back to that team and how successful we were, really from a skill perspective, I was probably the third, maybe fourth best player on that team. And the thing was, I put in more work than anybody else. And this is not a slight at anybody because we have some other guys who worked really hard on that team. But I was obsessed with it. I was obsessed with getting better. I want to become a better shooter. Better ball, a better finisher, better defender. I put in so much work. And when I look back at that year and what made us successful, the. The biggest gift that I gave to my team, my biggest contribution was, wasn't on the things that I worked on. It was with the things that I just naturally had. That was my leadership ability, my ability to communicate. I was always relaying messages from our coaches to the rest of the team. I was always making sure that that guy was okay and that that guy understood what we were doing. And that guy's down. I got to make sure I pick him back up. This guy looks confused. So I got to make sure that we're all good. That was my role. That was what I naturally did. There were other guys on the team who were more talented than I was, who didn't. Who didn't have that role because it just wasn't them. It wasn't naturally what they gravitated towards, but it was for me. And when I look back at what made us so successful, I had some great games, statistically. I had some games where I made a lot of shots and games where if I don't play well from a statistical perspective, we don't win the game. But that wasn't what I contributed best. It wasn't what made me valuable. That wasn't. That wasn't what led to that team being the best team in school history. It was the stuff that naturally I had, that I gave back, that I focused on being the best at. I knew that, hey, I can contribute this and a lot of other people can't. I know that if I really focus on this, it's going to be the best on this team, and that's going to make me valuable. And so ultimately, like I said, I put in a ton of work on my skills, but it was the things that I naturally already had that were the ultimate drivers for my success and my team success. So I think what this means for you is that you need to make a shift away from thinking that your success is all about doing do more, achieve more, work on more, and instead recognize that your greatest success as a basketball player is going to come from being who are you? You have to first recognize those gifts. So what are the things that people have told you that you're. You're good at, that you already gravitate towards the things that you know deep down, like, yeah, I'm good at this. I have this. This is something that I've been given, that I've been blessed with, that not everybody else has and you might think of those things and be like, well, I wish it was that. I wish it was this. It might not be what you think you want it to be, but ultimately you've been given that for a reason. Your responsibility is to give those gifts back to everybody else. So what you are already inclined towards. And again, maybe it's something physical on the court, but maybe it's just a personality trait that you have. Maybe it's your understanding of things, Maybe it's the way that you can communicate things. Those things, if you really embrace them and you say, I'm going to make this my identity. This is who I am, people are going to watch you play, and it's going to very clearly set you apart from everybody else. The problem that a lot of players have is that they want to be somebody else. They want to be that guy. They want to be this guy instead of being themselves. Everybody has different callings, different blessings, different gifts, different strengths, different weaknesses. And when you try and be somebody else, you give up a lot of what actually is going to allow you to succeed at the highest level possible. And when you do those things, when you first of all recognize, who am I, what do I naturally gravitate towards, gravitate towards. What do people tell me that I'm great at? That's when the game starts to feel easy. That's when you go out and things just kind of happen for you. Things that you might. You might not even work for are going to start to happen to you because you're just in line with who you are. You want those things to be at the forefront of your game. That's how you get into what they call a flow state. And when you're in a flow state, that's when you allow success to flow towards you. It's like shooting a basketball. You want to shoot the ball. You don't want to try and force the ball into the basket, because when you do that, the paradox of it is the harder you try to put the ball in the basket, the harder it actually becomes to do that thing. It's the same thing when it comes to your success as a player overall. The harder you try to make this happen, the harder it's going to be to achieve success and then sustain it consistently. But when you are just focused on giving back what you've been given, that's when you're into a flow state and success actually flows towards you. Results actually flow towards you because you're just being. Instead of trying so hard to do what or to be somebody else. If I was going to summarize all this, I would. I would put it this way. Recognize who you are and understand that you have the ability to impact the game different than anybody else who has ever played the game and will ever play the game. That should be such a powerful mindset for you to have because it means that when you focus on giving those gifts that you have back to everybody else, it makes you irreplaceable. It makes you super valuable wherever you go. And ultimately, when you adopt this, the game is going to start to feel easy and. And those results that you work so hard for are going to start to flow to you naturally. Now, I'm also not saying to not work on your weaknesses or try to get better or put in the work that you need to move to the next level. But what I am saying is that those things that make you. You always keep that the main thing, always focus on giving that and all the other stuff is going to work out just like it should. Hopefully that makes sense to you. If it does, drop a comment down below. I think this is such an important message, so I appreciate you for watching. Talk soon. Peace.