Building A Scoring Baseline - Scoring 101

Foreign podcast. Thank you guys for tuning in today. Shout out to all you guys watching on YouTube and of course you guys listening on your favorite podcasting app, Apple Podcast, Spotify, wherever else you might be. I really do appreciate you guys. I hope you guys had a great Thanksgiving. And obviously, you know, this year has been a big year for vision driven basketball. And really the growth has been incredible. I think a year ago I was at less, I was definitely less than a thousand subscribers. A year ago I probably was at a year ago. Today I was probably at 500 subscribers and now I'm at add 10,000 of that, right? So the growth has been incredible. So very, very thankful for you guys, you guys who support, who watch every video, who, you know, support. But you know guys, you guys who bought T shirts, programs, all this stuff that, that's helped me to grow as much as I have. I really am appreciative of you guys. And of course this is just the start. And again, it's been encouraging to see how quickly things have started to kind of take off. So, you know, again, very, very appreciated to you guys. Shout out to all you guys who are in the Thanksgiving Day ball handling live stream, the live workout. And I know there was a few you guys who missed that because again, it's, it's partially like, I'll take some responsibility for that because I've been putting it out a little bit late when I'm gonna go live, I try to get it out at least, you know, 20, 24 hours before it actually is gonna happen. And these past couple workouts, I've only done it like 10, 12 hours before. But that's why I say make sure you guys turn on my notifications on YouTube so that you guys know for sure. Whenever I post something, I believe when I post on my community tab, you'll get notified about that. So if that happens, then you guys will see as soon as I post about going live. So you guys will know for sure. So make sure you guys go right now on YouTube, turn my notifications on so you'll know anytime I go live, anytime I'm planning to go live, anytime I drop a video, you guys will of course be the ones to see it. And again, I want you guys to be part of that. But shout out to all you guys who were, I thought it was really, really good. And a lot of you guys are in there working and you guys were commenting about how difficult it was, really tried to push you guys, especially at the end there. And it was, it was really, really good. So Shout out to you guys. Be looking to do a couple more of those within the next, you know, month or so. Definitely Christmas. Look, look for that. Probably New Year's as well, just because I know, you know, all you guys are just going to be chilling really on those days, so I'll plan on that. But shout out to you guys who are there. And so today I wanted to talk about, you know, a little bit about scoring. And this is the, this is the big thing, right, because everyone wants to score more points. And I was doing a lot of reading and research over the past few weeks, really for those who don't know, and I've talked about this a couple times, but I'm doing a ton of updates to the perimeter score system. So, I mean, I've been watching a ton of film on it on different aspects of offense and I'm really, it's really going to be taking the kind of basic program and just built like it's going to be so much more in depth now. And I'm really excited to get it going. Literally, that's, that's. I'm either recording a video or I'm filming for that or I'm editing for that. Like, that's basically all I'm doing right now. So that'll be coming soon. I want to get that out mid December. So you guys who are in already are going to see that. It's going to update for. You guys will see it. And when you, whenever you guys log in and it's live, you guys will see it right away. And you know, for, for that, that being said, all that has gotten me really thinking about scoring because the, the, the. One of the biggest questions that I'll get is like, hey, you know, how do I score more points, how to become more consistent offensively? And to me, there's a lot of. Obviously the skill work stuff is huge. That's where it starts off. You have to work on your skills. You have to be able to actually go and execute. Because if you can't do that, then it doesn't really matter how much you know or how much film you watch. If you can't go out and do the basic skills, you're going to struggle. But once we take that for a given, we know that you're working on your skills, well, now it becomes about picking your spots, understanding how to score, when to score, the opportunities you're going to have. And really the whole point of what I want to talk about today because there's so much that goes into scoring, but what I want to talk about today is being able to increase your scoring baseline. Okay. You know, people want to talk about increasing your scoring average, right, Coach? I want to score 10 points a game. I want to score 12 points a game, 14, 15, 18, 20 points a game. And in order to do that, first of all, that's a difficult thing to do, especially at the high school level, right? Scoring. I mean, scoring any more than probably 12 or 14 a game is pretty impressive because high school games just aren't that long. So you have to be really, really efficient or you have to be a volume guy who's going to get a lot of opportunities. So. So it's more difficult in high school to be able to do that, but it's still a possible thing. But what we want to be able to do is take control of a lot of the variables that come with a game, right? So in a game, if you have to rely on just hitting shots, it's going to be hard for you to be consistent. Again, unless you're very, very efficient with your shooting or you're a volume guy and you get to take a lot of shots. Okay? Because again, if you only get to shoot five, six times a game, well, you know, if you have an off night, you only make two shots then which, which might not be, you know, that's not terrible. Two for six is. That happens sometimes. Right. But we obviously want to be out at a whim, like, oh, I went six or six and hit six, three. So I had 18 that game, and then the next game I went one for six. So. Right. We don't want that. We want. We don't want that fluctuation. Want to be able to have a baseline of scoring. What I mean by that is that there's a certain amount of points that you're basically going to get every single game. Okay. Regardless of whether or not you hit your shots. You know, regardless whether or not you get any situations where you get to take your guy one on one or you get to come off of, you have a play drawn up for you. Regardless of that, there are other things that you do offensively that that caused you to have a standard level of scoring that you basically know you can hit every game. So that might be 6 points, 8 points, 10 points a game that, you know, even if you don't get any offensive opportunities, I'm going to be able to get these points because they don't rely on me having to have the ball in my hands necessarily. They don't rely on me having to have a play drawn up. For me, these are just things that I can go out and do. And not only is it going to help me to, again, have that baseline of these are points I'm going to get basically every game, but also it's going to allow you to be able to help your team, because these are things that good teams do. Good teams have players that do these things. And we're going to hop into exactly what I'm talking about and what you can do and how you can take these things and translate them into your own game. Okay? So when we think about the best scores, right, we think about guys that you watch. So, you know, Donovan Mitchell. Actually, I don't even want to use Donovan Mitchell. I want to use guys who aren't even as much on ball as he is, right? If we take a guy like Klay Thompson, okay, we take a guy, you know, guys who have to. Who have to share the backs. When we say, you know, a Giannis, right, where he's got point guards on his team, like, guys who are going to be doing other things. And we look at, like, we see the highlights, right? If we watch Giannis, right? Or we watch, you know, these guys, Klay Thompson, we see the. We see the highlights, we see the crazy. You know, Clay's making threes with a hand in his face and all this stuff, and he's got these really nice step backs. You watch Steph Curry, Kemba Walker, Jason Tatum. Like, you watch these guys who have great highlights, you know, and we see that you guys have. Who watch my channel. You've seen, I posted a couple videos, couple of film breakdowns with Duncan Robinson in them, and some of the shots that he makes are just so difficult. So difficult, right? And those are the ones that. That are the highlights, right? Those are the ones that we see. When you look up Duncan Robinson on YouTube, you see those, those highlights. That's why he's one of my favorite players now, because just the, the. The level he shoots at is just incredible. Like, it's awesome. It's so much fun to watch. And he just does things so well, and he's a player that, like, I wish that, you know, if I'm on a team, if I'm a coach and I have a guy like that, like, that just makes my life so much easier, okay? So that's why I love watching his. His film. But you see, like, the first things you're going to see with him are the difficult shots, the deep threes, okay? What you need to understand about highlights is that they're just highlights, okay? You don't actually see the, the small things that they do. This is why I always say, like, if you're gonna watch film, watch individual game film of players, right? Because then you're going to be able to see the smaller plays, the repeatable plays, the routine plays that are actually the majority of scoring that these guys do. Okay? If you go watch season highlights of LeBron James, you go watch season highlights of Kyrie Irving, you watch season highlights of Jason Tatum, you're going to see the dunks, you know, you see the posters, you're going to see Kyrie Irving doing, you know, six crossovers, spinning between two people and hitting some fade away. Like, you're going to see the crazy plays. That's not what we should care about. There was a guy in the live stream the other day was asking, hey, coach, can you break down Kyrie Irving's crossovers? I'm like, listen, I'll break Kyrie Irving. There's a lot of stuff to learn from Kyrie Irving. First of all, like, Kyrie Irving does a lot of things really, really well that players can take. But my, my, my response is basically like, I'll break down Kyrie Irving's game so we can take what he does and repeat it. Kyrie Irving is a lot of. What Kyrie Irving does, though, is just not stuff that 99% of players are gonna ever do, Right? Some of the moves that he makes are just. They're just not. It's not realistic for the majority of players. Okay? So we take his highlights and then we think, oh, we gotta, we gotta work on that. When it's like, no, there's a lot of routine stuff Kyrie Irving does that. It's actually stuff that we should be working on. I was talking about the live stream. Like, you know, we were working on manipulations. So the guys, if you see my feet, they're nice and wide when I go with these manipulations that I go between the legs, because if I'm in a game, I don't want to have my feet real narrow because I'm not explosive from that position, Right? My hips are low, my feet are wide. So if you watch a guy like Kyrie Irving and he beats somebody off the dribble, his feet are nice and wide and his hips are low, and he's explosive in that position. Okay? So that was one thing that you can take from that. But, but we want to be careful of, of not falling, not, not, not falling in the trap of thing. Oh, you know, these are Highlights. So this is what this player is really about when it's like, no, if you look at the majority of scoring actually do, it's very routine, right? It's, it's open threes, it's cuts, it's running in transition, layups, like, it's very, very simple things that they do over and over. And these guys who are like really high level scorers, you know, James Hart guys who are going to get a ton of shots, they're going to hit crazy shots every game, okay? But it's not like that for every player. Klay Thompson is going to put up 20 a game every year and he's not going to hit crazy shots every game. CJ McCollum is going to put 20 a game every year and he's not going to hit crazy shots every game. A lot of what he's going to do is very, very routine. Even a guy like Damian Lillard, like we watch Damian Lillard and he's hitting all these crazy shots in his highlights. But if you actually watch him, a lot of what he does is very, very routine, right? He does it at a very, very high level, but it's routine, okay? So we want to get out of the mindset thing that we have to, we have to go out and then we have to dominate on offense to be able to score at all. When it's like, no, if you can get good at these simple repeatable plays, these basic routine plays, then you can be a good scorer and you can build a solid baseline, solid foundation to where now if you can add 3, 4, 5 makes a game, right? Where you're actually creating for yourself on offense or you're getting a play drawn up for you, now you're really going to have the potential to score a lot of points because you already have those baseline of points down. So let's talk about what I actually mean by like this. Okay? So the first thing that you want to do is you want to have. And this is something that I read in a book, I believe it was Everyone Hates a Ball Hog but they All Love a Score by coach Karan Gawain. I recommend you guys check that out. I think it's on Apple Music and Spotify as the books. If you search that, then I think you'll find it on there. And basically what he talks about is that the, the first step for him and just back some background on him. He played, I believe at University of North Florida, University of Buffalo. And he was, he, I think he was North Florida's like all I Think he was their ultimately in score for, for a while. I don't know if he still is or not, but he was at one point and he's talking about how he would kind of break down the game into phases. He was like, you know what? If my goal is to score 18 points a game, then I said to figure out a way to score. If I'm, if I'm playing College, we have 20 minute halves, right? I have to find a way to score nine points a half. Okay, so let's. So now that 18 points a game seems much more doable, that just means I got to find a way to do, to score nine points a half. That's, that's much easier than thinking, oh, I scored 18 points today, right? 18, you know, nine points, that's two threes and then a layup and a free throw. It's not really that much. Okay. And you got to break that down however you want to. But it's same thing if you're in high school, right? If your goal is to score 16 points a game, you have four quarters. That means it's four points a quarter. That means it's two layups a quarter or, you know, a three pointer and a free throw a quarter or a layup and two free throws every quarter. So you can break things down and understand that it's much more doable, much more attainable when you understand that, oh, you know, it's really just four points a quarter, right? It doesn't seem like that much anymore. Okay? So that was the first step for him to taking that goal, that bigger goal, and then turning into something attainable. Okay? Because now we can talk about how can we get to that baseline, right? So if my goal is 16 points a game, okay, how can I get, how can I make, how can I make it so that I can get four points per quarter without having to really have anything drawn up for me? Okay? So obviously if you're getting a lot of opportunities as the lead guy, the number one option, you're going to have a lot of opportunities to score. But a lot of you guys probably aren't in that position because only, again, only one or two players on your team probably is going to be in that position to be able to do that. So the, the, the best scorers are also able to score in ways that don't require them to have the ball in their hands. So making cuts, running in transition, offensive rebounds, those are all keys to you building that baseline, okay? They're basic, basic fundamental plays that a lot of People are just going to overlook and be like, oh, you know what? That's not fun. Like, you know, I want to make threes, and I want to. I want to cross people up and I want to hit step backs. I want to do all this stuff. And that stuff's all cool. But that's not. That's not. That's. That's a small part of the game. Okay? If you can get good at the other stuff, the. The basic stuff, then the other stuff will be open up. Will open up to you. But at the end of the day, the. The score sheet says 16 points. It doesn't say 16 points, but, oh, eight of them were offensive rebounds. No, it didn't say. Doesn't say 16 points. But they were all crazy crossover step backs. Like, no, it just has 16 points. So in the day, scoring is scoring really. So that's what we're going to focus on. So the first part is scoring off of cuts, right? So understanding when your defender is vulnerable, when you as the offensive player are going to have an advantage to make a cut, and at that point, you're going to be able to be in a position to get really, really easy buckets. Okay. And some things to look for are. Well, really, first of all, it's understanding that you don't want to be standing still. Okay. A lot of times it's easy to get caught up ball watching and just waiting for the ball to get back in your hands. Be like, you know, the only time I know how to move is in the balls of my hands. But if you can understand the fact that, you know, you Actually, I did. I did a breakdown on Jeremy Lin a couple months ago where I looked at, you know, his off ball movement, which is really, really good. He's. He's fantastic moving without the basketball in his hands. And there's a lot of things that he does that he looks for that trigger him going into a cut. So one thing is, like, if he's. If the ball is coming towards him, right? If he isn't the ball, his teammate is dribbling towards him, and then his defender, his. Jeremy Lynn's defender, turns his head to stare at the ball. Jerry's going to cut right there. A lot of times his guy's going to see that hit him with a bounce pass, and then he's got a layup, right? So that's one thing to recognize. The other thing, too, is just. Just understand. So, okay, you know, I'm going to pass the ball, and I cut every single time, right? Pass and Cut. Instead of passing and standing and just moving more without the basketball, you're going to get more opportunities to do that. So if you can add, you know, four points a game just by moving to the basketball, well, there's four for you, okay? So there's one thing right there, you know, the other thing to, to, to. To focus on when it comes to building that, that baseline is running in transition. So that's another thing where it's like super, super simple, but really a great way to get points. So the really basic part of it is that there's less defense on this, on the end of the floor in transition, okay? So if you're able to run out in transition, you might have one defender, right? You might have one, you might have zero. Chances are even if there is one, he's going to be at a not great advantage or not great position. Like you might have the advantage in that position. So that's where you draw more fouls, more and ones. One of the best things to remember about running in transition is that you want to try and be the first person to half court. So the first three steps you take are massive when it comes to actually getting out, being in a position to score in transition. So those first three steps, when your teammate gets the offensive rebound, those first three steps should be long and explosive trying to get to half court. And then you've got to be in a position where you're running wide, running lanes and you're in a position to catch the ball and, and then be able to score, okay? That's going to open up a lot of opportunities for you even if you don't get the basketball, if you're able to shoot the ball, you run in transition and you spot up in the corner, your teammate is driving down and then he might have a kick out for you and it's a wide open three, okay? So in general, running in transition is going to do nothing but benefit you and your team. So something that you got to be able to do, and again, that's going to give you more opportunities to build that baseline of scoring, okay? And then the third way that really is a key when it comes to building that baseline is offensive rebounds, okay? And a lot of you listening are guards, so you're not that big. But that doesn't mean you can't crash the offensive boards as well. Because the thing is, even you watch a guy like Steph Curry. Steph Curry is not big for NBA standards. He's not that great of an athlete, but he gets offensive rebounds still and that's not necessarily because again, he's not, he's not beating anybody size wise. He's not out jumping anybody in the NBA. But he's smart and he understands, you know where to crash to. Okay? A lot of times offensive rebounds are going to go long, so you're going to have opportunities to do that even if you can't. If you just box out and get in a good position. There's literally a clip that I'm going to put in right now of Steph Curry boxing out Dwight Howard. Thompson misses Curry, the rebound, the put back, he's fouled. Curry got position on Dwight Howard. The fact that a guy like Steph Curry can box out Dwight Howard to me is like, well, what's the excuse then? Because of that, that lets you know that, hey, there's another opportunity for me to be able to get, to get points because again, you get that offensive rebound on low and you're in a position where a pump fake is going to get that guy to jump and then you're going to the free throw line probably with an and one if you finish it. Okay? So another great way, if you get opportunities, even if only get two of those a game, that's two more opportunities for you down low right there, right? That could be four points. So if we really break this down, we take those three areas, okay? Let's say you get each of those gets you two more shots per game, okay? So making cuts to the basket gets you two more layup opportunities a game. Running into layup opportunities and then offensive rebounds. Two layup opportunities per game, that's six total shots, which would give you a potential 12 points, potentially 12 easy points right there. Okay? Then all it takes, you know, you hit two threes, you're 18 right there, okay? You make two, you know, two more layups that game, then we're at, we're at 16, okay? So you're in a very good position, but you can build that 12 right there. So even if you don't get any other shots, you miss all your threes that game, you already scored 12 because you did those little things. That's what I mean when I say building a baseline. That's if you want to be a consistently good scorer. It's 12 starts with that. It starts with understanding, hey, there are some ways that I'm going to be able to get points every single game. It doesn't matter what happens. Doesn't matter. You know, what my coach draws up this game. Doesn't matter what the game plan is. Doesn't matter who's guarding me, what's happening. There are things that I can do that I control, that I'm going to be. That I'm going to be able to build that baseline for, okay? And to me, that's really, again, where it starts from. So don't fall into the trap of thinking, hey, you know, if I want to score points, I've got to be able to hit six threes a game, right? I've got to be able to do all these things. Like, it's really, really simple when you break it down, okay? It's not easy. It's not easy to be able to do these things consistently. It's a habit you have to build. You have to get good at it. You have to start to recognize opportunities to make cuts. You have to recognize opportunities to get offensive rebounds. You know where the ball is going to bounce off from. So you also have to recognize that a lot of times the ball is going to miss long coming off offensive rebounds. So you start to understand positioning better, okay? Then you got to go to be physical enough to finish it, to actually go get the rebound and then finish that play, okay? So it's not easy because it was easy then every single person would do it, right? But it is very, very simple. It's very simple and a lot of players would be able to do it, but they just don't even think about it. All they're thinking about is going out and trying to get highlights, when in reality that's not what matters, right? What matters is the points that you scored. The ultimately points win games. Okay? So build that baseline. Be in a position to be able to help your team like that. And again, that's. That's a conservative estimate, right? That's only. That's assuming you get two of each per game. What if you get three of each per game, right? So what if we have. What if we have. That's 18 potential points right there, okay? Even if you miss a couple 12, 14, 16 points, not to mention you get fouled on any of those. And ones like, really things can add up when you start it, when you just are really break it down and see that the simple ways of scoring points can be very, very valuable for you if you're willing to do those things, okay? And again, coaches love those things because it's things that guys don't really think about. Guys who are really good at offensive rebounds are very, very valuable to his team. Guys who run in transition, very valuable to a team. Guys who move without the basketball in their hands, extremely valuable to a team. Okay? So it benefits not just you in the scoring column, but it benefits your team in general. It helps you guys win more games. So that's what. That's something that you guys have got to be doing. And you guys all start to be able to understand what your spots are. Okay? So you may become more comfortable with one of these things. You might become really, really good at running in transition. That might be your thing. Okay? You might become really, really good at crashing the offensive boards. That might be your thing as well. Okay? But again, like I said, it's not easy, but it is simple. You guys will figure this out as you continue to move on. Okay? So there it is, like, really scoring is simple. Okay, Again, not easy, but it's simple because there really are some things you can do that are going to put you in a position to consistently be where you want to be as a scorer. Okay? So again, it's about breaking things down to recognize that you really can do what you want to do. You can hit your goals, but it's about being smart about doing it. Okay? It's not just about going out and thinking that you have to be Kyrie Irving. So, again, I don't want you guys to fall into the trap of thinking. I see highlights from these guys. I see Trae Young hit these crazy shots. So that's what I have to do, too. It's not what you have to do. Okay, again, a lot of things I love Trae Young. A lot of things we're going to learn from him as well. But there are a lot of things that you can do right now that are going to help you to score more points and win more games. Combine that with the skill training that you're doing, and you'll be in a position to really do a lot of good things with the ball in your hand. So again, hopefully that helps you guys out. I made a video on this last year, but obviously, like I just said before, like, that was before 10,000 of you guys were here. So hopefully this, this, this helps you guys. Let me see today. Okay, so we'll have probably film breakdown this week, maybe a workout this week coming up, and then more than likely, we'll see may have a guest on next week. And I'm gonna ask you guys some questions, too. Like I always say, guys, if you have questions for me, DM me at Vision Driven Basketball on Instagram. A lot of the inspiration I get for podcasts comes from questions I get through my DMs. I don't always see questions on YouTube. So that's why I say DM is better. And again, appreciate you guys for. For. For tuning in and for subscribing. 10,000 subscribers is really, like. It doesn't even, you know, for me, I always feel like. Like I have a tough time looking back and, like, just being like, oh, that. That's cool. Like, I. It's hard for me to be able to slow down and, like, take a step back and look at things. I always feel like there's more to do, right? There's always more to be able to do. Hopefully, like, a lot of you guys feel the same way, right? You might have a game where you score 20 points, but now it's like, really, we're on to the next one, right? That's a lot. That's how I feel about. About really anything that I do. But with YouTube and anything with visionary basketball, it's like, okay, you know, cool. Like, we did this, did that, and it's always on to the next. But I really am appreciative of you guys who continue to support. I don't take that for granted at all. So, again, we're going to move forward questions, like I said, at Vision Drew basketball on Instagram. I'll talk to you guys later. Peace.