How to Become a High IQ Basketball Player (The Ultimate Guide)

Basketball IQ is the ultimate equalizer and is the number one thing that you should spend your time developing. Most players think that you need to have insane athleticism or elite skill in order to stand out and dominate in games. But the reality is if you have a high level of basketball IQ and you start to see the game differently, you'll be able to make a way bigger impact than a lot of players who might be more athletic or more skilled than you. Over the last year or so, I've worked exclusively with players, helping them to transform their basketball iq. And I've witnessed players over and over again completely transform who they are on the court, their success and their confidence. Confidence just by changing who they are and how they view the game. So in this video, I'm going to take all of that stuff, all the knowledge and experience over the last year of working with players, and I'm going to put that into the full nine step blueprint to develop your basketball iq. The best thing about developing basketball IQ is that it's something you can do right now and start to see the impacts almost immediately. So let's dive into exactly how you can do this step by step and make sure you stay for all nine of these tips, because I guarantee you there's at least a couple that you've probably never been to before. The first thing you need to do to develop your basketball IQ is watch games with a purpose. This is probably the simplest thing that a lot of players overlook, or they do it completely wrong. Normally when players are watching basketball games, whether it be an NBA game, a college game, whatever, they're just kind of watching the game as a fan. They're watching the ball, they're seeing the moves that players are making. But when you watch it as a fan, you're not really gaining a lot that's going to help you when you're on the court. The best way that you could do this is to pick one player in that game and just watch them. So. So pick one player who plays a similar position to you or maybe does something that you want to get better at and just watch their decision making. Watch how they move with the ball, watch how they move without the ball, watch how they read the defense, watch how they communicate and how they create and recognize opportunities for themselves and their teammates. And then to dive even deeper, look and see how they handle different situations. So how do they come off of pin downs? How do they use ball screens? How do they attack closeouts and exploit defenders momentum? How do they play in transition? The simplest way to do this would be. First of all, I recommend watching college games or Euroleague games because a lot of times the principles and just the style of play is much more similar to the level that you're probably at when you watch those games. Pick that one player and take notes on what you're seeing. Once you have those notes, take one or two takeaways from that. So two simple things you can keep in mind you can remember. So maybe you recognize that whenever that player doesn't have the ball and their defenders in the passing lane, they backdoor cut and they scored a couple buckets off of that and you, you can start to recognize that maybe that's one of your takeaways, maybe your other takeaway is that they love to bump and create contact whenever they're driving into the basket so that they're able to more control their defender and create and separate and open up finishes for themselves. Whatever those two biggest takeaways are, a lot of times you can take those things and apply them the next time that you play. And that's why this is so valuable. The second thing you need to do if you want to develop your basketball IQ is know your team system inside and out. So study your team's offense, your team's defense, and the game plan that you might have from game to game or overall. So for example, for the team I coach, we're very action base. So we're in a four out typically and we have our pin downs or pass the screen away and we have different ways that we can come off of those things. We have a pinch post action where the ball goes to the top of the key. We have ball screens and so we have those things. And if you want to be good in our offense, you have to know those things and you have to really deeply understand them. Defensively, we are really heavy when it comes to playing gap help. So if you're one away from the basketball, you've got to be in the gap to help on drives. Sometimes the game plan will dictate how you're going to play a player on the basketball. So you have to be able to know those things going into games so that you're ready to apply them. Basically, you need to know where you should be on every play, offense or defense, and you have to know how you fit into the bigger picture of your team. Now this might seem like kind of boring or it might seem like maybe obvious to you, but this is so important because when you know these things, when you know your team's system like the back of Your hand, it allows you to anticipate. And that word anticipate is so important because the best players are able to anticipate things. A lot of players are stuck in a reactionary mode where they're just kind of reacting to what happens, so they never feel like they're a step ahead. So if you feel like you're constantly a step behind everybody else or you, you know, things moving really fast for you, you need to put yourself in a position to where you can start to anticipate things happening. And you do that by knowing the offense, the defense, you know exactly where you should be, what you should be doing. That's how you develop the ability to anticipate things. And the game is going to feel so much easier to you and you're going to be way more consistent and you're going to recognize opportunities to yourself and your teammates way more often. Now, in order to do this, you should write down everything that you know about your offense, your defense, whatever. Like get that on paper so you can see it, you can memorize it, whatever. And if you have questions about it, go ask your coach, ask your teammates. Not only is that going to help you to develop those things, but it's going to develop a certain level of trust with them as well that shows that you're bought into what you're, you're supposed to be doing. So do those things. And like I said, it's going to help you to anticipate things way better and that's going to make a huge difference for you. The third thing you need to do in order to develop your basketball IQ is you need to play more basketball. What you need is volume and grace. And I'll explain what this means. The best way to develop your decision making, to develop your pattern recognition, to know when to do what, is to put yourself in that position as much as possible. So that's that word volume you need to get a volume of in game experience. Now that doesn't necessarily mean it needs to be 5 on 5, though that's obviously great because that's what you're playing. One on one is phenomenal. And I've been saying in a few videos recently that if I could go back, what I would do as a young player is I would have at least one or two days every week in the off season where I would get a teammate or a couple teammates or just a couple friends, and we would just play one on one for like 30, 45 minutes, an hour maybe, and we would just make it all constrained. So I Would say, okay, we're gonna start on the wing, we have five seconds to score, or we're gonna start at the top of the key, we have four dribbles, or we're gonna play one on one full court and we have a certain, like, we have a shot clock. Trial and error is such a massive part of getting better at anything. And basketball is, is obviously a great example of that and that where grace comes into play because you need the volume, right? You need to go and put yourselves in that position. But you also have to understand that you're going to make mistakes, you're going to mess up, you're going to look bad. You have to give yourself grace in those moments to say, okay, that doesn't matter. What can I take away from that mistake, from that failure from the day I didn't play very well, what I need to work on, what do I need to change the next time so that I can be better? And just by constantly having that mindset of putting myself in that position, getting the volume and then also giving myself the grace to say, okay, I have to be perfect. I don't have to be right every time. I have to win every single time. But what can I take from this to get better that is going to put you in such a good position when it comes to developing your ability on the court? So the one thing that really ties this together and makes it so valuable is after every time that you play. And like I said, this could be after a real game, it could be after a practice, could be after you play two on two or one on one, whatever, reflect on what went well for you and what didn't go well, what was good and what could you get better at? What are you going to be focused on improving the next time? Maybe going into your workouts. What are you going to be doing? Being purposeful and really thinking and not just playing and forgetting about it. That's where you really get a ton of value out of this. And you really start to separate yourself from everybody else who's not doing that. The next thing that you need to do in order to develop your basketball IQ to a super high level is master the art of advantage creation. The game of basketball is all about advantages. If you want to be a great offensive player, you need to know how to consistently create those. Now, there's different types of advantages. So we have what we would call momentum advantage, which just means when the defender is closing out to you, their momentum is coming towards you. That's an advantage for you because that's the most difficult thing that they're going to do on defenses. Get to you take away the shot, slow themselves down and not get beat. That's the best time for you to attack them. This also means recognizing opportunities where maybe you're in transition. It's a four on three, so you have a numbers advantage. Maybe you get downhill and you recognize that there's one help defender and your teamma is over there. So it's a two on one. So would you recognize that advantage right there? And then we also have turtle and mouse advantages. So turtle meaning maybe you got a player switched on to you who's slower, maybe the guy guarding you is just slower or you have a player that switches on to you who's smaller. So a mouse situation, or maybe you recognize that your teammate has that. So okay, we got to get my teammate the ball in that situation because we have a turtle or we have a mouse. This is by far the most important part of being a great offensive player is being able to recognize and then create advantages as much as possible. If you want a resource that's going to walk you through exactly how you can do this, this I have a free hour long basketball IQ masterclass link down below. We go step by step into how to do this. And there's way more included as well, completely free. So make sure you check that out after this video is done. But when you can consistently create advantages and recognize them, you become so valuable to your team because not only are you going to score more points, but you're going to create more scoring opportunities for your team as well. So going back to our first point about watching more games and watching them with purpose, this is where you can start to apply that as well. That player that you're, that you're watching, start to see, okay, what advantages did they create consistently? How did they do it? How can I do that in a game? And that's a great way to learn from the film that you're watching. The next thing that you can do to develop your basketball IQ is to study film of yourself. So watch your own film and analyze your decision making. You want to look for patterns in your play. So good patterns, things that you want to make sure that you double down on, but also things that were bad, maybe missed opportunities, maybe bad decisions, but you want to identify areas where you can improve. The reason why this is important is because when you're playing, so many things happen that you don't even see, you don't even recognize in the moment. It doesn't matter how smart of a player you are. Just because you're limited when you're actually watching the film, you now have a bird's eye view of what's going on, and you're able to see things that in the moment you had no clue even happened. Now, if you're a high school or college player, then you probably have access to your film through huddle or through synergy or whatever. But even if you don't have someone that you know filmed your games, maybe when you're playing your one on one, your three on three, your five on five, film that or film parts of it so you can at least start to see and maybe recognize some patterns. But doing that could be such a game changer. And it's another way you can separate yourself. Because as much as this is a known thing that you should be doing it, a lot of players are not doing it. So, great way to separate yourself right here as well. The next thing you need to do in order to develop your baseline Q is to use mirror neurons to your advantage. Now, this one right here is something that I haven't heard anybody else talk about. And it's such a great way to separate yourself because nobody's doing it. As humans, we have this incredible ability to use mirror neurons. All that mirror neurons are is they allow us to watch somebody do something and mirror that action in our mind so that it almost feels like we're doing it. We can almost get mental reps of doing something just by watching somebody else. So what you want to do is you want to adopt a mindset that says every single rep is mine. You can learn so much, you can develop so much just by being mentally present within the reps of your teammates. So maybe you're doing a three on three drill in practice and you're watching your teammates and you're just being so purposeful. You're not just sitting in there waiting for your turn, you're watching and you see, oh, they missed an opportunity to go back to right there. Or hey, if they'd taken one more dribble right there, they might have been able to get to a stronger finish. Or, man, they got the ball and the help collapsed over and they had their teammate wide open for a kick out and they missed it. You want to literally put yourself in the shoes of your teammates. Paul Jordis talked about on his podcast how when he had his really bad leg injury, he obviously couldn't play, so he was sitting there and just watching his teammates. He talks about how he developed his scoring ability in that season when he couldn't play because he was literally just sitting there on the bench watching his teammates in different situations, saying, oh, wow, I guess I could have. I could probably apply that. Or, okay, they missed that opportunity. Maybe they would have done that differently. It would have been better. And he came back and he mentally was so much sharper because he used every single rep that they had as his own. So, like I said, this is super powerful. And the only person I've heard talk about this is Paul George. Nobody else has talked about it. So, great way to separate yourself. And now we look at the reps that you might get in the practice or in a game, and you can double, triple, quadruple the reps that you're getting just by applying this. The next thing you need to do in order to develop your basketball IQ is to train with context. The problem with the way that a lot of players train is that they put themselves on autopilot and they get into their workouts and they're doing their shooting drills or ball handling, and their mind is not in the present moment. Their mind is on what they're going to do after the workout, what they're going to eat for lunch, what their friend said to them earlier, and they're not actually present and in the moment. What this is going to lead to is a lot of wasted reps because you're going to get into a game and you're going to have to be focused on the present moment, and it's going to be a struggle for you. And something that I always talk about is how the players who are the most successful most consistently are the ones who are able to keep themselves in the present moment as close to 100 of the time as possible. So not thinking about the past, on what just happened, the mistake they made, they're not thinking about the future, where they're worried about what could happen if they mess up, what their coach is going to say to them when they come out of the game. The players who are the best can focus on what is happening right now. How do I impact the game right now? What do I do in the next play to make an impact? So you can make your workout so much more valuable by, first of all, using visualization to your advantage. So when you're going through your drills, envisioning yourself in a game situation, so hear the crowd, you have teammates on the floor, you have defenders around, there's referees, there's a score, there's something on the line. Placing yourself mentally in that game situation is Such a powerful thing because like I mentioned with the mirror neurons aspect of it, using visualization is a great way to get reps as if you're in a game without actually being there. There's been so many studies out there that have shown the value of using visualization. So it's something that we can apply into workouts as well to make you more present and allow the work that you're doing to actually translate way better into games. Now, you also can do this by adding more challenge to your workout. So you're doing a shooting drill. Maybe you're doing 10 shots from the baseline, and then you move to the wing and do 10 shots and you're going to doing 50 shots. But the thing with that is that, you know, all right, I'm just going to shoot 10 shots. So you can basically put your brain on autopilot and not really think about anything. Just think about, you know, what you're going to do after, like I mentioned, anything but what actually is going on in front of you. So instead of doing that, a simple thing you can do is adding pressure to your shooting drills. So maybe Instead of shooting 10 shots, you have to make four in a row or you have to make five without missing two in a row. And now you have to be very locked into each shot that you're shooting because they matter. It's valuable and you can't afford to let your mind wander. Doing stuff like that take you from being on autopilot and putting you into the present moment is a great way to make your training actually translate way better to games and allow you to apply the things you're working on. And the last step to developing your basketball cue to a super high level is to find coaches that you trust and go all in on what they're talking about. The problem with the age that we live in is that there's so much information out there. And so if you try and piece together a million random videos or million random pieces of advice, then you're going to hear a lot that conflicts. It's going to be hard to keep everything straight and there's going to be a lot of gaps and things that you know. So find one, two, maybe three coaches that you trust that you've got gotten value from and go all in on consuming their content. So watch their videos, pay attention to their breakdowns, take notes on that stuff, and then apply that, because it's much more likely that you're going to be able to fill any of the gaps that you would get if you go all in on those one or two coaches. Now if you're watching this, you probably love basketball, you probably love getting better. And so you're watching a ton of different content. And I'm not telling you to stop doing that. But what I am saying is that when you find those coaches that you really trust and that you think put out value, make sure you, you consume as much of their stuff as you can so you get a an all encompassing view of what they're talking about. You're going to feel so much more confident applying the things that you learn when you do that. This is the ultimate foundation to developing your basketball IQ and becoming the player that you want to become on the court. Now if you watch this, you want to take this to the next level. Like I mentioned earlier, I have a free basketball IQ masterclasses linked down below that you're going to want to check out. We go in depth to even more of this stuff. How to score more points, how to create more consistently and play with more confidence. Develop the mindsets and the understand that you need in order to dominate on the court. It's completely free. It's a top link in the description down below. Make sure you check that out. Appreciate you for watching. Talk soon. Peace.