How To Deal With Missing Shots (Overcome Shooting Slumps)

Steph Curry. Steph Curry is the greatest shooter to ever touch a basketball. And it's not a discussion. He's the best to ever do it, okay? And Steph Curry, you know, on a. On a great year, is going to shoot 45% from 3. 45%. 3. Which is incredible. That's an incredible percentage to shoot. But if you look at that percentage, right, 45%, that means you're still missing over half of your threes. Steph Curry, the best to ever do it. The best. Like, think about that. Of the billions of people who have ever lived, Steph Curry is the best to ever shoot a basketball. And he still makes less than half of his shots in games on a great year, okay? That, like, you need to put that into perspective. So. So if that's. If that's what he does, the best ever do it. The greatest ever do it. That's how he shoots. Why do you expect to never miss shots, right? How is that. How is that make any sense? How is that fair to Steph Curry, right? You're supposed to shoot 100%, but he only shoots 45%. That's not. That's not how it works, okay? You have to understand, I'm not saying you should go out there and expect to miss every shot, but you should expect that you're going to miss shots from time to time. You might miss multiple shots in a row. That's. That's how basketball works, okay? The best shooters do that. Steph Curry's had games where he's shot terrible, where he shot 15% from three. Plenty of games where he's missed multiple threes, and he's had plenty of games where he shot 75% from three. Okay? It all balances out. We're going to talk about that a lot moving forward, but you need to keep yourself in check. Keeping yourself in check is key mentally, okay? When you start to miss shots, when things start to not go your way, okay? Keeping yourself grounded, keeping yourself thinking the right thoughts, preventing yourself from. From listening to lies that you're gonna. You're gonna tell yourself, okay? That's. That's the massive key right here. You know, if missing a couple of shots or, you know, some, you know, something going wrong, if that starts to make you doubt yourself, that's. That's a problem for you. That's a massive problem. If you miss three, if you're a good shooter, right, and you miss three shots in a row and you decide at that point, like, I can't shoot anymore, like, I guess I gotta Be done shooting because I can't make anything, then that's a massive problem for yourself, a massive confidence problem. And you won't be consistent if that's your approach to things. If you're a good shooter and your coaches say, hey, you're a good shooter, you're allowed to shoot the ball, your teammates know you can shoot the ball, you miss a couple shots, so you decide to be done shooting the ball, that's a problem, okay? And confidence is massive when it comes to consistent production and. And confidence, you know, that's something that players struggle with, too. Confidence is really gained through two things. Two things, in my opinion, is gained through repeated success. So, you know, you'll be confident in yourself if you've made a ton of shots in your life. If you spend a lot of time shooting a basketball, you see the ball go in a lot, you're going to be pretty confident in your ability to hit shots because you've done it so many times, okay? You'll be confident if you're used to going out and scoring 20 every game, right? If you start off the season and your first eight games, you score 25 points, you'll be pretty confident going into that ninth game that you can do it again because you've done it right? So doing things, consistent success and wins, repeated success and wins, that's going to give you confidence in something, okay? You know, if you get a lot of stops on defense, you're going to be confident in your ability to be a defender. You, if you handle pressure well, you're going to be confident going forward in your ability to handle ball pressure, okay? Doing things gives you confidence, which is why we, obviously we work out, right? We work out to get better at our skills, but we also work out so that we can be confident when the game comes, that we can go and produce, okay? That's why we play pickup basketball. So we have to play against defense now. So we're confident in our abilities once we get to the game where there's live defenders, there we go. We've been here, we've played against defense before. We know how to do what we do when there's defense on the floor, okay? That's something that we have to think about, and that's a reason that we have to that we do those things, okay? And the thing is, with that, a lot of players do that. Most of you guys listening probably do that now, again, especially if you're younger, you probably haven't put in enough time, right? Shooting is a skill that compounds over Years and years of work. Okay. You know, that's why it's hard. You know, you don't see a lot of players in middle school who are great shooters because they just haven't spent enough time working on their shot. Okay? And players, you know, will get better and better at shooting as they continue to go along, okay? Because it's just muscle memory adds up, right? But there are a lot of players who have put in a ton of time who are good, maybe even great shooters or great at some sort of skill, yet they aren't confident enough to withstand any sort of adversity. Okay? And usually if that's the case, if the case they've put in the work, they're good at something but they still can't overcome adversity. They don't have the confidence to do it. Usually. That's, that's a self talk problem. Okay. You have to ask yourself, when you miss a shot, when you miss multiple shots, what do you say to yourself? Like what is your reaction to yourself? If, if your reaction is to say, oh man, I can't shoot or oh man, I'm off today, or oh man, like I'm not good or something like that? There, there goes, that's, that's a lack of confidence and there goes your ability to be consistent with something because if you're, you're at that point, you are taking yourself out of the game. You're taking yourself out of the game. So your self thought needs to change from that into, you know, my next one's going in. That's got to always be your thought. And that's a conscious shift you have to make. You might, you're going to have to start thinking to yourself, you know, when do I start? You have to catch yourself talking negatively to yourself. You miss a couple shots and you catch yourself saying, oh, I can't shoot today. No, you got to, you have to stop right there and say, you know what? No, the next one's going in. I've shot too many shots in my life to, to, to miss my next one. Like the next one has to go in because I've seen it go in so many times. I know I can shoot the basketball. Next one's going to go in. That has to be what your self talk is, okay? Because objectively it sucks to miss shots, okay? But the only thing we can control going forward is our next play, our next shot. We don't control what we missed. We have to try and make an effect, an impact on the game going forward and we need to make sure we put ourselves in the right mindset to do that. And you won't do that if you're being really hard on yourself for missing shots. You got to be just ready to go and you got to hit the next one. So, you know, like I said, Steph Curry misses over half his threes, and he's the best ever. You know, a great shooter in the NBA is going to shoot 40% from three. So they're going to make four out of 10 threes. So think about that way. You know, if you go 4, you shoot 4 for 10 from 3. That, that kind of, you know, off the bat, that might be like, man, I feel like I shoot better. Like, if I go to the gym right now and I shoot 10 wide open threes and I make four of them, I'm gonna be pretty upset with myself and be like, I feel like I'm wide open from three. Like I should be hitting more than four of these. Okay? But if you consider that in a game that's like that, you're gonna, like, you have a spot on an NBA team, you can consistently hit 40%. Okay? Obviously, there's different factors to consider in games. That's neither here nor there. Right now. I'm, I'm adjectively talking about makes and misses right now. 40% is, is the marker. Okay? So put that into perspective. A few missed shots in a row is not the end of the world at all, okay? Because at the end of the day, it's all going to balance out. We're going to talk about the law of averages right now. So Klay Thompson, right, has a game against the Bulls last year, last season where he set the NBA record for most threes in a game when he hit 14, which actually he broke Steph Curry's record 14 threes in a game. He shot 14 for 24, which is 58%. Okay? Obviously one of the best shooting performance, probably the best shooting performance ever. I mean, from three he made the most, so I guess he would be. 58% as well. Is incredible from three, and that's pretty great. But you have to consider the first month of that season, he shot 31% from three. Okay, I don't know if you guys remember this, but this is when Clay was going through that stretch where he just could not make anything like. Like he was shooting really, really, really bad to start the season off that year, like, really bad. And he was getting questions every day from reporters. Klay, what's wrong with your shot? Klay, what's up with this, with that, all that different thing. Klay Thompson is going to go down most likely as the second best to ever do it shooting a basketball and behind his own teammate. By the time things are all are said and done, you know, and he retires, he'll probably be the second best shooter ever. And you like the guy who was the second best to ever do it potentially was, was shooting 31%. 31%. And you have. So, so that's where I talk about the law of average. Because you're gonna have a guy come out of the start of season off shooting awful from three, awful from three. And next thing you know, all of a sudden, boom. Sets an NBA record for most threes in a game, right? He's gonna go from that to the complete polar opposite. Okay, and that illustrates the law of averages, right? Everything is going to balance out. Everything is going to balance out. It always does. Okay, so he's going to shoot 31% and that was pretty bad. You know, I believe, I believe he had a stretch between like end of November beginning December, that was okay. And then December again was a terrible month. Shot like 33%. And then boom, January comes, he was at like 36, February was like 45, March was 46, April 45. And by the time the regular season is over, he's shooting 40% for the year. So he's in that. He shot like 40.2% from 3 by the end of last year, but he started off the year shooting 31%, right? So you're like, man, like this guy's supposed to be the greatest of all time shooting 31%. Like, but no, it all balances out because next thing you know, the very next month, he might shoot 46%. Okay? And it's going to balance right back out. So, you know, during November of that year, actually Clay was asked about that. He was asked by a reporter during a press conference. You know, they, they asked him, they're like, you know, Clay, like, what's up with the, with the, with the shop right now? Like, are you, are you frustrated? Are you nervous? Like, like what, like what needs to change? And I'm going to put his response right here for you guys to listen to.

I feel great, man. You don't set NBA records being frustrated. So I'm not going to go over here and dwell on missing a couple shots, missing a game time shot this early in the season. I'm just going to keep shooting and they'll fall on a high cliff. I guarantee that it's going to be the key to snapping out of this rut right now because the team's win tomorrow, it's pretty simple.

So just listening to his response, like, that's the pinnacle of confidence. You know, he's saying, like, look, man, like, you know, I. I said NBA records. Like, you don't do that by, you know, being, you know, getting frustrated or. Or feeling like, you know, you know, you can't shoot anymore. Which essentially what. What he's saying, he's saying, you know, like, I'm not going to respond by saying, like, oh, man, like, what am I supposed to do? Like, I'm not gonna freak out about it. Like, I know what I can do. I know what I've been able to do, and I know that I'm going to get back to that level again. Okay? It's. It's. It's the pinnacle of confidence. You know what you've done, you have the confidence, you've put those reps in. And your talk to yourself is not like, man, I don't know what's wrong with me. None of these things. If you listen to other interviews, he does. He had another interview last year, the same season, in December, where he talked about his. They asked him again because he's going through a slump in December. And they said, you know, Clay, like, what's up with your slump? And he was like, no, it's not a slump. Like, it's not like, it's not a slump. And they're like, well, you're not shooting very well. He's like, well, it's not a slump. Like, he just had completely refused to even acknowledge that because he knows, like, he's like, yeah, I'm just going to go the next game, and I'm doing the same exact thing. I'm just going to go shoot basketball, and eventually it's going to go in. And it did for him. That's. That's literally the confidence he has in himself, okay? And his ability to shoot the basketball. And the two things you can take from that is, one, you need to expect that you're going to go through slumps sometimes. You're going to go through times that you just don't make shots, and that's okay, because the best players to ever do it also struggle with that same exact thing. So don't get too hard on yourself when you start to miss, you go through slumps or you don't shoot very well, it's going to happen. But like I said, law of averages. It all balances out. Eventually you go through a time where you're going to start hitting shots, okay, maybe at a, at a disproportionate rate. You might hit some shots. You, you probably, you know, you might hit like you might have a game where, you know, maybe the first five games of the year, you, you know, you shoot 20%. The next five games, maybe you shoot 60%. All of a sudden you're at, you're at 40, right? So that, that, that's how, that's how that works out. And, and two, like, you know, if you've put the reps in right there, that's, that's the caveat here. If you've put the reps in, Klay Thompson obviously put the reps in. Now none of you guys listening have put in as many reps as Klay Thompson. None of you are probably even close to him. But that doesn't mean you, you can't be a great shooter as well, okay? If you've put the reps in and you know what you can do with the basketball, it's going to balance out for you, right? Clay started the season off shooting, awful, shooting terrible. And from a long time, almost the first two months of the year, he had some games mixed in that were good. But overall his, his percentage going into 2019, into January was not good. It was way less than 40%. It was probably shooting 33, 34% going into, into, into, you know, January, which, you know, isn't, isn't atrocious. But for the guy who's, you know, the splash brother, that's, it is, it's bad. That's, that's not good at all. Okay? Ends the year 40%. All balances out at the end. And it's going to start clicking at some point, okay? So at the end of the day, you cannot get discouraged by going through different sort of slumps, okay? Because it's going to happen, but things are going to balance out if you stick with it, if you put the reps in, you need to be confident that that's going to happen. And like I mentioned before, it starts with your self talk. What do you say to yourself when you have, when you miss a shot or when you have a bad game? If you have a bad game where you miss, you go over eight from three. Are you telling yourself that you can't shoot? Are you saying, man, I can't shoot anymore. Like this is like what am I supposed to do? Or is your thoughts yourself? Like, you know what, I went 0 for 8. That means eventually I'm going to have to go 8 for 8, right? Because it's all going to balance out, right? So I know that my next shot probably is going to go in. Now, is that, Is that your. Is that your. Your reaction to yourself, right? Is that what you tell yourself at the game? Say, you know what, didn't shoot well today, but next one's going to go in? I'm confident what I can do. I put the reps in, I put the time in. I'm going to go do it. Okay? The players who are consistent are the ones who talk to themselves like that. They have a short memory. They say, you know what, Whatever, doesn't matter what happened there. I'm going to put my next one in. I'm confident in my ability to do it. I'm going to get it done. Okay? Every time you miss a shot, your belief needs to be the next one is going to go in. Every time you have a bad game, your thought needs to be the next one is going to be a great game. Okay? And that's, that's how you handle adversity. A lot of the issues you'll see with guys going into stretches where they just play terribly is because they have one bad game and they just, they can't get out of that mindset of thinking, like, man, I'm terrible. Like, they just get so down on themselves, even though they shouldn't. From outsiders perspective, they might be one of the better players on the team, but because they, they are talking down on themselves, they don't believe in themselves anymore, they're going to continue to play poorly. Okay? If that's you, you need to get it together. Say, you know what? Nope. Next one's gonna be good. I'm gonna go get some shots up today. I'm gonna start and I'm gonna feel good about my shot going forward. Okay, that's. That's gonna be what it is. I want you guys to right now go to the top link in my description and get my free elite perimeter score workout. We're gonna work on a bunch of different skills that you need to have if you want to be an elite player in the perimeter. Make sure you guys check it out completely free. Click the link, I'll send you.