How To Develop Your Instincts and Basketball IQ

Foreign welcome to the Vision Revassel training podcast. Appreciate you guys for tuning in today. Whether you're an Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube. Thank you guys for listening. We'll hop into it. Really appreciate all the feedback I've been getting recently just on recent videos specifically. You know, a lot of you guys have, have really been sending me a lot of questions, which definitely helps out with, with, you know, knowing what I want to make more of. You know, what videos help you guys, what podcasts are going to help you guys. So continue to do that. Any questions you have, make sure you DM me on Instagram @visiondrivenbasketball. Try my best to get to all of them. And obviously if you're on YouTube, you can leave a comment as well, but Instagram is the best spot to do that. And also just give me a follow. So you know, when I'm going live with my workouts or any other things that you might want to know, any posts that I have, you'll be to see those as well. So make sure you guys check that out today. You know, I want to talk about specifically how to improve your instincts and your basketball iq, your ability to make reads, all those things. This is a question that I get so often. I mean, one of the most frequent questions that I get is just players asking about how they can, how they can improve those things in their game. Because typically what's going to happen is that, you know, I'll get a DM saying, hey, coach, do you have a workout or a drill that can help me improve my IQ or my ability to make reads or my court vision? And you know, a lot of times I give the same answers to the. But so I wanted to make a podcast as a very, very important question to note because it is, it's very like, it's a great question and it's something you need to think about, you know, if you really want to be at your best. You know, obviously the physical traits and skills of the game of basketball are a major part of the game, right? So, you know, your ability to shoot, your ability to dribble, and then we can even get more specific. Your ability to hit step backs, your ability to score off the dribble in the mid range, your ability to play out of the high post, your ability to, you know, break your guy down off the dribble, your ability to, you know, do all these different things go to different crossover moves go to you obviously I talk about my, you know, my go to moves, the, you know, the punch drag. I had A post on Instagram breaking that down. You know, being able to go to, like, the float dribble. You know, you guys have seen the video I just posted on Friday of those drills of the out of the flow dribble. Obviously, there's a lot of skills that you work on and that you can develop through doing those certain drills. And obviously, everybody who's serious about basketball understands that and is willing to do those things to work on those skills because they understand, like, oh, if I want to be good at something, I gotta actually practice it, right? And, you know, obviously there's workouts and there's videos online for basically every skill you could possibly want to have. You know, for the most part, I mean, if you want to get better at something specific, you can find a video on it. You can usually find multiple videos on it. And again, you know, maybe, you know, some videos might be better than others, but you're gonna find things to do. There's help out there for you. And, you know, obviously on my own channel, for example, I've got drills and workouts for a whole bunch of different skills. Obviously, we have the NBA player workouts, which are gonna target different types of skills, different situations. Then I have more and more specific workouts where we might be working on shooting. You saw again, the drill I just posted about the flow, where we're just basically going through float. Like, shots at the float dribble, my jab workout, so many ball handler workouts. Like, a lot of finishing workouts, too. Like, literally, for every sort of skill you could want, there's workouts for it. And that's great. And obviously that's one of the best things about where we're heading, is just, like, there's so much help out there for players. You know, even when I was younger, like, there was, like, YouTube was still big when I was in, you know, middle school, early high school, like, it was still a massive thing back then. But, you know, even at that point, it wasn't. The quality wasn't what it is today. There's a lot of really quality basketball content on YouTube. It wasn't like that, you know, whatever, seven or eight years ago just wasn't so moving in the right direction, obviously, in terms of drills and workouts and stuff like that. But more specifically, what I want to get into is the unfortunate trap that a lot of players fall into when it comes to this, because they know, like, okay, I can find all these drills and workouts on YouTube to work on these skills, and they fall in love with doing Drills. And they think that drills are the way to actually get the success in the court that they want. And that's unfortunately not really the case. It's part of it, but it's not the full story. Okay? And a lot of players don't. Don't quite get this. A lot of players feel like they can become great in games just by doing drills. And it's really. It's far from the truth, because there's a lot of things that you have to develop as a player that you don't get from drills. At least most drills, and especially drills that you're doing, you know, against no defense. You know, we all know players who. Who don't work out, like, you know, quote, unquote, workout on their, you know, basketball game all that much, right? But they're still able to be effective on the court. Like, you know, they might show up and play pickup, and they might be the best player there, even though they don't really practice all that much. But maybe, you know, they're always playing pickup. You know, maybe basketball's not even their number one sport. But anytime that, you know, your group of friends trying to get pickup runs, they show up and they just play and they've become really, really good at playing. And that in itself is a skill that's very important to have. And that's really what I want to touch on today, because that. That is something that. That right there, that is a lesson you need to learn. And if you can apply that lesson with your drills, you'll become very, very effective in the way that you want to be. So, you know, obviously players, you know, players will ask me, like, how can I improve my instincts? And really, that's a good question. But the question that I get a lot, too, is like, how do you have a. Do you have a workout to improve my instincts? Do you have a workout to improve a basketball iq? Do you have a workout to improve my court vision or my passing? Like, here's the thing. I think passing in itself is a skill. Obviously, you know, be able to throw behind the back pass and, you know, no, look past or, you know, over the head, whatever. But at the same time, a big part of passing is knowing when to do it. Okay? Like, you can have all the skills passing the world, but if you don't know when to make that pass, it's really useless. So I'm gonna lump passing in with this, too. So when I get questions about passing and all those things, like, I'm gonna lump that in with this, and you Know what I tell them is that, like, when they ask that question, you don't get those skills from practice. Like, you don't get those skills from doing drills. You don't improve your basketball iq. Now, you can to an extent, and I'll touch on this in a minute with basketball iq, but in terms of court vision, instincts, overall awareness, and passing as well, you develop those through playing the game, through actually playing against defense. That's how you develop those things. And really, there's some things in the game of basketball that you just can't learn without facing defense. You know, improving your instincts, like making massive improvements in your iq, you know, your decision making, all those things are things you develop through trial and error. Okay? That's the thing. Players want to skip that whole trial and error phase because it's uncomfortable. It's not fun to have to go out there onto a court against actual opponents and mess up and turn the ball over and make the wrong read. They want to do a workout where they can say, oh, I can just work on this in a workout and I can just go be perfect in games. But that's just not how it works. You can't, you can't look to approach things like that because it won't work out for you. And, you know, you can make your individual workouts planned. You can make them perfect. You can make them, you know, obviously, a couple weeks ago we talked about, you know, block versus random training, where, you know, essentially when you have block training, it's where everything's planned out. I'm going to do this and I'm going to do this, then this and this and this, and I can make it perfect. Right? Random training is where things aren't going to be perfect for you. You know, you might be creative with your drills, which I'm going to touch on in a later podcast, the importance of creativity. But that's part of it if you're working out by yourself. But then also random training includes actual, like game live situations, you know, where you're playing one on one, three on three, five. That. That's also training. It's random training though, because you can't plan anything out. It's not perfect, right? Things are going to go wrong, you're going to make mistakes, you're going to get beat sometimes. And that sort of training is very, very effective in developing you as a player. So that, that is why you need to have that sort of, that sort of, that sort of training is developed through that. So in that podcast I talked about how you know block and random training, like random training is statistically better. It gives you, will give you better results. And you can listen to that podcast if you want to hear the full, like the more detailed version of that. But essentially you still need to have both of those things. You can still improve your shooting by doing rep after rep after rep block training. Okay, you can do that. And honestly, you're going to have to. Even when I'm working out with my players, like, we're going to get up a lot of spot shots. Okay, we're going to get up a lot of them. So I also get questions a lot from players. Like, coach, is this blockchain? Like, coach, how do I make all my workouts random? Like, you don't have to do that. All that I'm saying is that if you don't have access to a trainer who's going to do this for you. So I also get questions about trainers which I'm going to touch on again later, but not always. Will trainers have blocked or have random trainings? A lot of times can be blocked as well. But if you do block training, that's fine. Okay, that's fine. But you need to make sure that you also are playing basketball. You're playing pickup, you're playing one on one, three on three. That's going to be your random stuff. That's where you can actually learn how to develop those skills into actual, you know, skills you can use in games. Okay? So like don't make things, so don't make things super complex for yourself, okay? End of the day, play more basketball. That should be what you get from this. Play more basketball. Now going back to basketball iq, there are some things you can do to develop your basketball IQ off the floor. So, you know, there are a lot of film breakdowns, you know, IQ breakdowns out there. And there's a lot on my channel. If you go, look, I have some film breakdowns, I have some move breakdowns that really break down like my, some of my favorite moves and why I think they're effective. I really encourage you guys to check those out. And you know, like another one, I have my off ball movement breakdown of Jeremy Lynn where we just looked at how he moves about the basketball, why he's able to score so easily. There's stuff like that you can learn that will help you. You know, for me there's a, there are a, A, there's a baseline of things that you can learn from film study, right? And things you need to learn. So in my program, the 20 points per game blueprint, we break down film in there because we're trying to build that iq. So when I teach a player, like attack his lead foot, right? When I teach a player, the best time to attack is off a closeout, right? And we look at situations in the 20 points a game blueprint of that happening and how guys are able to use that. That allows you to now be focused on that going into your actual training. So now you think, okay, you know what, I'm going to make sure, like when I catch the ball, oh, I remember I supposed to attack him on the closeout because he's moving towards me. I'm going to have the advantage getting downhill on him, right? That's something that can directly help you. Okay. And we have a ton of stuff like that in there, too. That being said, it doesn't just. It doesn't. It doesn't stop there, right? You can also look at a lot of NBA games, college games, if you watch those games, that can also help you. You know, you turn on the TV and you watch LeBron James, you using the pick and roll, you can learn from that, right? You can do that, but it doesn't stop at that point. Okay. You can't just study film and then expect to go into games and just be able to do the things you see, right? You should study film. But also then you have to actually get out there and do that, like, do what you're watching, right? If you're learning how to attack, if you're learning how to use a shot fake, how to use a jab, right? You can't just watch and say, oh, wow, that looks effective. Like, I guess I just go out and be great at that. Not how it works. You got to actually get out there and do it and learn how to do it and go through that whole trial and error piece of the thing too. And, you know, that was, for me growing up, that was a big thing for me. Like, a lot of the moves that I learned were just stuff that I would learn from online programs or from YouTube. And, you know, the biggest thing was that when I learned them, I would actually go out and like practice them, right? And then when I practiced them and I felt like I could actually do them, like physically, then I'd go and try to do them in games, not necessarily, but pick up, you know, pick up or one on one or two on two. Like, I'd get there in the practice still in a practice situation, still in that random training and work on those things. Then when I had that down, I Felt like I could bring that into my actual games. That's how you develop a skill completely. You know, you learn it, you see it, right? Then you take it into your practice, into your, you know, your individual practice, and you learn how to do it. Then once you have that down, then you use it in your pickup games or in your one on one. Then after you have that down there, you can use it in your real games, okay? That's how you go from, you know, not knowing how to do something to being effective doing it. And my commitment to doing that allowed me to get good at a few things, right? Like learning the whole. You know, One of my favorite things is the jab. And I feel like my jab is really good. And it's again, the reason I love this because you don't have to be a great athlete for it. You don't have to be like. But I feel like I've studied it so much, I've watched it so much, and I practiced it so many times that I feel like I can create space coming out of that, out of that triple threat, out of that jab, out of that double jab, little shimmy, which I think is very, very important to do. So it can't just be, you watch something and then you don't go out and practice it and you don't go out and try it in your actual competitive pickup games. You got to do that too. And that's where you develop that basketball iq. That's where you take the basketball IQ from something you know. You know, you can recite to me. You can say, yeah, I know, coach, I'm supposed to attack his top foot. I know I'm supposed to do this and do that. But also, you know, I've internalized it, meaning that I've taken it from just being something that I know that I can tell you to something that, like, I actually live by and do, right? Something that, that, that's internal, something that is instinctual, right? You develop those instincts, that basketball iq, you turn it into something instinctual when you finally go out and practice it against live opponents, okay? And in games, that's the important part for you guys to recognize. And, you know, like I said, there's a few reads and IQ points that we really touch on that you need to know, okay? But once you have those things down, it's about going and learning it for yourself, okay? And, you know, growing up for me, I was all about the drills, right? So, like, that was the thing. I. There was nobody, like, where I grew, where I'm where I grew up, there. I don't know anybody who spent more time in the gym doing drills than I did. Right. Or I should say who is more consistent in the gym doing drills than I was. And, but, but what I learned, and it took me a while to learn it, is that it's not just about that. Like, you can't just be a guy who does drills all day. Okay, important. But also there's another piece to it that you can't skip out on because you're going to get better at shooting, at dribbling, at all those things. But your instincts, your ability to read and react, your iq, your ability to make decisions, quick decisions, you don't get that from doing drills. You get it from playing. So what I should have done as a younger player is played way more. I should have played way more. I should have played way more one on one. Should have played way more pickup. And I didn't start doing that until like my later years of high school. Like, I should have done that a lot earlier. It would have been a lot better for me. And you know, once I started to recognize that playing was as important as drills are, that was when I saw real progression. And honestly, that's the point that we got to touch on too, the importance of playing honestly. There's probably players out there who I would say, like, you need to play more than you train, like, you need to play, you need to play more live basketball than you, than you do drills. Not every player is like that, but there are a lot of players out there who probably could benefit from that. Just ramping up the amount of times that they play. And, and you know, the whole thing with the drills was great because I'm able to pick things up quicker. I feel like I can pick up footwork details quicker, subtle moves quicker, because I just spent so much time dissecting things and working on them. But that second part of, of, of being able to, to make those reads and have those instances in games is what I lacked early on. And you know, as I've stopped playing competitively on a team and you know, literally I'm just playing a ton of pickup. You know, I, at this point, I'm doing less drills than I was back in high school, but I'm at, at this very moment is the best I've ever been as a basketball player. And that's what doing less drills. The only difference now is that I'm just playing more, there's playing more pickup. So I just have the ability to really learn how to score in games better, how to make decisions better. And that's a point you guys need to understand. Once you start to play more, like, you're just gonna. There's a confidence you're gonna get that you just don't have if you only are doing drills, okay? And that's something you're gonna develop through, Through. Through playing. And really, it's a whole new perspective. And now when I'm where I'm. When I'm training people, when I'm training my players, I understand that, like, it's not like drills are important. We're going to work on those physical skills, but at some point we're going to go live. So we might be working on, you know, we might work on, like the jab step on the wing, right? But, you know, maybe we'll spend the first 40 minutes doing that. In the last 20 minutes, we're going to go live where I'm going to. I'm going to make a pass out to you on the wing, maybe from a disadvantage from the middle, and I'm going to close out on you, and you got a score out of that triple threat, right? So now we're going to take the actual skill and translate into a game. So now when we do that repeatedly, that player is going to feel confident actually executing those moves with the defender on him. He's going to know, okay, I've got this much space. I can go to this now. Okay, I don't have this much space. I got to give him a. I got to give him a shot fake or. Okay, I can get downhill now. He crosses feet. I can go to that punch drag and get my shot off right there. Okay, I went to my punch and he recovered. Now I got to go between the legs. I can get to the other side of the room and finish. That's something that you learn from playing. Okay. And that's kind of the best of both worlds. You get your actual drills in, but then you actually get the instincts, the IQ when you play. You know, the other question I get a lot of times is about counters. Like, coach, how do I develop counters to my moves? And again, I'm going to touch on this in a future podcast, talking about creativity, because that's a major part of it, being able to be creative with the ball, but also that comes from playing more. So when you are playing, you know, one on one, and you have to be able to react to how a defender is going to play, right? If you go to. If you go to that punch, dribble the first time, and you hit. You hit the shot and you go to it again. Maybe, maybe you got it twice in a row. Now that defender's gonna be playing heavy on it. So you gotta be able to go punch between the legs and go right. Maybe he gets that next time. So you got to be able to go punch between the legs, step back, go right. And that's how I develop. That's how I design a ton of, like, my workouts will be like, literally just little wrinkles off of what we're doing. So, like, again, if you go back to my. My float drill that I posted on Friday, you'll see that's literally what it is. We're going to take the float dribble, then we're going to add a little piece to it. So we'll go from float into a shot, we'll go float into a shot, into a sidestep, and then we'll go float into a. Like a between, like step back, and then we'll go into a float between shift. Literally just adding wrinkles to every single variation of the move. And if you watch that drill, that's literally what we did. We just. We just shifted variations the whole time. So now all of a sudden, you're playing out of that float while you have an unlimited amount of options you can go to, right? So if you're trying to work on something like that, that's an important thing to do. You know, I'm trying to work on being able to go to that punch. So what are all the variations I could go to? Right? I could go to a punch into a shot. I go punch between the legs. I could go punch into a step back. I could go punch into a hesitation into a blow by. I could go punch into a behind the back step. Like, literally, there's. There's an unlimited amount of things you can go to. And again, we're going to get into the. Into being creative in a. In a later podcast. But that's kind of another. Another point with that, that, that you got to think of. But again, playing. I think it's just massive for that, for being able to. To create counters, having to react to different things. You know, I talked about before basketball, there's never a play that you're going to see twice, right? Every play that you're going to have in your career is going to be a little bit different. And, you know, the biggest thing in basketball is being able to overcome problems, right? So you're faced with a problem, you have to solve it very Quickly, okay? That in itself is a skill you're being your ability to problem solve on the floor. And the more you do that in your training and AKA pick up one on one, the more you have to learn how to solve problems, the better you're gonna be when you get to games and you have to solve problems, okay? Because when you're just training, doing drills, you don't have to solve problems, they're already solved for you. There's no defense, you just do it, right? You get into games and a pickup and that's different, okay? So it really translates for you. And again, it's going to help you develop a level of confidence that you, that you haven't had before, okay? So I can't stress it enough if you want to be able to learn those instincts. And really that's what it is. You know, when people talk about instincts and iq, all that really is is your ability to solve problems, okay? Your ability to solve problems on the court quickly. That's referenced as your instincts and your basketball iq. Your ability to make the right decision, okay? To make the right play and to execute that play. And you only can, can really work on that through playing and through being in those situations, you're going to find yourself in games so very, very important. And you know, again, there is no like this is not to say that that drills can't help us. Like I said before, you know, when I'm working with my players, we're gonna go live at some point and we're gonna, we're gonna work on an action out of a simulated situation. So like I said, I might close out on my guy on the wing and he's gotta play out that triple threat, right? So we're working on those skills as well. Maybe we've worked on being able to go, you know, working on some sort of jab series from the top. So now we're gonna play one on one from the top, right. The other thing that we'd like to do, and I'm actually, I'm gonna be posting it at some point is we played like a one on two trap drill out of alpha ball screen which you guys will see. And that's another type of drill you can use to really work on those sort of game. You know, ability to make reads and different things like that. There's a lot of different live things you can do and you know, if you're fortunate enough to have access to somebody who knows how to do that. So if you have a coach or a trainer who knows how to Implement those things. That can be very, very helpful as well. In addition to your training and your playing, that can really help you as well. But if you don't have that, it's not the end of the world. Just make sure you play more basketball. And I also want to clarify what I mean by play more, because not all pickup is equal, okay? The pickup units that you play needs to be game, like, right? It can't just be, you know, you go to the YMCA and you're playing against a bunch of, you know, trash players or, you know, playing against a bunch of kids who are six years younger than you. Like, that's not gonna help you all that much if it's all you have access to right now, like, make the most of it for now. But you're gonna want to find a better situation for yourself, okay? So you know what that, what that means is, is you want to try and find a situation where you can play against other good players, okay? So maybe, maybe you can't even consistently find good five on five. If you can find good three on three or good two on two or good four on four or one on one, whatever, that's going to be helpful for you as well. But obviously, five on five is ideal. But you know, the thing is, you can kind of. You can kind of be that person. And honestly, like, that's what I've been able to do, like just playing pickup. You know, I have access to a gym, so that really hasn't been an issue. I can get guys in the gym, we can play pickup, which is just super important for, you know, the guys that I'm working out with, but also, like, just getting a chance to play, right? So you, you know, be that guy. Be like, hey, you know, text all your teammates, hey, let's go to the park and play, right? You know, maybe you guys can go to the, to the local gym and play, right? Be. Be proactive and be like, hey, you know, I'm gonna try and get five of my friends to go play and we can play three on three, right? Five of my teammates who are all good, who are all these going to play hard, who are going to give me a chance to actually, you know, get some good looks. That in itself is going to be helpful for you. So, so if you don't have access to good pickup right now, be the guy, right? Be. Be the girl who's going to get your teammates together and say, hey, let's play, right? Even if it's like, hey, I'm going to get one of My teammates, we're going to play one on one for a little bit. Do that, okay? Do the best that you can with what you have. And that's the thing. I always talk about the importance of playing one on one. And it truly is incredibly important that you do that. There's a lot of things you can develop and ultimately basketball is about being able to beat your guy and put the ball in the basket. So you know, when you're playing, if you're able to just play one on one and learn how to do that at a high level, again, your confidence is going to go way up. Okay. Obviously, basketball is a five on five game. It's not about one on one. Which is why I recommend if you're going to play one on one consistently give yourself a three or four dribble limits and say, you know, we're going to play five on five or four or we're going to play one on one. But you have a four dribble limit. Okay. If you can't drill more than four times, three dribble limit, usually how I play it, make it, make it game like and force yourself to learn how to score with limited dribbles and against somebody who knows you're going to shoot the ball, right. In a five on five game, they don't know if you're going to shoot, you're going to pass, right? But in one on one, they know you have to score. So that has another level of difficulty to it that's going to make it easier in games when your defender isn't quite so sure what you're going to do. Okay. So very important to do that. So kind of the question is like, what would that schedule look like then, coach? Like if I'm supposed to, you say you're telling me to still do my drills and all that, but also to play more. Like, how do I balance that, you know, for my guys. So for my guys in the perimeter score system, I recommend that they play at least twice a week. However, like, that's a minimum. Like you can play more than that. You can play. If you can play four or five times a week. Cool. That's not necessarily. I wouldn't say it's necessary, but you know, if you can, especially as you get closer to like the season starting as we, you know, approach the. Obviously it's still early in the summer, but you know, once we get to the fall and hopefully, you know, depending on where you live too, with this whole, with the whole, you know, pandemic thing, you know, I know Some places are more open than others, but ideally, as we go along, things will start to, you know, open up even more. But play as much as you can and, you know, I would say at least try and get some sort of live action in twice a week. So even it's just one on one or two on two, whatever, try and do that twice a week for, you know, an hour and, you know, 45 minutes. And again, like I said, you'll see a lot of improvements in your, your instincts, your iq, your decision making, and your ability to. Again, all that goes into your ability to solve problems. And once you, once you are confident that you can solve those problems consistently at a high level, that's where you'll start to get that confidence, right? And it's really not a confidence you get from any sort of workout. Like, you might feel confident, your ability to shoot the ball. If you, if you, if you can shoot the ball at a high level in your workouts, you're going to be confident doing that, right? Like, and that's completely understandable. It's the same thing with your ability to solve problems. Your instincts, your iq, your decision making. The more you do it, the better you get at it, the more confident you're going to be on the court. And that's going to make every other aspect of your game way better. When you have that sort of innate confidence about that and, you know, kind of going on with that, if you have a teammate you work out with, so, you know, you guys get some shots up together, play some one on one at the end. That's what I used to do in high school. You know, we, we'd get in the gym, we, we'd go through our workout or whatever, we'd get some shots up, do whatever we're going to do that day. And then we play one on one. You know, we go from. We, we'd start in the, on the wing, we'd go four dribble limit, three dribble limit, first one to five, right? So I'll go put my shot up. We're going to reset it. He'll go. And whoever scores five points first, right, make it, take it. Whoever scores five points first. Then we'll go to the other wing, then we'll go to the top and let him do the corners, right? Just being able to get in different situations and simulate those, the ability to just get buckets right to score when you need to. Very, very important. So I want to go to a couple of questions that I've gotten, and these aren't necessarily actually like, answers to the questions, but I've gotten a lot of DMS and even comments about this sort of stuff, so I wanted to kind of break this down. And the first thing. And this is something that I hear that I actually. I forget who I heard talk about this the other day, but it kind of sparked my memory because I. I had made a video similar to this a couple weeks ago talking about, you know, basically, does your height translate to the next level? Okay. Because the big thing that, you know, players need to think about is, like, you know, if you're in high school, right, and you're playing, you know, you're six four, okay, or you're even. Even. Maybe even six five, right, you're playing big, which is very common for a lot of high schools. You know, at my high school, literally when I was there, we had a couple kids who were, like, a little bigger, but in our starting lineup, I was our. Yeah, I was our biggest player in our starting lineup. But the thing is, we played all good. It was basically five guards, so we would run five guards. But. But if you're, like, you know, if you're six two, right, and you play big, you don't play. Like, you can't play guard, That's a problem. Okay? And the thing is, a lot of times it's not actually your fault, right, because you might have been. You might be six two, right? But maybe you were six foot in eighth grade. Like, maybe you just, like, hit your growth spurt really early. So you were six inches taller than everybody else when you were in eighth grade. So you played big, man, like, your whole life growing up, you were bigger than everybody else. But then, you know, you stopped growing. Everyone else caught up to you. Now you're, like, pretty average basketball height. Like, you're not really, like, you're not small, but you're not big. So obviously, if you don't have those guard skills, you just. You can't translate to the next level. Like, you just can't do it at 6:2, even at high school, you're gonna struggle against good opponents who are big. And so it's very important that players develop those guard skills regardless of the position they play, especially younger players. So if you're, you know, if you're in seventh, eighth, ninth grade, and you're playing big right now, like, and you don't have guard skills, like, you got to develop them even. Even if you're, like, really big, Even if you're 6, 6, 6, 7, right, still have that ability, still have an Outside shot still have the ability to put the ball on the floor when you need to. Because that's where basketball is heading. That's where it is now. Okay? Everybody in the floor can shoot. You know, everyone. If you look at the NBA, right, if you can't, there's, there's a very, very limited number of spots for players who cannot shoot the basketball. And typically those guys are like seven footers who are going to be your basically your, your garbage guys who are going to do all the dirty work for you, get rebound, set screens. And typically, you know, if you look at like for example that warriors team, I forget which year it was when they had Zaza Bachelia, right? He would, he would start for them, but he played like 12 minutes a game, right? Because they'd have guys who come off the bench, Iguodala Livingston, guys who had those guard skills, perimeter skills would get the majority of the minutes because that's where the NBA is now, right? You don't need Zaza petrolia to play 30 minutes anymore, okay? This is in the 1990s, right? You don't have a big guy who's going to get, who's going to. And now again that it's different. Even if you look at the big guys in the NBA today, Carl Anthony Towns outside shot could put the ball on the floor. Joel Embiid. Joel Embiid is incredibly talented. Like if you watch this guy, like he didn't start playing basketball, he was 15, which is just remarkable when you look at his ability to put the ball on the floor, his ability to shoot when he's open, his just his moves he has in the mid range. I mean it's incredible to watch, right? He has those abilities to put the ball on the floor to shoot the basketball. He's not a traditional big, okay, he can do that because he's 7 foot 2 and an incredible athlete, right? So, so. But even him, like if Joel Embiid is not just going to settle with, oh, I'm big, so I'm just going to play big guy, right? I'm just going to have a back to basket game. If he's not settling for that, you definitely shouldn't be. Okay? It doesn't matter how tall you are, you got to have those skills because at some point you're going to, you're going to play on a team where there's going to be guys who are going to be the same height as you who have more ability than you to score the basketball. Your coach is going to want to play Fast, okay? The best teams now play fast. They get the ball up and down the floor. They shoot a lot, right? Drive a dish. Everybody on the floor can put the ball in the basket. If you can't do that, you can't. If you have no outside game you like, you're going to ruin spacing. You're going to be, essentially, you're going to be another guy who just can't get it done on offense. So your code is going to say, oh, we got guys who are similar size, you know, maybe not the same skill set. Maybe I can't get as many rebounds as you, but, like, we'll make up for and the threes we're going to hit because we're going to put him in the game. That's how it's going to work, and that's how it has work. And I see it all the time. So you really got to. Got to develop yourself. And again, you know, even if you're big, even if you're six nine, six ten, like, still. Still approach it with the knowledge that the best big guys in the NBA are all have guard skills as well, right? They might not be guards. You know, if you look at, you know, Jokic in, in Denver, right? He. He's a big, but I mean, he's an incredible passer, right? He could put the ball on the floor. He can handle the ball. Like, he, he has like that. That's where basketball is now. There is no room for guys who can't shoot the ball. There is no room for guys who can't dribble the ball, okay? You need to have it. And I think that's a very important piece for players to learn. And that's why I'm saying, like, you know, if you have aspirations to play at the college level, you need to evaluate yourself and be like, okay, can I actually do that? Right? If you're 64 and you can't shoot, like, unless you are a ridiculously great athlete, it's not going to work out for you, okay? You need to be able to shoot the basketball. You need to be able to put the ball on the floor, okay? Do not settle for, you know, I've always been a big. So, like, that's what I do. No, take the time to get in the gym and work on it, right? Even if it's not your role, okay? I'm not saying that you need to, you know, get mad at your coach because maybe you're the biggest kid in your team and you have to play big, okay? That's that's fine. But at the same time outside of your team practices, develop those skills, right? So that if you're, you coach my start to see, okay, this, this dude can, this dude can actually like, he can do a little something with the ball now, right? So maybe we can look at something where we get them on a pick and pop now, right where you're going to set a screen, you're going to pop out to the, to the, to the three point line and you might be able to shoot, you might be able to attack and all of a sudden right there, that's the thing. You know, I refer, like when I was in high school, we had, we ran a five out essentially. Actually a lot of times we ran a four out, one in because we had me and another kid who were both like, I mean six one, maybe six two, but we both had guard skills. So it's like if we, if we're playing against a team that has a kid who's six six but he can't move, right, he's their big guy, like we're gonna like, we can, we can eat that kid up because we can both put the ball on the floor, we can shoot the ball, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna put pressure on him. And now all of a sudden we're taking the game from, oh, they're, they're undersized to wow, that team can't stop them because they, their big guys can't play with them. That, that, that's where the NBA is, is treading. It's, you know, where who's got the biggest team. That's where all basketball is treading. It's not about who has the biggest team, who has the best athletes, but who, who has the best shooters, who has a team that, that spaces for the best and runs for the best and has the best ball movement and can play defense, can guard every position. Those are the players and the teams that are successful in today's basketball. So, so recognize that. And if that's, you start today developing those guard skills, shoot the ball and put the ball on the floor. Those two things you got to be able to do. So that, that I feel like is something that's very important for players to know. And the second thing that I want to talk about today too is, is, you know, I got a DM last week and it was, it was from a kid and he was, he told me he's going into his freshman year of high school. So he was saying like, you know, he asked me A couple other things. And then, you know, he said, he was like, hey, coach, so, you know, I'm going into my freshman year. Like, you know, you said in your video that rankings are important, which I talked about in last week's podcast. And he's like, okay, so if rankings aren't important, like, what should I do to get exposure, to get noticed? And, you know, this kind of has a multifaceted response to it. Here's the thing. If you're in 8th, 9th, most of you in 10th grade, like, I'm just going to tell you straight up, like, don't even worry about exposure now, okay? You, most of you are not Mikey Williams, okay? Like, like, most of you aren't. So most of you aren't going to have ESPN and, you know, all these, all these major networks covering you when you're in, you know, you're in eighth or ninth grade, this won't happen. Very, very, very, very, very, very few players have that. And it really doesn't matter at the end of the day. So, so the whole exposure thing, it's for what? Like, the main thing is players will ask me, like, coach, how do I get recruited to play basketball? Like, I, I don't want it to. It's, it's not this simple, but it really is. Like, you have to be good. You have to be really, really good. Like, really, really good. If you aren't getting, if you aren't getting recruited now, there's some things that you can do additionally. But at the end of the day, if you're in eighth or ninth grade, like, you, you aren't good enough to play back to play college basketball. Yeah. Again, unless you're a top player. Okay? So when you're that, when you're that young, when you're below your junior year high school, or at least the summer going into your junior year of high school. So if you're still a sophomore or lower, your main focus should not be exposure or recruiting or anything like that. Like, just stop thinking about it. It's not important. Again, unless you are a top player in your class, right, where you're going to have D1 offers when you're in seventh or eighth grade, okay? Again, 99.9999% of players do not fall in that category, okay? So stop worrying about it. If you're below that age, your main focus should be development, okay? It should be getting really, really good so that by the time you're a junior, right? Junior is a very important year for recruiting. By the time you're A junior. You can contribute to your varsity team. You can be a main guy in your varsity team. You can play on a good AAU team, play good tournaments, and actually be in front of people who now actually care. Because here's the thing. I've said this in videos before that, that you guys have probably. I had a whole pot. Well, it was a segment of a podcast where essentially I talked about the whole difference between, you know, D1, D2, D3, my experience playing with guys at each level, and how a lot of those deep, like, a lot of D3 guys that I know are better than some D1 guys I know. Like, and the thing is, for the majority of Division 3 programs, like, they're not going to recruit you before your junior year. Like, they're just not going to. It's different in D1. They might recruit you as a freshman, sophomore, some even earlier than that if you're. Again, if you're a top player. But like I said before, the majority, in most places, the best player on your team, the best player on your league, the best player in your conference is going to be a D3 guy. So that player isn't even going to really get recruited until he's a junior. Okay? So why, why worry about recruiting when you're a freshman? It doesn't really matter. Your. Your. Your goal needs to be to become that guy. Like, I need to become the guy who's the best player on my team, who's the best player in my conference. Like, that's got to be what you're actually looking to do. It shouldn't be about, oh, I gotta get exposure, I gotta do all this and that. And like, that's just. It's not important. Like, I think. I think the focus for players is not where it needs to be in terms of that. Like, I get it because that was. That was me. But, you know, I learned to recognize, like, you know, you got to actually get good enough to be there because a coach is going to look and when he evaluates you, he's going to ask himself, is this kid going to be able to contribute to my team? Right? And like I've said before, a lot of these, even if you. Even if it's D3, a lot of these D3, like, guys are incredibly good. Again, I mentioned it before, you know, you go watch Devonte Friga, right? Like, that's a D3 guy. And he is. And he's, you know, if you, if you play with him, he's probably one of the best players. You're ever going to play with, right? So, so you need to, you need to look at that like I've, like, think about that yourself. If a guy like that is. And again, I know this for, I don't know this for sure, but like, you know, you'd assume probably not before his junior year is really when he started to get that sort of, that sort of traction, at least with the program he ended up going to. So, so end of the day, the, the exposure piece, forget about that for now, okay? Get to a point where you can, you can actually see yourself contributing to a college roster. Okay? This shouldn't be about like, oh, I want to play. No, it needs to be like, are you good enough to do that? Be honest with yourself. Ask yourself that. If you aren't, then, then, then figure out why that is and work on it. Okay. Once you get to your junior year of high school, okay, going into your junior year, this is when you can start to, to be proactive. So for example, and I'm going to dive into this at some point in more detail, probably give you guys like something like, like some sort of template or something that you can use. But you're going to want to reach out to coaches, okay? Because here's the thing again, if you're not a top player, if you're not a, you know, if you're not a, if you're not D1 guy teams are not going to reach out to you for the most part. They might reach out to you, but you're going to have to reach out to a lot of schools, especially if you're interested in them. So if you want to go to this school, there's a good chance they probably won't reach out to you. You're going to have to be the one to email their coach, say, hey coach, you know, my name is, you know, Mark, I go to this high school and I graduate in this year. Here's my highlights. This is my stats from last year. You know, I'm interested in playing at your school and essentially that's what you're going to say. So you're going to do that for the schools you're interested in. And at that point, you know, if they're, if they think again, if the coach looks at you, your highlights or list, your game film says, hey, this kid might have the potential to contribute to our team in a couple years. They'll be interested in you. If they're, if they don't think that, then they won't be. So again, you need to put yourself in the best position to actually get there, okay? Stop trying to get to the finish line before you even start the race, right? If you're, if you're an eighth or ninth grade, you haven't even started. Like, you're not even close to where you need to be, okay? So stop worrying about the finish line. Start focusing on actually sprinting and getting into first place, right? Worry about actually doing it before you actually worry about finishing it. That's a big thing, I think that players need to understand is that it's not just about like, you know, oh, I gotta get exposure. You know, this kid, and this kid is, you know, Mikey Williams is getting this and that. It's like, stop. Again, that's my issue with ball's life. And overtime is like, stop worrying about what's happening on overtime. It has no effect on you. Again, those, those players on there are the, are, most of them are the very, very top of the basketball of each class, right? So they're going to get the attention, they're going to get the quote, unquote, exposure, and they're going to get the offers early because they're just, they're better than everybody else's, okay? So you can't worry about that right now. That doesn't affect you. You got to get yourself to a position to where you actually can contribute and schools are actually interested in you, okay? Because if you just are like, oh, I'm gonna get exposure, that's the other thing too. Like, you gotta, you gotta think about these camps too. A lot of camps are gonna be like, oh, you know, exposure camps or whatever, right? But if you aren't good enough, like, if you aren't that good, what do you, like, what's your exposure gonna do? It's gonna really be a waste of your time and money potentially when you could be spending that time and money in a better place. And then by the time you're a junior senior, you gotta, then you gotta worry about that stuff. And you can go, you can go to those camps, right? Because you're good enough. You put the work in for it now and you know that teams are going to be interested in you, okay? So take it step by step, get there first, get good enough first, then worry about actually being, you know, reaching out and putting yourself in a position to, you know, have opportunities for yourself, okay? That's how it works. So those are the two things I want to talk about in addition to the whole first point. You know, as always, like I always say, guys, if you have questions for me, send me a DM on Instagram @visiondriven basketball. Again, a lot of those last two questions, all from DMs that I got. And really, actually this whole entire podcast is from DMs. I get DMs on this stuff all the time. So, you know, let me know what I need to talk about, what you guys want to hear. So again, if you have a question, let me know about it. And if not, just give me a follow on Instagram. Regardless, Vision of Basketball. So you always see what's going on, I'll plug it again. But if you guys are not part of my live ball handling workouts, I go live twice a week, every week. So potentially only once a week. The week you're listening to this because of might have something on the weekend, but Wednesday, basically Wednesday and Saturday or Sunday every week. So what you should do, if you're interested in that is you should follow me on Instagram first of all. And you're gonna see I post on my story the day before I go live for my workouts. Every single time. The day before I'm gonna post about it, you're gonna see it. You can turn on reminders so that you know exactly when I'm gonna go live. Also, if you're subscribed on YouTube as well, make sure you turn notifications on. So you know when I'm going live. And you know, again, for, for, again, a shout out to all my guys who have been showing up to those. I've been doing these since mid April at this point, and it's mid June. I've literally had guys who have been in every single one. And, you know, the feedback from those guys has been incredible. Just the improvements they've seen in their ball handling, you know, that's one of the big things is, you know, you want to get better at handling the basketball. You got to have the ball in your hand more often. That was something that I've learned is just being able to be consistent. Consistent work is really a key when it comes to developing your ball handling. So again, I want to encourage all you guys listening. If you have not done that, make sure you check it out. And the other thing too is like, once I record them, they're on YouTube, so they're on there forever. So if you want to go back and do one of those live workouts, you can do it whenever you want to. But just so you know that, that that's there. So make sure again, follow me on Instagram @visiondriven basketball. Any of your questions, stuff like that. If you're listening to Apple Podcasts right now, would really appreciate if you guys would go ahead and drop a review for me. Scroll down to the bottom of the page. Quick 5 star review. Take you 3 seconds. Really helps out the podcast. So I appreciate that. If you're on YouTube, go ahead and subscribe and leave a comment and a like as well. Really do appreciate that and I'll talk to you guys soon. Peace.