How To Get Really Good At Basketball

When it comes to getting really good at basketball, there's a process that every player is going to go through and every player who is great at basketball that you know has gone through it, but I think a lot of times we aren't fully aware of it, and it causes players to be distracted and not really focus on the things that are going to take them to that level that they want to get to. As the saying goes. There's levels to this, and that absolutely applies when it comes to getting really, really good at basketball. So right now I'm going to go through the four levels that, that you need to go through in order to become a great basketball player and take yourself to that next level. And then I'm going to tell you the exact steps to take in order to progress yourself through these levels so that you understand first of all where you're at, and then of course, how to get to that next level or even farther than that, and then become really, really good at basketball. There's four levels when it comes to who you are as a basketball player and kind of where you're at. And a lot of it is mental, and a lot of it is just your overall understanding and the depth of understanding that you have when it comes to the game and things that you do. So really, it comes down to four different depths of understanding, I think is the best way to put it. And this applies in literally every area of life. When you think of somebody who you know is really, really good at math. Right. The way that they view math is going to be very different from a first grader who is just learning math. Right, right. The things that they're going to do, the way that they're going to solve problems, the way they're even going to look at problems is going to be completely different. And when you talk to or look at somebody who's maybe a beginning basketball player versus somebody who's a professional player, the way that they view the game and the way that they approach the game, the way they solve problems is very different. We're going to go through why that is and how you can continue to progress yourself forward with this understanding. So the first level that we have is the tactic level. And this is where every player is going to start off at at some point. And some players progress through it quickly, some players don't, some players never progress past it. But this is like the baseline level when it comes to basketball. And this is where you're very much focused on just the simple tactics that go into performing a skill or Performing in the game in general. So a tactic might be flicking your wrist when you shoot the basketball, right? That's an example of a tactic that's used. A tactic might be learning that you know, you need to relocate when your teammate drives so that they can kick the ball out to you and they have a passing angle for that. That's an example of a tactic. So player will hear that, implement that into their game and now they're going to see some results and now they're going to go looking for the next tactics. This is when you know, you get on TikTok and you see, oh, try these five moves in your next game. Like that's an example of, of, of tactics and, and a tactic level of thinking. And like I said, every player is going to start off at this level and be at this level and, and a lot of times they're going to go back to this level whenever they learn new information. But the problem is at this level it's very easy for things to get messed up or for things to do to be challenging for you. Because if one thing changes all of a sudden your tactic may not work. If the defense goes from playing a man to playing a zone, the tactics that you were using might not work. So if you don't understand the like even deeper the game of basketball, then you're going to struggle to be able to adapt when things change, right? So this is why a lot of times beginning players, younger players are stuck here and they struggle to be able to adapt and solve problems and be consistent. Because the way that they think is very service level, it's very tactic based. Okay? If this doesn't work, they need to hear another tactic and they a lot of times need to be told the tactic and they can't really figure it out on their, on their own because they don't have the experience that goes into understanding, you know, why am I doing this right? And that's kind of the next level to it. So the second level is strategy. And so this is like that, that, that next step past tactics where now all of a sudden you're able to kind of combine tactics into more of a cohesive plan into more of a strategy. So for example, it could be constantly looking to shoot first. You understand that when you shoot, when you look to shoot first, the defense has to close out harder and it might allow you to eventually be able to tack downhill because you're always looking to shoot the basketball. And that's an example of a strategy that you might employ. Okay, so we're taking that next step from tactic to strategy. And this is where players will get to after they've been around the game for a little bit or they've been around coaches who, you know, help them to start to learn the game or maybe they just watch a lot of basketball and start to see patterns and stuff that happens. Another example could be taking advantage of closeouts. Could be, you know, just as simple as shooting when you're open. A lot of these things that go into being successful, these strategies, kicking the ball out if you draw a help defender. Another example of a strategy is that next level from tactics, okay? And really those are the two levels that, that a lot of times players who are beginning the game and players who haven't quite ascended to that expert level, a lot of times they're going to find themselves just in these sorts of, of places where everything is tactic driven or strategy driven. And so this again is great. But it, there's another level that we can get to where we're going to be much more prepared to handle when things change. When you get a different matchup, when a team changes things up on you, when you see a different type of defense and that next level is principles. And so this is where we take that next step. And now you, a lot of times are going to have experience, you've learned from coaches, players who may know more, and you really start to understand the why that goes into the strategies. And this is where you really can start to become a successful player at a high level because you have an understanding of the principles that go into being successful. So now we, when the defense changes how they're playing, or you see a new matchup, or you see better competition, you're still able to be successful because you're not reliant on a single tactic or a single strategy. You now have the principles of being successful and you can apply them to whatever situation that you find yourself in. This is how you truly become a great basketball player. So some examples of principles would be making two guard one. So whenever you drive, you're trying to draw in a help defender. So now your defender and a health defender are guarding you. And now you know that you have a teammate that's going to be open. So you're constantly looking to make two guard one. And that's a principle that you play by because you know that when you do that, you're going to create an advantage for your team. Exploiting defenders momentum, constantly looking for times where a defender is coming at you and you can be able to attack their momentum and get downhill to again, potentially make two guard. One example of principle that you may live by being willing to pass up a good shot for a better shot or a good shot for a great shot. Understanding what a great shot is and whether or not you have it or not, it's a principle that you can play by. And you can live by constantly hunting for mismatches. And if you have a mismatch, then you attack it. And if you see that you don't have a mismatch but your teammate does, you make sure that you get them the ball in a position where they can attack a mismatch. So constantly hunting those mismatches is an example of a principle that you may live by. And so when you start to understand the principles of the game of basketball, again, it allows you to be so much more successful in a variety of situations because you're not reliant on a single tactic that can, can be taken away by the defense or the other team changing one of their tactics. Right. It allows us to become a much more expert level when it comes to the game of basketball. And this is where the best players are, is they're at this principled level. And so when you see players who just kind of play with a different level of confidence and they're able to adapt and be successful in a bunch of different situations, it's probably because they understand the principles behind being successful and, and therefore they are successful. But there's a fourth level that we can get to that's even beyond the principles that the best players are at. And that's wisdom. And this is what you get when you take those principles and you actually go out and you get experience with them, you get experience using them and applying them. And now you start to understand the nuance that goes in the game of basketball where things are going to change, possession to possession, game to game. And you understand these things. You understand the nuance within the different principles that you, that you, you live by, that you play by, because you've experienced it, and now you have the wisdom that goes along with that. And this is where the absolute best players are, is they not only have the principles, but they have the experience as well, which leads to wisdom. And this is where you really get to a level of supreme confidence. You watch the most confident players that you know, or the most confident players you know in the world play basketball, and they just have a certain level of wisdom and experience and, and understanding that goes into everything they do on the court. And that's that fourth level. And again, this is where you get to that level of supreme confidence. And ultimately the best performance when you play the game is by getting yourself to that fourth level. Now we get to that fourth level by doing as much as possible, okay? And that's one of the first things we're going to talk about here when it comes to, to, to kind of moving through these levels and progressing yourself forward. So if you're, you know, still stuck in that level where everything is tactic based and you have to hear, hey, this hack to score more points and you know, this hack to not lose the basketball and that's where you're stuck at. You want to be able to, to take these things and apply them so that you can move through and eventually develop the confidence of somebody who plays by principles and plays by wisdom. So the first thing that we want to do when we want to develop and live by principles and live by wisdom is to go and do. Now I'll approach from two different perspectives, but the first thing is to play as much as possible, right? There's a difference between training and playing. And a lot of, a lot of players I think look at it backwards where they look at their on air training like by themselves as like the main source of training and then playing, whether it be a one on one or a five on five, whatever, they look at that as like a supplement or secondary or in addition to, in reality, kind of the way that I view the game now is I almost view the, the stuff against defense as more so the main training and then the stuff that you do on air or by yourself or without defense is more so the supplement. So obviously to become a great shooter you have to get a ton of reps up and a lot of that's going to happen when you're by yourself. And that's completely okay and I think it's completely necessary as well. But if you never work on shooting against a defender or when this defense on the floor, then it's going to be tough for you to develop the, the understanding that goes into having principles behind, okay, do I take the shot? Do I not take the shot? Do I look to pass the ball? Is this a good shot or a bad shot? In this situation, am I able to get this shot off or am I not? And you don't understand those principles. You don't gain that wisdom without playing against defense. So I think the first thing to understand is that you want to play as much as possible and almost shift your view from saying, hey, I need to spend 90 of my time working out by myself and then extra 10, I can have fun and play and instead view it and say I. If you're deliberate and you're focused, when you go and play your one on one or your five on five, so you say, hey, I'm playing five on five, I'm playing pickup. And I want to focus on shooting today. So I'm just going to try and and shoot whenever I can and I'm going to learn what works, what doesn't work. And that's where you're going to gain that experience that will lead to wisdom. Right? And at the end of the day, the skills are important, but if you don't have the, the understanding of the principles and you don't have the wisdom, then you're never going to be great at basketball. And I think this is some, an area where a lot of players get, get, you know, kind of, kind of led astray and they struggle to really see successes because they don't understand that they're stuck at the tactic and strategy level. So no matter what they do, they're never going to be able to be consistently successful and consistently confident on the court because they're not doing enough. Right. We ultimately the game that we play is against defense. So a lot of our training should be as much as possible to the point where in a lot of my workouts now with my players, we are going to play probably we're gonna play one on one or a two on one or a two on two for probably 70% of every workout is going to be some sort of live, whether it's finishing or ball handling or even shooting. There's going to be defense present and that's where you're going to learn the nuance that goes into everything. And this can be as simple as just playing one on one and again focusing on like certain things. You could say, hey, I'm playing one on one, but I really want to focus on, you know, getting to my left hand on my drives or getting to my left hand for my finishes, or creating separation in the mid range or I want to work on changing my pace. And you can do all of those things against the defender. And that's super, super valuable because not only getting the physical rep, but you're getting the mental rep, which again leads to understanding the principles behind being successful and then ultimately gaining that wisdom as well. So play as much as possible. And when you play, be deliberate with what you're trying to accomplish with the goals that you're going after, and that's going to lead to you being successful. There's a lot of stories you can, you can read, you can, you can hear on numerous podcasts or whatever about NBA players and really high level players who are just constantly playing one on one or playing against defense as their way to train. Right. There was a, a story about Peyton Pritchard. I think he was on someone's podcast where he was talking about what he does in the offseason where he essentially will just pay for, like his friends who, you know, are professional players overseas to literally just guard him. And he'll go and he'll get 200 reps against defense for a workout. And, and that's. His entire workout is basically just one on one in different situations. And that's how he works out the whole off season. And so I think there's a lot of value in understanding that that's how a lot of the best players train. A lot of the best players grew up training that way. And again, that's why my focus is so much on how much can you play against defense because you're going to gain the wisdom which is ultimately to that success. So that's the first thing go and do. Going with that point, you want to stop asking so much, stop needing things to be perfect, right? We're also focused on, okay, these, how many shots do I need to shoot every single day, how many, you know, how much, how many minutes do I need to spend on my ball handling every single day? And we want the perfect solution, the perfect answer, how, you know, how many reps want to do for, you know, my lifting today or my plyometric stuff or whatever I'm going to do at the end of the day, you just got to go and do those things until you get better at them. Um, and I think the, the important thing to understand is that, and kind of what we'll touch on in a second is that it's much more important that you're challenging yourself and finding ways to, to challenge and reach those challenges than it is to be doing something perfectly. And I think a lot of players get, get sidetracked because it gets so caught up in, oh, am I doing things right? Am, am I, you know, is my schedule exactly how it should be? Are my workouts exactly what they should be like? At the end of the day, if you're going and doing the thing that you want to be better at as much as possible, you're going to get better at it, and it's going to be much better for you to do that than to Sit around paralyzed by wondering if you're doing the exact right thing, right? Go ask yourself what I want to get better at and go do that thing as much as you possibly can and you're going to become great at it. It's really as simple as that. The second thing going with that is you want to train to be an expert and, and not train to be a beginner, right? So beginners are going to constantly train almost like we talked about, separate from what they're trying to get better at. We're trying to get better at playing against defense, right? Against scoring when there's a defender, against driving or handling the basketball when there's a defender who's guarding you. So go do that as much as possible. A lot of times players get stuck in this, you know, training again 90% of the time against no defense. And, and because of that they never are able to progress to a point where they can play with any sort of confidence when they get to an actual game. Okay? So we want to train like somebody who is hyper focused on the exact goal that they have. So I still. What situations do you want to be great in? And find ways to recreate those situations and ask of what skills you need, find ways to train those skills and constantly look to challenge yourself. This I talk about a lot. If you are making 80% of your shots in your workouts, then you need to find ways to challenge yourself more at the end of the day and the next point we're going to get to, you need challenge, you need mistakes, you need mess ups in order to get better. So when, when you miss a shot, your brain is able to self organize and say, okay, how did I miss that shot and how do I adjust to be better? And that's the entire process of getting better is that process right there. You lose the basketball. Your brain is going to assess and say, okay, what happened and how do I correct that? But if you never make mistakes because you're never challenging yourself, then your brain never goes through that process and therefore you're never getting any better. You want to think about your overall performance like your capacity. So maybe Your capacity is 20 points in a game, that's the best you can do. We want to find ways to expand that capacity so that the best you can do is 30 points. But if you're never challenging yourself and putting yourself through that process of making mistakes and forcing your brain to, to correct and figure out how to be better, then you're always going to stay at that 20 point limit and it's never going to be pushed. Right? Getting better requires you to push yourself, requires you to be uncomfortable and make mistakes. And so it's important that you challenge yourself and train like an expert would, which is making sure that you're challenging. So as much as possible. So if you're making all your shots and workouts, what can you do to make it more challenging? If all of your dribbling drills are super easy, what can you do to make it more difficult? Can you go faster? Can you add something else that's going to make it a little bit more. More difficult? Can you add a defender to what you're doing and make it more difficult that way? And that is going back to my last point. That's I think why it's really important to play against defense as much as possible. Especially like a one on one the way that I'd said Peyton Pritchard does in the work in the, in the offseason where he's constantly just playing against, you know, defense. He'll go 200 reps and that's his entire workout because every rep is going to be challenging, right? There's someone trying to stop you from accomplishing your goal. So it's always going to be difficult. And that's the best way for your brain to go through that process of getting better quickly is by being in those situations and being challenged like that. So sprint towards challenge and don't avoid it. And, and you're going to find yourself getting way, way, way better. And then the, the last point I'll make kind of touching what I just said is believe in the power of self organization. So I talked about how it's not about being perfect, right? It's about just going and doing and then finding ways to challenge yourself when you do those things. And when you do that, that's going to lead to self organization, which just means again, when you shoot the basketball and you miss it, your brain is making corrections asking, okay, how did I miss that? When what do we need to do to fix that and not miss the same way next time? And that's a process that's incredibly powerful that a lot of times players don't really understand. A lot of coaches don't understand this as well. So be okay with struggling, be okay with missing. Be okay with the fact that when you actually do these things at a high level, it's going to be difficult and you're going to feel like you're, you know, you're not doing great. And that's a lot of times what goes along with the process. That process of self organization is a really, really taxing thing for you to go through mentally. It's a really, really difficult thing that your brain does, improving at something. So you're going to feel bad a lot of the times when you do it. You're going to feel like you're not getting better. You're going to feel like you're not doing the right things and you're going to just feel drained. But that's a sign that you actually are doing the right things and you're going through that process of getting better right there. So believe in the power of self organization. Your brain is incredibly powerful when it comes to getting you better. As long as you, you're able to continuously put yourself in those situations of being challenged, of stretching your comfort zone. And that's how we increase that capacity to perform. So again, we want to take ourselves from being tactic driven and strategy driven to being principle driven and wisdom driven. And we get there by doing those things, asking yourself, what do I want to get better at? And finding ways to do it, ideally doing that against defense as much as we possibly can, um, and then allowing ourselves to be challenged and make mistakes and understanding the fact that that's the best thing for us is messing up and making mistakes and missing shots and losing the basketball. Because that's what goes into us being forced to get better, our brain being forced to find ways to improve at that skill. Okay, so if you understand these things as a player, you're going to be able to get really, really good at basketball. And this is a lot of times, I think the missing link for a lot of players out there. So apply this to what you're doing. You're going to see a lot of improvement. And if you want more that goes into just the overall understanding. And obviously a lot of the stuff we talked about was just like mental and having an understanding of like the right mindset to have and the right approach to have. Obviously we talked a lot about the tactics, the strategy, the principles. I didn't go too super in depth into that, but if you want to get something that's going to go way more in depth into that and help you kind of progress through these levels, click the top link in my description down below to get my free basketball IQ Masterclass. It's an hour long, it goes through a bunch of these different things. It's going to immediately help you to score more, create more overall, just play better, play with more confidence, develop some really important mindsets that great players have. It's completely free. Like I said. And it's something that I like, I say all the time. It'll instantly help you to probably be able to score 6, 8 more points per game just with the stuff that we go through in that hour. Like I said, completely free. That's the top link in the description down below, so go and check that out. I appreciate you for watching. Talk soon. Peace.