How To Score 15+ Points Per Game (Without Being The Biggest or Most Athletic)

So I just put out a poll on my YouTube community tab asking players what their biggest goal for next season is. And the most common answer that I got by far was from players who want to score 15 points per game or more next year. So I wanted to make a video about this because I think that a lot of players go about doing it wrong. Here's the thing about this. Scoring 15 points per game or more is a doable goal for a lot of players, but you have to make sure that you're focusing on the right things and you're putting yourself in the right position when it's game time. So in this video I'm going to talk about the four things that you need to do if you want to reach your goal of scoring 15 points per game or more. The stuff in this video needs to drive your entire offseason, all the work that you put in so that you come back not only better from a skill perspective, but also mentally from an IQ perspective and physically. And if you follow these things, then I guarantee you're going to maximize your potential as a player. The first thing you need to do that's so important if you want to become somebody who can score 15 a game or more is that you need to create a scoring baseline. You don't have a ton of time in games to actually score points. 32 minute games, you have four, eight minute quarters. And that's about what most players have. If you're not playing every minute of that game, that you might only have 20, 25, 28 minutes to be able to get to your goal when it comes to scoring. So the problem that players run into is that they miss a shot. Maybe they have a game where their shot is just off and so they can't score points that game. And it's really frustrating. So the most important thing you can do if you want to become somebody who can score like that is you need to create a scoring baseline. A scoring baseline are points you can rely on every single game, regardless of whether or not you're making shots that day, and regardless of whether or not your team draws up a bunch of plays for you. If your goal is to become a high level scorer, the most important thing is learning how to score easy, consistent points. When players think about the best scores, they think about highlight plays and think about all this crazy shot making and sometimes it's a part of it. But what the best players really do is that they are so good at consistently scoring easy points that so you look at them and a lot of times you think yourself like, wow, I can't believe they have 25 points. Can't believe they have 28 points. Because it just. They just do it. The mindset shift you have to have is that scoring should actually be easy. It should come natural to you, should be on the court, just existing and points find you because you know how to put yourself in the right position for things to flow to you. We want to aim to create a scoring baseline that's at least six or eight points per game. So these are six or eight points that you can bank on getting every single game. Again, regardless of whether or not you're making or missing shots, and regardless of whether or not your team is running a bunch of plays for you. So I'm going to give you four ways to build a scoring baseline. And when you think about it, if you just do one of each, that right there is your scoring baseline. And so it's actually a lot more simple than you might think. But you have to listen to these things to think about what applies best to you, what suits your strengths the best, and think about how you can apply them. The first thing is running the floor in transition. You want to make it your goal to win the first three steps. When your team pulls a defensive rebound, you get out and run and be the first person up the floor. Floor. Because a couple reasons. Obviously, the ball gets advanced to you and there's nobody there. It's an easy layup. But even if the ball gets advanced to you and there's one defender there, they usually aren't set, they're probably not in great position. And if it becomes two on one, you have a teammate with you, then now they're worried about guarding two players. And you're going to find scoring to be much, much easier when you commit to getting out and sprinting in transition. A lot of players that they do this, but when they actually watch themselves back on film, they aren't actually sprinting that hard every single time they can in transition. And I promise you, if you make that switch and you make your mission to sprint as hard as you can every time you're in transition, points are going to start flowing to you. You're just going to be in the right position and you're going to find scoring becomes easier. The second thing is cutting without the ball. And this is huge because defenders, most defenders have a tendency to ball watch. So when you don't have the ball in your hands, your defender's main priority is what the ball is doing, what that leads to. A lot of times is them turning away from you, turning their back to you. And if you commit to cutting to the basket in those opportunities and not just standing there and being stagnant, you're going to find easy points consistently. The three opportunities you need to look for to cut to the basket are number one, when you see your defender who's in help turns their head to look at the ball, they can't see you. You want to look for an opportunity to backdoor cut or to front cut, wherever the space is, you want to cut there. And then the second time is when the ball gets into the low post on the opposite side of you. We call this a 45 cut, which just means a cut from the opposite side. And again, this is because when the ball gets down to that opposite low post, all the defense turns the ball watch. And a lot of times your defender is not going to know where you, where you are. So when you cut to the basket a lot, a lot of times there's open space and you're going to be able to score easy points doing that. And then the third time that you should look to cut is when your teammate drives from the opposite side of the floor. This is so important because again, your defender is going to turn to look and see that drive. A lot of times they're actually going to rotate over to play help defense. And now nobody's concerned about you. And a lot of times if you come from that opposite side, the pain is wide open for an easy layup. The third thing you can do to build your scoring baseline is to crash the offensive boards. This is especially important for guards. Obviously, if you are more of a big or more of a forward, you probably have been told to do this. But a lot of times guards think to themselves that, well, you know, I'm not the biggest, I'm not the most athletic, so I'm not really going to be a factor. But when you think about how many threes are taken, it leads to a lot of long misses where you might be able to pull rebounds at the elbow, maybe a step into the paint. You're going to be able to pull rebounds, have easy open mid range jump shots, or maybe, you know, put backs in the paint right there. And then the fourth way to build your scoring baseline is to make it your goal to get to the free throw line. Even if you can do this one or two times a game, that's two to four additional points. Potentially a couple things that are going to make this easier for you is number one, make it your goal to be the aggressor on offense, be willing to initiate contact with, don't shy away from it. We're going to talk a little bit later about developing yourself physically from a strength and athleticism perspective, which will certainly help you with this. But then the other aspect to it is you want to have the IQ and understanding of what's going on in the game. First of all, is the defender that's guarding you, are they prone to fouling? Do they foul a lot? Do they usually use their hands? Do they get called? Is it more likely if you drive against that person that they're going to foul you? And then the other area that most players don't think about is whether or not your team is in the bonus. So if you know that on the seventh team foul your team is in the bonus, you're going to shoot free throws and there's six fouls. Well, you want to make it your mission in those times to drive because if they foul you at all on the drive, you're shooting free throws, you're getting free points for it. So having an understanding of time and situation when it comes to the game is going to allow you to put yourself in a position to get to the free throw line more often. Now let's talk about the second part of becoming somebody who can score 15 points per game or more. Like I mentioned earlier, games aren't that long. You don't have that many opportunities to be able to score your points. So the second thing that is super important if you want to become a player who can score like that is you need to master the high leverage areas. You need to be able to be efficient with the way that you score. Plenty of players have this super deep bag and have all these moves that they work on, but they don't actually. They're not able to apply them in games because they don't have time to. They don't get enough possessions to do those things. Their team runs a certain offense. So you might get a chance to use those moves you work on once a game, twice a game, but that's obviously not going to be enough for you to be able to get to that goal you have. So when we talk about scoring points, the two most efficient things that you can be great at that are going to lead to you Being able to execute and score in way more situations is having the ability to make cash and shoot threes at a high level. So coming off of spot ups, driving kicks, extra passes, pin downs in transition is another one. Being able to make those Shots. Those shots consistently should be the number one thing that you are working on from a skill perspective. Not only do those opportunities present themselves all the time, but they're worth the most amount of points. So if we think of it this way, if you create a scoring baseline, that's six or eight points, let's say you score eight points off of you just your scoring baseline, and then you hit two threes. Well, now we're already at 14 points. And then, you know, all you need is another layup. All you need is another free throw. All you need is one more thing to be at your goal. There's really three parts to this. Number one is volume. So you need to get a lot of volume. This is your traditional shooting work. So, you know, you go in the gym and you shoot 20 threes from the corner, 20 from the wing, 20 from the top, 20 from the other wing, 20 from the other corner. And there's 100 shots right there. That's an example of what volume would look like. And generally, I would say anywhere from 100 to 250 makes in a workout is a pretty good amount of volume. Volume is important because of something that's called self organization. All of that means is your brain's ability to be able to solve problems in terms of makes and misses. So when you shoot enough shots, you start to understand, okay, I'm missing it to the left, so I'm going to be able to fix it by doing this, or I'm missing it short. Okay, here's my solution to that. Or I'm missing it long. How do I fix it? You learn those things by doing it a ton with a ton of volume. Like I said, 100 to 250 makes every single day will give you volume. Where you can start to get to a point where you miss a shot, you can quickly make an adjustment. That's called self organization. And that process right there is the most important part of why volume is important. Important. The second aspect to this is challenge. When we talk about becoming a great shooter, it's very similar to you getting stronger when it comes to, like, weightlifting. So if you want to be good, if you want to get a stronger bench press, well, at some point, you have to challenge yourself in terms of how much weight you have on the bar or how many reps you're going to do. But there has to be some sort of increase with that because that's the only way that you force your body to adapt your muscles to adapt and get stronger. With shooting, it's the same Thing when we think about our capacity to perform, which just means up on the screen, you'll see my capacity to perform is right here. Imagine it's this, it's this big. My max capacity for shot making is that I can make two threes in a game. Well, how do I expand this so that I can now make 3? How to expand that so I can get to 4? We have to find ways to expand your capacity to perform. And we do this by adding challenge into your shooting drills or shooting workouts as well. Now we do this in a couple of different ways. I think the simplest way to do it is by working on shots that are coming off of a bad pass. Because now when you get into a game, you don't need a perfect pass to make the shot. You're used to working on making shots when the pass is low, pass is high to your left, to your right. That expands your capacity to perform. Another way to do this is by working on making shots with your feet being a little bit off. So now when you catch the ball in a game and your feet aren't set perfectly, you're maybe a little bit off balance, you can still make the shot because you've worked on expanding your capacity in those right there. And if you get really good at those two things, that might double your capacity to perform. And now all of a sudden you become a better shooter because you've challenged yourself and you found ways to adapt and overcome that challenge. And then the third thing is live application and nuance. There's a difference between making shots in a workout by yourself and making shots in a live game with teammates and defenders. The way that that affects you from just a psychological perspective, it makes the, it makes it different. So you need to make sure that you're getting enough reps of making shots against defense. So this could be like a small sided game where it's a one on one and you're, you know, you're, you have a defender closing out to you and you have to make the shot. But really simple. You just need to make sure if you're trying to become a better shooter, whenever you play pickup, you play three on three, two on two. Whenever you're playing, you need to make sure that you're working on really hunting opportunities to shoot threes because you're going to learn how to make it in that game, setting with defense, with teammates, all that sort of stuff. So if that's your goal, become a better shooter. Make sure that you are prioritizing that when you play so you get those reps against live defense. We'll talk a little bit more at the end of this video about how you can develop your skills at a really high level. The third thing that's so important if you want to become somebody who can score 15 a game or more, is that you need to get stronger and more athletic, but you want to do it in a way that's going to actually translate onto the basketball court. You don't need to become Mr. Olympia and become some crazy bodybuilder, but. But you do need to be strong enough to handle physicality and to be able to have that mindset shift. Like I said earlier when we talked about building the scoring baseline of being the aggressor, being able to initiate contract contact play through contact. And if you can do that, then you're going to be capable of scoring more points. As important as your skills are, if you don't have the just the size and the strength and the athleticism to also be able to do what you want to do, then you're going to struggle to be consistent. In fact, for a ton of players that I talk to that I watch, this is the biggest reason why they're not scoring more points. They put a ton of time in on their skills. Maybe they're a really smart player, but they just aren't strong enough, they aren't athletic enough, and that holds them back from being able to be the type of scorer that they could be. So I made this really, really simple and then I'm going to elaborate on this at the end of the video as well. But when it comes to getting stronger, you have to be in the weight room, ideally three to four times a week. This can be full body, it could be two days upper body, two days lower body, whatever makes sense for your schedule. But you want to be doing something even if it's only two days a week, right? You need to be in the, in the way we're getting stronger. And when we talk about how to do it, the best thing to do is to focus on the compound movement. So that just means movements that are working multiple joints. So think about for your upper body to be bench press, shoulder press, dips, could be pull ups, could be pull downs, could be bent over rows. And then for your lower body, it could be things like squats or deadlifts or lunges. And then when we have those, generally in a workout, we may have two or we have two or three compound lifts. And then we might have two or three, what we call simple lifts, which just means we're only using one joint. This would be for upper body, could be bicep curl, it could be lateral raise, it could be tricep push down. For your lower body, it could be leg extension, or it could be hamstring curl, could be calf raise. You just want to, like we talked about with shooting, you want to challenge yourself. So every workout you're trying to add a little bit more weight, trying to do one more rep, trying to just find a way to force your muscles, force your body to develop strength, develop muscle. That's the simple, simple, simple process of getting stronger. And then when it comes to getting more athletic, this can also be so, so simple for you. You want to run as fast as you can and jump as high as you can two to three times a week. And pretty much how I would do this is for your running. We're not running like it's a practice. And you're trying to get, you know, conditioning where you're running, you know, 17s or whatever sort of conditioning you probably do with your basketball team. We want to run for max speed and max output, and we want to have a big rest in between each. So what this could look like would be maybe four sets of three sprints. And that sprint is going to be from the baseline to half court. And your only goal is to get up to your top speed, run as fast as you can. And then between each of those runs, you're going to maybe give yourself 30 to 45 seconds of a break so you can recover. And then after that first set, you'll take, you know, a minute and a half and then do your next set so that every run that you're doing is your max speed. When you push yourself to go as fast as you can, and you're also in the weight room getting stronger, your output is going to become better, you're going to get faster, which is going to translate to you being better on defense. It's also to translate to you jumping higher as well. But then specifically with jumping, this is where we would do, you know, two or three times a week, three sets of five max height jumps. So this could be something as simple as you're going to run and try and grab the rim or touch as high on the backboard as you can, or try and dunk. You're going to go give that jump, you're going to give yourself, you know, a little bit of a break until you feel recovered, then you're going to do another one and maybe that'll be a set of five and after that set you're going to take a break for, you know, a minute and a half, two minutes and then get onto your next set and then same thing for your last set there. And again when you are just constantly jumping as high as you can, you're going to get more athletic. You're going to be able to jump higher and all that stuff combined, the running, the jumping and then the building strength in the weight room is going to lead to you being a significantly better athlete and it's going to translate to you being a better athlete when it comes to the game of basketball. Like I said, I'm going to talk more about this in depth towards the end of the video. And then the fourth thing that goes into becoming somebody who can score 15 a game or more is to see defense as much as possible. Now I want to actually explain the why it is because you probably hear the all.