How To Work On Decision Making By Yourself

One of the questions that I get asked the most is how players can improve their decision making abilities by themselves. Now obviously the best way to improve your decision making is by actually having to make decisions. So going and playing, specifically playing two on two, three on three games, we call them small sided games and also just playing normal 5 on 5. But obviously I can relate because as a player you don't always have access to those things. A lot of times you're going to work out by yourself or spend time by yourself. So, so how can you improve your ability to make decisions without anybody else around you? Now obviously as a player it's so important to be a great decision maker because you can have all the physical ability, you can spend all this time working on your shooting, your ball, handling, your finishing, your passing, whatever. But if you don't understand when to do what, then you're always going to struggle to be consistent, you're always going to struggle to perform and you're not going to play with a lot of confidence because you're going to be unsure and second guessing yourself all the time. So if you really want to become a great player, it starts with becoming a great decision maker. So let's talk about a few things that you can do when you're by yourself to be able to train disability. Specifically we're going to go through four things you can do by yourself to increase your ability as a decision maker. Obviously, like I said, playing and utilizing those small sided games, the one on one, two on two, three on three, five on five sort of things are great and you should do them as much as possible. But if you also do these things, it's going to help transform your ability as a decision maker and it's going to transform your confidence as a player as well. The first thing that you should do if you want to increase your decision making ability by yourself is watch a ton of basketball. So specifically you want to watch full games of basketball. Now I recommend for players who are at the middle school, high school, college level to watch a lot of college basketball because there's going to be what translates best to your level. Specifically, if you're like a high school player, the best thing for you to do is watch full college games because the games are very similar in terms of the flow, in terms of the type of offenses that are run to the type of actions. And so because of that, it's going to most directly correlate to the situations you're going to see most often as a player. But you can also gain a lot from watching full NBA games, full EuroLeague games. You can learn a lot from those things as well. But the important thing is that you watch full basketball games. The reason I say that is because you get so much context and understanding behind why somebody does something when you actually know what's going on throughout the game. A decision a player makes in the second quarter might be different than the decisions that they make in the same situation in the fourth quarter, because the time to score is different, right? Maybe in the second quarter. You know, the game was tied in the fourth quarter. They were up by 10. And so it made sense for them to change the decision that they made. So it's important to gain the context. And this is really how you can increase your basketball IQ by a lot of. Just by watching full basketball games. Even better if you have the ability to pause and rewind. And if you see something that catches your eye or you say, hey, that's an interesting thing. Like, I've been in a similar situation, and this guy made this decision right here. Can I rewind it and then figure out why? Okay, what did he see here? You know, or maybe you see someone make the wrong decision. You see somebody turn the ball over or take a bad shot, and you can rewind it. You can dive into why they made that decision, what was the right decision they probably should have made in that situation. That's one of the best ways you can increase your basketball IQ is by, first of all, watching full games. Also, watching and breaking down film of specific players is a great way to do this. Now, you can do this in a variety of ways. You can just get on YouTube and this is probably the easiest way you go. Let's say, you know, you play similar to Trey Young. You go on YouTube and you look, you know, Trey Young highlights. The best thing, in my opinion, when you do this is to watch, like, individual game highlights. So try Trey Young. 27 points, 10 assists against the, you know, Milwaukee Bucks from a random game in February. Like, that is the best way to do it because you get to see, like, the, like the actual, like, like the normal plays. If you go watch, like a season highlights, you're going to see, like, the spectacular stuff that doesn't necessarily happen all the time, but when you just watch the individual game, you're going to see things that happen over and over and over again. It's going again. It's going to be much more applicable to you. When you do this, you really want to obsess over what you're watching. And breaking down and diving Deep into what's going on so that you can be able to take it and apply those specific things to your game. Right here, if you really want to. You know, if you play point guard and you want to be better as a ball screen handler, well, watching Trey Young in these bolstering situations can teach you a lot. How did the defender guard him and what did he do to respond to that? How did the default. How did the help defense react and what did he do to respond to that? And you can see where his motivations are for the decision that he makes. When you really dive into the film and ask a ton of questions about it and be willing to watch the same clip over and over and over and over again until you can understand the why behind it, right? This takes time. But if you want to get better at decision making when you're by yourself, you have to spend time watching film. So again, full games, player breakdowns, player highlights, stuff like that is really going to be able to teach you a lot. If you're willing to spend time not just watching it one time through, but when something catches your eye, rewind it, watch it again, dive into it, try and find the tiniest detail you possibly can in that clip. And. And eventually you're starting to notice patterns, you're going to start to notice some trends, and you start predicting the decision that. The decision that players make. The. The powerful thing with this is that we as humans have what's called mirror neurons, meaning we can see something in our. In our own mind. We can. We can place ourselves in that position and almost run through it as if we were in their shoes, right? It's called the power of empathy that we have as humans. So we can utilize those mirror neurons in our brain's ability to put ourselves in somebody else's shoes by actually watching and then imagining or putting ourselves in that position, which we'll talk about in a second, right? So that's the first thing, watching film, a great way to get better at decision making when you're by yourself. The second thing is recording yourself and watching that film. This is a really, really, really powerful thing that you can do. Obviously, you know, for school games and AAU games, like being able to record that and then watching it back and trying to see, okay, what did I do in this situation? Did I miss something? Did I make the wrong decision? Did I make the right decision? And why am I? And really digging deep into those things, because what you're going to see is that if you ask yourself those questions, you're Going to see that you, you probably missed a lot of things or you missed a lot of opportunities to make a play or you know, to, to have an option that again, you might have, have had no idea about because in the moment you didn't see it. But when you watch the film back, you can pick up on these things. And now the next time you're in that situation, you're going to know that you're gonna be able to see that thing and you're gonna become a better decision maker because you've watched it, you've studied it, and, and you can go in there anticipating that you may have another option or you may, you may know the right decision going into some sort of situation. So going back to the ball screen example, maybe, you know, you go back and you watch your film and you recognize that, oh man, I, I had the weak side kick out when I came off that ball screen. Or man, if I would have come off a little bit tighter around that ball screen, my defender wouldn't have been able to follow, like, you know, get between me and the screen and I would have been able to get downhill for a layup. Or maybe you saw that you made the wrong decision and you threw it to the wrong person, but you had the role wide open on the ball screen. You might not know these things at the moment, but you'll be able to see them when you watch your own film back. So for a lot of schools they are, you know, if you're in high school or college, like they're already recording generally, so you can go back and watch those things. But if your school doesn't record or if we're talking about aau, find a way to record it or ask somebody to record it for you and then go back and watch it. Super powerful way to, to be able to get better and improve your decision making going forward. You can also do this when it comes to pickup games. So like I mentioned earlier, those small sided games. So if you and five of your friends are going to play three on three, just setting up a camera and recording and then being able to watch back and see what you did and all those things can be really powerful as well. As if you are playing five on five, just recording, that can be really, really powerful as well. Being able to critique the different situation that you're in right there. Going with that, going with the playing aspect of it. When you play, you want to be super purposeful what you're trying to get better at. If there's a certain situation that you feel like you're not a great decision maker in. Well, you need to be really purposeful about putting yourself in those situations as often as possible whenever it is that you play. Again, going back to the ball screen stuff, if you feel like you're not a great ball screen decision maker, well, you need to make sure that when you play these pickup games that games that don't really matter, you've got to put yourself in those positions as much as possible and be okay with the fact that you're going to mess up and make the wrong decision and fail a lot, because that's ultimately going to teach you a lot about, okay, well, that didn't work. So maybe I need to try this. Okay, that also didn't work. Well, now I'll try this. That works. And all of a sudden you made that connection and now you become a smarter player because you put yourself in that position over and over again. You've been willing to fail, but you came into that game or, you know, the, the two on two, the three on three with purpose, super purposeful about what you're trying to get better at, what you want to focus on, and the areas that you really need to spend your time and attention. And then the last thing that's really powerful when it comes to becoming a better decision maker by yourself is visualization. So I already talked about the power of mirror neurons, but a really, really great thing you can do is just sit down and imagine yourself in those situations. Like a great visualization workout you can do is picking maybe three different situations in the game. So let's go with the ball screen situation. Let's go with like catching the ball in the wing. And then we can go like transition maybe with the ball in your hands. And you can just close your eyes and put yourself like in that situation where it's like first person, you can feel the shoes on your feet. You're in that situation and at that point you just kind of, kind of walk through like a play happening. So close your eyes, you come off a ball screen, the defender chases you over and the screeners defender drops. Okay, well what do I do here? Well, how close is the drop defender? Can I go by them? Are they far off? Do I shoot the shot? Did they, does the job defender really like come over towards me and now I can hit my screener with a pass. Okay, put yourself in the situation and visualize it. And that's actually a really, really powerful thing that you can do because there have been studies that have been done on the power of visualization and how there actually is is merit behind getting better at a skill just by visualizing yourself doing, doing it. They've done studies where they would have groups where a group would work on like actually practicing free throws every day. There'd be a group that wouldn't do anything, wouldn't practice free throws, wouldn't think about them. And they'd have a group that would just visualize practicing free throws every day. And they saw that the group that visualize, that visualized shooting free throws got way better than the group that did nothing. So there actually is some merit behind that. So like I said, picking three situations and saying, okay, I'm going to, you know, spend five minutes or three minutes imagining myself in different ball screen situations and then three minutes envisioning myself just catching the ball in the wing with the defender closing out at me. And then three minutes on different situations in transition with the ball in my hands. Just three as an example right there. But you can choose any of those situations and that's a quick little 10 minute visualization workout you can use. It's going to make you a better decision maker. So ultimately, if you want to become a better decision maker by yourself, number one, you want to watch film both full games, preferably college, but also Euroleagues. Euroleague is also really, really good. And, and the NBA as well. You can find value in all three of those different types of basketball. Watch full basketball games and then also watch highlights. But specifically we want to watch individual game highlights because you're going to get like the day to day, like the most common stuff that happens. The things that you need to be great at are going to, they're going to be most apparent in those individual game highlights that you're trying to, that you're trying to learn and study. The next thing is recording your games so your school games, AAU games, even pick up games if you can. And then watching back and looking at the situation that you're in. Okay, did you, do you turn the ball over? Why? What could you have done differently? Do you take a bad shot or a four shot or shot that you felt uncomfortable taking? But why? What can you do differently next time? That's a great way to be able to improve your decision making going forward. The next thing is being purposeful when you play. So I want to get better at decision making in this situation. So I need to make sure I put myself in that situation as much as I can. Be okay with the fact that you're going to fail, you're going to look bad because eventually you're going to find someone that works and then you're going to start to to be able to repeat that and that's how you become better in that situation. The last thing is just quick visualization workout. Doing it as much as possible every day if you can and just visualize, visualizing yourself in those different situations, making good decisions, making the right read is going to translate to you being a better decision maker on the court. So hopefully this gives you some ideas, some takeaways that you can use to become a better decision maker. If you want something else that's going to take your basketball iq, decision making and overall game to the next level, click the top link down in my description to get my free basketball IQ masterclass. It's an hour long, we dive into different IQ points. Everything's going to help you to immediately start to score more points, create more plays for your teams and overall, just be way more confident. So like I said, completely free. Check out that top link down below. It's going to help you out a ton. Appreciate you for watching. Talk soon. Peace.