If You Focus On These 2 Things, You'll DOMINATE The Game of Basketball...

The main thing that prevents players from being as good as they can possibly be is the fact that they're distracted with what it is that they should be focusing on. Improving players get on social media and every single day there's more and more things that are telling them what they should be doing. This trainer says this, this trainer says that, this trainer wants you to do this drill. This coach says that drill sucks. Do this drill instead. And every time you open the Instagram or YouTube or TikTok, somebody's telling you something new. And it's really hard to stay focused, right? And if you're chasing 100 rabbits at once, you're going to catch zero rabbits, right? If you're chasing one at a time, it's much more likely that you're going to be able to catch one. And so the number one thing that you can do as a player if you want to get better, is eliminate the things that are distracting you and figure out what are the one or two things that I need to be focusing on improving if I want to reach my goals as a player. Whatever the goals might be for you, what whether you want to score more points, you want to earn a spot on the team, you want to earn a starting spot, you want to, you know, become an all conference player or play college basketball, play professional basketball, you need to be laser focused on the one or two things that are going to allow you to get good enough to achieve those things. And in this video, I'm going to talk about the two things that you should be prioritizing, that you should be focusing on. If you focus on these two things above everything else is going to make sure that you continuously improve and you reach your potential as a basketball player. And it's going to allow you to, to know that the work you're putting in is going to lead to actual, real results on the court. Because the worst thing that could happen is that you put in all this work onto things that don't matter. And because of that, you don't see results on the court. And it's a huge waste of time. And a lot of players are stuck in those situations. I've been there. I know a lot of players personally who, who are like that. But when we focus on these two things and everything that you do comes from the lens of am I working on one or at least one of these two things, if not both, well, that's going to lead to you becoming a really, really good basketball player. So let's dive into the two things that you need to Focus on, keep at the forefront of everything. If you do this, it's going to allow you to maximize who you are as a player and become really, really good at basketball. The two things are decision making and shot making. Right? Super simple. But I want to break down exactly what, what this means. I actually said this to my high school team last night after our workout. It's a really tough workout. Not because we were running a lot or doing a bunch of defensive slides or anything like that. It wasn't necessarily tough physically, but it was tough mentally. It was tough emotionally because our guys had to make a lot of decisions and we did a lot of shot making. And I told him, like, guys, this is really tough, but this is what basketball is all about. We need to have a lot of days like this where, where we're focused on doing these two things we don't care about. If we look bad, if we look good, if we're making every shot, missing every shot, making the right decision, making the wrong decision. When we have days like this where it's an hour and a half straight of decision making and shot making, that's going to make us really good. It's going to make us. It's gonna be you guys really good individually. And that's what I, I said to them. The game of basketball is about two things, decision making and shot making. If you can do those things at a high level, you're going to be a really good player. So let's talk about that first part, decision making. Decision making is the foundation of being great as a basketball player. Right. This is the problem and an issue a lot of players have when they only work out by themselves. You spend a whole summer working out against air and you get back to the game and you feel like you didn't get that much better. It's probably because you didn't actually have to make any decisions and work on that. And then you get to a game and all of a sudden you have to make a decision, well, should I shoot now? Should I, should I pass it? Is this a good opportunity to drive? Should I go left? Should I go right? What should I do when I catch the ball? When is it the right time to do this or do that? There's so many things that go through your mind that you have to process. And the better you are processing those things, the better you're going to be as a basketball player. Right. I see it all the time. The players who are the best are not necessarily the most physically gifted players. Right. I can, I could name I could write a book on the amount of players that I've coached or watched who have all the physical ability in the world because they spend all the time in the gym, one on zero against air, shooting all these shots and doing all these ball handling drills. And that stuff is of course important to an extent, right? But the best players that I'm around aren't always the most physically gifted. A lot of times they're just the best decision makers, they're the smartest, they're able to figure things out and they can process things very quickly. And because of that, more often than not, they make the right decisions. And because of that, they see the most success on the basketball court. So let's talk about exactly what this is. So for example, I'm going to break it down and make it super simple, just talking about offense, right? If you can focus on these areas, decision making wise, that's going to cover about 80, 85% of what goes into it. Number one is knowing when to shoot, driver pass. This is like the foundation of being a good offensive player is knowing when to shoot, driver pass. Okay? Generally my philosophy on this is that we want to think shoot first, right? And that goes to our second point. If you can't shoot well, you better start working on being able to shoot, because if you can't shoot, it makes the game way harder. But what I tell my players is like, okay, we want to think shoot first. Because if we think shoot first, first of all, we're not going to hesitate. We're just going to shoot with confidence, meaning we're going to make more of the shots that we take because we're shooting them with belief and conviction. That's what we want. That's how we make shots, is by shooting with belief. But the second thing is that it's going to force the defense to close out to us and try and take away that shot, which is going to open up opportunities for us to drive. And when we drive, maybe someone rotates over and then we pass the ball, right? But shooting is essentially the foundational point of all of that right there. So knowing when to shoot, when to drive, when to pass, how would that change depending on who's guarding me? If I have someone who's really athletic guarding me, maybe I want to look to shoot a little bit more because it's gonna be harder for me to drive by them. But if I'm going against somebody who's maybe smaller or not that quick, maybe I want to lean more towards driving because I know I can beat Them all the time. So it's important to have an understanding of the nuance that goes into when to shoot, driver, pass as well. That's a super important aspect of decision making and really the foundational piece of being a good offensive player. The second thing is knowing what is a good shot and what's a bad shot. So this is dictated by a few different things. So first of all, your ability as a shooter, can you make this shot consistently? Is it the best shot your team can get? That's the first thing based on your ability. The next thing is the team scheme or philosophy. So what does your team want? What kind of offense do you run? Do you guys want to shoot a lot of shots? Do you guys play with, you know, really slow pace and you only take. You only have a few possessions, so you have to get a really good shot every time. Does your team like to play fast in transition, slow in the half court? What. What does your team like to do that's going to obviously influence if it's a good shot or a bad shot and then time and score. So end of the quarter, do I need to wait? Because we want to get the last shot if it's the end of the game. Are we up? Are we down? How much are we up or how much are we down? Throughout the context of the game, maybe we've gone four possessions without scoring. So we need to make sure that this fifth possession we take a really, really good shot because we're in a drought. All those things go into what makes a good shot and a bad shot and all that stuff goes into decision making. Then the last aspect of it is understanding how to utilize basic offensive actions. Right? This would be like pin downs or something called like away screens or down screens. Knowing how to, how to use those and then knowing how to use ball screens and knowing how to play out of handoffs and different things like that, super important as well. I'll link a video above that kind of goes deeper into that specifically. But. But those are really the foundational keys of decision making. So how do we become better as a decision maker? Well, the most important thing to understand is that the best way is by being in those situations. Okay. And by failing in those situations, one of the ways that you get better at anything is by hunting failure, Viewing failure as a sign of. I'm improving because this is forcing me to improve. I said to my team last night, like I said, our workout was, it was really, really good, but it was tough. It was difficult mentally. Guys that are processed a lot Make a lot of, a lot of decisions. And a lot of guys were frustrated and they felt like they played so bad. I was like, guys, what you got to understand is that days like today where it's messy and you messed up and you didn't look great are the best days for you. Because what that's going to do is it's going to send a signal to your brain that we need to improve at something. Because you had 10 reps where you failed, but then you had one where you figured it out. And those error reps are what is essentially going to have your brain make sure that it remembers the successful rep. And now you've gotten better because that's become a pattern in your mind of, okay, what did I do that led to me being successful, that I failed at that, that didn't feel good. And then I succeeded and that felt really good. I want that feeling again. That's what improvement essentially is. So that only happens if there's struggle, if there's failure, it's like lifting weights. You only get stronger if there's struggle, if there's resistance, if it's difficult. And the same thing happens when it comes to improving any skill, decision making being one of them. So how often can you put yourself in these situations? Playing as much 1 on 1, 2 on 2, 3 on 3, 5 on 5 as you can is going to allow you to do that. And the second thing is watching a ton of basketball. This is such an important thing because as much basketball as you might play, you only can play a couple hours to a few hours of like productive basketball a day, right? Let's say you play, you have to, you play basketball, which this is probably more than most players, but maybe you play for, you know, two, two hour pickup runs a day, right? Like I said, that's more than most players. That's four hours at most. Most players are below that. But let's say you also go home and you watch film breakdowns or you watch full basketball games for another hour, right? Or two hours. Well, think about that. Over the course of seven days, that's seven to 14 more hours of, of decision making of basketball. IQ of reps, mental reps that you're getting that somebody else isn't getting. So think about how that adds up as the weeks go on. You're getting so many more mental reps than everybody else because you're not just limiting yourself to what you do on the court. Because physically you only have so much energy, only have so much time that you can be on the court. So watching basketball and like I said, this is like watching full games. So full college games, full NBA games, even full high school games can be good as well. And then the next thing is watching film breakdowns and watching the stuff. If you feel like, hey, I want to get better in ball screens while watching things going on YouTube and finding videos that are going to help you to, to improve those things is such an important part of getting those mental reps as well. To become a better decision maker. If you guys want a resource that's going to help you become a way better decision maker, it's going to translate to you scoring more, creating more for your teammates, ultimately having way more success. I have a free hour long basketball IQ masterclass link down below, top link in the description. It's going to help you to immediately start to score more, be way more successful and work on this stuff that we're kind of talking through right here. So go ahead and check that out. Like I said, completely free, an hour long. But in my opinion it's the best resource that you can use if you want to become a better decision maker. Which like I said, if you do that, you're going to become a way better player. That's the first thing decision making. The second thing is shot making. Right? This is seems very obvious, right? Obviously basketball is about scoring points. So the better you are at shot making, the better you're going to be basketball. I get that. Right. But I think this is where we really need to understand what actually goes into shot making. Okay. Because this is where the disconnect is. There are a lot of players, I know who they want to play basketball like they want basketball to be in an empty gym where they just get to shoot. And that's all they train, right? They spend a ton of time working on shooting, but it's in an empty gym. There's no one in the stands, there's no one on defense, there's no pressure on them and that's what they ultimately want. They don't want to get into a game 5 on 5 where there's pressure and coaches and refs and time, score and fans and every shot matters. They crumble because they haven't prepared themselves to make shots in that environment. So you have to ask yourself, am I preparing myself to succeed in a game environment? The question is, are you training to feel good or are you training to get better? Because it feels good to go into a gym and shoot 500 shots on air, but that's not to a point going to make you Better in the game environment where there's defense and pressure on you, the, the shot becomes physically different because of what's going on mentally and emotionally throughout that entire process. Right. So how do we make sure that we are able to make shots in a game environment? The saying goes, you can't train in a peaceful world and then succeed in a wicked world. That practice that one on zero with, you know, no defense, no pressure. That's a peaceful world. Everything's easy there. A game is a wicked world where everything's going against you and you have to be able to overcome so many things. We've got to work ourselves to that point. There's two main things that we can do to make sure that we translate our shot making to that wicked world. Number one is kind of going back to our decision making point. How often can you work on shot making against defense? Right. This is stuff that I do with my team all the time. We're working on shooting against a closeout or we're going like a three on two where the off offense is going to drive, kick the ball out and they have to shoot a three. And so now we're working on the, the decision of when to pass, when to shoot, when to drive, and we're making shots against defense in that pressure filled environment. Okay. The interesting thought with that too is like when you're shooting by yourself, right, and that's your workout, think about the fact that you have to shoot the ball. There's nobody else on your team on the court like you have to shoot the ball. There's no decision to be made in a game when it's five on five. When you shoot the shot, that means that there's four players on your team who didn't get the shot. So there's a whole nother dynamic that you have to start to think about where it's like, man, do I feel confident enough in myself that I can take that shot knowing that there's four other people on my team who do, who don't get to take the shot in this possession. Right there, that's. That is another thing that makes it different in game versus in a workout or in practice. So we want to shoot those in those situations as much as possible. Now obviously the way that I had mentioned it, there is really good. If you have a group of like, you know, four teammates, five teammates setting up a three on two, where you know you're going to start with an advantage, you're going to drive, kick, the whole offense has to shoot a three because it's three on two, great way to do it, right? The other thing is that you can be purposeful in your pickup games. In your one on one, your two on two, your three on three, you can say, hey, I know that I could probably drive by this guy, but in this game, in this pickup game, I'm just going to work on shooting the ball as much as I can, shooting against closeouts, shooting when it's difficult, shooting when you know there's some adversity and some pressure and, and that's how you're going to get better at shot making in that wicked world, in that game environment is by focusing and being purposeful and saying, hey, I'm going to work on doing this here because this is as valuable, if not more valuable, than the hundreds of reps that I might shoot by myself, not in a game environment. Okay? So you can 100% do that. If you're purposeful with the time that you are playing, pick up and you have an actual goal, something that you want to get out of it. So that's the first thing. Now the other thing you can do, because obviously I understand you're not always going to be able to work out with other people, right? You're gonna be by yourself sometimes. So what can you do to make it as similar to a game environment as possible? And the best way you can do this is by adding pressure to your shooting. So instead of saying, hey, I gotta go five, five, five spots around the perimeter and I gotta make five at each, maybe say I gotta go five spots around the perimeter and I gotta make three in a row or four in a row, or I have to make seven shots without missing two in a row. And if I miss two shots in a row, I go back to zero and I got to go till I make seven without missing two in a row at that spot. Now all of a sudden there's pressure on every shot, much like there is in a game where you got to worry about time and score and what does this game mean to your team. And oh, by the way, like I mentioned, when I shoot this shot, there's pressure on me because four other people on my team didn't get to shoot the ball. So I better feel really good about my ability to shoot through that pressure. And we can sort of simulate pressure in our, in our workouts by ourselves by adding pressure to it. Another way I love to do it is maybe you do a shooting drill where you're working on like pull ups in the mid range and then you say, okay, I Got to make two pull ups in a row and then I got to make a catch and shoot three and I got to, I got to make all those shots in a row. So three shots in a row and I got to do that four times. So now we have pressure on every single shot that you shoot and that's going to translate to you getting into games and feeling way more confident and comfortable shooting with pressure on you. Which every shot you shoot in a game, there's going to be some sort of pressure on you. So if you want to make sure that you're shooting, work when you're by yourself, translate to the game. Start focusing on adding pressure to your shooting workouts, to your shooting drills as often as you possibly can. Give yourself challenges that you have to, that you have to reach. Give yourself difficulties throughout your shooting drills that make you struggle where you're going to fail sometimes and not always get it. And that's going to lead to you being a much better shot maker in that game environment. So the two things that you need to focus on if you want to improve and become the best player possible is becoming a better decision maker and becoming a better shot maker. And you want to realign your focus and say, okay, today is my workout going to make me better at at least one of those things and if it is, do it right. Ideally both of those things, but at least one of those things. And you know that, hey, if my workout is getting me better at one of those things, I'm gonna get better. I'm, I'm on the right path. I just gotta keep doing this. And you know, on the flip side, you, you can know, you can say to yourself, hey, I find a really rough day at my workout or at practice, did I get better at decision making or shot making? Is there anything that may be better at either of those things? You can say yes. Then it was a great day for you because you got better. Okay? So I think, like I said, eliminating the distractions and the shiny new objects that throw players off is such an important part of training the right way. And we prioritize these two things, it's going to ensure that, that your time is well spent and you ultimately see results for the time that you put in, the work that you put in. So like I mentioned earlier, make sure you click that top link down below to get my free basketball IQ masterclass. It's going to help you in every aspect of basketball IQ and it's going to lead to you being a better scorer, better decision maker, better facilitator, creating more for yourself and for your teammates. And like I mentioned, I think for a lot of players you can easily add six or eight points per game to your average right now, just with the stuff that we go through in that masterclass components completely free, top link down below. Make sure you check that out. I appreciate you for watching. Talk soon. Peace.