The Harsh Reality of Making It To The Next Level in Basketball

The first thing I want to talk about is that players think, hey, if I just work hard, go to workouts, and then I just, I get better, then some college coach will find me and I'll get recruited. And that's sometimes the case, but you also have to think about what, what the numbers are. We have to have an idea of what the actual numbers are behind playing at the college level. If you think about it, There are about 450 million basketball players in the world. Now. That's every level. That's, you know, youth level, middle school, high school, college, professional, adult leagues. Like, that's, that's everybody out there. That's obviously not the number we really need to look at. But if you at in The United States, 137,000 high school seniors who play basketball, we can basically double that number to estimate around the world. Probably what we have, maybe we could even triple that number. But let's just say for now, let's just double it. So we'll double that number. Then we got to look at the amount of colleges, right? So there's about 1750 colleges in the United States that offer college basketball. About. And again, I'm rounding with these numbers so they're not going to be exact. And obviously you have some colleges and like you, Canada and different places around the world. But I'm, I'm, I'm strictly talking about North America or, or the United States for now. So of those 1750 spots, there's about 31,000 roster spots available. Again, if you just do the math with that, about 31,000 roster spots. But you take about a quarter of those because you have four years, now you have five because the extra year the NCAA gave out. But let's just say for, for our purposes now we're going to divide that in four. So every year, about 7,750 spots open at the college level, total. Let's compare that to the number that we started with, right? We took 137,000 high school seniors who play basketball in America. We doubled it. So now we're at 273,000 high school players around the world who are gunning for 7,750 spots, which would give you a 2.8% chance of actually moving on from the high school level to the college level. Something to keep in mind is that, you know, not every single player who plays basketball is serious enough, good enough, wants to play at that level. So let's say, for our purposes, let's cut that number. Let's say that only 25% of those 273,000 actually wants to play at the college level, actually have the ability to. So that would give us about 68,000 players left gunning for those 7,750 spots, which gives about an 11% chance of making it so easy. Even if we cut those numbers down, we just take the players who are serious, the odds of making it are still. You have about a 90% chance of not doing it. Just so we have an idea of what the numbers are, so we get an idea of what the actual competition level is for those spots. And that's why I said earlier, like, no matter where you end up at the college level, it's impressive because that's 90% of other players who didn't get a spot there. And again, I'm taking into account every single level that's Division 1, Division 2, Division 3, NAIA, JUCO, all those combined, there is an 11% chance you have of actually getting one of those spots. Let's keep that in mind. We talk about how, you know, getting recruited, and I'm not going too far into that, but we talk about actually wanting to be a college basketball player. You have to understand that you really have to separate yourself because of the high demand for those spots from players and the very limited supply of roster spots that's out there. Essentially what that's going to mean is that you have to be in the top 10% of your class to be a college basketball player. You know, we can break that down even more. Like, we can look at that even further and even more of a, of an actual. Like, we can look at it in context here. So, you know, let's say that, you know, you think about the teams you play in your conference or in your area. So think about nine of the teams you, that you play consistently, right? If you're in high school, to think about nine teams in your league or in your conference or that's on your schedule, and then take your team. Okay, so 10 total teams right there. Let's assume that 10, 10 players get minutes on each team. We're going to take 100 players, 10 teams, 10 of them get actual minutes per game. Probably a little bit high for some teams. Let's just say 10 players get minutes. That means that of those 100 players who play, you have to be in the top 10 of those 100 players to statistically be a college basketball player. Now, obviously, it's going to vary depending on where you play. Some areas are going to have a higher concentration of players because it's Just more competitive in some areas are going to. It's going to be lower. But again, I'm just going by averages right here. On average, you're going to take the top 10 of those 150, and those are going to be the ones who end up playing at the next level. Basically what I'm getting at is that playing at the next level, there's no guarantee. You know, I'm always big on, like, hard work. Like, hard work isn't. What does hard work matter if there's no results that come with it? That's ultimately what matters, is the results. It's not the work. And I'm not saying hard work isn't something that, that, that applies to that. But I'm saying that we have to look at it deeper than just, oh, who works the hardest? Okay? Because if you take those 68,000 players around the world, they all are going to work hard, right? They're all out there trying to make it to that level, but not all of them to only 10, 11% of them are actually going to be able to do that. And for some players, you know, this year, that number was drastically cut because the NCAA gave the free year. So a lot of colleges didn't lose any players. So they didn't have any more scholarship opportunities. They didn't have any roster spots opening up. So a lot of players who were high school seniors just didn't get opportunities that they probably would have gotten on a normal year. I don't know what exactly the number is in terms of, you know, what that 11% goes to, but I wouldn't be shocked that 11% went down to, you know, 6, 7, 8% this year because of the extra year. And that's going to be the case for probably the next couple of years because of that extra year that the NCAA gave out. Again, unless teams are deciding to expand the, you know, the rosters or the scholarship opportunities. And I know a lot of schools aren't going to do that. So that's, again, something to keep in mind is that the numbers are just not in your favor at all, right? So that has to be the approach that you have, is you have to understand that it takes you going above and beyond to actually get to that level. The first thing to understand, guys, is that working hard is. But ultimately you have to be better than 90% of other players. If you're not better than 90% of other players, then you're not statistically a college basketball player off the bat. The first thing before we get to recruiting before we get to anything else, you have to actually be good enough to play at that level. So ultimately, the point I want to get at is that if you want this, if this is your goal, if you want to get to the point where you can play college basketball, then your actions need to back that up as well. It's not good enough to just say, oh, you know, I want to get to this point because I want to have a signing day, because I want to go and say, oh, I played college basketball. You have to actually, like, if you want to get there and you want to last there, that you've got to actually put in the work to get yourself to that point again, understanding that there's, you know, at least 68,000 players out there who are working just the same way I'm working, trying to get one of the 7,000 spots available, right? So that college coach can look and he has one spot to fill. He's got 68,000 options. Think about it that way. You. You obviously don't have that many options. You've got about 17, 50 in the United States. Those are your options. Right? And he's got 68,000 of them at least. Right. Maybe more, depending on. In fact, this year, definitely more, because the transfer portal guy's getting extra years. That coach has well over 100,000 viable options that he can take. So you have to understand that if you're trying to get one of those spots right there, then the training that you go through, your commitment, your discipline to doing what you need to do, to getting better, that's where it all stems from. That's where it all starts from. Don't have a goal, but you don't match that with your actions. Look yourself in the mirror and say, listen, do I actually want to do this? And if I do, am I making sure that my actions back up what I'm saying? And if you do that, guys, and you commit to getting better, you're going to put yourself in a position where, you know, you. You may be able to reach that goal again, and the numbers aren't for you. But that shouldn't be something that discourages you. That should be something that just propels you to work even harder. If you guys are serious about taking your skills to the next level, I want to give you guys my free Leap Hunter score workout. We're going to target a bunch of skills that you're going to need to have if you want to be an elite player on the perimeter. All you got to do to get that is click the top link in my description right below, and I'll get that right to you.