Want to Score More Points? Take the 6-Point Challenge

Scoring isn't just about how skilled you are, how athletic you are. It's about decision making and how well you recognize opportunities. If you're not scoring more points, it's either because you're not good enough, which we'll get to towards the end of this video, or it's because you don't know how to score efficiently and how to make scoring simple. By the end of this video, you'll know exactly how to start scoring more, how to make scoring easier and more consistent for you. And I'm going to give you a challenge that you can apply to your next game, your next, your next practice, your next pickup run that's going to help you to develop some of the things we're going to talk about in this video. When we think of elite scorers, we think of guys like Kyrie Irving, Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, James Harden, and we usually think about the highlight plays and the crazy tough shots that they make. And that's what we think about. We think about elite scoring, but in reality, for these guys, most of their scoring comes in simple, routine ways. As an example, I did a breakdown of Kevin Durant, one of his games from a few months ago where he, he scored 21 points on only one dribble, and that one dribble he took was him attacking a closeout to get downhill. All the other points that he scored in that game were off of running in transition, off ball cuts and catch and shoot threes for the most part. So even those guys who are supremely talented are able to score at a high level consistently because they can routinely take advantage of the opportunities to score in simple ways. Chances are, if you're frustrated with the amount of points that you're scoring, if we peeled it back a little bit more, you're likely frustrated with the consistency of your scoring. So maybe you have a quarter where you score six points or eight points and then you don't score the next quarter, or you only score two points in the third quarter. Or maybe you have a game where you score 12 points, but then the next three games you only score 2 points, 4 points, whatever, and you can scale that to whatever kind of level you're at. But if you want to score more points, you have to find a way to score consistently and consistent scoring comes through simple scoring. So let's talk about three areas where you can start to get easy points that are going to lead you scoring more consistently and scoring at a high level. Number one is running in transition. This is probably the simplest way to score Points, because it's all about effort. And so you know when your team is on defense, your teammate pulls a rebound, you just getting out and thinking about winning the first three steps to half court, as fast as you can take those first three steps, you're going to be able to probably steal a bucket, maybe two buckets every game just by committing to getting on transition and running. A lot of players don't do it. A lot of players are lazy and they want to just walk the ball at the floor or wait to get into the half court. So if you're willing to work, you can score a couple easy points every game by doing this. Now, the second area that is going to absolutely transform your scoring is being able to move without the basketball. This is probably the most important area. I refer to this as the 95 because this is 95% of the time you're not going to have the ball in your hands. It's very rare. And usually you only have one, maybe two players on a team that are going to have the ball in their hands a lot. And most players are going to be without the ball most of the time. So you have to understand how to score without the basketball. There's a couple of different ways you can do this. So number one is recognizing backdoor cut opportunities. Let's say you're on the wing or in the corner. Whenever you see your defender turn to look at the ball, that's when it's a great opportunity for you to cut back door because you're going to be wide open, they're not going to be able to follow you. You going to get easy layups, easy wide open shots just by looking for that opportunity. So you see your defender turn their head towards the ball, back door cut. And you'll steal a bucket, two buckets every single game just by being able to do that. The next type of cut is a 45 cut. So usually this is when you're on the wing and either your teammate drives from the other wing or other corner or there's like a low post touch on the opposite side. When you do that, you're saying about cutting from the wing to the basket and, and a lot of times again, your defender who's in help turns to look at the ball or turns to go and help. And so that 45 cut is wide open for you to get an easy layup too. Great way for you to score, you know, an extra bucket a game just by recognizing that opportunity and be willing to do something. And then the last area that's really important is relocating. So when your teammate drives, usually your defender is going to be in help and they're going to try and put themselves somewhat in the passing lane between your teammate who's driving and you so that if they make a pass, they could get a hand on it or whatever. So whenever your teammate drives, you want to relocate to make sure that you open up a passing lane so that your teammate can kick the ball out to you. And then at that point, if you're a shooter, that you've got an open catch and shoot three, or maybe your defender closes out to you and now you have momentum, you have an advantage to attack. You can get downhill and get to a pull up or get to the basket for a layup or whatever. Now the third area that you can really focus on to get easy points is crashing the offensive boards. And this is another one, kind of the first one. We talked about running in transition and this is all about playing hard and effort and wanting to go get the ball. I've coached players who have no business pulling offensive rebounds because they're small, they're not super athletic, but they just work for it. They put themselves in a position to where the ball might come for them and they just try their best. 95% of the time you're not going to get the ball because it won't bounce to you or someone will box you out or someone will just win the ball. But that 5% of the time, once or twice, maybe a game, if you consistently crash enough, there's enough that you can score 2, 2, 4 points, maybe you get fouled, go to the free throw line. So again, going through that number one, run in transition, win those first three steps. Number two, look for opportunities to move without the basketball. So backdoor cuts, 45 cuts, relocations when your teammates are driving. And then number three, look for opportunities to crash the offensive boards hard. And that's going to lead to put back opportunities or free throw opportunities as well. Now the other area that's super important when it comes to scoring more, making scoring easy is knowing when the right time to attack, when the right time to try and score is. A lot of players struggle to drive to the basket, they struggle to attack and they think that it's a physical thing. They think that they're just not good enough, that maybe they're not strong enough, that they're not good enough handling the ball. A lot of times that's not the case. A lot of times the problem is that they are trying to drive in situations where it doesn't make sense to drive where it's going to be really, really difficult. So it's important that we can pinpoint good opportunities to get downhill. And then not only are you going to score more, but it's going to be easy. It's going to feel way easier for you to do it. So let's talk about some mistakes that players make when it comes to this. Number one is driving into crowds or driving into really good help defense. So sometimes there's a gap defender that's right next to your defender, and if you try and drive, you're going to be driving right into somebody on defense, and so you're going to turn the ball over. You're just not going to get anywhere. So that's the first mistake that a lot of players make. Or there's a lot of congestion in the paint and they try and go to the paint anyway. Even though there's no open space, there's no opportunity for them there. The next thing is not recognizing momentum advantages to attack, meaning that a closeout comes at them and the defender is at their most vulnerable. And players don't recognize and attack that right there. That's the best time to try and get downhills when your defender is closing out to you. And a lot of players don't take advantage of that. So what do you need to do to make sure that you recognize these great opportunities to attack and start to score way more easy points? Because of number one is you need to get good at reading your defender. So is your defender closing out to you? Is there momentum coming towards you that you can take advantage of? Like I said, the hardest thing a defender is going to do is go from help defense to closing out onto the ball. They have to take away the shot and they have to slow down and not get beat. That's a really, really hard thing to do, especially if they have to do it more than one time in a possession. The very simple question, do you have an advantage to go at? Like I said, it could be the close of the momentum, but also, do I have a size advantage? Do I have a speed or an athleticism advantage? And if I see an advantage to go at, that's an opportunity that I want to take advantage of. The next part of it is getting good at reading the help defense. So number one is their gap help, meaning one away from you. Is there a defender that's in the gap? If not, it becomes a much easier opportunity to drive because there's nobody who's there to step into the gap and Be in your driving lane. There's nobody who's there to reach and maybe get a hand on the basketball. So can you recognize when you don't see a gap? We call this the empty read. So if I catch the ball and I see, oh, it's empty, then that means it's a really good opportunity for me to be able to get downhill because I only have to worry about beating one guy and I have to worry about help defense. Same thing. We talk about weak side help. So do you see that the paint is empty? If that's the case, then, you know, hey, if I get by my defender, if I attack really hard right now I'm probably going to get to the rim and have a layup because there's nobody there to stop me. Those are going to be great opportunities for you to pinpoint as good times to drive. I think maybe the most important key to all of this is that you have to be willing to play the long game. So many players get down on offense and they want to make something happen right away. Like the first time you touch the ball, they've got to do something. And the problem with that is that when you first get the ball on offense and it's early in a possession, that's actually the easiest time for the defense to to defend because the, the ball hasn't moved yet. So the on ball defender is just kind of in place. Usually the gap defense is where they want to be because they haven't had to move yet. The weak side is usually where they need to be. So the defense is usually at its peak early on in a possession, which would be like the first time that you touch the ball. So if you flip your mindset and you say, you know what, I want to make it my goal as often as possible for my defender to have to guard me two or three times in a possession. Meaning if number five is guarding you the first time you touch the ball, maybe he's in good position. The gap defender is in good position. So now you want to move the ball, you want to make number five now have to drop in to help and worry about stopping the ball. And then maybe the ball moves again. Now he's into full weak side help. And then maybe the ball gets skipped to you. And now number five has to close out to you and that's going to be a great opportunity for you to beat him. Maybe you catch the ball that second time, you still don't have a good advantage. Maybe he calls out really well or, or the gap help was really Good. You move it again and five's got to move in to help. If you make them rotate a third time and him come close out to you again, the likelihood of them being able to successfully do that over and over and over and over again for multiple possessions is very low. It's very hard for defenses to do that. If you make it your goal to say, hey, I want number five to have to guard me two times or three times every possession, you're going to start to notice that that second, third time is going to open up these advantages that we talked about, closeouts, mismatches, and it's going to open up those things way more for you. Now I want to give you something that you can use to be able to apply this stuff to your games going forward. This is called the six easy points challenge. And so the objective here is that you score at least six points in a game off of these easy high percentage opportunities. We want to create what's called a scoring baseline, meaning we want to create an amount of points that you can pretty much bank on having every single game. So I know even if I'm terrible and, and you know, I play my worst offensive game, I can count on scoring these six points because that's the baseline you've created. Meaning even your bad games won't be that bad because you're still going to have this that you can fall back on. So here are the four categories, the four opportunities that can go towards this six easy points challenge. Number one is scoring and transition. So getting out and running, like I said, trying to win those first three steps. And the goal can be, can you score one bucket a game doing this? The second area is offensive rebounds and put back. So again, just crashing hard, really working trying to find opportunities to score off of second chance buckets. And again, this could be one bucket a game. Number three is cuts to the basket. So recognizing backdoor cut opportunities, 45 cut opportunities. And this could be one A game. So if you have one from all three of those categories that right there, cross it off the list, you hit your six points and the fourth will be just catch and shoot opportunities. You have space. Can you hit one? Three. There we go. There's an automatic three points right there. So chances are if you really lock in and doing these things, you'll probably hit more than that. And then it becomes, okay, well, now can I make this scoring baseline 8 points or 10 points? Can I find ways to score 10 points per game on just this simple stuff so we can keep track of this? You can you can keep like a, like a, like a note on your phone of each game or each time you play pickup? Are you able to do these things? Now? The most important part of this is that I want you to be more purposeful when you play. What this is going to do is it's going to force you to actually hunt these opportunities to make scoring easier for yourself. You're going to look for opportunities to run in the fast break. You're going to look for opportunities to cut away from the basketball and move without the ball. You're going to look for opportunities to crash the offensive boards. And by doing that, you're going to put yourself in a position to score more consistently because you're going to be scoring in much easier ways. This also is going to reduce your reliance on making tough shots or even making shots in general. You could hit this goal of six points, and if you get consistent eight points, you can do that without making a single three. You can do that without necessarily even dribbling a single time. And like I said, all this is with a goal to make your scoring more efficient, make it more simple. When you do that and you build the habit, habit of hunting these things, you're going to become a really good scorer. So give this challenge a try and let me know in the comments how it goes. Now, like I mentioned at the beginning of the video, the other reason why you might not be scoring as many points as you want, because maybe you're not quite good enough to do so. And regardless of whether or not that's the case, all this becomes easier if you're better. Most players could be getting better twice as fast as they currently are. And I just released a free guide on how exactly to do this, a step by step guide on how you can get better twice as fast as you currently are, and a full schedule on what your day should look like. If you want to make that happen completely free top link in the description down below. Make sure you check that out. Talk soon. Peace.