Why "Shoot First" Will Make You A Better Player Instantly

So I had my first workout of the fall with my high school team the other day, and we focused a lot on what I call the 95, which essentially just refers to the fact that 95% of the time on offense, you're not going to have the ball in your hands. So it's incredibly important that in that 5% of the time that you do, you're efficient when you catch the basketball. Efficiency is the biggest key when it comes to this. There's so much inefficiency that I saw when players would catch the basketball and they would waste dribbles or they'd waste time, they'd waste opportunities to go. And. And it really made it so that the 5% of time that they had, the basketball, they weren't making the most out of it. They weren't scoring, they weren't getting the shots that they wanted, and they were very, very frustrated about it. That led us to talk about the important point five decision rule, which just means that when you catch the basketball, you have half a second to do something with it. Either shoot, drive, or pass the ball. The only thing that you can't do is hold the basketball, as Steph Curry puts very well right here.

I'm either catching the shooting, I'm catching and ripping, or I'm catching and giving up. If you held the ball for one second, that's a grenade, and it blew up, and you're done, all right? So think about that. I need have 0.5 seconds to make a decision, and that's when you start to get the dominoes to fall. All right, Showing side, whatever it is. We're giving y' all some terminology. Basketball. That's a good one to take back to your team.

Now, even when we did this, I could see my players really overthinking it, like, oh, when do I shoot? When do I drive? When do I pass? What am I supposed to do? And they would go through this whole checklist, so it was impossible for them to make consistent, quick choices. And so we focused on one specific mindset that fixes so many of these problems, and it's the shoot first mindset. Now, this seems so simple, right? We're just thinking to ourselves on the catch shoot. And you're thinking, shoot until you can't anymore. And the reason why this makes sense and the reason why this is so effective is because, first of all, it forces the defense to close out to you, right? If you are first thinking drive or pass, the defense doesn't have to close out the whole way to you. And so therefore it's not going to open up as easy of a drive. If the defender really has to get to you to try and take away the shot and contest it, it's going to be much easier for you to like, shot, fake and drive by them because their momentum is, is out of control. You're able to exploit that. That's really where it starts off, is that it forces the defense to get all the way to you and give you momentum, give you a close up to be able to attack. That's the first thing right there. The second thing is that it simplifies your decision. So like I said, instead of having to think, okay, do I drive, do I pass, do I shoot? And going through a whole checklist, all you need to do is ask yourself, okay, do I have enough space to shoot? If the answer is yes, shoot it. If the answer is no, then you can drive or you can pass the basketball. But it becomes very simple when the only question you have to ask yourself is, do I have enough space to shoot? Simplifies the entire game for you. And now you're not hesitating, you're not wondering, oh, like, should I shoot, pass, drive, all that sort of stuff. You're thinking, shoot. If the shot isn't there, then you do something else. Either drive or you make an extra pass. And, and it makes the game so much simpler and it helps you to stop overthinking things when you only have to make one decision. And the number three is it boosts your confidence because now you're shooting without hesitation. You know that, hey, like, I have to shoot the ball. If I'm open, I have to shoot it, right? That's, that's the shoot first mindset. And so when you shoot without hesitation, where you're not overthinking it or second guessing yourself, you make more shots. It's just how it works, right? Indecision is the number one reason that players miss shots is because they're indecisive or they hesitate. And that's what causes missed shots. So when your initial thought is, okay, I'm shooting this ball, if I'm open, then you're going to make more of those shots as well. Well, and so once my players embrace this mindset during the workout, that was pretty much immediately the results that we saw. So they made more shots without hesitation. They found open lanes and created easier drives for themselves because the defense had to fully close out to them and try and contest the shot because they expected that they would shoot the ball. And they just play with way more confidence, and it was just way, way easier. They played in much more of a flow state where they weren't overthinking things. It was simple. And ultimately they were being so much more successful. And, and one thing that I told them, the important thing to understand when it comes to making decisions as a basketball player is to understand the 8020 principle. And all of that means is that our goal is to be is to make the right decision 80% of the time and understand the fact that 20% of the time you're going to make the wrong choice. There's really no getting around it. No matter how good of a player you are, 20% of the time you're going to make the wrong choice. Okay? So players get so, so caught up in, I got to do the right thing every single time. I got to be perfect every single time. What I'm saying is that in these situations, it's much more valuable for you to be quick and make a quick decision that points up decision. Don't let the grenade blow up in your hands, okay? It's so much more important that you do something quickly and live with the fact that, hey, I only need to be right like 80% of the time there's going to be 20% where I make a quick decision and it's the wrong one. And when you don't hold yourself to a standard of perfection, it allows you to again, play so much with so much more freedom, so much more confidence, way less overthinking. Whether this hesitation, because you're okay with the fact that, hey, sometimes I'm going to get it wrong because everybody gets it wrong. But I know that when I play quick, more times than not, I'm going to create a situation that's advantageous for me as I do it more and more. Understand these two concepts. The shoot first mindset, where when you catch the basketball, you're thinking shoot unless you don't have space for it. The only question you ask yourself on the catch is, do I have space to shoot? And if it's yes, you shoot it. If it's no, then you drive or you pass. Okay? Very, very simple. And then that understanding the 8020 principle, knowing that, hey, I'm going to make these quick decisions on offense, okay? I'm going to look to do that knowing that I'm not going to be perfect. I need to be. I'm going to be wrong like 20% of the time. But it's so much more important that I play quick and live with the fact that I'M going to make mistakes because that's going to ultimately lead to better successful. When you understand those two concepts, it allows you to be a much better offensive player. So super important thing, like I said, as soon as my players started to implement these things, they just were so much more successful. They were making more threes, they were getting to drives much more easily, they were getting to the rim to finish. They were creating for their teammates by drawing and help defenders and kicking and creating open shots for them. And basketball just becomes so much more fun and you become ultimately the most successful player that you can be. We actually dive into way more like this inside of Basketball IQ Academy, which is my full basketball IQ course. And along with that, we also have a full confidence course as well. So it'll completely transform who you are as a player. The way that you look, the game, your confidence and just your understanding, right? When we look at being a successful basketball player physically, like you need to be skilled, you need to be athletic. But there are so many players who, and you probably know players like this, who you look at, you say, why are you not better? Right? Players who will have all these skills and they're putting all this time and the work so hard, then they get into games and they're like a shadow of themselves, or they play with a huge lack of confidence, or they constantly make poor decisions with the ball and because of that they're just ineffective, right? Even the players who work super hard and really, really want to be good, if you don't understand how to play the game and if you don't have the confidence to be a great player, to go out there and take risks and really show what you're able to do, then you're never going to be successful on the court. So that's why I created Basketball IQ Academy. There's nothing else out there like this. And it's the best thing that you can do for your success as a basketball player. And so many players have seen their game revolutionize because of the stuff that we go through inside of Basketball IQ Academy. We talk about how to train to make more shots, right? So we talk about having that shoe first mindset. Well, how do you train in order to get to a point where you feel really confident in taking those shots? So we talk about not only how to make the shots, but what shots am I even talking about? Like what kind of shots do you need to be great at shooting so that you can truly embody this shoot first mindset and really believe that every shot you take is going in. So talk about exactly how you can train that what you should be training. We talk about what to do and driving to the basket. So okay, I have that shoe first mindset, but I didn't have space to shoot it so I had to drive. Now what about the, the second line of defense? Like how do you do with help? How do you read the help defender? How do you know when to kick it out? How do you know when to go to a floater, when to go to a pull up, when to go all the way to the rim? Two feet, one feet. How do you make that decision right there? That's something that we go through inside of basketball. Cube Academy reading help defenders overall again, knowing when do I kick it, where do I kick it to the go read. So this is basically the read that I refer to. When you see this, it means that you're going to drive every single time. Okay. It's called the go read right there. Something that we go through as well. And then so much more that goes into like the little nuances that goes into being a great basketball player and a great scorer and creator specifically. So if you're serious about taking your game to the next level, highly recommend you check out Basketball IQ Academy. It's linked down below. Hopefully I'll see you in there. I appreciate you for watching. Talk soon. Peace.