A basketball coach tells young players that anxiety before games is universal, even for great players. He recommends deep breathing, pre-game routines like specific playlists and journaling, and taking shots with confidence instead of freezing up.
All right, young hoopers, listen up. So every time you're about to play a game, no matter who you are, you get performance anxiety. No matter how much you prepared, no matter how much you're the scout, no matter what, who you are— Kobe, Steph, or me— and then about after a minute or so, you kind of settle into the game and everything's back to normal. What I've found to help me with those situations is just embrace it. Embrace that performance anxiety. Take deep breaths and continue to have confidence in your abilities. Because if you have that anxiety and you don't take your open shot, now you done messed your whole head up. Take risks, have faith, eat the consequences. One more thing: develop systems and routines allowing you to turn off your ability to make decisions before the game. You need all your power to make decisions during the game. So for me, I listen to the same playlist, I read the same scriptures, I write the same stuff in my journal, and it's all to get my brain
