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Friday, March 1, 2024

Basketball: Off the Rails, Where Does It Go Wrong?

Post by @lets.make.a_difference1
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What keeps you up at night?

Jim Rohn shares reality, "you suffer the pain of discipline or the pain of regret."

Think back to some first round draft choices that didn't pan out. "Living the life" was more important to them than durable success. You know the names.

1. Commitment. Nobody gets to be "All-League" before being "All In." Sacrifice comes before success.

2. Sleep. If you don't get enough rest, underachievement is certain. Choose anecdotal like LeBron getting 12 hours of sleep or studies showing more sleep equals higher performance.

3. Discipline. Party animal? Alcohol impairs cognition (e.g. memory), performance, and recovery. "But why should student-athletes particularly care? A single night’s alcohol use impairs hydration (alcohol is a diuretic), muscle recovery, healing, and can cause memory deficits for three days. Alcohol damages sleep. It limits absorption of key vitamins. It decreases endurance." 

4. Work ethic. Elite achievement demands physical and mental toughness. Check out the videos. Your idea of hard work isn't NBA level hard work. Winning is hard. That's why it's valued. 

5. Smarts. Nobody wants to be told they have a low basketball IQ but many people struggle to make consistently good basketball decisions. See through a lens of suboptimal decision not poor player. 

6. Selfishness. "Happiness begins where selfishness ends." - Coach John Wooden  Make serving your teammates a priority. 

7. Inattention. We've all seen games lost when players didn't pay attention, didn't understand, or didn't execute a task. "I didn't know who to cover" is the classic. Be "performance-focused, feedback-rich..." in the words of Ronald Reagan, "trust but verify." 

8. Sense of urgency. Nothing works without urgent cutting. Pass "on-time and on-target." The simple "give-and-go" action when a cut is set up, executed, and pass received is hard to defend. 

9. Stubbornness. Some players and coaches wallow in unmerited self-belief. Have you thought about doing it this way? 

10.Pride. "Pride goeth before the fall." Get help. The legendary Fred Rogers reminds us, "look for the helpers." Jimmy Piersall was a muscular teammate of Ted Williams. The Sox had a 'strength machine' in the clubhouse where a broomstick and rope looped over a pulley lifting a ten-pound weight. Roll your wrists to raise the weight. Piersall boasted, "I can do three times as many as anyone here." Williams replied, "Stop being an a*hole, Jim." "Let's go, Williams." Almost everyone bet on the strongman, who did 50. Williams got on the device and it moved up and down effortlessly, to 150. Williams explained. "I invented this machine, Jim." 

Be open to learning, to improving, to rebooting our strategy. "Sorry" is too late. 

Lagniappe. 

Post by @ryanpannone
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Lagniappe 2. Keep banging on winning themes.