Basketball is a game of (fill in the blank). We might substitute 'life' for basketball. One of my favorite expressions is 'basketball is a game of passing and cutting'. But it's also a game of time and space. Let's examine 'time'.
"There is always something that we can improve." But improvement demands not only a commitment to 'do the work', it requires time.
Eric Greitens concludes his book Resiliencewith a chapter on 'Sabbath'...the rest. He quotes Rabbi Abraham Herschel, Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul. Greitens adds, Time is beyond your control. Yet you have to live meaningfully in time as well as in space.
Time factors into many areas of basketball. We have 'practice time'. We have time for off-season personal development. As a high school or college player, we have finite eligibility. We have game time. We have timeouts during games. The passage of time is immutable; we cannot control time...but we can control tempo.
How do we manage our time? Do we choose to spend our time or invest it?
Darren Hardy in The Compound Effect discusses the value of tracking, To help you become aware of your choices, I want you to track every action that relates to the area of your life you want to improve. In the investing community, journaling is highly recommended as a way to track your thought process and decisions. This demands using time to help organize time.
A few thoughts on time:
1) Run practice at a high tempo. We can always get more done when we commit to do so.
2) Don't squander timeouts. I like to save at least 3 (of 5) for the last four minutes of a game with a variety of purposes.
3) Start on time and end on time. Our players deserve that. It's tough to put the responsibility on kids (transportation needs, multiple activities)
4) Don't talk them to death. They need the reps.
5) "Tomorrow is granted to no one."