Robert Greene wrote the bestseller Mastery. Mastery examines how students, craftsmen, or professionals arrive at high performance levels. This translates to basketball at many levels.
Greene cites numerous examples, like Benjamin Franklin, an aspiring journalist, who eschewed training in the family business (candle making) for a longer (nine year) apprenticeship in printing.
First, he advises us to match our work with our passion. Some players participate as surrogates for their parents. That dog won't hunt.
Second, focus on the process - the apprenticeship, experimentation, and skill enhancement that occurs over years. You know the 10,000 hours rule...professional skill levels are time-sensitive.
Third, maintain a childlike fascination with learning. Kevin Eastman says, "be a learn-it-all, not a know-it-all." We encounter true geniuses; don't believe that applies to us.
Fourth, pay attention to detail. Da Vinci was an autodidact, he taught himself to draw, through meticulous observation and concern for detail.
We can combine key elements as an acronym, SALT.
S - skill of the craftsman (hone your craft)
A- attention to detail
L - learning both direct (trade-oriented) and indirect (other fields). Basketball shares excellence, leadership, teaching, learning, exercise physiology, psychology, and even applied mathematics.
T - time.
Near the top of Coach Wooden's 'Pyramid of Success' flank the words, FAITH and PATIENCE. Short cuts and mastery don't mix.
Green notes that in early apprenticeship, OBSERVATION has a larger role. With time, trainees get more 'hands on' experience.
I served in the Navy during the tragedy of the turret explosion on the Battleship Iowa. Before the investigation concluded, an elderly patient and former gunner's mate explained that powder loading required considerable technique and experience. He said, "I could still do that. Kids don't have the experience." There was no corporate memory bringing battleships from mothballs. Young players with limited experience make mistakes inherent in the process. Mastery isn't free.
Here's some valuable advice about Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman via fourminutebooks.com:
During yesterday's part 3 of Best of Enemies, ESPN dredged up the tempest in a teapot between Isiah Thomas and Larry Bird. The issue was never race, but mastery. Isiah spoke, perhaps awkwardly, that his craft evolved through working long hours on his game. Every NBA player pays the price to achieve that success and mastery.
Thomas wanted people to know that work not gifts got him to the NBA. Kobe Bryant shot a thousand jumpers a day for a hundred summer days (100,000 shots). Spencer Haywood's path to the NBA traversed winning a challenge to make fifteen consecutive free throws to earn a scholarship to Detroit. Work, toughness, and persistence inform mastery.