Helen Mirren shares
Players, excel in your role. How?
1) Know your role. Each player is a piece that fits into the overall puzzle, or an "intermediate good" going into the finished product. A Lamborghini is useless without a battery or wheels or brakes. Everyone can't be the engine or the transmission. A shutdown defender or elite rebounder adds immense value to a team when they discipline themselves within the team concept.
2) Prepare physically and mentally for your role. If you're a scorer, then you need scoring actions. You envision yourself as a three-point shooter. What is your plan against ball pressure, ball denial, double teams? Can you penetrate and get open shots when catch-and-shoot is denied? Exploit a variety of arrows in your quiver.
The mental practice might include mindfulness to enhance focus ("a man distracted is a man defeated") and a psychological routine (e.g. Jason Selk's training includes breathing, performance and identity statements, and a mental highlight reel).
3) Be a giver. When individuals sacrifice for the team, they foster harmony and reduce jealousy. Personal sacrifice that allows others high performance means disavowing a bigger piece of the pie to bake a bigger pie. Elite creative minds like Frank Lloyd Wright, viewed as America's greatest architect, have struggling periods because of their inability to play with others.
Excelling in your role combines individual achievement with willing collaboration.
Lagniappe: "Set up your cut..." one of the Jay Bilas Toughness attributes. Via Chris Oliver and Basketball Immersion
What is your defender doing and seeing? Is she a head-turner? What is her visual field?
Can the potential passer see you?
What is your plan re: change of direction, change of pace, and using obstacles (screens and occasionally officials) to get open?
