Winning is supposed to be hard. Sacrifice is not natural. Thus, the dilemma, finding players willing to do the hard things.
Can we predict what players sacrifice to attain skill and will?
We guess which athletes care enough about their athletic identity to sacrifice what less committed participants will not.
"While athletes may experience specific sacrifices such as pain and injury, there are some sacrifices that appear to be shared between these different groups: sacrificing family activities; sacrificing social activities not related to sport; sacrificing school/professional activities and; having a strong sense of belonging to an exclusive and privileged group."
Academics partially predict commitment. Brad Stevens remarked, "In 11 years, never had a player in the program that worked his tail off on the defensive end that wasn’t a great teammate/student."
In high school, I played on two summer baseball teams, a summer basketball league, and summer soccer workouts. And during the day, I worked as a playground supervisor at the park with the town's best outdoor basketball court. I never considered it sacrifice, as selfishness about athletics came into play. My adult children gave me a t-shirt once, "the older I get, the better I was."
The best players and the best teams willingly do the hard things. There are prices to pay for some (arthritis, chronic pain, CTE, etc.). Athletes seldom mention sacrifice and regret together.
Drill. Superman. "Development is an everyday job."
Nature or nurture? I believe rebounding entails both. Don't leave points on the floor because of inefficiency.
Set Play. Execute hard to defend actions... pick-and-roll, hard front and back cuts, screen-the-screener (including Flex action), screen-the-roller (Spain action), staggered screens, "get" action.
"Great offense is multiple actions." Basketball is a game of separation.
Lagniappe. More hard things. I've seen more high school basketball this year because of live streaming. Teams lost practice time because of quarantines and COVID-19 infections (our high school girls had at least four infections and three shutdowns). What are the biggest issues?
- Shot selection. Somewhere between a third and forty percent of threes are airballs. Stop. TAKE BETTER SHOTS. Bad shots come from low skill, poor decisions, and ego.
- Turnovers. You can't commit twenty-five turnovers a game and hope to win. It's a mixture of both poor decisions and poor execution. "TAKE CARE OF THE BALL." Elite notes from Zak Boisvert.
- Poor passing...leads to both turnovers and poor shots. PASS BETTER.
It boils down to "possession and possessions." Do the hard things. Get more possessions and stop wasting possessions."
