Basketball Advice that Players Will Never Regret

Target your audience. Today it's players. There's a lot to learn and the more you know, the more you realize there's much more to know.

Absorb and process a handful of truths.

1. "Do hard better." Skill development is hard. Conditioning is hard. Studying the game is hard. Make doing hard better a priority.

2. "Learn every day." Find resources to help you improve across a spectrum of sources - books, video, clinics online, leadership articles. 

3. "Find a mentor." Passionate athletes find people who want to help them develop. "Mentoring is the only shortcut to excellence." Ask. 

4. "Chunk" visual information. Chess grandmasters see a board and see relationships among the pieces. Basketball "minds" see 'setups' and read the play. 

Real-time, I saw a 1-4 high set with the wing at the top leaving and the wing at the bottom cutting, knowing this Iverson action would create a great shot. 

5. "Play with purpose." In Jay Bilas's "Toughness" article, he describes "set up your cut" as a tough action. Failure to set up cuts or to cut urgently is a major definition of offensive success or failure. Basketball is "a game of separation." If you don't separate you either won't get the ball or will be crowded on the catch. 

6. "Win in space." Your parents taught you not "to play in the traffic." Don't dribble into traffic or pass into traffic. Both play exactly into what the defense wants. If you "draw two" that opens a teammate. 

7. "The quality of the shot relates to the quality of the pass." - Pete Carril  Passers can lead players into open space or into trouble. Passes to the "shot pocket" allow the shooter better shooting conditions. Crisp passes open shots better than lackadaisical ones. 

8. "Think shot first." - Don Kelbick  If you're always ready to shoot, then you're always a threat. 

9. "Become a possession ender." Possession enders create scores and stops. Rebounds, steals, turnovers, and time end opponent possessions. Sometimes blocks and deflections do. 

10. "What is your primary skill?" Do more of what gets and keeps you in the lineup and less of what doesn't. If you don't know what your primary skill is, then you don't have one. 

Lagniappe. Simplify. What can we eliminate to become more successful? 

“A few extremely well-chosen objectives,” Grove wrote, “impart a clear message about what we say ‘yes’ to and what we say ‘no’ to.” A limit of three to five OKRs per cycle leads companies, teams, and individuals to choose what matters most." - "Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs" by John Doerr

Lagniappe 2. Stay abreast of new developments. This video shares what the author calls, "Three across."