Basketball lives in the public domain. Growth demands work. Excellence doesn't flow from trickery. Learn and share insights that create advantage when regularly applied.
1. Sleep more and better. Shakespeare wrote, "Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care." He wasn't exaggerating.
A Stanford study in basketball players who extended sleep showed sprint times reduced by an average 4.5%. Both free-throw and 3-point shot accuracy significantly improved by 9% and 9.2%, respectively. Sleep better, play faster and better.
2. Improve your habits. James Clear is the habit guru, author of Atomic Habits. Here's a link to a summary. Key points:
- Make good habits easier and bad ones harder.
- One percent improvement compounded daily raises performance over 37 times.
- "Don't miss twice." Maintain habits by doing.
3. Develop a mindfulness practice. It is apolitical and non-religious. It takes about ten minutes a day. It improves sleep, focus, and immunity. It helps memory, reduces anxiety and depression. The UCLA Mindfulness site provides free, short mindfulness scripts. Professional teams and Olympians champion mindfulness training.
4. Read. What? Consider starting with "Game Changer: The Art of Sports Science" by Dr. Fergus Connolly, Human Performance expert. Sounds dry. It's not. "The difference between who we are now and whom we become in five years are the people we meet and the books we read."
5. Journal. Write down your thoughts regularly, especially adding something that makes you think or question a previous belief. The great Don Meyer kept one notebook for basketball, another for general information, and one for appreciation for his wife. You don't have to share and it only takes a few minutes a day.
6. Keep a "rethinking scorecard," as suggested by Adam Grant in Think Again. For example, I thought the Celtics might win 35-40 games this year. Even with a small sample size, there's a glaring weakness...defensive rebounding. They're far below the MVP (minimum viable product).
7. Teach leadership directly. Leadership has many elements and all of us can coach better and benefit from coaching.
- Model excellence.
- Focus on communication.
- Find leadership examples. A parent recently noted how he appreciated how my volleyball blog gave a 'shout out' to a reserve player (not his child) who cheers relentlessly.
- Speak greatness. Be positive and praise the praiseworthy.
- Become a storyteller. Stories stick. Develop a portfolio of worthy stories. Before the Civil War, Ulysses Grant was selling firewood on the streets of St. Louis. All he did was save the Union. Perhaps unfairly, Winston Churchill was blamed for the failures at Gallipoli during WWI. All he did in WW2 was help save Western Civilization.
8. Study greatness - coaches, great players, and player development. Study your role models' role models. Usher studied James Brown and Gene Kelly, two of Michael Jackson's role models. Two of my coach's role models were John Wooden and Dean Smith, certainly worthy of study.
Lagniappe. Habits and discipline...
The 7 habits of self-discipline: pic.twitter.com/sVPEJXbFhF
— Mindset Matter (@Mindsetmatter_) October 19, 2025
