Habit Forming

Harvard Business Review might be an odd place to think about basketball. But maybe not.  HBR gives six keys to becoming excellent at anything.

It's not as difficult as it might seem. 



Here, then, are the six keys to achieving excellence we've found are most effective for our clients:

1. Pursue what you love. Passion is an incredible motivator. It fuels focus, resilience, and perseverance.
2. Do the hardest work first. We all move instinctively toward pleasure and away from pain. Most great performers, Ericsson and others have found, delay gratification and take on the difficult work of practice in the mornings, before they do anything else. That's when most of us have the most energy and the fewest distractions.
3. Practice intensely, without interruption for short periods of no longer than 90 minutes and then take a break. Ninety minutes appears to be the maximum amount of time that we can bring the highest level of focus to any given activity. The evidence is equally strong that great performers practice no more than 4 ½ hours a day.
4. Seek expert feedback, in intermittent doses. The simpler and more precise the feedback, the more equipped you are to make adjustments. Too much feedback, too continuously, however, can create cognitive overload, increase anxiety, and interfere with learning.
5. Take regular renewal breaks. Relaxing after intense effort not only provides an opportunity to rejuvenate, but also to metabolize and embed learning. It's also during rest that the right hemisphere becomes more dominant, which can lead to creative breakthroughs.
6. Ritualize practice. Will and discipline are wildly overrated. As the researcher Roy Baumeister has found, none of us have very much of it. The best way to insure you'll take on difficult tasks is to ritualize them — build specific, inviolable times at which you do them, so that over time you do them without having to squander energy thinking about them.

The Greatest Basketball Commentary I Have Ever Read

I've read a number of books about coaching basketball, and I try to learn as much as I can to become a better teacher of basketball. But inside, I believe that teaching sports is about teaching life. Jealousy, envy, selfishness...they destroy teams. Sharing, caring, and team spirit create life for the team. 

If you never read anything about basketball, just read what Carril believes and embrace the truth.

Excerpts from former Princeton coach Pete Carril follow.

Whatever you emphasize and to the degree that you do, you get better at it.

There's a tendency for players to believe that because the coach is talking to someone else, they don't have to listen. If they're all listening, the coach won't have to repeat the same thing to the guys who weren't involved.

The quality of their work habits can overcome anything: praise, criticism, good or bad coaching. 

I can check the level of your honesty and commitment by the quality of your effort on the court. You cannot separate sports from your life, no matter how hard you try. Your personality shows up on the court: greed, indifference, whatever, it all shows up. You cannot hide it.

Passing makes everybody feel a part of the game, a part of the team. No single aspect of basketball does more to develop good team play than passing

The essence of character is what I call mental and physical courage. Everybody has the potential for courage, but some people -- because they have had to demonstrate it all their lives -- are good at it, whereas others are not until the need suddenly arises and they have to learn to react. Basketball brings out the need for courage.


Defense is the heart of our game. Good defense is recognizable even when you're losing.

When you demand a lot, my experience has been that you get more.

Size is not the most important thing about rebounding. Knowing how to use your body, seeing where the ball is going, that's what counts.

Pivoting is one of the most underrated techniques and skills, and when you go to teach it, someone always asks, "Why bother?" 

Fakes are like lies. The first thing I tell anyone about faking is that if you're going to fake, your move has to look like the real thing.

How do you know if your team has camaraderie? I can tell by the way they walk off the floor at the end of practice. You can feel their happiness vibrating; you can see how they work out together; 

When players who have had good high school coaching walk on the floor in college, there isn't much that a coach has to do. 

I don't recruit players who are nasty to their parents. That shows they are giving less than they can give and can't forge the bonds essential for a good team. I look for players who understand that the world does not revolve around them.

There are so many things that don't show up on the stat sheet, or in the win and loss column, that no one can explain, but you see them and they affect the outcome of games.   

Use your assets: You have to take advantage of what you have. Marilyn Monroe and Sophia Loren did that, and we do it, too. If you have a fast team and you don't run, you're being stupid. And if you have a slow team, you must take the run out of the game.

"Be Quick But Don't Hurry"

One of legendary coach John Wooden's sayings was, "be quick but don't hurry." For example, make the good pass quickly, but don't hurry and throw it away.

How do you get quicker? Here's a 'cone' or 'cup' drill. I takes discipline to train, attitude to succeed, and motivation to be your best.

The Greatest Challenge

The great challenge for basketball players is to MAKE THE PLAYERS AROUND YOU BETTER. The best players have the greatest capacity to do so.

How do you do that? You must develop individual skills and have the awareness to create for and utilize your teammates.

Some examples:

• Moving without the ball
• Passing to open players
• Setting screens, and rolling to the basket or popping to open spots
• Help defense (and recover as needed)
• Blocking out to allow your teammates (or yourself) to rebound
• Hitting the outlet pass AFTER securing the rebound

Although I'm often tasked with coaching the fours and fives (which involves a lot of footwork), I grew up as a perimeter player (and mostly as a baseball player to be honest)...

Here's a brief article from the Coaches' Toolbox on what perimeter players need to develop. Becoming an accomplished player means acquiring and refining a broad individual skill set and learning how to use it. If we are successful, you will be able to become a coach someday and share your knowledge with your students. As we say in medicine, "see one, do one, teach one."

Baker's Lesson

We talk about "getting separation" all the time...and PREVENTING separation defensively. Here's why.

Practice, Practice, Practice

A couple of shooting drills. I don't care for the way he drops lowers the ball before he squares but that's just me.