It is now the second week of March. How many of you have continued to stick with the New Year’s resolutions you so confidently set for yourself less than month ago? If you are being honest with yourself, you probably haven’t. Whether your goal was to lose weight, quit smoking, or spend more time with your family, statistics show most folks begin to fade and fall off course after three weeks.
I am always fascinated by the initial enthusiasm and optimism people have towards New Year’s resolutions. What is so magical about them? What is it about the promise of a New Year that makes folks believe they will actually break their bad habits and improve themselves?
I rarely make New Year’s resolutions. And it’s not because I don’t have areas in my life I need to improve. I most certainly do. It’s because I make “New Year’s” resolutions all of the time! I make them daily, weekly, and monthly. If I have something in my life I need to fix or improve, I try to address it immediately. I don’t wait around for January 1st. And the reason I can make these self improvement goals, or resolutions, as often as I do is because I am constantly evaluating my performance, my career, my relationships, and my life. While I can take time to bask briefly in a job well done and give myself a pat on the back when appropriate, I strive daily to never get content, complacent, or satisfied with where I am in life. I constantly set and update both short and long term goals and am focused on evaluating my performance in achieving them. But it is an ongoing process. One of the major keys to real happiness is growth. People, regardless of age or vocation, are usually happiest when they are growing, learning, and improving. I know I am. But that is tough to do without constant self-evaluation.
It has been my experience that a lot of basketball players (and coaches for that matter) don’t put much emphasis on their individual development during the season. Most players feel the best time to work on their game is in the off-season. That’s what the off-season is for, right? Why? Who made that rule?
Your goal as a player should be to get better every day, 365 days a year. Why should it matter if you are in-season or out of season? The name of the game is continuous development. Don’t you want to be a better player in March than you were in November? I recognize and admit during the season your primary focus should be on your team, your team’s goals, and being a good teammate…but why can’t you improve individually at the same time? They aren’t separate entities.
What is the first step to improving as a player? It is identifying your weaknesses. Before you can truly improve, you have to establish what needs improvement. This can only be done through evaluation. You need to evaluate yourself and you need to have your coach evaluate you, because for the most part, those are the only two evaluations that really matter. If you are lucky you will have a coach who cares enough to be honest with you and tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear.
Many young players today try to avoid the truth, so they encircle themselves with yes men and with entourages who constantly tell them how impressive they are. That is why so many talented players have major flaws in their game, because either no one is honest enough to tell them what they need to improve on or they are too hard headed to listen. I have seen numerous All-American caliber players who have a very weak off hand, poor shooting form, and have no clue how to play help defense. These weaknesses, if never addressed, get exploited when they go to the next level. Young people are often so ego driven they try to avoid hearing about, referring too, or acknowledging their weaknesses. Why? You should want to know your weaknesses. How else will you get better? I have heard Tiger Woods spends hours and hours with this personal golf coach watching film on himself…hoping and praying he finds a weakness in his swing, because it means he can still get better and still has room to grow.
One of the most integral parts of self evaluating is to take ownership. But this is also one of the hardest parts. It is human nature to point the finger, make excuses, and find a scapegoat for any weakness. And taking ownership is especially difficult in times of adversity. As either a coach or player, after a loss, do you ask yourself what you could have done better? What about after a sub-par season? Specifically, what didn’t go well? Why not? What could you have done differently? I know those are not easy questions to ask yourself, especially when you are down in the dumps. But it needs to be done. How many times have you heard the “floor was too slippery” or the “rims were too hard” or “the refs were horrible?” Bottom line: they are just excuses. Once you get those out of your system, you need to evaluate your actual performance and get to the root of what went well and what didn’t.
If you really want to be a player, you should try this. Make a chart on a piece of paper and rate yourself on the following characteristics: ball handling, shooting form, shooting performance, rebounding, defense, basketball IQ, leadership, being a teammate, work ethic, athletic ability (strength, quickness, and explosiveness), and physical stature (height, weight, reach, and wingspan). NOTE: With the exception of weight, there is nothing you can do to increase your height, reach, or wingspan. These traits are 100% uncontrollable and were pre-determined at birth. And while you should never focus on things you can’t control, these traits do factor into being a strength or weakness on the court. That’s just reality. Even though a physical trait should not dictate your overall ability (“don’t let what you can’t do interfere with what you can do”), it can dictate how and what you focus on. If you are a 5’5” high school senior, it is understandable if rebounding and post defense are weaknesses. That just means, generally speaking, your ball handling, shooting, and passing need to be extremely impressive so they overshadow your height deficiencies.
You can rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 or on an A, B, C, D, F scale. Now, this isn’t going on the internet or in the newspaper. This is truly a self-evaluation, not for anyone else’s eyes, so don’t try to fool yourself. You get nothing out of giving yourself some bogus high scores. And this evaluation is what you believe; it isn’t what your parents tell you, your girlfriend tells you, or what some scouting service wrote about you. Once you are done, you should schedule a time with your coach and ask him to fill out the exact same evaluation on your behalf using the same criteria and scale. If they care about you and your progress they will do so honestly and enthusiastically.
How do the results compare? For the most part, any score you and your coach agree on is probably pretty accurate. If both you and your coach believe your ball handling is an “8”, then it probably is. But what if you think it is an “8” and he thinks it is a “3”? Is it possible you think an aspect if your game is better than it actually is? Regardless, you should average out both scores and have a final rating for each of the categories. Then you should put them in descending order, meaning your highest scores (strengths) are at the top and your bottom scores (weaknesses) are at the bottom. This will help you prioritize what you need to work on. Keep in mind I said prioritize. That doesn’t mean you ignore the aspects at the top of the list, as you surely can still improve in those areas too. Heck, your top trait may still only be a “7.” An evaluation like this will also help you determine your ability to play at the next level. If you are a high school player this will determine whether you can play in college and at what level. If you are a college player this will determine whether you can play professionally, and if so, in the NBA or overseas.
This evaluation exercise can also be done by coaches who want to evaluate themselves and their staff. After all, how can a coach expect his players to constantly grow and develop if he doesn’t? A coach can evaluate himself and then have his assistants and/or players evaluate him as well. Possible areas of interest are practice plans, game strategies, scouting reports, pre-game routine, motivational techniques, teaching concepts, relationships with players, having fun, etc. How do you rate? How do your assistants and players rate you?
If, as a coach, you adopt this evaluation concept with your players, you should implement a 15 minute segment into practice called “individual development.” You can do this once a week throughout the season. Put 15 minutes on the clock at either the beginning or end of practice and let the kids work on whatever they feel they need to work on (preferably something towards the bottom of their own list). Coaches can offer suggestions for drills (“hey coach, what is a good ball handling drill for me to do?) and rebound or pass. I guarantee this will be a very popular and productive segment of your practices.
Although I am constantly evaluating myself, I acknowledge I need to do a better job of asking others to evaluate me and solicit more formal feedback on my individual training sessions, my team training sessions, my clinics, motivational talks, and my writing. I usually ask for feedback, but usually only get some surface comments. I try to evaluate every session (whether it is a team workout or a presentation at a clinic) as soon as I am finished so everything is still fresh in my mind. I scribble notes on what worked well, what didn’t, and what ways I can improve. I constantly update and revise my “to do” list and my short and long term goals. I aim to do this on a daily basis. I find the more in touch I am with my goals, the higher my rate of accomplishing them. Many years ago I read a powerful quote, and it embodies my entire philosophy on individual development and daily evaluations: “Every night before you go to bed ask yourself this question: I just traded 24 hours of my life for what I got today. Am I happy with the trade?” If you almost always answer “yes”, then you are on the right track!
If you have any questions or comments about this blog, or my services in general, please email me at Alan@StrongerTeam.com. I will do my best to respond as promptly as possible.
Train hard. Train smart.
Alan Stein
