Treat Yourself (And Your Game) Like A Machine

The problem with improvement in a sport as multi-faceted and dynamic as basketball is that it can be challenging for players to pin down a specific development strategy. When there’s so much to work on (in a general sense and on a personal level), how do we choose what to work on first and what to work on most often? As players, we don’t face the same development issues as those in other disciplines: a musician knows with some clarity how their practice will correlate to better performance — even a Lineman on the football field has a much narrower range of moves and skills available to them. Paths to greatness are no easier in these other disciples, but they are clearer — it’s easier to see how one goes from Point A to Point B.

So, how can we solve this issue? In a million ways, probably, but there’s one I like in particular:

Imagine yourself and your game as a high-tech sports car that you’ve been building. Different cars have different strengths — some are super fast, some handle better than others, some can handle collisions without taking as much damage, etc. Players are the same way. We all have different styles of game — and really, what that means is that we all pull different tools out of the infinitely large toolbox of basketball skills because those are the tools best suited to us.

So, if you’re struggling to succeed on the court, go back to your schematics as a player. How tall and athletic are you? A short and slow player (akin to a car without a powerful engine) needs to find ways to improve their performance. They could do it directly (or semi-directly, at least) by training their speed, but that still doesn’t solve the height issue, and it might take a ton of training to even get to an average speed.

What if they become a great shooter, though? What if they maximize their physical strength so that their lack of quickness isn’t such a disadvantage anymore?

You get the picture. Here’s my larger point:

It can be easy to develop your skills blindly. To do any and every drill you have access to without the slightest thought about why that drill will help your specific game. And don’t get me wrong — blind development is better than no development. It’s way better. But we can do better than better — we can develop our game with intention.

Make a list of your strengths and weaknesses, both physical and skill-based. Plan for the future here, too — even if you’re tall for your age, if both your parents are 5’6”, chances are you won’t be 6’9.” So size may not be a weakness today, but in the future (if you’re anyone under 6’4,”) size will be a weakness.

Go through that list and highlight which strengths/weaknesses are mostly unchangable. Again, size is something we can’t change. Even strength, though you can improve it a lot, can be very genetic — some players just have bigger, sturdier frames than others. On the bright side, though, something like intelligence is semi “unchangeable” too (again, not fully, but the point is if you’re bright now, you’ll continue to be bright), and that’s a huge advantage.

These highlighted strengths/weaknesses are the nuts and bolts of your machine. They’re the basic materials you have to build with. What you build, though, is up to you.

Plan to create a style of play that makes sense. The skills that you focus most on should work together. You don’t see a lot of small guards who are elite at finishing at the rim but have bad handles — why? Because your handle gets you to the finish.

So, if you’re a small guard with a knack for finishing inside, but your handle is only so-so, you know you need to make it elite. You need to build a better machine.

If you’re going to be 6’5” but are slow and unathletic, while you might try to maximize your athleticism, your attention is best directed toward perfecting your jump shot. Why? Because there are a lot of slow and unathletic 6’5” shooters who fill up stat sheets even at the highest levels. That’s a viable machine.

One last point — when you’re building a machine, you’re building it to be used. If I put a new engine in my car, it’s because I want to go fast tomorrow, not five years from now. So, while it is true that skill development takes time and effort, what you do in practice should translate to how you play in games relatively quickly. If you’ve been working on some aspect of your game for six months and (despite improving that singular aspect) your success hasn’t really gone up, then you need to figure out where your machine is breaking down and go fix that. Don’t be the elite finisher who never has a chance to finish because his handle is weak.