When you are standing on a basketball court, your goals differ from position to position. While simply saying “I want to win more.” would suffice to some people, it is not as simple as that. You need to set realistic goals that you can achieve. Setting unrealistic goals that you cannot possibly achieve or even improve upon can demoralize not only yourself, but those around you as everything a member of any team does, affects the whole team, and not just that person.
Some goals to keep in mind when you are trying to improve on the court and off the court issues are as follows.
- One realistic goal that most people like to look at off the start is scoring more points. While you cannot guarantee a certain amount of points each and every game, you can maximize on the chances that you do get. That means doing extra drills each and every practice and keeping track of your progress. Getting help from fellow team members that have a better shot then you is always a plus. You cannot watch yourself shoot unless you are videotaping, and sometimes even watching yourself on videotape; you may not catch something that someone else does. It could be something as simple as timing the release of the ball better, to something as complicated as the power that you have behind the ball. While power seems to be a “small” issue in the eyes of some, if you put too little, or too much power behind a shot, you may find yourself wasting some good scoring chances.
- Conditioning is another realistic goal that can have its success measured rather easily. If you find yourself becoming winded in the later quarters of the game, this could be an indication that you need to focus more on your conditioning, or could also be an indication that you may be over-stretching yourself. In either case, some additional time spent doing a wide array of exercises from simple treadmill workouts to intense cardio can help strengthen your body and keep you at the level of performance you need for the entire length of the game. While the physical longitude of a player seems like a minor issue to some, to the seasoned player, coach, or fan it means everything. A player that is playing at a diminished capacity can become more prone to injury, foul, or even just let points through simply because they cannot keep up or fulfill their role on the court. Which puts the task on the other players of the team and they are tired themselves.
- Attitude is a crucial component on and off the court. It shapes not only the image you project to your team but the image you project to your fans. This image may not be crucial to some, but to the overall team chemistry it can be a maker or a breaker. If you are a sore loser, and instead of trying to find solutions, you blame it on everyone else, it can make the team feel lower than it likely already does and give teammates a negative image of you. If you are greedy and put yourself before your team and always try to take a shot, when you could have passed off to a teammate, and given them a chance. It sounds corny and old, but the old saying holds true. “There is no I in TEAM.”
While these are not a list of every single thing a player can do to improve overall, these items listed above are just some of the most pressing matters on and off the court that face players.
