NBA – From the desk of Adam Thomas

The ball isn’t going to fall every time

Steph Curry, known as the best shooter in the NBA, now holds a field goal(baskets made) percentage of 48%.

That guy that you see on Sportscenter every night making that basket fall, doesn’t make it half the time. And he is the best.

Confidence, Preparedness, Willpower

So, how does he make it look easy? First, he feels like every shot is going to go in. He has confidence that he will make everything he shoots, and he only hits it half the time. He knows that it wont, but he feels that it is. He decides to have real confidence in himself, every time he launches one of those threes that get our attention on the highlight. How did he get there? Being ready.

Preparedness lead him to the that confidence. He has practiced his shot since he was extremely young. His father, also a great NBA shooter, had him doing pregame warmup at 7 years old. He keeps that prepared attitude before games, as you see him always working on that shot.

He never rests on his laurels either, even in practice, taking every opportunity.

How does he keep that up, even as the best? Will.

It’s easy to rest when people are calling you the best. It’s easy to slack off, take the endorsement deals, go to the club, get the contract and cruise. The problem with all that, is that you don’t stay the best. People often get this flipped. They think its easy to go into the gym when you are the man, but often, that’s when you fall under the most pressure.

You aren’t going to win all the time, so keep hustling

The idea above is that even with all that training, Steph doesn’t even make half of his shots. You have to keep pushing. The idea of winning every time is a dangerous one, and stops us from experimenting. Once we got some experimentation down, the ideas of confidence, preparation, and will move us further down the line.

Don’t lean on perfection. Keep shooting, and you could cook too.

Brian Scalabrine. Don’t Underestimate People

I love basketball. How the game unfolds is relative to where it is. When you go to a local park, the better players on the court are doing crossovers, taking things behind the back, and any assortment of moves. Street ball soon takes the form of a lower speed AND1 game. But when you watch an NBA game, which features far superior players, the game is much simplier. In fact, the game looks extremely basic, just the fundamentals.

Lets introduce Brain Scalabrine. When he spent his time in the leauge, he was known as nothing other than a barely there, bench player. In fact, there are a ton of memes commemorating that. If you needed reference to someone who would barely make a team, or didn’t add much, a picture of Scalabrine is perfect to have in your mind.

But, Brian stars in one of my favorite stories when it comes to how people underestimate people. It isn’t a secret that he saw the memes, he had fun with them. When he retired, he set up an open game, when anyone could challenge him.Here is “Mr 15th Man”, who people often joked looked big and slow on the court, open for a challenge. Should be easy right, he doesn’t do anything fancy, in fact he always looked so slow.

The TL;DR version – It was utter domination. Scalabrine took the opportunity to show he could do everything on a court. He shot threes, he dunked, and he played scathing defense. The opposing players, combined, from all the games scored only twice – as in two points.

It is a great lesson in life. Don’t underestimate someone just because you see them not do well. Competition is relative, and even if Scalabrine looked horrible next to Lebron James so be it. But, don’t underestimate what he could do on the court when it comes to you. Likewise, in life, don’t judge someone who does things at a higher level when it comes to their competition, look at them compared to you.