FIGHT ONE MORE ROUND

"When your feet are so tired that you have to shuffle back to the center of the ring, fight one more round. When your arms are so tired that you can hardly lift your hands to come on guard, fight one more round. When your nose is bleeding and your eyes are black and you are so tired that you wish your opponent would crack you one on the jaw and put you to sleep, fight one more round – remembering that the person who always fights one more round is never whipped."

- James J. Corbett (1866-1933)

Former world heavyweight boxing champion

COMMITTMENT TO THE TEAM FIRST

"Players who are committed to the team first will find a way to help when things are going bad, they will do whatever it takes. Kids that are more into themselves will not do that. They will take care of themselves and get more individual when things are tough."

- Dick Bennett

HIGHER ARC = BIGGER TARGET

Your target area (inside the rim) increases with a higher shot angle. The higher the arc, the larger the target.

In theory it makes sense to shoot with a slightly exaggerated high arc (70 degrees), thereby increasing the size of your target. You rarely see good shooters shooting low angle shots (30 degrees).

INVEST YOURSELF IN THE PROCESS

There comes a time in every athletes career where they have to make a decision. If they truly want to improve… they have to decide whether they are willing to pay the price for that improvement. And I know that’s a phrase that gets thrown around a lot in sports, “paying the price” but it’s true none-the-less. You will never get better if you are only 50% committed to getting better. Talking about it will never make you better.

Once an athlete accepts the fact that they actually CAN improve their game through some work & effort, and once the athlete decides to embrace that process… the sky is the limit to what they can accomplish.

There’s no other way around it. There is no magic pill to make you better. There is no DVD that will make you better. There is no coach that can make you better. Only YOU can make you better through the decision to sacrifice some fun time (TV, computer, etc.) to invest meaningful time into improving your game. Like a savings account, it won’t grow without putting something into it. Your game won’t progress very much without investing some meaningful time into it. And I don’t mean by just spending time at the gym shooting around. That doesn’t help your game. You have to practice with a sense of purpose. You have to be honest with yourself and identify the weak areas of your game that need improvement and specifically target those areas with the goal of improving them.

Remember, being average means you are just as close to the bottom as you are to the top. Separate yourself from average.

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NEW PROTOYPE HOOPS KICKS FROM UA

UnderArmor is slowly creeping into the hoops market. Here is a sneak peek at their latest prototype hoops shoe.

INTERESTING DELEMMA

Orlando Magic forward/center Marcin Gortat is in the middle of a dilemma. Gortat, who gets paid by Reebok to wear their shoes is obviously a Michael Jordan fan, but guess who wants him to cover up his Jordan Jumpman tattoo.

Gortat was asked, by Reebok representatives, to cover the tattoo up or wear long socks. The tattoo, located on Gortat’s right leg, is a red Jumpman logo overlapped by the silhouette of a basketball. I know why Reebok wants him to cover it, but does Reebok actually hurt their image worse by the publicity of asking him to cover the Jordan tattoo? Would anyone have even noticed had they not made a big deal about it?

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WINNING TEAMS HAVE 4 THINGS IN COMMON

A few years ago in Seattle, Washington, nine finalists were poised at the starting line of a 400 meter race, each planning to do his best and hoping to win the medal for first place.

As the gun went off, the racers sprinted toward the finish line. But one of the runners fell down. He quickly got up and gave his all to catch up with the others. But once again, he fell. His frustration totally overcame him, and he burst into tears and began to sob loudly. Then a strange thing happened.

The rest of the field heard his cries, and they turned to see that he was lying on the track. The runners began to slow down, and then one by one, they stopped, turned around, and went back to him. They picked him up, consoled him, and then together, all nine of them finished the race.

In a race made for individual glory, the racers had made themselves into a team. Where in the world could something like this happen? At the Special Olympics. Perhaps that is why they are called ‘special!’”

We can look at hundreds of winning teams in the past 50 years, and we will find that their players have four things in common:

#1 They play to win: The difference between playing to win and playing not to lose is often the difference between success and mediocrity.

#2 They have a winning attitude: Team members believe in themselves, their teammates, and their dream. And they don’t allow negative thinking to derail them.

#3 They keep improving: The highest reward for their efforts isn’t what they get from it, but who they become because of it. Team members know intuitively that if they’re through improving, they’re through.

#4 They make their teammates more successful: Winners are empowers. Few people are successful unless a lot of other people want them to be.

- John Maxwell

WHERE OPPORTUNITY HAPPENS

"You'd have to go back to Kobe's early years in the older-style Lakers uniforms, when he was throwing up air-balls against Utah in 1997 or missing potential icing free throws against San Antonio in 1999 to conjure up images of Bryant failing so badly in playoff crunch time. Since then he's accumulated tons of highlight reel plays that you see in the black-and-white ‘Where Amazing Happens’ commercials complete with the piano music." - Chris Sheridan, ESPN

Even the best player in the game had trouble focusing at the line when the game was on the line. Kobe who is normally rock-solid in pressure situations (85% FT), was a pitiful 5 of 10 from the line last night in the Laker’s 108-104 loss to Orlando.

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PANIC vs CHOKING

Panic, is the opposite of choking. Choking is about thinking too much and allowing it to affect your game. Panic is about thinking too little. Choking is about loss of instinct. Panic is reversion to instinct. They may look the same, but they are worlds apart.

Why does this distinction matter? In some instances, it doesn't much. But there are clearly times when you are in a situation where failure happens and understanding "why" is central to correcting it.

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LECRAE SHOW CANCELED.

Well it's officially "official" ...the June 26th show in PC has been canceled.

"As an athlete sometimes the best thing that you can do is not think. It's muscle memory, let that take over."

- Laker’s Lamar Odom on hitting late-game FT’s

SINGLENESS OF PURPOSE

Dr. Charles Garfield, a psychologist who studied peak performers and highly successful people found that one major difference between them and others less successful was that they concentrated on one main goal while others dissipated their efforts going after many goals.

"You can have anything you want - if you want it badly enough. You can be anything you want to be, do anything you set out to accomplish if you hold to that desire with singleness of purpose."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gain confidence, seeing you react. If you're in control, they're in control."

-Tom Landry

LACK OF FOCUS?

There once was a professional basketball team that was known for being arrogant, heartless and just plain dumb. They won a playoff game by 14 points against a team without its two best players ... then lost the next game to this same team by a dozen.

They won another playoff game against an outmanned, overmatched team by 40 points ... then lost the next game to this same team by five. In those two losses, their starting center scored zero points, their starting point guard allowed a gazillion points, and their coach seemingly never lifted a finger to help any of them.

One of their owners called them "embarrassing." A television announcer openly rooted against them. They were unapologetic, unashamed, and completely unlikable.

They were the Lakers three weeks ago.

While the entire sports world feels they will finish off the Magic within a week, the Lakers still have to manage their worst enemy… themselves.

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Phil Jackson on the biggest misconception about Bryant: "That he's a nice guy. He's a killer. He'll take the weak and have no mercy."

If you're playing up to your potential and playing to the best of your ability, the opponent is irrelevant.

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“The breakfast of champions is not cereal, it's the opposition.”

- Nick Seitz

RIGHT OR WRONG?

There's an old saying about trying to split time between two pursuits... "if you chase two rabbits at once, both will escape" meaning that neither pursuit will get the full attention it needs to be truly successful.

Came across an interesting article this morning about a high-school soccer coach's decision to forfeit a semifinal game because he didn't believe his players were committed enough and it angered the athletes parents.

Poor attendance at practice apparently drove coach Salah Ramoul to remove the Northern Secondary School junior boys soccer team from the city championships. And yesterday, the school board upheld the coach's decision.

The players learned that coach Ramoul had removed the team from the semifinal game, forfeiting to Silverthorn Collegiate Institute the day before the game. Coach Ramoul made the decision because too many of the 16 players – in Grades 9 and 10 – were missing morning practices. Several players have commitments at private club teams that required them to attend late-night practices and the school team practices at 7:00 AM four days per week.

Out of curiosity, do you think the coach was right in forfeiting the game?

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“I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen.”

- Frank Lloyd Wright

ACCEPTING RESPONSIBILITY

Most people dread accepting responsibility. That’s just a fact of life, and we can see it in operation every day. Yes, we can see avoidance of responsibility all the time in both our personal and athletic lives. And here is something else we can see just as often: we can see that most people aren’t as successful as they wish they were. Do you see there is a connection between these two?

It’s in your best interest to take responsibility for everything you do. But that’s only the beginning. Many times it’s even best to take responsibility for the mistakes of others, especially when you’re in a leadership role.

Bill Russell, who played center for the Boston Celtics, was one of the greatest players in the NBA. He was especially known for his rebounding and his defensive skills. How good was he? Russell won 11 NBA championships in his 13 years in the league.

It was the final game of a championship series between Boston and the Los Angeles Lakers. With about twelve seconds left to play, the Lakers were behind by one point and Boston had the ball. It was obvious that the Lakers would have to foul one of Boston’s players in order to get the ball back, and they chose to foul Bill Russell.

This was a perfectly logical choice since statistically Russell was the worst free throw shooter on the court at that moment. If he missed the shot, the Lakers would probably get the ball back and they’d still have enough time to try to win the game. But if Russell made his first free throw, the Lakers’ chances would be seriously diminished. And if he made both shots, the game would essentially be over.

Bill Russell had a very peculiar style of shooting free throws. Today, no self-respecting basketball player anywhere in America would attempt it. Aside from the question of whether it’s an effective way to shoot a basket, it just looked too ridiculous. Whenever he had to shoot a free throw, the six-foot-eleven Russell would start off holding the ball in both hands about waist high, then he’d squat down and as he straightened up he’d let go of the ball. Can you say "Granny Shot?"

But regardless of how he looked, as soon as Bill Russell was fouled, he knew the Celtics were going to win the game. He was absolutely certain of it because, in a situation like this, statistics and percentages mean nothing. There was a much more important factor at work, something that no one has found a way to express in numbers and decimal points.

Simply put, Bill Russell was a player who wanted to take responsibility for the success or failure of his team. He wanted the weight on his shoulders in a situation like this. No possibility for excuses. No possibility of blaming anyone else if the game was lost. No second guessing. Bill Russell wanted the ball in his own hands and nobody else’s. And, like magic, even if he’d missed every free throw he’d ever shot in his life before this, he knew he was going to make this one. And that is exactly what happened.

That is what virtually always happens when a person accepts responsibility eagerly and with confidence. Accepting responsibility is one of the highest forms of maturity. A willingness to be accountable, to put yourself on the line, is really the defining characteristic of a leader.

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" Once you say you're going to settle for second, that's what happens to you in life "

- John F Kennedy

8-12 THE EASY WAY

You do not have to be a great shooter to score. If you are an inside player, hustle and determination on the offensive boards will produce at least one put-back shot opportunity each quarter.

If you play aggressively you will likely get fouled and go to the line at least one time per half.

As a result, if you make your free throws, you have the opportunity to score eight to twelve (8-12) points without ever taking a shot from the field.

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A FEW THOUGHTS ON REBOUNDING

Most players and coaches have a tendency to look at rebounding in terms of total rebounds, and view rebounding as a single endeavor. However, offensive and defensive rebounding are entirely two very distinct basketball techniques that must be addressed and perfected separately.

While offensive rebounding is mainly an individual effort requiring agility and movement, defensive rebounding relies mainly on positioning and strength. Defensive rebounding also requires a total team effort. However, offensive and defensive rebounding do have four things in common:

1. Anticipating a missed shot

2. Determining rebounding location

3. Flight time effort

4. Determination

WHAT LEVEL PASSER ARE YOU?

Level One. Throws the ball to an area just to get rid of it. Common among beginning players.

Level Two. Just throws the ball toward a teammate no matter if they are ready to receive it or not. This is why players get hit by the ball during practice when just standing around.

Level Three. Surgeon. Passes to a specific target (hand). Leads receivers into good shots. Rarely throws the ball away.

The ability to move the basketball and hit the open man is a characteristic found in all great players and teams. In order to perfect this ability to its utmost, players must utilize and master the following fundamental principles of passing:

Anticipate. Read the defense and know where to pass before receiving the ball. Outstanding basketball players have the ability to anticipate where to pass the basketball. This is why professional players need very little team pattern to create good scoring opportunities for their teammates.

Maintain a proper spacing. Most passes should be made within a 12' to 15' distance. This spacing spreads the defense and allows for quick, accurate passing. Passes beyond 15' carry a high risk of interception. Never throw directly at a receiver moving away from you. Always lead the receiver to the basket on lob and baseball passes.

When the defender is playing off, close the distance with a dribble to less than 3'. The closer the defender plays, the less time they have to read and react to the passer's movements. Dribble penetration will also force the defender to defend against the drive and eliminates their playing of the passing lane.

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DISCIPLINE BEATS TALENT

"And you better know this: The reason we won the Eastern Conference is because Coach Stan Van Gundy goaded and nagged this team -- he got them to stop with the short-cutting, and the lazy habits, and the sloppiness."

- Magic Asst. Coach Brendan Malone

Orlando's emergence as an elite team is not so much a product of talent, but of management and team discipline.  Boston and Cleveland (and their superstars) learned that the hard way.  Now is it the Laker’s turn?  Game 1 on Thursday.

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25 DAYS... EIGHT SPOTS REMAINING

Pass the word to your baller friends that we still have eight spots available for the READY Camp on June 26 & 27.  

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