Hi All,

Re: An Open Letter to All Players Who Want More (Part 1)

This letter isn’t gender specific, I wanted to take the opportunity to write to all basketball players with goals, who would like to achieve more than they have currently whether it’s as part of a team or individually.

I can’t tell you the number of times I have had meetings to discuss a player’s performance, place in the team or what areas they need to show improvement. Most of the time the question they are really asking is how can I get more court time? Sometimes even more shots or touches. Even so I always told my players or parents I was happy to have these conversations whenever they wanted, as long as they were always happy to hear answers they didn’t like. Some of the time this was the case, most of the time it wasn’t, but I always found it most productive to be honest.

When I wrote my list I came up with ten points, or areas that from my experience players don’t pay attention to and perhaps don’t even realise impact a coach’s perception of them and the role they have in the team. Once I started typing some explanation on each I realised I had far too much information for one blog, so I’m going to release it in parts. Some examples of topics to be included in the future include “There Isn’t 480 Minutes” and “Know the Coaches Picture” as well as “Be Engaging.”

But todays part one should be the most obvious to players and relate directly to getting the most out of your body and improving your skills. To be clear, what I am putting down here is my thoughts or advice from a coach’s point of view. Again the key here is it’s my COACH’S perspective, and ultimately they are the person who picks you in a team or puts you on the court.

So without delay, the obvious ones to start with are:

Your Preseason Shouldn’t Start When the Team’s Does

If you turn up to the first session unfit you can’t expect to move up the pecking order and be one of the better players in the league. Coaches may also use diplomatic words when discussing this with you but believe me we can tell if you are out of shape and haven’t touched a ball enough. You are also more likely to pick up an injury putting the body under stress it isn’t prepared for then miss more time and fall further behind.

Some of the most talented players I’ve ever coached couldn’t break this cycle. The WNBL players show how important off season work is. Because they are fit and ready to go they come back into the first month of WSBL and play at such a high level, and the teams that have multiple players coming from there benefit early.

The table below shows what a typical November week looks like for some of the marquee players in our State Basketball League. As expected it shows results for hard work:

 

Team Training is Not Enough

So I haven’t even put a heading in for it because it goes without saying but you need to be at trainings, every training where possible. Coaches know injuries happen (and even then you should be watching) and that sometimes there are direct clashes with work or studies but outside of that you need to be there. And you know what, as soon as you miss training for a fluffy reason Murphy’s Law says something legitimate will happen to make you miss more and put you even further behind. Now I would think that this entire paragraph is obvious, because if you aren’t ARRIVING ON TIME AND COMPLETING more than 90% of your team trainings then you have no right to have expectations.

With all that being said, even if you complete all team trainings there are no guarantees you will improve even the slightest individually, let alone be seeing results that put you ahead of your teammates or opposition when you play them. This is such a logical statement but not everyone seems to get it. If you want to gain an advantage, accelerate how quickly you improve you have to do extra work. This is what these same players complete during the season (excluding games):

Now you’ve read that, think about your team, most of you will have players on the roster that put in some version of this work. It could even be almost all your starting five if you have one or two imports. If you aren’t able to make the sacrifices required to do a similar amount (or even more if you have ground to catch up) then you don’t deserve to have the same kind of role.

Being Great is Not a Fad

We’ve all had exercise fads, diet fads, New Year’s resolutions, and many other types of lifestyle changes or improvements that come for a while and then disappear. While these might make a difference in the short term, if they aren’t realistic or sustainable we just fall back to old habits and aren’t really any better off.

A famous Thomas Eddison quote is “The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are: Hard work, Stick-to-itiveness, and Common Sense.” We all sometimes think common sense isn’t very common but the first two you can really control. We have already covered hard work in previous points by showing you what some of the hard workers in the league do. But “stick-to-itiveness” is absolutely crucial. We all experience motivational highs and lows, weeks or even months where it isn’t as easy as always to get ourselves to and through a session, but the ability to get it done in these periods until it gets easier often separates the achievements of people.

I want to be clear, I’m not advocating for training flat out every day, every week, all year. We all need to manage our workloads for physical, mental and emotional wellbeing. But those who can make the appropriate plan and then mechanically stick to it for periods of time that extend from months to years will always get the best results.

When I had a good look at the programs for each player you notice some similarities and some differences. What I see is that they all have components of strength, aerobic capacity, skill and recovery. The differences exist in the amounts of each they do, which can simply come down to body type or how they like to play the game. For example:

• Kyle made comment how his season focus is being healthy, body maintenance and getting up lots of shots. In the offseason he tries to “smash” himself physically and work on areas of his game he felt exposed.
• Sami is an explosive scorer / shooter, and this is no surprise given the amount of work she does on shooting year round. In fact in November when a lot of people are resting she is shooting for between 8 and 12 hours every week!
• Melissa is tall and athletic but doesn’t feel that she is naturally “strong” physically, so if she doesn’t work on this she isn’t fit enough or able to play at the tempo she likes. You can see this particularly in her offseason program where she has a higher strength component than some others. She does weights three times per week and pilates / yoga twice per week for core strength.
• Casey is one of the all-time games leaders for WSBL. For recovery and maintenance she keeps an appointment booked with the physiotherapist every week.

Now I picked these players because they come from a variety of teams, a variety of backgrounds and have a variety of demands on their time away from the basketball court. Some are paid professional players which gives them an advantage, but some are students, many work full time, have families, relationships and even children. So next time you think you are too busy to fit in some work:

• Casey is married, has children and is the Director of a company. When you combine exercise, work and family most of her days go for excess of 15 hours. Every extra shooting session she does in season commences between 530am and 630am.
• Chelsea is a PE teacher who’s after hours sporting commitments can vary significantly from week to week. For this reason she operates off a couple of different plans, and has to pick the best one each week to suit her work schedule.
• Ben is a full time teacher and also pointed out that he watches game tape as part of his routine whenever it is available.
• Kyle mentioned how he has been in organised programs in the past but now he works full time he can’t hang out at the stadium all day but still makes sure he gets something in before or after work every day.

The most important thing you can take from these people is their examples, there are no excuses and very few people would experience time challenges greater than most of them. If you want more success and want to be a great player you need to do the work just like they do. Sure, we all start with a different base, but if you want to get the most out of yourself and test the limits you need to make a plan and do the work.

I want to sincerely thank all the players I’ve mentioned for getting back to me; everyone was supportive of the idea and very open to share. The interesting part for me was most were almost embarrassed at the amount of work they put in. Some of the quotes included “I probably do a bit more than most” and “I realise I’m lucky to be able to dedicate this kind of time” and “if I’m going to commit to something I will commit to doing it properly” and “can you put that I do the extra work because I like to do things well no matter what level.” It’s just crazy, they should all be proud, what they’ve accomplished, combined with the fact they all have been doing it season after season is fantastic for the State Basketball League.

I just want to finish by saying that I’m writing to the players who want more, who want to be better. I’m not advocating that everyone involved in our league needs to be working to the level of those who responded. At the end of the day it is a balancing act between the goals you have and the lifestyle you want to live. Personally, I made the decision years ago to enjoy basketball as a hobby instead of make the sacrifices necessary to pursue it as a career, and that has made it likely that SBL and State teams are the highest level I will experience it at. It may change again but currently that works for me, and I’m happy with my lifestyle. The same may apply to you as a basketball player and people should respect your choices.

Regards,

Craig Mansfield

craigmansfield@me.com

Follow me on Twitter @CMansfield34

SBL Slam’: Airing Monday Evenings 9-10 pm on 98five Sonshine FM

http://www.98five.com/shows/other-shows/sblslam/