The “madness” of basketball is not limited to college basketball during the annual March Madness tournament. In the heat of the National Basketball Association’s 2024 Playoffs, I wanted to share my experience as an athlete navigating the mental health challenges and emotional aspects related to basketball. Therefore, this exciting period of playoffs and the peak of spring sports should be a time of reflection for athletes. After reading this blog, I hope you can also have a strong mindset as you play your favorite sports.
In all honesty, my high school basketball team struggled this past season. We were at 2 wins to 18 losses. There were lots of factors that contributed to our struggles, but I don’t like making excuses. The losses hurt me because I had been working up to this point all my life: starting varsity point guard as a junior on my hometown team. Unfortunately, all that work still led to a 2-18 season.
I felt like no one took us seriously and that nobody recognized me as a good basketball player. However, even through all of that, I know who I am as a player. Yes, there were moments when I thought about giving up or quitting, as many athletes have. At my lowest point, I found a basketball podcast called Deep Game Basketball, hosted by Coach Taylor Allan. After listening to one episode, I scored 16 points at my next game –my career high! I played the best basketball I had ever played in my life. So in this blog, I would like to share with you the important lessons, points, and advice I gained from my top three episodes of Deep Game Basketball.
Episode 1, “How To Build Unshakeable Basketball Confidence”
The first episode that I listened to and loved was called “How To Build Unshakeable Basketball Confidence.” Confidence has always been a problem of mine with basketball. Growing up on the middle school travel team, I never really played that much and I felt like my skill developed much later on. In fairness, I have been the youngest player on every team I’ve played on. The feeling of being in middle school and scared to shoot the basketball still lingers with me. This episode delved into that feeling and defined the difference between extrinsic confidence, and intrinsic confidence.
Intrinsic confidence is what you should strive for. Extrinsic confidence is classified into three different factors in basketball: coaches, teammates, and audience/reputation. To gain extrinsic confidence, which is temporary, you need validation from 1 or 2 of these factors. For example, if you have the constant “green light”(the approval to shoot the ball) from your coach, you would probably have more confidence to shoot the ball. In terms of confidence coming from peers, if you have a good game, they then validate you, increasing confidence externally; extrinsic confidence.
But what if you have a couple of bad games? Your coach might limit that “green light,” or your teammates may be less eager to pass you the ball. That is where the necessity for intrinsic confidence comes in. In order to prioritize this intrinsic confidence, you need to disregard all the previously mentioned external factors. Your confidence should come from within, and you should be striving to succeed for yourself.
To gain this confidence back, you need to be selfish in a way. You need to trust in all the hard work you put in and know that your shots will end up falling. This episode also talks about how coaches can’t just tell a player to be confident and expect it to work. Confidence is a skill and should be encouraged and practiced, even outside of sports.
In the podcast, Taylor makes a great real-life example. He had an amazing game after a long stretch of playing badly. He felt like he was on top of the world because of all of the validation and extrinsic confidence he had from the game. After the game, he went to a party with his teammates, and he didn’t feel confident in the social environment. That temporary feeling of extrinsic confidence completely disappeared, which then affected him right back on the basketball court. Overall, this episode demonstrated the necessity for practicing one’s intrinsic confidence as a learned skill, and that you should prioritize YOUR inner confidence rather than finding it from others.
Episode 2, “3 Steps to Build Bulletproof Basketball Discipline”
The second episode that really hit home for me was “3 Steps to Build Bulletproof Basketball Discipline.” What is talked about in this can also be applied to anything in real life as well, such as academics, work, hobbies, etc. This episode refers to discipline as a muscle, and how people have to train it.
Some days you will have no motivation, but discipline is what you need to make constant progress. You can’t go into the gym one day without ever lifting in your life and put 300 lbs on the bar –you can’t do it without your discipline “muscle.” Like any other muscle, you have to treat discipline as something that takes gradual progress.
After a week of not engaging in basketball, I can’t just go into the gym and work out for five hours as much as I want to. Because I would not be used to feeling tired, I am deterred from staying consistent in the gym. It is about the little steps of progress, and the podcast articulates this. You ask yourself, what can you comfortably handle? You then start loading more work from there.
Taylor makes an example of a weightlifting set, but this can be used for a plethora of things. The set should be 80% easy. Near the end of your exercise, it should be 20% hard. So for example, if an exercise had 10 reps, eight would be easy and manageable, and on the last two, you should struggle to perform the exercise.
The second thing he talks about is called “atomic habits”. These are any habits in your life that promote discipline, like for example, waking up at a certain time each morning to exercise. They seem small and insignificant to most, but they add up and go a long way. The podcast says every time you perform them, it’s like you’re voting to become the person you want to be.
The last thing he talks about is his adaptivity. No human is perfect, and no schedule, no matter how disciplined you are, will ever be followed perfectly. So he says even if one thing is missed on your schedule, don’t say “Oh, my schedule is ruined, I’ll just restart next week.” Instead, find little adaptations you can do in the following days to make up for what was missed. Even though the perfect schedule was interrupted, constant progress is still being made, and that is all that matters.
Ultimately, unshakeable discipline is so valuable to me because it leads to clarification in my life, meaning less stress. I know I am making progress, and I know I am following my schedule. That brings peace into my life through that “grind.” All I know is that if you are an athlete like me, and you enjoy the “grind,” these 3 steps will make you fall in love with it, and improve your mental health at the same time.
Episode 3, “Let it Go: Every Wrong Part of a Larger Right” Basketball Confidence”
Finally, the last episode that stood out to me was called “Let it Go: Every Wrong is Part Of A Larger Right,” and it was part of a subseries called Beyond Basketball, where the host applies a principle he learned from basketball to beyond it, to life and one’s overall growth and development as a whole. The whole premise of this episode is to understand how your journey flows with the world and to go with that flow. Through every wrong that happens in your life, it flows into a larger right, and things do work out.
Taylor made a real-life example. He rented out a place for a couple of months from a woman in Maui, Hawaii. He mentioned he talked to her a lot, and she told an intriguing story about the land she owned. It had an overgrown jungle 30 years ago, and she and a group of friends were trying to build property on it. She said for the first 2-3 years, they tried to cut their way with machetes through the overgrown jungle and tried to build land on it. It never worked, and the jungle always grew back onto the paths they made. She then made an important realization. So instead, she found the natural clearings the jungle made, and built houses on those clearings, forming a very beautiful array of houses situated in the middle of the jungle. What she did was flow with nature. She stopped trying to force her way through the jungle and took what was given to her.
I think all athletes could use this advice, especially in easing their stress mentally. Stuff will happen in life, and hardships will always occur, but what you need to apply from this episode is to let yourself flow, and ride the wave of struggles that life throws at you. I know you’ve heard it before, but you really can only control what you have control over, so don’t waste time stressing over things you can’t control. If that results in you quitting the sport you are playing too, and you find peace in that, then so be it. You are still full of life left to live and experiences to experience without having to be involved in sports.
Conclusion
You are important, and sports don’t define you. So what I hope you got from the advice from these three podcast episodes from Deep Game Basketball is that you have the ability to be confident in yourself. Accomplish what you want to accomplish for YOU first. I want you to also know not to push yourself too hard, as an unshakeable discipline is created from little positive habits in your life, creating “atomic habits.” Lastly, focus on what you can influence, not on things that are out of your control. Live with what life throws at you, and find peace and contentment from it, even if it involves not playing your sport. In all, congratulations on finishing your winter season, I wish you the best of luck in your spring sports. Remember to always prioritize your mental health through your journey with sports.