Good at practice, bad at games

I’ve been there.

You feel like you are ready. You have gone to work. Hours and hours in the gym doing shots, training with your friends, doing drills.

All off-seasons are put on a specific skill and then bam. It does not translate to games.

Failure to translate to games. Somehow, when the time comes, you start to get on your nerves. Everything feels more vibrant, alive. Every move you make slows down in time, and every possible decision goes through your mind, making you doubt yourself second by second.

It happens on all levels. You see it in the NBA when players seem to stagnate despite claiming they work on X, Y, or Z. (hey Dion, looking at you dude).

So what can you do about it? How do you become the boy (girl) who is at his BEST in games, the Timmy T of basketball? Let’s look at some things you can do to improve your performance.

1. Visualize. Visualize and visualize some more. Ideally, every moment and experience you’re going to have in a game feels like you’ve had it many times. When you step on the pitch, you’ve already imagined it a dozen times. When that ball is rolling, you’ve focused on any nervous feelings you may have.

You’ve felt what the ball feels like when your hands are hyperactive, yet somehow unresponsive.

You have imagined your first layup with the defense on your back. You have imagined that first pass before taking a shot.

By doing this, you will lose a degree of that nervousness or urgency you feel in games that is likely a factor in your “shaq on free throw” type of play.

Interestingly, you don’t want to feel completely disconnected from the experience, as a little excitement is good, so if you come into the game and you’re so disconnected that you don’t even feel like you care about basketball, start feeling excited. and be loud with your teammates like you see professional players do at the start of every NBA game.

2. Focus and confidence. A major factor in gaming fighting syndrome is overthinking every action you take and keeping track of the results in one mind.

Am I having a bad game? Am I having a bad game? Where is my mom? What does my mom think? Oh shit, what does my girl think? All my teammates hate me. Kyrie hates me (my worst nightmare).

That good neighbor who says he’s always there is gone, that’s how bad I am for this one mistake.

And that is the problem. It’s a mistake. By thinking too hard about every missed shot, every mistake, you guarantee that you will make more mistakes and miss more shots. Also, you will be disconnected from the game and you will not focus as much on things like defense and increasing the energy of your team. Well done, negative Nancy.

Instead, focus and trust. You know that you have got down to work. You know it. You’ve seen your shooting move in practice tons of times and you’ve seen yourself play better than the competition in games.

So trust your body. This is no longer the time to analyze. Time to play. Just trust your body and focus only on making the right basketball decisions.

Sounds counterintuitive: see the forest, not the trees. If you keep making the right decisions and don’t punish yourself for the outcome, eventually that outcome will catch up.

So lose the pressure and relax.

3. Practice better. If you’re on a real team doing scrimmages and this is less likely to apply, but it’s still important for anyone training on their own or playing for fun. You need to simulate what happens in the games in practice.

You’ve probably heard this before, and if so, it’s because it’s true. You need to play at “game speed”. In games you get tired; everything feels faster. In a second you are turning a screen, the ball is thrown at you, you realize that you are open and you shoot before the window closes.

There’s no room for “let’s take a break, have a soda, and listen to The Weeknd” here. Take the same shots in practice as you would in games, at the same speed, in the same conditions (tired as hell).

For one last quick little tip, get an idea of ​​what you want your performance to look like. The feeling you want to have. You know when you do that and one and you feel like you’re on top of the world? Something like that.

Focus on that image and block out everything else.