"Focus on the journey, not the destination.

Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it." - Greg Anderson

This week it's a late night edition of The Deep Three! 🌘 🏀 😴

Three thoughts, ideas, or motivations that will help you and your team be more successful this season.

My apologies that this email is coming to you so late. 😴 I was just having too much fun writing this week's newsletter. 😂

P.S. In case you missed the email yesterday, I've just launched my own YouTube Channel. I'd love to have you subscribe and let me know what you think!

New videos drop each Wednesday at 5 pm CST. Shoot me an email if you have an idea of something I should cover!

This winter I've gotten one single question from athletes via email and social media more than any other. I've been asked numerous times something along the lines of "How do you overcome different distractions and setbacks in order to stay mentally focused during practices and games?"

This is such a great question, both for players and coaches alike!

While we could make a list a mile long of ways to be more mentally focused, here are four specific ways that I've found to be incredibly helpful when it comes to dealing with distractions and overcoming setbacks.

1. Intentional Self-Talk

Positive and instructional self-talk helps you stay grounded and focused in and on the present moment. While it's easy to judge ourselves with our words and be our #1 critic, it's also just as important to positively communicate with ourselves during a "bad" game or practice in order to stay focused on what's most important.

2. Trigger Words

This is a form of self-talk that is used to trigger a response. Triggers words are very useful when you are trying to vary or change a movement pattern or response to a situation. For example, you might use the trigger word "balance" when attacking the basket to remind yourself to stay on balance when you finish at the rim.

3. Stay Present

Too often, athletes and coaches tend to lose their concentration when they either: 1) dwell on the past (especially mistakes), or 2) focus on the future (potential uncertainties). Doing either of those things is a futile exercise if you want to stay mentally focused, as both are out of your individual control. Successful athletes and coaches stay in the present by only focusing on that moment because the present is all you can actually control.

4. Develop a Focused Plan

You can develop a plan to not only prepare for practice and games but also to prepare for what you would do in different situations. For example, players can decide how they want to respond to a turnover and then spend time visualizing turning the ball over in practices or games and continue to visualize their response to that turnover. A great exercise for coaches would be deciding how they want to show up with their body language/demeanor after a referee makes a bad call, and then practice visualizing those bad calls and their reaction to them. Most importantly, I'd recommend focusing on process goals rather than outcome goals. This will help you have more confidence as you go through practices and games!

As we're now in mid-January and seasons are beginning to wind down, each game is probably becoming more and more important to your team. Whether you're battling for a district/conference championship, fighting for playoff seeding, or just trying to finish the season on a higher note; this is the time of year when each team's offense must be the best it's been all season.

Some teams may be able to still improve by adding in a new play or making a big change to their offensive approach, but for most teams, being more efficient at the end of the season is won and lost in the margins. It's the little things on each and every possession that will make the biggest difference in how well your team's offense performs over the course of the game.

Let's quickly break down three ways you can make your team's offense more efficient over the final few weeks of the season. And whether you're a player, coach, or parent reading this section, there are things you can do to help improve the offense for yourself and others during this crucial time of year.

Each example is fairly brief, as I've broken down all three concepts in greater detail on my YouTube Channel. To watch these breakdowns (each video includes film study/examples for you and your team), simply click on the below image to go straight to that playlist.

1. Ball Movement

The longer you go into your season, the better your opponents are going to have scouted and prepared to play against your team. Many times that lead to our offense getting really muddy. Players overdribble more frequently, they take too long to make decisions on a catch so the ball gets sticky, and their decision-making decreases as the defense knows the desired outcomes deeper than any other time of the season.

Basketball is a game of advantages. Yet typically what happens on these possessions is that players end up attacking against a small advantage and your team ends up getting an "ok" or decent shot. Instead, your team should look for more opportunities to quickly move the ball (i.e. pass it) against these small advantages in order to hunt out bigger ones. That's what I call playing SABA (small advantage < big advantage) basketball.

Great offensive teams don't limit themselves with small advantage situations, but they use ball movement to ruthlessly hunt big advantages, which leads to great shots and more efficient offense.

2. World Hunts

This is a phrase/concept I stole from my good friend Tyler Coston. Side note - Tyler's an incredible basketball mind and a must-follow on Twitter.

For generations of basketball, we as coaches have indoctrinated players to "hunt the paint" and "get to the rim" on their drives. While there's nothing wrong with those thoughts, many times players continue to attack too deep towards the rim when they haven't gained a big advantage on their defender. Then things get too muddled or jumbled up in the paint if the player with the ball doesn't have an open rim or wide-open kick out for a 3.

Instead of forcing drives to the deep part of the paint, players should learn to hunt the world more often. The world can be defined as the circle that encompasses the free throw line (think of the FT line like the equator). As players hunt the world, great things can happen. The defense will still react like any other paint drive (focusing attention on the ball), but it will keep better spacing for the offense (more lanes to cut) and allow the ball handler to keep better vision for off-ball movement and specifically rim cuts.

To fully understand this concept, you definitely need to watch my world hunt video on YouTube. It's a concept best understood through the film breakdown.

3. Don't Settle

This is a concept EVERY TEAM must focus on during the stretch run of their season. That is, stop settling for good shots and be relentless in your pursuit of great shots.

Shot selection is the #1 factor that decides the outcome of games between evenly matched teams. If your team wants to make a deep playoff run, you will need to eliminate the worst 4-6 shots your team has taken in each game throughout the season so far and replace those with great ones.

I'm amazed at how often teams settle for good shots, especially since great ones are typically just one or two more passes away on any given possession. Think SABA. Stop shooting in small advantage situations, knowing you'll win more games by having the patience on offense to wait for the big advantage ones.

If your team simply stops shooting off-balance rim shots and contested 3's, you're well on your way to eliminating terrible shots on no longer settling in your offensive shot selection.

This thought comes straight from a great friend of mine, Micah Hayes. He previously shared this story in a PGC Basketball blog post, but it's too good not to share here as well.

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I was going into my junior year at Emmanuel College. We had graduated five seniors from the previous year—a loaded team that not only won the most games in program history but had also made the school’s first-ever conference championship appearance. Riding that wave of success our head coach left, leaving myself and one other teammate as the two lone holdovers from the previous season. We knew the year was going to be an uphill climb.

In our first scrimmage of the year, we squared off against North Georgia. The ball is tipped to me to start the game, and it was on. I started a two-on-one fast break with one of our freshmen, Chad, slightly trailing on the wing. I drew the defender, and left my feet to finish at the rim. While in midair, I get a glimpse of Chad and drop off a behind-the-back pass for what I assume will be an uncontested lay-up. Unfortunately, Chad fumbles the pass, and it goes out of bounds.

I get lost in the heat of the moment and yell at the top of my lungs, “CATCH THE BALL!”  When I yelled you would have thought we were playing in a library. The gym fell deafly silent, and everyone had their eyes on me.

At that point, my coach’s demeanor quickly changed too. He wasn’t mad at Chad; Chad was just a freshman. No, he was upset with me for how I responded to a mistake that even the most seasoned players will make from time to time.

After that game coach pulled me aside and gave me three nuggets that changed the way I have approached leadership. I hope they can have the same impact on your leadership game as they did mine.

1. Don't Yell When a Whisper Will Do

Every teammate is different, and you have to know when to provide coaching versus when to provide criticism. Some of your teammates will want you to be direct, while others will need you to use a softer approach. Be conscious of when, where, how, and to whom you are giving coaching.

2. Leaders Eat Last

I was told to set the table for the guys around me before I set it for myself. For me, that meant making sure my teammates were comfortable on and off the court. Be a teammate or coach who is always trying to find ways to serve your teammates/players and put their needs ahead of yours.

3. Care

This is a simple—yet overlooked—action that can take your leadership to the next level. Show your teammates you care through your words, actions, and commitment. Invest time in getting to know them. Invest time in your craft. Invest time in your growth.

While I can’t guarantee that these three things will immediately transform you into the best leader to ever walk the face of the Earth, they will help you will be a better leader today than you were yesterday. Let your teammates know you care about them. Run through a brick wall for the athlete next to you, and they will run through a brick wall for you in return.