Shoot Your Shot

by Vernon Brundage Jr

  I often read and watch content that profiles the players I admire in the NBA and highlights their work ethic.

  While in college, Stephen Curry was in the gym at 6am working out and would have multiple shooting sessions throughout the day to improve his jump shot. Before games, he also has intense dribbling sessions that translate to effective ball handling during games.

  Kawhi Leonard worked on his game so much while playing for the San Antonio Spurs that he sometimes had to be escorted off the court after practice by his coaching staff as a means to prevent exhaustion and injury.

  LeBron James is regularly the first of his teammates to arrive at practice and the last one to leave, which has aided him in being considered one of the greatest all-around basketball players of all time.

  Russell Westbrook is known for watching hours and hours of film so he can identify a competitive advantage on the court and improve his play.

  Dirk Nowitzki worked tirelessly on his shooting mechanics and his footwork in order to master his patented step-back jump shot that has made him one of the most dominant scorers in NBA history.

  Each one of these examples shows a common theme of preparing adequately and maintaining a commitment to one’s craft. This is the behavior that keeps them at the top of their games and sets them apart from their peers in the league.

  So in your own life, how can you incorporate their approach to the game into your every day life? First, start small. Little by little, a little becomes a lot. All the seemingly diminutive and insignificant steps you carry out while pursuing your goals are actually critical to the attainment of that which you desire. How you do the small things, will ultimately be how you do the big things. If you put in a half way effort when you prepare, that half way effort will be what you put out when it’s time for you to perform.

  In the words of Joel Embiid and Philadelphia 76ers fans, “Trust the process.” Every assertive action you carry out up until you accomplish your goal is significant and inches you closer and closer to your desired end result.

  Progress is a process. Success is only a consequence of the decisions you have made and the actions you have carried out regardless of how you feel or what you’re going through. Being lazy has never resulted in favorable outcomes. Do what you need to do even when you don’t feel like doing it in order to become the person you desire to become. Be patient. Be persistent. There are no quick fixes to long-standing success.

  The extra time that was put into practicing, watching film, working on their bodies and on their games prepared players like Curry, Nowitzki, James, Leonard, and Westbrook for the key moments that have defined their careers. They had no idea if or when those moments would come, but they were prepared nonetheless and have shown up more often than not. Because when you stay ready, you never have to get ready.

  It is more beneficial to be prepared for an opportunity and for one not to present itself, than for an opportunity to present itself and not be prepared for it. If you consistently do the little things, you will be prepared for your moment. Take pride in your work no matter how menial the task may appear.

  Ray Allen (also known as Jesus Shuttlesworth for his timeless role in He Got Game) had one of the most beautiful, accurate, and effective jump shots in the history of the NBA. It was like poetry-in-motion watching him shoot the basketball.

  Allen once said the following: “When people say God blessed me with a beautiful jump shot, it really pisses me off. I tell those people, ‘Don’t undermine the work I’ve put in every day.’ Not some days. Every day. Ask anyone who has been on a team with me who shoots the most…the answer is me—not because it’s a competition, but because that’s how I prepare.”

  Ray Allen just so happens to be the all-time leader in three-point shots made and a 2018 Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame inductee. Now, I would hope that Jesus (I mean Ray) recognizes that he has been blessed with athletic abilities far greater than the common person. At the same time, I understand where he is coming from. He was emphasizing the point that he worked tirelessly at his craft and got to where he was because of the degree to which he practiced and prepared. Ray Allen is a living embodiment of the old adage, “Practice makes perfect.”

  Practice? We’re talking about practice? *In my best Allen Iverson voice*

  (Sorry it was too tempting not to write that but yes, we are talking about practice.)

  Whatever it is that you desire to accomplish in life requires certain monotonous processes that must be carried out on a regular basis. Ball players practice the same shots over and over again at game speed whether it’s a bank shot, fade-a-way, step back jumper or reverse lay-up and at certain spots on the court in order to increase the probability of making those types of shots during games. The only way for you to improve in a certain area and increase your own likelihood of success is to continue to do the same thing repetitively until you reach the level that you desire to be at.

  Whatever you want to be, whatever you want to do, whatever you want to accomplish, there are going to be certain actions that you must carry out in a repetitive and consistent manner. Do not just go through the motions. Put forth your best effort every time you perform a task that corresponds to your objective.

  The necessity for you to put in the work and properly prepare also requires making sacrifices if you want to accomplish anything in life. There is an opportunity cost—or a tradeoff—associated with every decision you make. That is, you must give up one thing (or several things) in order for you to acquire or achieve something else.

  If you want to reach your goal weight, you’re going to have to give up the chips, the chocolate, and the cookies.

  If you want to start your own business, you’re going to have to spend some Friday or Saturday nights in the library doing research and drawing up a business plan instead of being in the club or in front of the television.

  If you want to earn your degree, you’re going to have to sacrifice some sleep and time with friends in order to devote that extra time to doing homework and studying for exams.

  As difficult as it may be, it is necessary to have the discipline and the willingness to push aside anything that serves as an impediment to your progress in accomplishing your goal. That’s the cost of being successful at any feat.

  In order to establish themselves as the elite athletes that they are, NBA players have had to sacrifice time with family and friends and have gone without participating in extracurricular activities to instead spend time in the weight room, on the court, and in the film room in order to perfect their craft.

  When they’re on the court, they make the game look so easy. This is because they’ve spent hours upon hours mastering their craft while forgoing other activities that they probably wanted to participate in.

  Make the necessary sacrifices in your own life. Work tirelessly at your craft or toward your goal so that when your work is presented to the world it looks easy. Make your efforts look effortless. Only when others try to replicate your results will they truly understand how much work you put in and what it took for you to get to where you are.

  I know how hard it is to give up the things that you enjoy. It’s a constant struggle. I’ve personally lost too many hours of my own time watching YouTube videos, bingeing TV shows, ‘chillin,’ scrolling down timelines, or partying with friends. In retrospect, the time I wasted could’ve been devoted towards doing something productive and beneficial to my future.

  Imagine just how much more productive we could be if we made the conscious decision to sacrifice a fraction of the time we devote to leisure or valueless activities and instead chose to do something that will move us closer to our goals. Leisure activities are necessary from time to time. However, too much of anything is not good. Don’t waste too much time on unproductive distractions that could be otherwise devoted to securing your future.

  The temporary sacrifices you make now will be well worth it when you’ve arrived in the much better state of being that you’ve envisioned for your
self. You will never accomplish anything great by only doing things when it is convenient. Convenience kills dreams. Persistence fuels them.

  Making sacrifices is difficult; it requires a lot of discipline and prioritization. But you are more than capable of doing so and it will all be worth it in the long run. Once you have accomplished your objectives, you will be able to fully and guiltlessly enjoy all the things you gave up momentarily in addition to reaping the fruits of your labor. So make the necessary sacrifices now in order to realize the life you want. Do today what others won’t do so that tomorrow you can have what others can’t have.

  SECOND

  QUARTER

  4

  Use Your Unique Gifts On Your Unique Path

  A winner is someone who recognizes his God-given talents, works his tail off to develop them into skills, and uses these skills to accomplish his goal.

  LARRY BIRD

  3-time NBA champion, 3-time NBA MVP, 12-time NBA All-Star, and a 1998 Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame inductee

  We were all born with gifts and talents, whether we have identified them already or not. There are things that you innately do better and more efficiently than anyone else on this earth. This is not just mere speculation, this is a fact. So own that. Embrace it. You have talents that are unique to you and only you.

  It is not enough to just be aware of your gifts. You must also cultivate those gifts and use them to your advantage as you embark upon your journey towards accomplishing your goals and living the life that you want to live. Not everyone puts their talents to use or, even more importantly, molds them into skills.

  Oftentimes talent gets confused with skill, but the two are not the same. Talent is something that’s innate. You are born with the ability to do certain things that come easy to you without much, if any, effort. Contrarily, a skill is a learned behavior that requires you to work hard, persevere, and remain dedicated to refining it. A skill does not require you to be particularly talented at something either. However, if you develop skills that are closely associated with your talents, you are putting yourself in a position to sustain long-term success and master something that is both unique and interesting to you.

  As important as it is to use our talents to develop our skill set, a lot of people seem to have an unwillingness to do the required work. We touched on this in the previous chapter. There have been countless top high school basketball prospects that have never played in an NBA game. There are also multitudes of first round draft picks who have ended up being busts in the NBA as well.

  Sure there are many reasons why their professional careers didn’t pan out, but one of the primary reasons is that they relied solely on their natural abilities and did not work on their games or become skilled at their craft. They may have actually thought that their talent alone would be enough to get them through. Realistically, merely having talent is not enough if you want to be successful in the long run.

  One of my favorite parables in the Bible is the parable of the talents in Matthew 24:14-30. Jesus tells of a master who is leaving to go on a trip and entrusts a different amount of talents (currency) to three of his servants. One receives five, another receives two, and the other receives one.

  Upon returning to his house, the master finds that the servant with five talents and the one with two talents both flipped what they had and doubled their number of talents. He declared to them, “Well done good and faithful servant. You were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things.”

  Conversely, instead of attempting to double the talent he was given, the servant with one talent buried his talent in the ground out of fear of losing it. The master scolded him, called him “wicked and lazy,” took the one talent he had away from him, and gave it to the servant who now had 10 talents.

  The moral of this parable is that we are rewarded when we use the God-given abilities we have been blessed with in order to advance our lives. If you do more with what you have been given, you will be able to accumulate more. Conversely, if you do nothing with what you have been given, that which you have will be taken away. You can either use what you have or lose what you have. Are you going to put your talents to use or are you just going to waste them away? The choice is yours.

  I’ve personally witnessed people squander their gifts because they were unwilling to do what was necessary in order to cultivate their natural talents into skills. I’m sure you can also name a few individuals who you have seen waste their gifts as well, can’t you? There are endless stories of what certain people could have been and what they should have been had they utilized the gifts they were blessed with.

  My advice to you is this: do not become yet another “woulda,” “coulda,” “shoulda” tale. Rather, identify what you are gifted at, work to develop a particular set of skills related to your talents, and make the most out of the natural abilities you have been blessed with in order to live your best life. If you are struggling to identify your gifts, ask yourself a few questions that may help you identify your natural strengths.

  “What am I especially good at?”

  “What do I do best?”

  “What comes easy to me?”

  “What is an action that other people compliment me about regularly?”

  Also, ask your parents, peers, mentors, coaches, teachers, and those close to you what they believe your strengths are and what you are gifted at. Feedback from others can be a critical piece in helping you to identify what you are talented at so that you can find and begin to make your own path.

  You may be gifted at cooking, public speaking, or making people laugh. You may be great at working with numbers, sketching people and things, or you can run faster than anyone you know. You may be able to relate to people or you are excellent at writing. Whatever it is, you have an extraordinary gift that is waiting to be shared with the world.

  Even if you do not recognize it right now, there are things that are unique to you that can help you in your pursuit of living the life you have always wanted to live. Once you identify these gifts, through introspection and consulting those who know you best, then you will be in a position to nurture those gifts and develop them into skills.

  After finishing a solid collegiate basketball career at Cal State Fullerton, Bruce Bowen entered the 1993 NBA Draft. Unfortunately, he went undrafted. Between 1993 and 1997, Bowen played professionally overseas and in the CBA for 5 different teams. If you looked up the definition of a ‘journeyman’ in the dictionary, his name just might be cited as an example.

  In 1997, Bowen’s fortune began to change when he was signed to a 10-day contract with the Miami Heat. In his NBA debut, he played 1 minute, but the fact remains that he still played. Get this: Out of the 54 players drafted in the 1993 NBA Draft, 11 of them never played a single minute in an NBA game. Bowen had accomplished something that even those who were selected by teams had never done.

  Between 1997 and 2001, Bowen had stints with 4 different NBA teams. However, in the 2000-2001 season, he had a breakout year with the Miami Heat in which he logged more minutes and scored more points that season than he did in his first 4 seasons in the league combined. During the 2000-2001 season, he also began to earn the reputation as a lockdown defensive player. As a result of his strong defensive presence, Bowen was named to the NBA’s All-Defensive Second Team that season.

  In the 2001-2002 NBA season Bowen joined the San Antonio Spurs, a championship caliber team. In San Antonio, he established himself as one of the league’s premier perimeter defenders, and was regularly tasked with guarding the opposing teams’ best player. From 2001 to 2008, Bowen earned 8 consecutive nominations to the NBA All-Defensive First and Second Team, placed second in voting for the NBA Defensive Player of the Year from 2005 to 2007, and was a part of three San Antonio Spurs NBA championship teams. During those three title seasons, Bowen was in the starting lineup every single game.

  In 2012, the San Antonio Spurs retired Bowen’s jersey (No. 12), making him the seventh player
in the franchise’s history to receive that honor. This all happened for a player who, according to his coach in San Antonio, Gregg Popovich, “couldn’t dribble and couldn’t pass” but he “shot 3s in the corner” and he “played great D [defense].” [iii]

  To be in a league full of dynamic, multidimensional athletes, Bruce Bowen’s career excelled because he found one specific area to specialize in: strong perimeter defense. As a result, his career panned out better than and lasted longer than a good amount of the 54 players who were selected instead of him in the 1993 NBA Draft. Bowen carved out his own lane and worked to become undeniably skilled in a specific area—defense. He proved that all he needed to do in order to have a storied career in his profession was to acquire a specific skillset. This is what ultimately set him apart from everyone else and allowed him to be successful.

  Identify those areas in which you are talented in and find a unique lane that will allow you to experience long-term success. Let Bruce Bowen serve as an example. If he can be successful in a profession with extremely high turnover and he only had one legitimate skill, you can definitely experience success in your own personal and professional endeavors. But first, it is important to develop a set of skills that will set you up for success.

  Find your own lane. Hone your skills in a particular arena—preferably one that will allow you to fully utilize the natural talents that you have been blessed with and can be used to your advantage. Why not become a leader or an expert in an arena that you are naturally skilled in and one that interests you? Work hard of course, but also work smart and have fun while doing it. Continually improve yourself in relation to the endeavors that you are pursuing. The more you do so, the greater you improve the likelihood of long-term success.

  What’s for you is what’s for you. It is not for anyone else. Your path is unique to you and only you. As are the tools that you have been blessed with in order to actualize the life that you have envisioned for yourself. Others have paved their own way and you have the ability to do so yourself in a particular area.