The Road to Becoming a Good Basketball Player

Other than the John Wooden definition of success at the end, I am not sure where I came across the rest of this, but I thought that it was worth passing along.  I think it is something that is worth constantly reminding your teams about as you work to keep an even keel throughout the season.

In my opinion, one of the most important life lessons to be learned in competitive athletics is that you can work very hard and sacrifice, but not always come out on top on the scoreboard because the other team is also working hard.  It is a different lesson than a classroom, because most high school students can earn successful grades in most classes where they do work very hard.  They are not competing against others for the grades, only against a standard.  I like to use this thought to help players to come to terms with losses when they have put a lot of effort in and seemingly not gotten a return on their investment.

The road to becoming a good basketball player is not by any means an easy road.  It is a road paved with hard work, sweat, skinned knees, and sometimes tears.  Along the way you will find victory and defeat, encouragement and discouragement, disappointment and joy, praise and criticism, success and failure, but you should always retain the satisfaction of knowing you did the best you were possibly capable of doing.  Success is this self-satisfaction.

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