How to Improve Your Basketball IQ
And how I define basketball player development and progressions of the 1-2 step.
How to Improve Your Basketball IQ:
“The most satisfying form of freedom is not a life without responsibilities, but a life where you are free to choose your responsibilities.”—James Clear
To be help an elite offensive basketball player learning the player development process is a fun responsibility. It’s also delightful to keep learning new skill training ideas now, and I was lucky to be free to choose my responsibility as a kid.
And improving a player’s Basketball IQ process is two-fold:
Players need daily high-quality, high volume repetitions of mastering techniques and skills within certain dribble, shooting, passing, and basketball moves.
Players need daily training situations where understanding what basketball decision (BDT) to make with their skills in real-time to create advantages for themselves or their teammates.
Some people will call a basketball player with elite skills and great decision making someone with high basketball IQ, but this is really just a microcosm of life. If you keep learning new skills and decisions that help your company, your startup, or your marriage, you keep bringing more value!
To me, Basketball IQ is making the decision to show up and train, improve, and work on your skills and BDT (basketball decision training) day after day, even when you don’t feel like it.
“The ‘bad' workouts are often the most important ones.
It's easy to train when you feel good, but it’s crucial to show up when you don’t feel like it—even if you do less than you hope.
Going to gym for 5 minutes might not transform your body, but it does reaffirm your identity.”— James Clear
Basketball IQ is making real-time decisions in a game with your skills that create an advantage for you or a teammate, yet what do our skill training sessions look like? Are your players making decisions in your basketball training sessions or not?Are you going against cones instead of real defenders?Are you dealing with gap, high pressure, traps, different ball screen defenses, a strong, assertive weakside, and high-level defensive intensity?
Basketball IQ comes from learning and reading the offensive concept relative to how the defense is guarding you, not playing the play for the sake of it. Once players can read a concept, they can begin to learn how to play the right way, with high-level concepts like DHOs, or flare screens, or dribble drive off ball movement and reaction time, horns screens reads, quick tempo drags, step up screens, down screens, pin downs, ghost screens, or how the defense is rotating, pressing, or zoning their weak side in any of these concepts.
More importantly, are your basketball players learning how to create advantages daily?
This is Basketball IQ in a nutshell—a player that can constantly do this.
How do we get weaker players to help our best players into more advantageous situations and vice versa?
Eight to 12-year-olds are learning what the right read is (Basketball IQ) in these offensive concepts overseas and decision-making with these offensive concepts are taught at a much earlier age, which allows them to have ahead of the game with their basketball IQ.
This is one thing I’d make sure all players are getting in each elite basketball skill training workout. Live play with decision making and reads. Skills. Reads. Skills. Reads. Skills.
Keep going!
The 80/20 rule applied with deliberate practice sessions (working on specifics) are the ticket into the big arenas of basketball! By watching the warmups one tell which team will play well. We are all creatures of habit. Good habit make us, bad habits break us.
Excellent article and all of it is correct. When I was coaching I never realized how most drills should incorporate reads until I saw a college coach's pregame warm up. Then, we started making every shooting drill (team and individual) unique to our fast break offense and our man offense. Simple things like curls, flares and back doors became muscle memory after so many reps. When to shoot or attack a close out would be another example. Spot on with this stuff, Trevor. Good work.