Basketball on the Edge – 3 Things I learned from Picasso

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I came across this story about the famous artist Pablo Picasso this week and it made me think of the way we should approach player development. Here’s the story.

A woman approached Picasso in a restaurant, asked him to scribble something on a napkin, and said she would be happy to pay whatever he felt it was worth. Picasso complied and then said, “That will be $10,000.”
“But you did that in thirty seconds,” the astonished woman replied.
“No,” Picasso said. “It has taken me forty years to do that.”

Three quick takeaways from the story.

1. Greatness doesn’t happen overnight.

It took Picasso 40 years to be able to do a simple drawing flawlessly and beautifully. I’m guessing the sketch on the napkin was pretty basic since it was done in 30 seconds and yet it was a “Picasso”. You can’t expect to work on something for a week and reach the Picasso level of greatness. Simple and basic skills executed flawlessly and with apparent ease make a player great. That mastery of fundamentals happens over long periods of time and requires a lot of work.

Lesson – Don’t expect overnight results. Sustained effort over time leads to greatness. Keep working, and if you do, you’ll end up far past what you may have thought was possible.

2. The best make things look simple.

We take for granted how skilled the best players in the world are in the same way the woman in the story took for granted how great Picasso was as an artist. There’s a reason NBA players make things look easy. It’s because they’ve put in countless hours honing their craft and learning to make basic skills automatic. “He made it look easy.” Really means “Wow! Did he put in an unbelievable amount of time and effort so he could execute simple things flawlessly.” The best players are the most efficient. They can produce a “masterpiece” very quickly.

Lesson – Put in time on the basic skills every day. Form shooting, pivots, and crossover dribbles may not get you excited, but simple skills like these are the secret to improvement. As my friend Alan Stein told me, “Don’t confuse basic with easy.”

3. Willing to work? Success is coming!

Picasso spent 40 years developing his artistic skill. The end result is that he became one of the world’s greatest painters. What if he had stopped after 5 years? Would he have been as good? Highly doubtful. He may have had more innate artistic ability than other artists, but I’m willing to bet that what set him apart was hard work. Sure, LeBron has physical tools that most of us can only dream of, but his hard work is what has enabled him to have the career he’s had so far. If you are willing to get after it every day success will come your way.

Lesson – There is no substitute for doing the work. Over long periods of time working hard at your game will yield results that can be difficult to see in the moment.

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