Basketball on the Edge – Don’t Get Distracted!

Published August 24, 2018 | By Mike Klinzing

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Sitting down with Alan Stein, Jr. last weekend to record a podcast episode was a rare treat. If you haven’t had the chance to listen to the episode I urge you to give it a listen. Alan made sure the interview was packed full of insightful, actionable advice. After we had finished recording he asked me how I had done my research on him to prepare for the interview. I explained that I had mainly listened to as many podcast episodes as I could on which he had been a guest. As the conversation continued he asked me what I liked to listen to and I shared a few of my favorites: How I Built This and Masters of Scale. Then I asked him the same question. Alan shared that his favorite right now is the Focus 3 Podcast. In fact, he said he stopped listening to it in his car because he found that there is so much great content for players, students, coaches, parents, and business leadersthat he needed to listen to it while he was home so he could take notes. That is a ringing endorsement!

I’ve spent the week listening to the first several episodes (in the car mostly, sorry Alan!), but I have found the Focus 3 Podcast (hosted by Father & Son – Tim and Brian Kight) to have tremendous value that is applicable to all of us. With that as the backstory, I took today’s topic, enduring discipline, from the podcast in which the Kights describe it as a way to overcome distraction.

Let’s take a look at what enduring discipline means for a basketball player. Anyone can be disciplined once or twice. Some players can be disciplined for a month. Others can be disciplined during a sixth month season. Fewer still can be disciplined for an entire year. Only the best can be disciplined for the entirety of their career, whether that career ends in high school (for many), in college (for some) or at the professional level (for very, very few). That doesn’t mean that players with enduring discipline don’t get distracted or off track, or miss a workout. They do…but when they mess up, they get back in the gym or back in the weight room and they get back to work. Players with enduring discipline understand that success comes from being disciplined about what they do over long periods of time. What many kids (and adults too) fail to see is that the consequences of their disciplined approach to training may not show up right away. In fact, those consequences may not show up until years down the road. There are very few players that take the long view of their career, especially when they are young. Players want it to happen now…today. The reality is that growth as a player isn’t often measured in days. Working on the basics day in day out for years is what it takes to become a great player and that requires enduring discipline not a week’s worth.

We often overestimate what we can accomplish in a day or a week and underestimate what we can accomplish in a year or five years. Too many players get distracted and give up without putting in the time required to get really good. Enduring discipline is not perfection, it is simply a pattern of discipline that players return to consistently over time. It allows them to slip up occasionally and yet still return to the practice habits, training, and mindset that leads to great outcomes.

Enduring discipline is a long term habit that doesn’t allow distractions or obstacles to get in the way of the outcome that the player wants. There may be the temptation to slack off, the call from friends to go hang out, the coach that doesn’t see your value, the teammate that says you won’t make it, but through all of that enduring discipline sets the course for a sustainable pattern despite the occasional setback that befalls everyone. If we can strengthen our enduring discipline by building great habits, then we’ll overcome the roadblocks that we face and stay on the road to long—term success both on the court and in life.