How to Raise Your Confidence in Basketball

Confidence for a basketball player is crucial when it comes to performance. From players to parents and even coaches, there is sometimes a misconception of where confidence is derived. One common thought is that a players confidence comes from an outward source.

Usually that outsource is from their coach, teammates or parents. While it’s more than understandable as to why this thought process has become a norm, we want to challenge that mindset and provide a different perspective that gives the athlete more control.

One of our favorite sayings is - control the controllable. If you’re in high school, you likely will have no control over who the coach is, what type of offense/defense they run and who your teammates are. Even if you think you have control over those things ie. a player getting recruited to college and assessing their choices through campus visits and a lot of communication with the coaches.

No matter what, it’s never the picture that the coach paints when they are recruiting you to their school. No program is perfect, no coach is perfect and no team is perfect. The only control you have is to do your best in picking that school and hoping the experience will be close to what you envisioned when you made the choice to go there.

A lot of athletes/parents believe that the answer is to transfer from high school to high school or college to college and sometimes that is actually what’s best. But many times, it’s not and many times it’s due to a mindset that exists where we try to control these things that we have zero control over instead of focusing on the things that we do.

Confidence can make or break an athlete, it is what hinders them from performing at a high level consistently. A few missed shots in one game can turn in to a three week slump, or more. Many times athletes assess their performance and look outward for the reason as to why they are struggling with this. The typical thought process is..

“My coach doesn’t let me play through mistakes”

“My coach boxes me in”

“My teammates are always trying to correct me”

“Coach has favorites”

Etc..Etc…

With all that being said, coaches are not perfect. There are definitely coaches out there who play favorites, who run an offense that isn’t quite conducive to their personnel and who have a very short leash when it comes to players making mistakes. But again what of those things as a player, do you have control over? Unfortunately none.

So now that we’ve talked about some of the things that you don’t have control over. Let’s talk about two things that you do. Number one being preparation. The impact that preparation has on confidence is immeasurable. As with anything, when you put a lot of time into a craft, confidence is inevitable.

Here’s a short video of one of the greatest basketball players ever talking about his approach to preparation.

Billy Donovan, Head Coach of Oklahoma City Thunder also speaks on this here and how important the commitment to preparation is to your confidence.

The second controllable is your thoughts. Again, it is so easy today to put stock into the thoughts of others. Especially with social media, it’s hard to avoid thinking about your performance vs others and to be more critical of yourself as a player.

Twitter has made it more commonplace to tweet out offers and to retweet articles or highlights and the result is more pressure on athletes to keep up. It’s no wonder why the mindsets of current athletes are so dependent on outside sources.

Family members, parents and friends all play a role in the outward source of your thoughts as an athlete but if you truly want to develop your confidence you have to remove yourself from that mindset.

It has to be a daily practice to take inventory of your thoughts and how they align with your goals. As awkward as positive self talk may seem, it’s much more beneficial than the alternative.

Taking ownership of why you are where you are, negative or positive, is the first step. Own your thoughts and recognize that that’s the area you have sole control over and challenge yourself to change every negative thought to a positive one.

Here’s a short clip of Dena Evans from Point Guard College speaking on this topic.

So go own your confidence. Get in the gym, work and take ownership of what you’re thinking on a daily basis and make sure that those two things align with your goals as a basketball player.