An Eventful Month

How's it going baller-nation? A lot has happened since my last post - from almost a full month ago- and I'm excited to share what I've been working on and learning in order to further my progress toward my goal of being a better basketball player. Over the past month, I've concluded this year's Community Center League basketball season, taken a trip to Florida over Spring Break, and played many more pick-up games than usual. Additionally, I've read one very interesting and helpful article that has changed my mindset in particular.

Shortly after my last post (ironically titled "Feeling Good"), my CCL team played our way into the championship game where we faced the upperclassmen of our very own Dow High School. They were the defending champions and despite an honorable effort, we were unable to pull out the win. Although the CCL season may have ended in heartbreaking fashion, I still feel that this project greatly helped me in becoming a better basketball player, and by improving my overall confidence in any game situation. There's always next year!

My Spring Break trip was very relaxing and a needed break from school, but I made sure not to slump on my goal to improve my game. Although my friends and I (most of the CCL team) were staying at a villa located on an island off the west coast of Florida, we were all hungry to continue playing the game we loved. Fortunately, one of my friends drove and was able to bring along a basketball; however, we still needed to find a court. We all set out and took a long bike ride to the location that we thought looked like a basketball court from Google Maps, and luckily it was a small concrete court. We were all overjoyed to find a place to basketball on our vacation, and we went almost every day to improve ourselves, as well as the team (I feel very good about our championship hopes next year).

The picture above comes from the aforementioned article that discusses the shooting technique of one of my personal-favorite players, Kyrie Irving. When I first searched, "how to shoot like Kyrie Irving," I expected dozens of articles praising Irving for his beautiful shooting stroke and fundamentals. To my surprise, the first search result was an article that critiqued Kyrie's shooting stroke and fundamentals, and said that if he must fix some bad habits if he ever wanted to dominate the NBA. The article provided an in-depth analysis of what is wrong with Kyrie's stroke, and even ways for him to mend his poor technique. This came as a great surprise to me, because beforehand I held up Kyrie as one of the best players in the NBA, and that it was his sound fundamentals and sweet shooting stroke that got him there; the article changed my perspective to one of more awareness in player's shooting errors.

Link to the article: http://hoopshype.com/columns/david-nurse/how-to-fix-kyrie-irvings-shot

Ballin' up this week and many more,

Brad