🏀 Mike Neighbors “secret weapon” for growth 📈

Welcome to the 382 new readers of The Basketball Academy.

This is the day you become a better player or coach.

Today’s Basketball Academy takes 3 minutes and 13 seconds to read.

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SPECIAL GUEST

Coach Mike Neighbors from the University of Arkansas

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Here’s what we’re serving up:

🏀 #1 - Being at your best 🔑

🏀 #2 - Neighbors’ Favorite Action 🎥 

🏀 #3 - Neighbors’ idea on culture 💭 

LET’S DIVE IN ⬇️

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Affirmations 🔑

We had Coach Neighbors finish this sentence “I’m at my best when I am_” He is at his best when: He is driving. A lot of times he feels cluttered, there are a million things going through his head and when he’s driving he’s able to get into a zone. This spurred an idea that the great Billy Oppenheimer discussed.

When your brain gets a rest, ideas walk in.

Once Quentin Tarantino was asked about his creative process, he gave this brilliant insight:

He used to have problems writing. 

Then around writing the movie Inglorious Bastards, he decided to become “more professional.” 

In his professional process, he starts writing during the daytime, then after a few hours, he deliberately stops writing. 

He then would hop into his heated pool and float around for a couple of hours… and ideas would come to his head. Then he would get out and make little notes on a notepad and save those ideas for tomorrow.

Lin Manuel Miranda calls this idea “incubation” as opposed to procrastination. He said the idea for Hamilton came to him when he went on vacation for the first time in years. He said the first time his brain got a moment’s rest

“Hamilton walked into it.” 

There is a lot of science that backs these ideas known as “The Science of Downtime.” By going for a walk, driving in your car or taking deliberate time away from your craft you’re able to:

“Restore your ability to direct your attention if you give this activity rest.”

The second sentence we had Coach Neighbors answer “I define success as_”: Doing the best with what we got. His answer was about maximizing his roster for that particular season.

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Must Add Action 🎥

Arkansas WBB Horns Actions. Great ways to put the defense in predicaments. 🐗🤘🏼

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Systems & Processes 💭

Neighbors says instead of culture, they utilize Systems & Processes. It’s easier for him to define for his team.

For example “The Stopwatch” ⏱️

Coach Neighbors shares this example of when he was coaching Kelsey Plum when she was a talented hot headed freshman.

As a way to get her to work on controlling her emotions, he brought out a stopwatch to practice one day. 

Plum asked coach what that was for and he told her- this is a way for me to know how long to take you out when you get angry. 

He told her- when you get frustrated I’ll start the timer and however long it takes you to calm down is how long I need to take you out of the game until you refocus. If it takes 20 minutes you’ll be out for 20 minutes. If it’s under 5 seconds you can remain in the game. 

As athletes, things don’t anger us, our opinion of things anger us. Players and teams that have procedures in place to handle the adversity are better equipped than their opponents.

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💥 BONUS 💥 - Favorite TV Show 📺

Just like us… Coach Neighbors is a HUGE fan of Ted Lasso.

We asked him his Favorite episode of Ted Lasso and he immediately said: Oh without a doubt season 1 Episode 8. From the creation of the Diamond Dogs to ‘BBQ Sauce.’

The Diamond Dogs are a group of coaches committed to supporting each other by sharing their most vulnerable thoughts & experiences.

Coaching is an incredibly stressful job at times and many coaches feel on an island at times. The Diamond Dogs allow the staff to feel heard, connected & acknowledged while also getting stress off of their chest.

What would you and your staff call your version of “The Diamond Dogs?”

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