The PGC Blog

We put together a list of our favorite books that will resonate with any good coach.

After most wins, you really aren’t entitled to all the congratulations you get nor to the focus on all the good things that happened. And after most losses, you really don’t deserve all the criticism or the anguish of realizing that so many plays—if only just one had gone differently—cost you the victory.

Here are five ways to practice your mental toughness off the court. If you practice these five things, every day, you’ll develop greater self-discipline. You’ll become unstoppable in anything you do. It is five things you will have to rise above your feelings every day. That is how you build mental toughness. You develop, as a habit, a muscle of rising above your feelings to level of your aspirations and commitments.

At PGC, we say you are either contributing or contaminating. Basketball players often measure their contribution just by how many points they score or the number of rebounds and assists they make. But what a good basketball player brings to the game and their team goes beyond stats. Good coaches and good teams value a contributing bench member.

This meant that his TRAINING time was much larger than his TEACHING time. The lion’s share (no pun intended) of practice was spent with bodies moving and shoes squeaking. That’s the way HABITS are formed. Repetition is king and there are no reps when my lips are moving and players are standing and listening.

The infamous press conference where Allen Iverson rants about practice may have occurred more than a decade ago, but that type of attitude in basketball players still carries on to this day. As coaches, we don’t want our players to take on this mentality that minimizes the importance of basketball practice. So how do we get players to really value practice?

Express the sincere appreciation you ought to feel for the fact that they came a long way just to watch you and your team perform.

What would your team look like if you said your end of the season goodbyes… today? You may have never thought about this but I promise you, it would greatly enrich your team.