Why You Have to Make Good Choices Even if You Get Bad Results

If you’ve been thinking of sponsoring me, why not do so today :) Upgrade at 30% offI help coach my daughter’s basketball team. She’s in sixth grade and all the players have the same bad habit.Whenever they get the ball, they immediately go into a dribble. This prevents them from surveying the court to see if anyone might be open for a pass. Most of them are right-handed so they immediately drive to the right.The defense has been conditioned to swarm because they know no pass is coming. The player tries to get down to the block on the right side, but is met by a wall of defenders. This causes the player to retreat and launch an awkward shot from the baseline.It’s difficult to shoot from the baseline because you don’t have the benefit of the backboard. Your only reference is the hoop hanging in the sky. It’s also difficult to play for the rebound on a shot like this. The ball might miss completely and come up short.It might bounce off the rim at an odd angle.It might overshoot the rim and land on the other side.When you allow yourself to get pushed into a corner, you end up making a bad decision.As a coach, it’s my job to teach the players to either pass or drive to the lane. I want them taking shots where they can see the backboard. This is better for both their shot and their rebounding.But it’s hard to break a habit. Again and again the girls go driving to the right only to take a bad shot and miss ugly.If the shot never went in, my job would be easier.However, every now and then despite all the odds, one of their desperation heaves rattles home. The player, sick of being told not to drive to the right, looks at me and says, “See?”My response is always the same. “Even if it goes in, a bad shot is still a bad shot.”That almost breaks their brains. Many adults can’t understand this concept either.People are conditioned to be results oriented. If something works out, they think it’s “good.” They rarely stop and recognize that they just got lucky.For example, you might survive driving the wrong way down a busy highway at rush hour, but it’s still a bad decision. The fact that it worked out for you didn’t mean that it was the right thing to do.Both in youth basketball and in society as a whole, we need to place a greater emphasis on celebrating rational choices even if they don’t immediately lead to obvious wins.In the long run, you’ll win more often if you teach yourself to stop chasing illusions.As a coach, I’ve been telling my daughter that I don’t even care if the ball goes in the hoop. I just want her taking good shots. Basketball is all about conditioned behavior. You don’t have time to stop and consider all your choices. You catch a pass, you survey the court, you pass the ball, if there’s a gap in the lane you dribble through and score. All of this has to happen by instinct.The critical thinking should happen during practice. You select drills that help teach the players the folly of certain choices. One of the drills I’ve been using is to insert myself as a defensive player. If the point guard drives to the right and tries to shoot, I block the shot. If your players encounter failure enough times, they’re going to stop making the same decision over and over.The secret to navigating life is to condition yourself to make choices that provide the greatest statistical probability of success.You’re going to take thousands of shots. The success or failure of any one shot during the course of a career is relatively insignificant. You can’t spend your whole life allowing your instincts to be dominated by the one time you happened to make a miracle shot you had no business taking.Make it easier on yourself.Play the odds.Once you’ve learned it’s more important to play the odds, you stop caring about the results of any individual shot. You understand that a bad shot is a bad shot even if you score.You have to understand that taking a good shot is a win even if you miss.The final wrinkle in this lesson is that it takes a long time to undo the damage of a false positive. Seeing one shot go in from the baseline is enough to compel a young player to launch 100 shots that don’t even hit the rim. For some reason, they clutch onto that early win as if their lives depend on it.This is why we need coaches who alert us to our mistakes even if it seems like we’re getting the results we want. A coach’s job is to spare the player the loses and the years of torment that come as a result of stubbornly following the path of greatest resistance.“Don’t make this game harder than it needs to be. Adopt the practices that are statistically most likely to lead you to victory.”This advice applies both to basketball and to life.You all make this newsletter happen! Thanks for your sponsorship! I have payment tiers starting at as little as twenty dollars a year.Upgrade at 30% offUpgrade at 40% offUpgrade at 50% offUpgrade at 60% offI'm so happy you're here, and I'm looking forward to sharing more thoughts with you tomorrow.My CoSchedule referral linkHere’s my referral link to my preferred headline analyzer tool. If you sign up through this, it’s another way to support this newsletter (thank you).I'd Rather Be Writing is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to I'd Rather Be Writing at walterrhein.substack.com/subscribe