“Why would I think about missing a shot that I haven’t taken yet?” ~ Michael Jordan. Hey Reader! About 2 weeks ago, I played my last pro game with HLA Lucentum in Alicante, Spain. Not because the season is over. Not because I'm injured. I got cut. There is a lot I could say about this. How getting cut as an overseas pro basketball player works, why I think the situation played out the way it did, what I'm going to do next. But what's really interesting is that for the first time in my career,...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
“I know my shot will fall. It’s just confidence, honestly. You can’t get down on yourself. You can’t focus on the negative. If you’re in your head, from experience, it never works out.” ~Aubrey Galvan, 5'6" Vanderbilt Point Guard Hey Reader! My mom sent me a text the other day: “Unbothered. Good subject for the next newsletter.” She was talking about Vanderbilt’s freshman point guard Aubrey Galvan. She’s 5'6" and playing point guard for the No. 5 ranked team in the country, which is insane....
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
“When everyone zigs, zag.” ~ Marty Neumeier, author of Zag Hey there! “Sadly just playing hard is a skill now.” That’s the exact text I got from a Division I coach this week when I asked him his thoughts on a player. Think about that. Playing hard is now considered a skill because so few players actually do it. College coaches get hundreds of emails a week. So, they have to quickly narrow down the list of potential recruits by position, height, GPA. If you’re a guard who can’t shoot, you’re...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
“If you can shoot, you can shoot. It doesn’t matter if you’re a girl or boy; it matters the heart that you have.” ~ Sabrina Ionescu, New York Liberty Hey Reader! Passing is the easy way out. It’s funny how coaches preach “ball movement” and “finding the open man,” but if everyone on your team passed first, you’d literally score zero points. Basketball is a game of points, which means to win, someone has to be willing to take the shots. And, everyone loves a pass-first player. Coaches love...
2 months ago • 4 min read
“One day or day one. It’s your decision.” ~ Paulo Coelho, author of The Alchemist Hey Reader! It’s almost mid-season, but I want you to pretend it’s already over. Next, visualize this. You’re sitting alone in the locker room after the last game of your season, replaying the year in your head. While still visualizing, ask yourself, “What could I have fixed sooner, and what held me back this season?” I recently watched a neuroscientist talk about something she calls “take it all the way to the...
3 months ago • 3 min read
Hi everyone - I’m resending this because apparently, the spam filters didn’t like my last subject line! This message is too important to miss, so I wanted to make sure you actually got it. “The difference between you and me is my training. I have negative thoughts just like you. But I stay in them for seconds, and you stay in them for who knows how long.” ~Novak Djokovic (recounting a conversation with a Buddhist monk) Hey Reader! Hi. I’m Wendy. I’m Tucker’s mom. I’m writing this from...
3 months ago • 5 min read
“The difference between you and me is my training. I have negative thoughts just like you. But I stay in them for seconds, and you stay in them for who knows how long.” ~Novak Djokovic (recounting a conversation with a Buddhist monk) Hey Reader! Hi. I’m Wendy. I’m Tucker’s mom. I’m writing this from Alicante, Spain, where Tucker is playing his third year of professional basketball. This past weekend, I was walking along the Mediterranean, thinking about his journey. And mine. (It was January...
3 months ago • 4 min read
“It requires tons of repetition with focus. High achievement doesn't require inborn talent. It requires working your ass off.” ~ David Googins Hey Reader! In this last email of Confidence Month, I’m going to talk about probably the most uncomfortable tool in the whole series: the Accountability Mirror. It comes from David Goggins. If you don’t know him, he was overweight, miserable, and going nowhere. One day, he got fed up and decided he was done making excuses. Two years later, he became a...
3 months ago • 5 min read
“We tend to overestimate what we can do in a day, and underestimate what we can do in a year.” ~ Bill Gates Hey Reader! Don’t you just love it when a parent or coach tells you to “fail forward?” Yeah, okay. Easy for them to say. They aren’t the ones airballing a free throw or missing a game-winning layup in front of a packed gym. You are. The issue isn’t failing. The issue is what you tell yourself after you "fail." If you treat every mistake like a disaster or proof that you aren’t good...
4 months ago • 3 min read