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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]According to my son’s trainer, who played in two NCAA tournaments and one final 4, played and coached internationally for a dozen years, and coached a VA state championship HS team, talent isn’t really required to succeed in basketball before college.

I think when a lot of people see “talent”, what they’re not seeing is thousands of hours of gym time - a lot of which is really, really painful or mind numbingly boring or both.

When my kid was young, he had no talent.  After many years of year round basketball, individual workouts at least once a week and 2 hours in the gym every day that there was no practice, suddenly everyone was amazed at his natural talent. [/quote]

This x100. Especially these days[/quote]

This is nonsense. A child could be in the gym for hours a day and still not make a local HS basketball team if he wasn't born with natural athletic ability. [/quote]

The kids who end up playing competitive high school basketball are very frequently not kids that someone would have looked at when they were 10 and said “This kid is a monster athlete”.  By the time they are in high school, they are super athletic, but what gets them there is often work, not genetic gifts.  I can assure you that when my kid was the worst player on a 3rd grade rec team that never won a game, nobody would have guessed that he’d be dunking in games as a HS freshman.

And yes, many kids ARE in the gym for hours a day, and many of them claim to be training.  Usually, this means that they are playing lazy, sloppy pickup games with their friends or missing 9 out of 10 threes and then celebrating like Steph Curry when they happen to make one.  That’s not training. Training is a painful and boring mix of grueling endurance work and highly technical skill practice.  No kid — without help from a coach —  knows how to train, and most don’t have the discipline to do it. [/quote]

At what age did your kid transition from bad rec player to good, then great?  I have a kid that works really hard but it's still not quite clicking.  He's highly skilled but makes so many silly mistakes and drives his coaches crazy.  Age 12.[/quote]

In terms of interest and skill, DS started turning the corner in 5th grade when a dad on his rec team who happened to be a basketball coach invited DS to workouts that the dad was doing with his own kids.  That was the first time that DS did hard, two hour basketball workouts, and he found that he loved them.  He got a trainer in 6th grade and his skills built from there.

He was nervous and inconsistent in games (only playing up to his potential occasionally) until the summer after 8th grade he started doing regular small group workouts with  kids who were older, bigger, and better.  When he was a rising freshman playing 2 on 2 or 3 on 3 with 6’8” juniors and seniors, he got used to being aggressive and just doing his best.  After that experience, his AAU games with kids his own age or even HS varsity games were much less intimidating.

One big thing for my kid was having effort stuff he could fall back on if shots weren’t falling or he made mistakes.  Things like poking the ball away or deflecting passes on defense or following shooters and putting back missed layups.  Knowing he could get 6-8 points a game just doing effort stuff made him much calmer.  Also, and this sounds silly, but — not hanging his head or looking angry or embarrassed after a mistake.  Coaches worked on that with him b/c doing those things invites the other team to play against you differently/more aggressively.  When you make a mistake and immediately get back on defense, you don’t help the other team gain momentum. [/quote]

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