Pierce Maslen

Founder of Shot Creation UK basketball
Basketball shooting Coach 🏀

[Pierce Maslen @pierce_maslen]

We are hosting four weeks of camp in the summer with main focus on shooting 📊🏀 Age group U11 - U15.📍 N14 6BS. Sign up via this link: https://t.co/nfKhgD0kDB

[Pierce Maslen @pierce_maslen]

Anyone looking for their next book to read I'd highly recommend this one. Life makes a lot more sense now 🤔

[Lisa Jay @coachlisaj]

Brandon Tchouya 6'7" (G) @ Laramie County Community College (WY) blessed to receive Basketball offer from South Carolina State University
* Dagenham Park School
London, England

[NBACentral @TheDunkCentral]

Victor Wembanyama showed the world tonight that the hype is real

(🎥 @IQfor3 )

https://t.co/gXsqVqb3UY

[Steve Sallis - Author/Speaker of Leadership @uefa @stevensallis]

Yep - the amount of entitled footballers out there is alarming . I’m just grateful the ones who choose my 121’s get it ! 🎙️ Miroslav Klose: "I said stop playing football because I no longer recognised it. Today, young players think about other things. As a child, I only thought about training and becoming someone in this sport that I always loved. At Lazio and in the national team, after each training session, I put myself in a bathtub full of ice to avoid injuries. But the young players on the team systematically refused.

When they saw me picking up the bags of balls to put them away at the end of training, they said to me 'But who tells you to do that?'.

At that moment, I said to myself: 'You're 20 years old and you can't help a 60-year-old worker?'

They care more about whether their boots go with their socks. That's why I said stop. The football I knew no longer exists.

Today's young players think first of cars, contracts with their sponsors, and their new boots. It is only after all these things that football comes. For them, their image is the most important thing. Whereas for me, all that mattered was football in its purest form.”

[Essential Mastery @EssentialMastry]

The 5 most famous laws in the world…

1.

[Gunners @Gunnersc0m]

Arsène Wenger: "What has dropped in recent generations is that of course park football has disappeared and now the trend in some academies is to recreate again what happened before. The game itself is a good coach.

"Why? Because, if I play in the park, I have to make decisions. If I’m shrewd enough to think why did that not come off, and have a right assessment, the next time I am in the same situation I am correct. We have lost that a little bit. And maybe today we are overcoaching a little bit sometimes, and we lose a bit that freedom, that creativity, that individual personalised training that happened before." [@MiguelDelaney, @Independent]

[Eurohoops @Eurohoopsnet]

Luol Deng having the time of his life with South Sudan (and British basketball should be banging their heads on a wall right now)

#FIBAWC #WinforAll

[Rikard Aspegren @RikardAspegren]

Joe Boylan (Director of Player Development, Minnesota Timberwolves) had two really good sessions during the @basketse clinic. In this clip, he highlights the importance of context. "If you think the pass wouldn't be there, put a defender there and he will figure that out".

[Simon Mundie @simonmundie]

OTT football parents… ring any bells anyone?

[San Antonio Spurs @spurs]

"It's about relationships." Coach Pop talks about his time with David, Tony, Tim, and Manu 🖤

#23HoopClass | @HEB

[John Hobbs @JohnHobbsTB]

.@CoachKeane14 praises prodigy Nedas Cholevinskas as @gbbasketball finish a very respectable fifth in the U18 Division B Euros
https://t.co/wYOzbf3iV9

[The Figen @TheFigen_]

Learning a backflip in one hour...

[FIBA Basketball @FIBA]

Welcome to the future of basketball 😍

#FIBAU19

[Billy Oppenheimer @bpoppenheimer]

Days after a quarterfinals loss in the 2010 French Open, Novak Djokovic told his coach, Marián Vajda, that he had decided to quit playing tennis.

He was No. 3 in the world, a grand slam winner, and a favorite to win Wimbledon.

After Djokovic said he was quitting, Vajda asked,

“Why did you start playing this sport?”

Vajda immediately sensed what the problem was:

Djokovic was focusing too much on rankings, records, titles, and external expectations. As a result, Djokovic said, “I was mentally at one very messed up place.”

As Djokovic thought about Vajda’s question, he thought about how many of his earliest childhood memories include his “most beloved toy”—a mini tennis racket and a soft foam ball.

He started playing tennis, answering Vajda’s question, “because I just really loved holding that racket in my hand.”

“Do you still love holding a racket in your hand?” Vajda asked.

Djokovic thought about it for a few seconds, got excited, and said:

“I do. I still love holding a racket in my hand. Whether it’s a grand slam final on center court or just playing around on a public court, I like playing for the sake of playing.”

Vajda nodded, “Well that’s your source. That's what you need to tap into. Put aside rankings and what you want to achieve and what you think others are expecting of you.”

Vajda then suggested that Djokovic take a few weeks off.

Djokovic agreed that he would.

But when he woke up the next morning, Djokovic was dying to hit tennis balls. He went to the courts to play for the sake of playing. “And I never looked back ever since that moment.”

The following season, Djokovic enjoyed one of the greatest seasons in sports history. He won 43 straight matches. He won three Grand Slams, including his first Wimbledon title. And he finished the year as the number one player in the world.

“I started to play freely,” he says of that season. “I became the kid that I was when I started playing.”

Takeaway 1:

There's a word for being like the kid who does something for the sake of doing it:

Autotelic.

From the Greek "auto" (self) & "telos" (end)—an Autotelic is "someone or something that has a purpose in, and not apart from, itself."

As opposed to someone who focuses on rankings, records, titles, and external expectations—for an Autotelic...

”The work is the win,” as Ryan Holiday once told me.

Since you control the effort more than the outcome,

“Ultimately, you have to love doing it,” Ryan said. “You have to get to a place where doing the work is the win and everything else is extra.”

Takeaway 2:

When reading about Autotelics—people who describe their work as play, who simply seem to love what they do—a common mistake is to think that it’s all bliss all the time.

One of my favorite Autotelics is the legendary skateboarder Rodney Mullen, who is in his 50s and still skateboards every day.

“There are days,” Rodney said, “where you don’t want to go out. Or it hurts. Or you’re sore. Or you just suck—you're not making progress, and you feel defeated...But that's the nature of love—it's got hate in there, it's got pain in there. And that’s what draws you in, that's the magnetism.”

At one point during the recent Wimbledon final, Djokovic angrily smashed and shattered his racket. And after losing the match, he admitted that it will take him a while to get over the loss.

That’s the nature of love—it’s got hate in there, it’s got pain in there.

- - -

“I see people with talent, with all those things, but the one thing they don't have is just that love for doing it for the sake of it.” — Rodney Mullen

Follow @bpoppenheimer for more content like this!

[LeBron James @KingJames]

INCREDIBLE!!!! 🐐

[EuroLeague @EuroLeague]

After a successful season in Germany, Brazilian star Yago Dos Santos signs a deal with @kkcrvenazvezda ✍️

Another back-court option for the Serbian Side 👀🔥

[Ritmo NBA @RitmoNba]

Los Raptors armaron ESTO en su hotel en Las Vegas, donde jugarán la Liga de Verano. Impresionante.

📹 @michaelgrange

[Andrew Brownhill @AndrewBrownhil]

The art of coaching by Steve Kerr👇
🗣️”The urge is, you’re the coach and you want to control it. But, coaching isn’t controlling it, it’s guiding it… It’s not going to happen by you saying ‘you have to do this or you have to do that.’ I try and communicate a vision and gently nudge guys along.”