A progress of even 30.3% in free throws by De Andre Jordan did not remain unnoticed in the basketball world. Numerous NBA analyses have tried to decipher which factors influenced such a significant shift in the free throw percentage (from 45.5% to 75.8%).
The entire Dallas Mavericks team takes credit for the progress in DeAndre Jordan’s performance made up of the main and assistant coach, fitness coach and sports psychologist of the club.
The focus of today’s article is to bring closer the part of the sports psychologist’s training in working on the mental preparation of the Dallas Mavericks basketball players that manifested itself the most and was shown in the work with Jordan.
As we have seen in the first part of the video, De Andre not only had a low percentage of free throws, but was made fun of by the audience for having missed the whole basket and categorized as a “center that cannot shoot free throws”. During training, De Andre spoke openly to his team about what he would think of when the referee handed him the free throw ball: “I used to think don’t fuc **** air ball, anything but an air ball. DeJordan was focused on what he did not want to see, in other words on the missed shot. He did all that was in his power to avoid missing free throws. He was highly focused but he directed his focus and energy towards the wrong things.
It is on this knowledge and principle that many world companies benefit. Remember the well-known advertisement of the Kraš Company entitled: “Don’t think of a cake?” If you do not remember we will try another example. Your task is not to think of a white elephant with red dots. Try to focus for a moment on not thinking about the white elephant with red dots and do your best not to think about it. What just went through your head? Most likely, it was a picture of a white elephant with red dots. Why is that so? Our subconscious mind cannot process the word “don’t.”
Whenever we tell ourselves not to think about something, our mind is just creating images of what we don’t want to think about. This is why we teach an athlete to focus on what he wants to see and not on what he does not want to see or tries to avoid seeing. If you took a good look at the second part of the video, you might have noticed DeAndre talking to his teammates before making a free throw shot; more precisely, in the moments when he receives the ball from the referee, De Andre looks at one of his teammates and asks him. “Who are you guarding?”
Sounds a little weird, doesn’t it?
DeAndre applied the psychological technique of “key words” (better known in English as “verbal cue”) in his own way. In other words, Dallas Mavericks players were taught that words addressed to oneself (positive self-talk) are stronger than negative thoughts, and how positive self-talk can stop the “torrent of negative thoughts” that direct a player to the outcome instead of the performance.
To be able to explain the power of our speech in a simpler way, let us try one very simple exercise. Before you start the exercise, ask a person nearby to help you out with this short exercise. Your task is to count from number 60 backwards to number 1. Do not count aloud but quietly in your own thoughts. Ask your assistant to stand behind you and clap his hands clearly and loudly during the count (when he wishes). Your task is to speak aloud at the sound of the applause. Simple, isn’t it? Try it!
What happened during the counting? Did the count stop? For most people in this exercise, it happens that the counting stops on its own. Some even forget which number they stopped at. Why this exercise? The same happens to our mind during a game: a sequence of negative thoughts comes and then a pre-planned word like: “next ball” or “pull the rope” (sailing) allows us to stop negative thoughts and focus on the present moment, that is, to focus on the performance rather than the outcome.
De Andre used this psychological principle in his own way by asking his teammate when shooting throws. “Who are you guarding?” Although the speech was not addressed to himself but to teammate De Jordan, it was enough to stop negative thoughts and focus on the performance, that is, to focus on the feeling of the body and the present moment, not on the mind.
Sounds too simple to be true. We often think that we need great techniques and tools for big changes, but success lies in many small, sometimes inconspicuous everyday things that we do often and that have become a habit and automatism. De Andre, of course, used a number of other psychological techniques when throwing free throws but the “keyword technique” allowed him to shift his focus on the right things and unleash the potential that was laying in him all the time.
The “De Jordan Project,” as they like to call it in Dallas, is the result of a commitment and a commitment from the profession and an investment in the relationship. Whatever techniques and tools are taught to athletes, they are secondary to the importance of investing in the relationship with the athlete. If we dedicate ourselves to an athlete with the goal of truly understanding him, to create a relationship of trust and shared values, we can get much more out of the athlete than the athlete himself thought he could.
The choice is up to us.