Get the motivation to become an elite basketball player

In any given sport,especially basketball,there are players that we never hear of and there are the players that are at the very top of their game,where a week never goes by without us hearing about them.For the ones at the top of their game,we may call genius's in their chosen sport.They are the michael jordan of basketball,the tiger woods of golf and the ronnie o'sullivan of snooker,etc.

So what makes michael jordan,one of USA's most prized basketball players,so special ? Is it the raw talent that he was born with ?

Obviously talent has a lot to do with it but was he really born with a rare talent ?

If i told you that a basketball player friend of mine openly admits that he has missed more than 9000 shots in his career.He has also lost almost 300 games,and 26 times he has been trusted to take the winning game shot and missed.Does that sound like a player that is at the top of his game to you ? This is a direct quote from michael jordan himself.

I have another friend who has spent the last 40 years trying to learn the guitar without success.He has never had a lesson in his life and believes he can learn on his own via books and dvd's.Maybe the only reason he still cannot play one song fully is because he has not been shown the right way to learn.Or maybe it is not possible for him to learn the guitar.I honestly believe with the right tuition and with the right practice anybody can learn anything they choose to,an exxcell at it.

It has been shown by study after study that you cannot become a genius at your sport just on talent alone.It takes many thousands of hours of practice.

There are also many sportsmen and women around the world who claim to have no special talents,yet managed to get to the top of their game by sheer practice alone.

Even the great Albert Einstein once said "I have no special talents.I am only passionately curious".
Will Smith also said that he believes he was not born with any special talents and where he excells is through a sickening work ethic.He works harder than anyone else to get the results he wants in life.

So it basically comes down to how badly you want to be that NBA basketball player,plus a little talent.The 10,000 hour rule states that it takes an average of 10,000 hours of dedicated practice to become a genius in our chosen field.Obviously it has to be the right practice otherwise you could make the same mistakes over and over again without progressing.

When you think about it.If you were to practice say the piano for 4 hours a day every day of the year (4 x 365) which amounts to 1460 hours per year x 7 years = just over 10,000 hours.No wonder Mozart was known as a genius before he was 10 years old.

The average age of genius sportsmen and women are getting lower each decade as parents are recognising this simple fact and getting their children into sports at very early ages so by the time they are in their mid to late teens they are competing at world class levels.Just look at Alexandra Raisman who won an olympic gold medal for gymnastics at the age of 18,and Ruolin Chen who also won a gold medal in the diving,both at the 2012 london olympic games.

Also take a look at some of the youngest basketball players to play in the NBA.Jermaine O'Neal,Kobe Bryant,Andrew Bynum and a whole host of other players that were only 18 years of age.

So there is little more to be said about natural talent.I would suggest that the only way to ever find out if you have what it takes to be one of the great basketball players is to work as hard as you can in each area of your game.Your fitness levels,what you eat,the amount of hours you put in and most of all work on your belief that you really can reach for the stars.

I hope this article has motivated you enough to show you that you really can be the best basketball player you can be.You have far more potential than you currently believe and the only way to find your potential is to go for it.