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JF: It’s hard. It’s not an easy thing to do, depending on your situation. There’s certain situations where you’re gonna be as confident as ever because the coach believes in you, teammates believe in you and they’re gonna give you a green light to go out and do anything that you wanna do. And there’s other situations where it’s not necessarily like that. The coach maybe doesn’t trust you quite as much. Maybe a new player in a new system, whatever it is.
What I always try to tell kids is to do whatever you are best at because if you can be best on the floor at one thing, that’s gonna help you stand out in front of a coach and then it’s like, all right, that guy is a great rebounder and he does that at a high level. I need him on the court, whatever it is and don’t shy away from it. That’s one of the biggest things, but once you start trying to do multiple things and things that you aren’t as good at, it kind of exposes you a little bit more. So I think that’s the first thing is try to do what you’re good at. Put your best foot forward. Once you get that confidence, you get to start playing more, then you’re able to kind of develop more and do more things on the court. The coach will trust you a little bit more. So that’s where you’re gonna find your confidence is by working on those sort of things.
