The Mental Game of Basketball

Nov 1, 2014 | People

[title subtitle=”words: Marla Cantrell

images: Courtesy Garrett Richardson”][/title]

Garrett Richardson sits at a booth inside a Fayetteville, Arkansas diner, trying to decide which dessert to order. It’s been an exciting few weeks – he’s the new dad to his third child, a gorgeous baby girl – and he’s still living on that high that comes from such joy. As he sweeps across his phone’s screen, showing photo after photo, he is radiant, thrilled at the way his life is unfolding.

As he’s talking about his growing family, the subject of his life in basketball comes up. His grandfather, Nolan Richardson, coached the Arkansas Razorback men’s basketball team from 1985 through 2002, taking the state to three Final Fours and winning the National Championship in 1994. His style was so intense, sportscasters called Nolan’s game “Forty minutes of Hell.” He tallied more wins for Arkansas than any other men’s basketball coach, and was elected to the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame in 2008, and to the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame earlier this year.

Garrett, who was born in 1981 in El Paso, speaks fondly of his grandfather. What he remembers most is getting to come to Fayetteville in the summer, starting in the third grade. He’d go to basketball camp, he’d spend time with Nolan, he’d get to see his grandfather in action. It was a new world for Garrett, seeing this endearing man all the kids in his family called “Daddy” wield so much power on the court.

From that time, Garrett learned many things: hard work, as his grandfather constantly preached to him, mattered immensely. And basketball was a great equalizer. On the court, it didn’t matter where you came from. All that mattered was your own ability, and your willingness to be part of a team. But the biggest thing Garrett learned during those sessions was how much your thoughts determined how well, or how miserably, you played the game.

This epiphany about how thoughts worked would become even more important a little later in Garrett’s life, when everything he was working so hard to achieve was falling apart. And that realization would lead him to the quest he’s on today, to help young players avoid the pitfalls of negativity and self-doubt.

To get to that story, though, you have to go with Garrett to high school where he was a point guard, so talented he was being sought after by Division One universities. His plan at that time was to come to Arkansas and play for Nolan, and for his uncle, Nolan III, who was an assistant coach. But when Garrett was a junior, Nolan III took the head coaching job at Tennessee State. After much discussion and consideration, Garrett decided to go with his uncle and help him build his team.

There is something to be said about listening to your heart, and fairly early on Garrett felt he’d made a mistake. His eye was on the NBA, and at a smaller school like Tennessee State he believed he wouldn’t be easily recruited. Still, he stayed. He did earn several titles. He made it into the 1000 Point Club, and broke four conference records in assists and stealing.

However, the team as a whole wasn’t doing so well. “Winning became a visitor that never came very often. I think I fell out of love with the game in my sophomore year,” Garrett says.

With every loss, Garrett’s heart sank a little more, and with every day he felt his future shifting into something he didn’t want. “It was like the pressure was building in a bucket like water, and I didn’t have the tools to know I should punch a hole in the bucket and let some of it out. It was so heavy. I quit talking. I was miserable. I pushed people away who wanted to help me.”

After graduating, he was offered two college coaching jobs. He declined them both, unable to shake the feeling that his playing days couldn’t possibly be over, even if the NBA hadn’t come calling. He almost signed with an overseas team, but this time when his heart told him no, he listened. Eventually, he signed with an ABA team, Nashville Rhythm, and later with an NBA developmental team, the Arkansas RimRockers.

It was during this time that he finally accepted he was not going to make it to the NBA. The realization stung, and there were times he couldn’t even watch a pro basketball game on TV. But Garrett also knew he’d learned a great deal from his career – much of it while playing on a losing team. He became a trainer for athletes trying to make it to overseas teams, even moving in with one seven-foot player so that he could cook for him and monitor his progress. In four months he’d gone from 385 to 315 pounds under Garrett’s careful eye.

“I loved watching people succeed and be happy. But I realized there was a part of training that was missing. My clients had confidence problems, and I started looking into the mental game. That lack of confidence – and these were some great players – was leaking into their everyday life. I started adding journaling and meditation, and when I saw how well it was working, that’s when I got my certification for life coaching.

“There’s so much going on on that court besides the game. It can be the circumstance of being behind, that intimidation, and if you’re afraid, you can’t play your best game. I knew that if I could have controlled my thoughts and my beliefs when I was on the court, that my career could have been different, and I wanted to use that to help other people.

“If you’re operating out of fear you’ll see reality hit, and it will keep you from doing what you love. It will keep you from taking that leap of faith. Sometimes you have to do what you love, regardless of what happens. You have to quit fearing failure.”

Garrett’s own leap of faith was developing HoopCliq, an online program he’s worked on for six years that includes a social media and video site for middle and high school basketball players (and their parents) that teaches skills for both off the court and on. “My own career didn’t go where I felt it needed to go but through all of that turmoil I learned a lot. If you’re practicing and you’re missing shots, that becomes a belief that you’ll take in the game. You’ll be afraid to shoot because you believe you’ll miss.”

He uses characters he plays himself in skits to teach about the roadblocks young athletes face, including a guy named Thought Blocker, a super negative guy whose goal is to make players fail.

Another skit is called “Hunch,” and comes from an experience Garrett had in high school. In it, he’s urging kids to listen to their inner voice, to pay attention when their hearts tells them trouble is lurking. “There was one of my players in high school who had a party, and I had this hunch that something wasn’t right. I kept telling my buddies but they’d say, ‘No, see all these girls here?’ I said, ‘There’s a party on the other side of town. We can come back later.’ I got them to go and just a few minutes later someone shot the place up and one of my teammates was killed. It was such a hard time for us and our school, but I learned to be in tune with what I was feeling.”

The videos and social site are free to use, and Garrett has additional training available for a fee. What he wants to do is help athletes succeed, to develop skills that will help them throughout their lives. Right now, there are approximately 430 jobs in the NBA. Thousands of young players are dreaming of getting one of them. The odds are slim, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t try, or that they should feel like a failure if they don’t make it.

Garrett is a prime example. All his life, he’s been interested in how the mind works, how thoughts create reality. Today, he’s getting to use what he knows to help young athletes, and he imagines they’ll in turn help someone else, and the circle will keep growing.

As a kid, Garrett says, his mom made him watch winning athletes being interviewed after games. She wanted him to listen to what they were saying, to see if they could easily explain what success was, and how they felt about it. At the time, he’d get frustrated, wanting only to get back outside, to work on his game. But now he sees what a gift she gave him, how she opened a door and showed him the mechanisms behind a winning mind.

Today, he pays attention to everybody. He’s fascinated by how thoughts become actions, and how actions create destinies. With HoopCliq he wants only to save some younger athletes the struggle he went through, to show them how to get in touch with their thoughts and feelings so their choices can serve them well in the years to come.

 

Do South Magazine

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