‘It’s important for kids to stay humble and stay hungry,’ says Will Avery, a 12-year NBA pro and former Duke assistant coach.

Watch the full interview here: Advice Every Basketball Player Needs to Hear | Will Avery

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My coach, Flip Saunders– God bless him, he’s passed away– was a great coach. He was my coach with the Minnesota Timberwolves, and I was 19 to 22 years old when I played for him. I would put a lot of pressure on myself to go out there and perform, and I failed a lot.

He would always tell me:

“You’re never as good as you think you are, but you’re also never as bad as you think you are. You’re always somewhere in between.”

I think it’s important that we keep young kids in between so they can stay hungry and keep working.

The Goal Trap: Complacency After Success

You should have a goal that you’re focused on. Until you reach it, you’re continuously working.

This is where I fell short as a player. My dream was to get to the NBA. I got there at a very young age (19 years old)  and I was like, “Oh, okay. I made it.”

Once you reach that goal, you’ve got to find more goals because you have to keep ascending.

Once I got there, I thought I made it. Complacency set in. You’ve been so good for so long that you think you’re good enough to get through, and I found out the hard way, no, you’re not. You have to keep going.

Once you reach that goal, you should already be finding other goals along the way. For me it was to get to the NBA. Then it should be: How do you become an NBA star? How do you become an NBA All-Star? How do you win a championship?

What It Really Takes: Work Ethic and Preparation

If you really want to get better at basketball, you have to work like you’ve never worked before. You have to sacrifice a lot. I would also say be organized with your preparation.

For me, when I was young, I had a routine I did before school. I had another routine I did after school. And I had another routine after that. I know people are listening and saying, “Man, that’s three times a day.” Well, if you want to get good at basketball, you have to put in the time. You have to have a strong work ethic.

I think the biggest thing kids never hear is that you have to embrace challenges. No matter how good or bad you are, you’re going to face challenges. Maybe you didn’t make the team, so what are you going to do now? Are you going to be discouraged and just quit, or are you going to find a way to work so that next year when it comes time for tryouts you’re ready and prepared?

You’re going to have ups and downs. Even the great players have all failed. They’re great because they are resilient and they persevere through all the adversity they face. They just keep going. I think that’s what makes them great.

The Grind and Stepping Away

At times I did get tired of basketball. It is such a grind, especially if you’re trying to achieve great things, whether as an individual or as a team. I had to step back and take a break from it, and I think that time was good.

Basketball is something I’ve been working at since I was six years old. Nonstop, every day: concrete, dirt, gyms, whatever, because I had this childhood dream of playing in the NBA one day. So I constantly had to work at it.

By the time you have completed a 12-year professional career, you start to get injured and you start to see a shell of yourself. You’re not as quick. You don’t jump as high. Those things can be a little discouraging at times. So that was the time for me to step back.

That’s when I really got into mentoring kids. It let me step away from the court and mentor these young athletes and give them knowledge that I didn’t have when I was their age to help them along their journey.

Training Environments: One-on-One vs. Group

I think different settings are advantageous for different kids. Some kids do really well one-on-one. Some kids do better in group settings because some kids have a different level of competitive fire.

For me, I would have loved to do things on my own, which is actually the way I did them, working on my weaknesses. But I loved the group setting because even if you didn’t know I was competing against you, I was. I wanted to win every drill. It’s kind of the way you measure yourself. It’s different for each kid.

What Kids Need Today: Pressure and Balance

In today’s generation of youth sports, there seems to be so much pressure put on the kid, whether it’s getting offers or NIL money or playing time or exposure,  I think it’s important to be a kid. Take a break and be a kid. Go have fun.

I know staying in the house playing video games is a thing, but go grab a friend, go grab ice cream and just talk about life. Go see a movie. Do something different. Be a kid. It’s important.

The Work You Hate: Conditioning

Anything involving conditioning without the basketball. I always hated it, but I always needed it because to be at your best, you have to be in the best shape.

Suicides and 17s:  if I hear those words, I break out in hives. Nobody likes conditioning without the ball in the game of basketball, but you have to have it.

Why Seeing Is Believing

I think seeing is believing. If you see it, you can believe it. You say it and it’s like, yeah, okay, whatever.

That’s why film study is so important. You can tell a kid, “Hey, you didn’t do this,” and they may go back and forth with you. But when you sit them down and watch film and they see it, it’s, “Okay coach, I got it.”

If it’s something you’re teaching them and you can show an example of a college player or NBA player doing it, then you’ve got them. Seeing is believing.

I think that’s why our app is going to be so effective because we show them exactly what they need to do. It’s going to be great. Not only that, you can store those drills in the library and go back and see your improvement.

Basketball as Life Preparation

One of the biggest is teamwork. Most of the time, anything you do in life, you’re going to be working with a group of people. If you’re a surgeon, you’re going to have a team in there doing surgery. If you’re a lawyer, you’re going to have a team of people doing things for you.

Teamwork is one. Discipline is another. Accountability is a big one, especially in a team sport. Everybody has a job to do. If you’re working for any company, you’re going to have a responsibility that people depend on you to take care of.

And if you want to be successful in life, competition is huge. You get to go out there every night and compete. In the real world, if you want anything, you’ve got to compete.

Character Over Championships

The most important thing is learning to be a good person. Winning is great, but you have to know how to handle winning. When you win, you don’t want to be the person that’s gloating and bragging because at some point you’re going to lose.

Being a good person is more important than anything. If you’re a good person, you have a better chance of being a good basketball player. Automatically, you become coachable. You’re probably a great teammate. You’re dependable. You’re probably already taking steps toward leadership.

Being a good person is more important than winning at a young age.

For me, someone who’s played basketball since I was six, I would say 95% of my friends came from basketball one way or another. If you’re playing a sport and you’re not a good person, you’re probably not going to have many friends. It’s important that kids learn to be good people.