In pee wee basketball, there is no skill. The kids that are a little more developed than the others physically are the ones that get to play. Got a kid who's hit a growth spurt and if four or five inches taller than everyone? He's your center. Got a short kid that can dribble without dribbling off his feet, there's your point guard. Fill in the other spots.
When you get a little older, say grade or middle school, skill *starts* to enter into it, but even then its still almost entirely a function of growth. Bigger kids play, as long as they are coordinated enough.
But then as you get older, say early high school, talent and skill start to take over.
The kids that work the hardest are the ones that get to play.
But something else sort of funny happens too. Some kids with talent can still get away without working all that hard, that is to say, without much practice.
This happens so much so, that some really talented kids don't practice at all, they just skid by on their talent. They can usually get away with this until the highest levels of high school basketball (varsity basketball).
So in light of this, how important is practice really? If you can get by without it, then why bother??
Here's a little story someone told me a long time ago about Larry Bird. You might not remember Larry Bird, he played for the Celtics around the same time the Magic Johnson played for the Lakers and even a little while Michael Jordan played for the Bulls. Bird was one of the greatest players to ever play the game, without a doubt. Not as flashy as Jordan, he still was amazing in every way.
Anyway, the story goes that every year, no matter how well the Celtics did (and they won a bunch of titles with Bird) Larry started practicing. Hard.
He started out each day with a five mile run and then practiced eight to twelve hours all day everyday. Of course, he had his own court to practice on, his own staff to rebound and guard him and run drills with him. And I'm sure he had his own trainers and chefs to feed himself and his staff.
The punchline of the story is that Bird used to say that he couldn't WAIT for the season to start so that he could take a rest and relax a little from all the hard practice!
Think about that and you will begin to understand a little bit just how important it is to practice and how much time and energy you should focus on it. To Bird, all the hard work was done in the off season to prepare. When the season itself rolled around, why, he only had to show up and play in the games for a couple hours a day.
Compared to the twelve hours of practice he would normally be putting in during the off season, the NBA season was a joke! And towards the end of the season when the rest of the players in the NBA were starting to get tired, worn out, injured, or just plain tired of playing, Bird was still fresh. He knew the hard work was still yet to come, next off season!
Bird was one of the greatest players in the history of the game. I don't know if that story is true or apocryphal, but it doesn't matter. The moral of the story is the same either way. The hard work is in the practice. After that you just have to show up and play! And games are just fun.
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