How to Build a Scorer's Mentality

Kobe Bryant once went an entire summer season without scoring a single point. He was ten years old.

Tiger Woods wasn't a golf prodigy. His father put a club in his hands at 18 months. By age four, he was practicing hours daily.

Genius is a myth.

Anders Ericsson, the psychologist whose research inspired the "10,000 hours" idea, studied elite performers across fields and found the same pattern: there's no evidence of natural talent in most domains. The best had simply spent more time in deep immersion and obsessive practice than everyone else, usually starting earlier than anyone realised.

I bring this up to make a point: anyone can become a great scorer.

Here is how I went from 3 points per game in my rookie year to averaging 22 points per game this season.

My shoulders shudder as my head drops. The whistle cuts through the gym. Sharp, deliberate, aimed at me.

"Fuck."

I walk to the treadmill without looking at anyone. Eyes down, jaw tight. It was one of those treadmills you have to power yourself. No motor, no settings, just your legs pushing the belt. Sixty seconds before I could rejoin practice.

I hated that thing.

But I didn't say a word. I already knew why I was running. I'd dribbled the ball more than twice. That was the rule, for me anyway. Because I was a shooter. That's what they saw when they looked at me. A shooter. And for two years, every time that whistle screamed my name, the word carved itself a little deeper.

Somewhere along the way I stopped being me. I'd catch the ball on the wing, feel the defence close out, and just hold it. Waiting for someone to tell me what to do. I used to attack without thinking.

Now I thought without attacking.

My identity as a scorer was destroyed.

From this stems everything. No amount of skill work, team support or offensive sets will help you become a scorer more than working on your identity and relationship with scoring.

Your identity isn't a fact. It's a story you tell yourself.

In college, the story became: "I'm a shooter. I don't create. I'm limited."

This story didn't just drive behaviour on the conscious level, but also at the subconscious level. Consciously: "In this workout I will only work on my shooting because I'm a shooter." Subconsciously: your body follows what it believes it is. You hesitate to drive the ball. You pass up an open shot. You fumble the ball after two dribbles because that's who you are.

Your identity drives behaviour that supports the story you tell yourself.

To change your story, you have to become crystal clear on who you want to become.

I wrote down exactly how I wanted to score the ball. Post fades. Tough threes. Attacking bigs off the dribble while putting smaller guards in the post. I wanted to make big shots.

Once it was clear, I wrote it down every morning: "I, Jack McVeigh, am extremely happy and grateful to make big shots. I get tough buckets. I am a mismatch problem."

After journaling, I would visualise myself out there being aggressive, making shots, being an elite scorer.

This created what psychologists call the gap. Where I am now versus where I want future Jack to be. To close that gap, I had to take action. I built a routine to live in it. I played one on one every day before practice. I studied Dirk's footwork, KD's release, Kobe's mindset. Every day I put myself in uncomfortable situations and forced the new identity to show up.

Changing your identity takes time. It is persistent, every day work. But once you write your own story, your body will follow that trajectory with a mind of its own.

In college, when my head ran rampant with doubt, fear and worry, I would watch Damian Lillard and Steph Curry with envy. I wished I could eradicate those thoughts from my mind for good. Then I would be a confident scorer.

But this mindset is wrong.

The best players experience those exact same emotions. They've just learned how to manage them.

There are two ways to manage fear and doubt.

A system I created to help me in the most stressful moments of my career.

It was the quarterfinals against Serbia at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Two minutes counting down on the clock. My eyes were locked with the coach as he went through his final speech before overtime. My legs started to shake. My hands sweating. Breath speeding up. "Am I really good enough to compete out there? What if I miss shots?" My body was taking over, and it was heading somewhere bad.

But in that final moment before panic set in, my system took over.

C: Catch the emotions and feelings. I became aware of what was going on. I felt my mind racing and my body sprinting.

A: Accept the emotions. I didn't try to push them away or wish for the situation to be different. I accepted that this feeling was part of high performance. It's okay to feel like this.

L: Lock in. I put my attention on my breath. Slowed it down. Felt air entering and exiting my nose. Then I practised a quick moment of gratitude.

M: Move. Once the body calmed down, I focused on the job that needed to be done and the next controllable action.

This framework brought me back into the present moment and ready to compete. I went out there and played aggressive, scoring 7 points in overtime.

Shooting around with your friends is very different to shooting in a game. This is because the result holds different weight.

Early in my career I didn't enjoy playing games. It was always a rollercoaster of emotions. I was invincible and on top of the world when I played well. Everything felt like weeds and mud when I played poorly. That's because my life only revolved around basketball. The games reflected how I felt about myself as a human being. The weight of the results was too heavy.

Once I started building a life I was proud of outside of basketball, my relationship with Beth, my writing, my values, friendships that had nothing to do with hoops, it lowered the stakes. I was able to play free.

I've seen the stress of money, opportunity and relationships add stakes to players throughout their careers. All of it lowers your confidence and ability to score the ball.

Explore why you play the game of basketball, and why you want to be a scorer. If it's to solve a problem outside of basketball itself, it will add stress and stakes to your game.

Creating a life you are proud of and happy with will take away a lot of the stress, doubt and fear you experience during games.

Dirk Nowitzki came to visit my team and watch a training session. I had one question I needed to ask him.

"When did they start letting you shoot your signature one foot fadeaway?"

His reply was quick and clean.

"For years coaches yelled at me and players shook their heads when they saw a seven footer shooting midrange fadeaways. But day after day I showed up and worked on it. Day after day I beat my teammates in practice with it. Eventually there was nothing anyone could say. It always went in."

A scorer's mindset isn't all internal work. You have to build the skillset required to perform and compete at the level you desire.

Every day, show up and work on your go to moves. Dominate your teammates in practice. This will earn their respect so they pass you the ball, and the coaches' respect so they play you.

Scorers know exactly how they want to score. Their spots, their strengths, their weaknesses. If you want to be a scorer, put in the work to be one.

You see the highlights, the game winners and the stats tallying up. But scoring is a lot more than that.

Teammates get frustrated with you. Coaches yell at you when you lose. The amount of death threats you get will blow your mind.

To build a scorer's mindset, you have to learn to shut out external noise.

LeBron James is one of the greatest basketball players to ever touch a basketball, and still people hate on his game. You have to accept that some people won't like you. Your performances will never be good enough for everyone. When your team loses, it's all your fault.

This is part of the process of being a scorer.

During the season it's hard for me to go on Instagram or Twitter because it slowly eats away at my identity and confidence. Build systems to protect yourself and do internal work to ignore the noise.

Especially because you're going to fail a lot.

Steph Curry is the greatest shooter of all time. He misses more shots than he makes. You have to shoot the ball to score the ball. You will miss. You will airball. The crowd will laugh at you. You will lose your team games.

Failing is the process.

Behind every game winner is two missed game winners. The best players hunt failure. They put themselves in uncomfortable positions more often than other people. Accept that failing is part of being a scorer. Embrace it. Every time you fail, you're becoming better.

The scorer's mindset is a collection of practices.

Writing your own story. Learning to deal with fear and doubt. Putting in the work. Shutting out the noise. Embracing failure.

It's not going to happen overnight. Change doesn't work like that.

But if Kobe can go from a ten year old who couldn't score a point to being drafted at seventeen to play in the NBA, anyone can take that next step to becoming a better scorer.