I depend on a bunch of different basketball and non-basketball resources – basketball books, writers, companies – to learn about basketball, specifically about shooting better. Here’s a general list of tools and resources that keep me thinking about marksmanship in conventional and unconventional ways:
Audible – Listen to books in your headphones anytime you want that relate to continuous improvement (in any field), human behavior, sports science, mental training, and seriously, any topic that you feel relates to where you fall short, on or off the court.
Recommended titles:
The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance by David Epstein
Faster, Higher, Stronger: How Sports Science is Creating a New Generation of Superathletes and What We Can Learn from Them by Mark McClusky
The Champions Mind by Jim Afremow
Relentless by Tim Grover
The Art of Mental Training by DC Gonzalez
The Hoops Whisperer by Idan Ravin
The Upside of Irrationality by Dan Ariely
Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink
Zen To Done by Leo Babauta
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life & in Business by Charles Duhigg
Kindle – Portable books on your phone or laptop or ereader you can pull up specific sections and visuals from, conveniently. You can pull up books like Basketball Skills & Drills at the gym, and look at specific shooting drills and workouts, that pros often work on every single day.
Grantland – Very few guys dissect basketball data, narratives and details like contributors of Grantland, specifically Zach Lowe, Kirk Goldsberry, and JP Abrams. The site may be a sports and entertainment ezine but I believe it’s a hub of genius, led by Bill Simmons.
BreakThrough Basketball – a basketball blog by Joe and Jeff Haefner that covers many of the fundamentals, workouts and training gear for coaching youth basketball.
Quora – great question and answer based website, that’s essentially a community of smart people sharing insight with each other. Like Audible, the best way to use Quora is by diversifying your interests and choosing broad categories you know nothing about. When you start receiving weekly digests (top 10 questions / answer threads for your categories), you’ll be amazed by the interestingness and simplicity of discussions outside of your usual learning zone. You’ll get inspiration from unrelated topics that crosses over to the topics most unique to you.
Twitter – the place where most basketball coaches, players and trainers connect to share their best advice. The place where you can find experts on any subject matter ranging from no-name and big-name users. If you want to keep up with the loudest noise from around the world in real-time, use Twitter. You don’t ever have to tweet to get value.