Wheelchair Basketball: Maximize Your Strengths

Video Transcript

"You know, I think any great athlete maximizes their strengths. We want to take our weaknesses, and we want to make them better, but I think we all kind of know what we do better than, than what we don't do well, and I think that's something we should build on. If I'm seven feet tall, I might want to grab a lot of rebounds, block a lot of shots. If I'm six foot tall, and have a lot of quickness, and a lot of speed, and I'm a good passer. I probably have the strength, of maybe being the play maker, or the ball handler, or the dribbler, or popping some threes, and you'll find that out. I know being my height, and with my level of injury, I'm probably not going to grab fifteen rebounds a game. I can develop that part of my game, and get better at it, but my strength has a lot to do with my size. It has a lot to do with my eye, hand coordination, but anybody out there, just take your strength, and use it to benefit your team, because after all, this is a team game, and everybody can bring things to the team, that will make their team better. Some people are shooters. Some people have good chair abilities, but we want to take our weaknesses, and we want to improve them. When you go to practice, you shoot shots, and you work on chair drills. A brand new player, when he first sits in a wheelchair, he can't do all kinds of things, but over a year or two, a little bit of practice, a little bit of conditioning and strength, and watching other people do it, and the right equipment, you get to where you can move that wheelchair in and out, and you're fast, and you're quick, and it doesn't, you don't become a good wheelchair basketball player in a year or two, or even three. It takes four, five, ten years to hone your skills."