Directions For Success: See, Believe, Repeat

"I would sit quietly for 15 or 20 minutes before the game in a secluded part of the stadium and create a moving picture in my mind of what was about to happen. I'd call up images of the man I was going to cover and visualized myself stopping his moves. That was the first part. The next step, which was much harder, was to lay back and not try to force the action once the game stated, but to allow it to unfold naturally. Playing basketball isn't a linear thought process: 'Okay, when Joe Blow takes that funny drop step over there I'm going to jump in and do my Bill Russell imitation.' The idea was to code the image of a successful move into my visual memory so that when a similar situation emerged in a game it would seem, to paraphrase Yogi Berra, like deja vu all over again." -- Phil Jackson