I hope that you aren’t one of those guys walking around thinking you give 100%. Because you don’t. You loaf. Everyone loafs. And the guys that come closest to giving 100% know this better than the others. No one gives 100%. There are so many things you can do in a basketball game, so many opportunities to help out a bit more on defense or to overplay a bit more, or to run back faster or block out better…the list is endless.

Good players know after a game, even a game in which they played well according to the papers, that they could have done more, could have hustled better, could have made a few more things happen if only they hadn’t rested at the wrong time, if only they had put out just a little more.

It is not simply a matter of conditioning. Of course, good players are going to be in good condition. A good coach gets even mediocre players in condition. It is simply that you can always do more.

Your only chance to approach your potential is to strive constantly to do more—always with a nagging sense of inadequacy, of having loafed and failed. Satisfied players are rarely good ones.

From Dick’s book Stuff