Just like anything in life, setting goals is important to your basketball success. S.M.A.R.T. is an acronym for the five important elements in goal setting. Learn about how create your own S.M.A.R.T. goals for on and off the basketball court.

Goal Setting Worksheet (DOCX)

Goal Setting Worksheet (PDF)

S: Specific

Specific goals are well-defined and have a focus.

Example of a specific goal: “Improve made free throw percentage”

The specifics of this goal allow the athlete to focus on drills and activities to help achieve the goal.

Not a specific goal: “I want to become a better basketball player”

This goal is very vague and doesn’t give the athlete the ability to setup a plan.

M: Measurable

Along with having a specific focus a goal also needs to be measurable. This will help the athlete see progress and results.

Adding a measurable to the Current Goal: “Improve made free throw shooting percentage from 25% to 35%.”

Adding a measurable allows the athlete to count made free throws to provide an overall percentage. This will help track the progress of the goal over time.

A: Achievable

The goal needs to be achievable by the athlete. Setting a goal of 100% free throw percentage is not an achievable goal. The best ever recorded free throw percentage by a professional basketball player was 98% in a season, so 100% is an example of an impossible goal.

Work in steps. If the athlete is a poor free throw shooter, start small grow the percentage over time. Make the goal achievable!

Depending on the athlete’s ability the goal “Improve made free throw percentage from 25% to 35%” is an achievable goal.

R: Relevant

Is this goal important to improving your game? Are you passionate about achieving this goal?

Basketball players need to choose goals that will self-motivate them and that will help impact their game.

Using the above goal as an example, improving made free throw percentage is a relevant goal as free throws can be the deciding factor in the outcome of a game. The free throw is the only opportunity in basketball where the defense cannot interfere, allowing the athlete to take full control of the ability to score, making a goal to improve free throw percentage a great goal to have.

T: Timely

A goal needs to have a timetable for increased odds of completion. Without a timeline the goal might be forgotten about or take longer than needed to accomplish.

Continuing our free throw percentage example a goal with a time-bound addition would look like this “Improve made free throw percentage from 25% to 35% by the end of 90 days.

Now the athlete has a time table and can easily setup small goals to see progress within that larger goal.

Final result of our created SMART goal:

“Improve made free throw percentage from 25% to 35% by the end of 90 days.”

Write Your Goals on Paper

Next, add the SMART goal to the goal setting worksheet. Add all the objectives of your SMART goal and be sure to breakdown the goal in phases. See the example below.