How can I get to the NBA?

Hi Joseph,

It's great you practice harder than anyone out there, keep that up! To make it professionally you need a whole lot of natural talent but even more of a hard work ethic. You should be learning from and training WITH professionals. Look into Coachup - https://www.coachup.com/ it's a website that facilitates private coaching for sports like basketball.

Also - Start talking to your high school basketball coach NOW. Make sure he/she knows who you are and how much you're interested in playing throughout high school (ideally on Varsity all 4 years!), into college, and on to the NBA. If your coaches know how badly you want it and they see talent in you, they will do more to help make that happen, so start to build a relationship with them now!

Lastly - Think about/look into colleges that have good basketball teams and learn how the players on those teams got into the school and on to the team. You could even reach out to a few of the star players who play the same position you do, and ask them for advice. A good way to do this is via Twitter. Pick a college, look up their basketball roster (ex: http://www.goducks.com/SportSelect.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=500&SPID=235&SPSID=4295) and then search Twitter for a player(s) you want to connect with. Write them a tweet saying something like "I want to play ball at Oregon after high school, have any advice to help me get there in 4 years?"

I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any questions.

Hi Joseph! Besides being a player, which you should be practicing right now if you want to be one, there are many other options that you can have in getting a job in the NBA.

Of course you can be on the team management side in becoming a coach, general manager, or one of the many assistants.

There is also the rise of analytics in sports and many teams are now employing specific people that can look at each specific game and provide advance statistics to help teams and players make better decisions.

There is also the media side which involves journalists, editors, bloggers, and public relations people.

The TV element alone has jobs ranging from production assistant, TV anchor, sideline reporter, play by play announcer, color analyst, cameraperson, producer, director.

Not to discourage you from your dream of playing but in case that doesn't work out. These are the multitude of options that exist!