I’m not usually the guy who puts a lot of stock into concepts like “confidence”. The way I figure it, everybody in the NBA has confidence. They might have slightly smaller or larger amounts of it relative to each other, but they all have lots of it.
My theory is vexed, however, by the existence of Frank Ntilikina. While my thesis above would assume Ntilikina to be full of confidence in his ability, the so-called “eye test” doesn’t bear that out. Ntilikina is passive in basically every aspect of the game. Every time he has a minor scoring outburst (like this game), all the Knicks fans come out of the woodwork to heap praise upon him, but the praise has no staying power, and Ntilikina will quickly revert to his old non-scoring ways.
I hereby offer my much-sought-after services as a confidence coach to Ntilikina. No, I’m not going to sit him down so that we can talk about his issues. I’m not a therapist. Instead, I will meet him in an empty gym and he can score on me as many times as he wants, gaining a small amount of raw confidence with each field goal that he makes. I will even play defense as well as I am able (not very well) so that Ntilikina feels like he’s succeeding against some kind of obstacle.
After dominating me in one-on-one situations for a period of weeks, Ntilikina will be ready to return to the Knicks and make an impact as a scorer. That readiness will last all of six minutes until one of his layups gets brutally blocked at the rim and he never again tries to score the ball. Ever.