Jake’s skill roadmap

Where he is now, and the order the pieces should come in. Point guard, age 10 — built around the game he already has, not a generic checklist.

Jake is a fast, high-feel point guard with real floor vision (15 assists and 8 steals in a recent doubleheader), a rebuilt shot that held up under fatigue (40 of 100 from three in tracked driveway blocks), and a floater he can now hit from three angles. The foundation is genuinely strong. This roadmap is about turning a fast kid with good instincts into a complete guard who can still get downhill when a defender has scouted his speed.

The floater is closed out, so the top priority moves to finishing lefty in traffic. He has it in practice; the gap is trusting it when contact is coming in a game.

• Left-hand Mikan and reverse layups to open every session — volume before pressure.
• Live finishes with a defender bumping him off balance, left side only.
• One rule in games: if the drive goes left, he finishes left. No bailing to the right hand.

The measure of success here isn't a drill — it's a game where he finishes a contested left-hand layup and doesn't think about it afterward.

His speed is both the gift and the tell. This block is about making the hesitation before the burst a habit, not a drill.

• Cone-attack-with-hesitation as a warmup staple: body stops, ball lives, one beat, go.
• Change-of-pace reps where the slow is genuinely slow — that's what makes the fast land.
• Triple-threat reads: catch, one read, then attack, so the decision comes before the defender's feet are set.

His offensive instincts are ahead of his defensive tools. Close the gap.

• Lateral quickness work — slide-and-recover, closeouts under control.
• Reading the ball-handler's hips instead of reaching at the ball.
• Turning steals-from-gambling into steals-from-position — he already has the hands, add the discipline.

By the fall tryout window, the pieces should start combining on their own.

• Full-speed decision reps: pull-up vs. floater vs. kick, read live.
• Both hands live at the rim under contact.
• The pace game — using the pause to set up the burst — showing up in games without a cue.

Don't chase all of it at once — that's the mistake that stalls fast kids. One horizon at a time, in order. The left hand first, because everything downstream — finishing, decisions, defense — gets easier once he stops having a weak side. Revisit this every few months; as one piece closes, the next one sharpens.