A person might be born with genetics that makes them taller than you. Perhaps with more muscle fibers that make them potentially faster than you.
But you put the limits on yourself with how hard you're willing to work and how much failure you're willing to endure in order to find success. To me, that's a fact of life.
Any athlete you can point to who is great, has always talked about the work they put in. Floyd Mayweather was boxing since he could stand. Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan were loudly praised as the hardest workers their opponents have ever seen. The repetitions they put in has way more to do with their success than being x-tall or y-strong or z-quick.
The only people who point to some superhuman genetic trait or special ability for why someone else is great are people looking for excuses for why they themselves did not rise to a certain standard.
That doesn't mean that any person can have an identical career to whatever famous athlete you can think of. Because frankly there are lots of different ways to be elite at anything. We're not talking about clones here.
He makes it seem like some athletes have this special ability to slow things down.
Nobody has that ability.
It's repetition. It's training. It's practice.
The first time you see a 90 mph fastball, it's a blur. The 500th ninety mile an hour fastball you see is not a blur.
I understand he's praising Crawford. I just think people should acknowledge the work. It's work. There's no secret gene or special ability that makes these guys great. X-Men isn't real. They work at this stuff.
nah you can train every day, practice every day and still not make it. In every sport there are guys who are just a cut above the gretzkys, the lemieuxs, the jordans, the lebrons, the mahomes, the sanders, the griffeys, the bonds
It doesn't matter if you trained with them every single day and tried to emulate them they are just a step ahead its greatness
A person might be born with genetics that makes them taller than you. Perhaps with more muscle fibers that make them potentially faster than you.
But you put the limits on yourself with how hard you're willing to work and how much failure you're willing to endure in order to find success. To me, that's a fact of life.
Any athlete you can point to who is great, has always talked about the work they put in. Floyd Mayweather was boxing since he could stand. Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan were loudly praised as the hardest workers their opponents have ever seen. The repetitions they put in has way more to do with their success than being x-tall or y-strong or z-quick.
The only people who point to some superhuman genetic trait or special ability for why someone else is great are people looking for excuses for why they themselves did not rise to a certain standard.
That doesn't mean that any person can have an identical career to whatever famous athlete you can think of. Because frankly there are lots of different ways to be elite at anything. We're not talking about clones here.
And there are people who were far more gifted than Floyd Mayweather, Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan who never made it professionally because they didn't put in the work.
And there are people who were far more gifted than Floyd Mayweather, Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan who never made it professionally because they didn't put in the work.
A person might be born with genetics that makes them taller than you. Perhaps with more muscle fibers that make them potentially faster than you.
But you put the limits on yourself with how hard you're willing to work and how much failure you're willing to endure in order to find success. To me, that's a fact of life.
Any athlete you can point to who is great, has always talked about the work they put in. Floyd Mayweather was boxing since he could stand. Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan were loudly praised as the hardest workers their opponents have ever seen. The repetitions they put in has way more to do with their success than being x-tall or y-strong or z-quick.
The only people who point to some superhuman genetic trait or special ability for why someone else is great are people looking for excuses for why they themselves did not rise to a certain standard.
That doesn't mean that any person can have an identical career to whatever famous athlete you can think of. Because frankly there are lots of different ways to be elite at anything. We're not talking about clones here.
Ben Simmons in the league 8 years refusing to shoot a jumper or play a game.
Bol Bol chasing IG hoes, still in the league.
Andrew Wiggins in the league despite not loving the game. You think he's done infinite reps?
Carmelo one of the greatest scorers of all time still had a limit on workout time and body work.
Duncan, Olajuwon, Embiid, missing years of reps due to playing other sports till 15, Hall of Famers.
Boxing is probably the closest to these reps making the difference but someone more gifted than Floyd is absolutely getting opportunities. A lack of work ethic just means they won't go far.
I think there is some truth to both sides of the argument in this thread. First off, there are some athletic prerequisites to get considered a spot/position on a team.
However, past that, this is also true:
If you got generational athleticism (with respect to your peers), you're going to process and see the game differently.
If you got below-average to average athleticism (with respect to your peers), you're going to process and see the game differently.
The thing is though, both of these groups can dominate. You don't even need to be a pro athlete to see this. Go to any field/court and you can see this play out. Some cats be straight up heads and shoulders athletically above everyone else but they can't play the game for shyt. You look at them sometimes and be like "Man, if they knew and understood how to actually play the game they'd probably go far."
That's where you get your players like Drew Brees, Luka, Jokic, etc. Yeah, Luka is mobile, coordinated and strong like an ox, but there are others like dude who are all that and even more athletic and coordinated, can shoot, got a handle, etc. but they don't dominate the same way.
That's where repetition, hard work and studying come in. Contrary to belief (read Barbara Oakley as she's the expert on this), you can improve your expertise and performance (although not your working memory). The brain has (basically) unlimited capacity for longterm storage and the more you get into long term memory, the more you can "chunk" which then makes whatever you're learning/doing easier to process because your "mental stack" gets freed up. This is why when below-average to average people can learn complex Physics and finish their PhD's basically in any field - as long as they're determined to learn they can do it. Barbara Oakley herself says she's very slow and below average when it comes to working memory and sucked at math but she managed to get a PhD in Electrical Engineering. Many stories of highly-regarded Physicists are the same.
The more you learn and store in long term memory, the easier you can think and problem solve in the moment. Come back in an hour and tell me all the letters in this sentence: "Some random sentence". I bet you'd be able to do it, it's literally three words. Now come back and do the same for the Russian translation: "Какое-то случайное предложение". Try to recall the letters. Now do the same in the conversations you have and try to do it in another language. Until you get fluent in Russian (through practice) your working memory/mental stack will always be taxed and you'll process slower. You'll have to think about it a lot more. Once you get fluent in Russian though? Not a problem.
Same goes for sports and the concepts that happen in competition. People with horrible Football IQ or Basketball IQ are seriously not spending time watching tape and self-assessing - that's where they're failing and that's also why somebody who is a horrible player now can be a Championship player later because they have so many examples of seeing winning in their sport (if they've been taking the time to break concepts down and continue to learn). You got some great athletes who simply aren't fluent in their sport and need to put the time in.
That basically explains the "time slowing" effect: chunking. A lot of these cats don't have the game/concepts in their procedural memory yet to thoroughly dominate.
All these skills trainer and drills working on moves and their bag are great, but I'm nearly positive some of these athletes would get far more out of watching themselves/others, getting more familiar with the sport and breaking down their decision-making - which will actually transfer to their moves and make them more effective. I think every single great and winning player has done more of this than everybody else and some players had better coaching/mentoring coming into their leagues already. Again, not only was Luka's dad a professional player who probably taught him a lot, but Luka's favorite players were Ricky Rubio and LeBron - two players who rely on knowing the game. Tyreek, Revis, Jordan, LeBron, Kobe, etc. are examples of incredible athletes who know their games through and through. Not only do they have the athleticism, but the game is highly chunked to them.
Actually a great post about this from Matt Waldman (you need to expand the tweet as it gets cut off):
I still think it's funny how bad Luka was struggling with the drills and coordination here. This was a month or two before dude's rookie season started. It's an example of how much knowing the game can really take you. This dude entered the league like this but basically dominated from opening month on:
It's funny Jalen Green is a great example of this. Pure athletic talent, who's most likely not watching any game tape and breaking things down. It's crazy but Udoka mentioned they watched film together recently to address him standing around and not getting rebounds, which is why he's been getting more rebounds lately. Like are you and your skill trainers not watching film to realize you're being that passive this whole time? They're robbing if you if so.
In terms of prospects, that's basically why these people are pretty hyped on Caleb Williams as well (outside of the rocket arm and overall athleticism):
He's trying to be slick & underhanded by inferring that Black athletes i.e,. Terence Crawford, don't have "special" athletic abilities which makes them exceptional in sports.
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