What is it that makes a person “good” at something? What is it about the things that certain people do, whether they be on a court, on a stage, on paper, or in a lab, that surprise, excite, and amaze us? How do we define such a nebulous idea as “talent”?
In the NBA, this idea is often synonymous with height, length, speed, or leaping ability. Players are often drafted (or not drafted) according to these metrics. Draft previews, online or otherwise, include specific measurements such as wingspan, max. vert., lane agility, standing reach, etc.
But what do these statistics really tell us? Can any of this data actually predict a player’s future success?
Certainly these calculables matter. In a game in which scoring occurs by putting a ball through a hoop above everyone’s head, simply being closer to that hoop can absolutely be counted as a skill, just as being the first one there can. But are these types of innate skills the only things that matter?
Anyone who’s ever watched basketball (or most any sport) knows they aren’t. For every player like Dominique Wilkins, Julius Erving, or LeBron James, there are a hundred guys like Darius Miles, Gerald Green, and Eddy Curry, guys who possess every necessary physical attribute but who, for whatever reason, are simply not effective NBA basketball players.
But what is it exactly that separates these two groups, that earned LeBron a nickname like ‘the King’ and Gerald Green a discount ticket to basketball obscurity? All things being equal physically (I’m not necessarily saying this is true to the letter, but they are at least comparable in height, hops, speed, and even age), both Green and James had access to NBA facilities and coaches, to the same technology and tutelage that should have, in theory, developed their natural abilities along similar trajectories.
So what is it then? Is LeBron just smarter/more able to absorb/understand the concepts required to play elite-level basketball than Green? (The term ‘Basketball IQ’ gets thrown around a lot but seems nearly as murky an idea as talent.)
Obviously, there are no simple answers to these types of questions, and being that a discussion such as this is, at its core, speculative, there may never be.
Michael Jordan, a man who knows a little something about talent, might provide us some insight on this matter. In a recent Truehoop post, Henry Abbott quotes a passage from Jordan’s 2005 book Driven From Within about last second shots:
I had put in all the work, not only in that particular game, but in practice every day… I was as prepared as I could possibly be for that moment. I couldn’t go back and practice a little harder.
On the surface, it’s, as Abbott describes, “an argument for preparation,” but hidden in that last line is another implication. That Jordan believes he “couldn’t” have “practice[d] a little harder” suggests a kind of commitment that most of us simply aren’t capable of. Not the kind of commitment you give to your job by showing up every day, but the kind that means you never go home. The kind of commitment that breaks up marriages. The kind of commitment that might be more accurately described as obsession.
It’s this sort of obsessive dedication that I believe allows some of us to turn ability into talent and also what makes being truly “good” at something more work than most of us are willing to do.
