(Replying to PARENT post)
It's fine to play sports, but only so long as it's fun. If it ain't fun, you don't have enough native talent for it, and you're wasting your time.
(This isn't the case for other competitions that don't attract so many competitors. In those cases, sure, grind if you want.)
(Replying to PARENT post)
The point from the NBA’s perspective is not that the US players who are not specializing are better prospects, but that the guys who eventually do develop the running and jumping ability good enough for the NBA would have been better off not specializing until a much later age. In this case, the NBA’s interests in rookie health and long careers for stars are well aligned with those of the players but not aligned with those of AAU coaches and/or parents trying to get a college scholarship.
(Replying to PARENT post)
Intuitively, I think this makes sense. Imagine skill as a logarithmic function with the x axis being time. Every unit of work you put in to train starts becoming less and less efficient. By training in different skills you are making more efficient use of your training time. And even if the skills appear to be orthogonal to see each, there’s definitely a cross training effect, for both mental and physical tasks.
A good example is programming. For longer than I care to admit I was one of those guys who could code but wasn’t that strong in math. I was frustrated because it felt like I wasn’t getting better. I decided to strongly focus on math, started exercising, and did brain training with dual n-back tests to increase my fluid intelligence.
I was pleasantly surprised that all these unrelated activities boosted my programming ability to a significant degree, in a comparatively marginal amount of time.
(Replying to PARENT post)
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/jul/12/general...
(Replying to PARENT post)
Absolutely. It shocks me how many people buy up the “our” team stuff and don’t realize that a lot of the narrative around interviews and sports-talk and drama are just advertising campaigns.
This is big business.
But to the topic; You’re right, if it’s really about winning it has to be one sport and be one section inside that. It shouldn’t be about winning national championships for kids, because millions will try for the spots a couple hundred will fill, but that’s not really any of my concern I guess.
(Replying to PARENT post)
>> But while the upsides of specialization are unclear, there are few doubts about the downsides.
What doubts? Winning. To be the best, and being the best is all that matters these days, you must focus on only one sport. For me it was swimming. To compete at the national level you have to train all year, 20+ hours a week. And to actually win at the national level you have to sub-specialize into particular events, specific stroke/distance combinations. Sure, some stars can win at everything, but the majority of swimmers focus. There aren't many champion 50m sprinters who can also medal in 400/800 IMs, not in the last decade or two.
So perhaps the NBA should stop taking only the best basketball players. Perhaps they should look at people who are not literally 'the best' and look at people who are well-rounded and therefor less likely to be injured in their first pro year. But that doesn't win championships. Professional players are essentially actors on a stage for an audience. They are tools for teams, businesses that will be around long after any individual players are injured/retired. What turns the most profit (winning) isn't necessarily what is best for the human players.