By Ed Piper
This is more an observation about college or professional sports, rather than high school sports. And it's not my original idea. It has come from others.
My observation is that individual athletes playing in team sports must play within a system that is conducive to using their gifts or abilities to be effective.
An outstanding athlete--here I'm thinking of pro athletes--can play really well in a team system that uses his or her gifts, or play really terribly if that overall system doesn't allow him or her to use their individual skills.
What I mean is that, you take a LaDainian Tomlinson or Pau Gasol. L.T., the great former running back for the Chargers who has since been elected to the football Hall of Fame, went from scoring a record 31 touchdowns in one season, to being under-utilized a few years later when the team changed to a pass-friendly, Philip Rivers-led offense. L.T. complained mightily; he disappeared in clear sight, because the ball wasn't being given to him the way it had been previously. Granted, he had also, by then, taken a million hits as a running back, and he was getting older.
Or Pau Gasol. On the Lakers, he had to play alongside Kobe Bryant, though brilliant a ball hog much of the time, with an ego to match it. So Gasol was effective for a few years from his post position: 7 feet tall, agile, runs the basketball court well. He scored, rebounded, defended, and fit into the team scheme. The Lakers, partly because of his contributions, won championships.
But things shifted, and his role was changed. He no longer seemed to be as good a player. That actually wasn't totally true: He was having less of an impact, but his individual skills had not diminished. He just was being put into an offensive system that didn't highlight his particular abilities. He eventually left, and went to the Chicago Bulls, where he showed he was still a stellar player.
The reason this athlete-in-system issue comes up is that you frequently see athletes' performances vary from impressive to less-than. Why is that? I have pondered. Sure, older athletes, like possibly Eli Manning of the New York Giants right now who is going through a horrendous season with his football team, erode in skills eventually as they age. That's just a product of the aging process. Totally normal.
But others experience a dip in a season right after one in which they excelled. This is the quandary. Are they one-season wonders, who really aren't that good consistently but they had a career season, which they will never repeat again? Wil Myers of the Padres showed some production, gained a franchise-record contract over several years last winter, and he bombed this season, along with the rest of the farm-team-level team. He has never shown himself to be a star over a period of seasons. His career batting average never did peak.
The Padres, in their rush to find a "face of the franchise", made a bad business decision by giving Myers, unproven and not an established star, a huge contract which they're either going to have to eat or trade away when it becomes apparent he isn't up to the stardom that the contract would indicate.
No, I'm talking instead about proven athletes who are known quantities, yet who suffer through ups and downs apart from injuries or the normal inconsistency that comes in sports performance--because humans are not robots, they're flesh, blood, and human minds that have to butt up against pressure, the challenge of repeating a command performance night-after-night, and so forth.
Who is a great example of what I'm talking about?
Lou Brock, the great Cardinal base-stealer, was a garden-variety outfielder with the Chicago Cubs, then was traded to St. Louis and became the top base-stealer of all time (until Rickey Henderson) and a Hall of Fame all-around performer. But that was partly because Brock was ready to blossom at that point in his career.
Isaiah Thomas of the Celtics, a short 5'9" in the NBA, dominated games last year as he led Boston into the playoffs (before suffering a season-ending injury). The system Boston used allowed the tiny guard to handle the ball all the time, to dish it out or to score. That's what he did, and he did it well.
If he had played for a coach who said, "Here, Isaiah, you're short, you're not going to be our centerpiece. You help move the ball around to your teammates," he wouldn't have soared to the heights of performance the way he did during the regular season.
I wonder how many young athletes had the potential, yet they weren't able to get a footing or use their abilities in a way that helped them develop and become more proficient performers. I know that when I played basketball in high school, I was new to the sport. In the 10th grade, my coach said to me, the tallest guy on the practice court at nearly 6'5", "Shoot the ball." I was right under the basket, but I hadn't yet developed a shot or any moves to score. So, facing away from the basket and hearing Coach Cornelius, I leaned over backwards and threw the ball up over my head. Ridiculous, but I didn't know how to apply what he was encouraging me to do. That came later.
Fast-forward two years, and I had an additional year of basketball (though only during the school season, in reality) and growth physically. My varsity coach knew how to get inside individual players' heads and motivate them. He motivated me by fear. He yelled at me to get aggressive. This was a big struggle for me, but it forced me to get out of my lawdy-daw, rope-a-dope playing, that lacked aggression and effectiveness, and led to me fighting for the ball, wanting to win, and more importantly, having the confidence that I belonged out on the court and could now help my team overcome.
If you're not comfortable on the court, and you're kind of apologetic, allowing other athletes to have their way and to push you around, you won't be effective. I'm thinking of basketball now, but I think it applies to other sports. When you take that step of personal confidence in your playing skills, everyone in the gym can spot it from the top of the stands--you behave differently, you play differently. You have an impact on the contest at hand.
It's not ego. It's balance. Having an accurate view of yourself. You have skills, you've worked hard at developing them, and it's time for you to play showing that's true.
But, again, these individual skills have to be fit into a team system. And that's the rub.
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