[Mild Rant] Why do people who don't play sports think becoming a pro-athlete is easy?

Becoming a pro athlete is like winning the lottery, your chances is very very very small.

 

People have big egos and are not self-aware of their limitations including their own work ethic.

 

If coach would have put me in we'd have won state

 

because a lot of people are insecure.

so when they see an athlete like lebron and he's doing the things they wish they could have done when they played, they just chuck it up to them being naturally gifted and that's the only reason why someone like lebron succeeded and they didn't. basically a coping mechanism.

 

Based on your genetics, it is easy. That's what people refer to, and they are right.

If you were born with certain athletic Genes, people tell you things from a young age, you'll be a millionaire by 20, and all you have to do is put in the work for something you love. It's not like working grocery, retail , desk job where you couldnt care less. Very easy to work hard when you love what you do.

So yeah, it is easy if you have the right Genes. Although that is the opinion of someone who played.

 

Professional athletes won the genetic lottery, and that's a fact. No matter how hard most of us work, or how much we love it, becoming a pro athlete isn't gonna happen. In that respect, they did get lucky. And there are plenty of pro athletes that made the pros without ever really working all that hard. They didn't succeed in the pros, but made it there. Baseball in particular is a sport where a person with mediocre work ethic can succeed if gifted enough.

Most of the players in the pros certainly busted their ass to get there, but plenty of people bust their ass at work for years to make a fraction of what pro athletes do, and that's where a lot of the animosity comes from.

Granted plenty of people have no drive or work ethic whatsoever, and they still deign to criticize athletes for being lucky, and that does piss me off.

 

It's the same way people thinking it is easy becoming a male p*rn star. It ain't that easy.

Just like the Warriors, you have to be able to get it up all the time and so days when you're facing the Kings, it's hard to get up for it

 

There is more than height and weight to winning genetic lottery , google "fast twitch muscle fibers". Plus going up against peers at young age, you get a sense of your strengths and where to improve even if you aren't dominating at that moment .

 

The only variation of this I've heard are short people who are bad at basketball but claim "with just a few more inches" it would be a very different story.

 

there are a ton of guys who hit the genetic lottery who didn't amount to **** as an nba player and even didn't get drafted.

 

These guys are still physically more gifted than 99% of the population. Small players who make it to the pro level are fast. For example, a guy like Steve Nash looks non-athletic and small by the NBA standard. But he is still over 6' tall and faster than most ordinary people. And things like court vision and shooting touch is also largely inborn talent.

Another factor of the difficulty is the small market for pro athletes. The NBA only allows 15 roster spots per team. That means only about 450 people (give and take a few) out of billions of the world's population can be an active NBA player at the same time. Think of the odds of being among that tiny fraction of the population. Basically, you have to be the top 450 guys to be there. If you want to be a physician, there are thousands more opportunities for you to make it, even though you still need to work your tail off to get there.

 

A lot of posters here call athletes lazy, scrubs rather easily. Even if they are right, they dun know that some guys are cut due to position and other factors, rather than being a scrub.

 

Why do ppl who aren’t politicians think being the president is easy? Why do ppl who aren’t chefs think being a chef is easy? Why do ppl who aren’t comedians think being a comedian is easy?

Have you ever said that a certain movie, restaurant, musician, video game sucks even though you have never been in that line of work?

“I could that do that” “you don’t need to be a genius to do that” are common thoughts when thinking about another persons profession.

 

I don't think people believe being a pro-athlete is easy.

I think the issue is the money that they're paid.

 

Most just think it comes down to winning the genetic lottery, but I don’t think anyone doubts the work ethic it takes beyond just the genes.

 

Never understood this. As someone said earlier, they are doing a job that only 450 people in the world are qualified to do - they should get paid a premium for their very services. On top of that, the players generate billions of dollars in revenue - why should they not get a big chunk of this? Are people who think this way arguing that the owners should get everything? More likely, they just haven't thought it out.

 

I tend to doubt this. I think there are some cases - usually big men who clearly just never had a love for the game - but for most people, having genetics isn't enough - you have to bust your ass to, because that's what everyone else is doing. Sure, there are some players that were just so ridiculously talented that they didn't have to work as hard, but how does a single professional player get to the NBA without actually working ?

They go through all training and practice, and while they might do it "with a bad attitude", its not like pro athletes just get to skip the parts that are hard. The laziest players in the NBA probably still have off-season workout that the average person here couldn't survive.

 

I've never heard anyone say being a pro-athlete is easy in the top leagues.

So I'm not sure what type of friends you have.

 

What exactly is the hard work we are talking about?

I assume the majority of the "work" is the athlete practicing/playing the sport they love (something many of us less athletically gifted people also love doing...for free).

There's also a big workout component that I guess you could call "work." Personally, I hate lifting weights. I find it boring and tedious. However, for some reason I love running long distances and have run several marathons. Some people would call that work, but I certainly don't.

By the same token, I know many guys who actually do enjoy going to the weight room as much as I like running, so I'm not sure they would classify that as work. Hell, my mother-in-law who has probably never competed in an actual organized sport in her life, goes to the gym 3 hours a day, because she wants to be healthy and enjoys it. She wouldn't call it work.

But in general, I think athletes are doing things the vast majority of the world enjoy doing for free (i.e., being active or playing sports). The real type of work that 90+% of the world's population participates in is not something anyone would ever enjoy doing for free. So yeah, hard for me to really be in awe of the "work" that athletes put in compared to rest of us average joe's.