No.... Several players have the same 'skills'. Playing hard is emotion-based. It's a disposition, not a skill. Its not a skill to lbe honest, or to have a positive attitude, or to be a team player, or (in this case) to try hard.
'meaningless' is a relative term. i go to shoot pick-up games every now and then with my boys. the winners of those games get absolutely nothing...other than bragging rights and the feeling that you put it on somebody. 'meaningless to everyone else? sure. not to us. the champions HATE to lose. the stories about Hakeem and Moses Malone going at it over at Fondi are legendary. There was no ring at stake. Jordan hates to lose at ANYTHING...hoops, golf, gambling...Pippen even said he hates to lose at pitching pennies. 'meaningless' is a relative term.
what about emotionless? That was actually the key word in my post, since that's what you related to playing hard...
Playing hard is not a skill, it's a will ...its the WILL to play hard all the time, its the WILL to dive after loose balls, its a WILL to do want to do all the intangibles
thats the thing, tho: i dont think there is a such thing as an 'emotionless game'. there are emotionless players... ive never seen a championship calibre player in pre-season go out and play to lose. there may be a game with several emotionless players...but alot of those cats want to win. in fact, certain playoff games are anything but 'emotionless', with guys trying to save their starting positions in some cases and other guys trying to make the squad. just my opinion.
Yeah but if playing hard is emotion based, that means players only play hard when they're full of that emotion, and if there's games that can be emotionless, then that would mean no player could play hard every game, yet some do. That's why I don't believe it's emotion based. There's vets with secure spots that still go hard during the preseason, some just go through the motions.
could it be both a skill and a will? Technically wouldn't you need the will to learn a skill? To be good at something you have to practice, have dedication towards it, in other words, the will to do it time after time.
Yea you could definately view it as both as their is definately no right or wrong answer to this question The way I see it, a skill is something you can exhibit physically with your body like dribbling or being able to solve math problems quickly (exhibiting brain power through critical thinking). You don't have to practice or even play basketball regularly to "play hard", it's just an attitude or mentality that people have within. I've played basketball all my life and have played with several people that have played only once or twice before in their lives and they PLAY HARD! It may not be pretty but they hustle on every play, dive for balls, just put the pedal to the metal because that's just who they are and the attitude they carry. IMO it's all about yourself and how much work or effort you want to give. People can playing as hard as they want and can be really bad at the skill they are trying to do. Every person in the world has the ability or potential to do whatever they are doing at a 100% max effort level. The reason people don't reach this level or reach this level but dont sustain it is because they don't have the drive or willpower to exert that much work or effort at any given moment or over any given time period.
that's a good point, in that context then playing hard doesn't have to be learned or taught, but i think people who play that way are generally hard workers in whatver they do, and i'd say they got that way by learning it sometime in their life. So maybe the answer is it's not a basketball skill, but a personal one, either you already have it or you don't, which i know some will say sounds like a personal trait, but some traits are learned behaviors, like a skill.
Haven't read the entire thread and this might have been mentioned, but I think the real issue is being missed here. How has Morey seemingly been able to find so many "effort" type players? Is it just a subjective judgement, or has he found some way of quantifying effort? Is there some metric he has found that correlates to a high effort type player?
its a skill and a talent currently. In the 80s, people were talented and hard working. Now its all about the next contract for some of these prima donnas.
