Playing hard is a skill. Ever notice the guy who plays harder than you on the court always seems to play harder than you, i.e. when you step it up, so does he. He always seems to play a little bit harder than you. Sometimes you have enough raw skill to overcome, but sometimes not. The reason raw out efforting is an effective strategy, is because you can tend to get more intense as the game wears on, whereas, the more refined skills tend to falter as players wear down.
Its not like shooting because everyone cant shoot. Evereyone can play hard or try hard. You dont have to practice to play hard. Your will and desire makes you play hard. Chuck hayes has all the desire in the world but he cant post a guy up and make a play with the ball, but what he can do is run down a loose ball or back tap a rebound, there is a huge difference. Now what you really want is a skillful guy that plays hard like kobe, wade,lebron and such, but you can have a guy that plays hard and just dont have the skill or skills to be really effective.
I completely agree. Actually, in typing this post I realized the whole problem with this argument. I think most of us in the "it's not a skill" camp are simply differing in our distinction of what is a skill. For example: playing guitar. Anyone can pick up a guitar and strum a chord, but I consider it a SKILL if you can play it by ear, learn and adapt quickly, or have 'mastered' it to some degree. The analogy? Shooting a free throw. Anyone can "shoot" a free-throw, but it becomes a skill when a guy is automatic and can be sent to the line and counted on to make 90%. He is a "skilled" free-throw shooter. So anyway the reason I say this is because using this definition of skill, "playing hard" doesn't fit. Anyone can do it - they don't have to have any level of mastery of their craft.
Playing hard is a skill. You just don't teach players to play hard. It is not something you can teach someone. I think playing hard is a skill that involves will power that motivates a player.
Its a skill. You "learn" to play hard the way you learn anything else. Anyone who has raised a child knows that you have to teach the child to overcome the natural desire to back down from something they perceive as painful in order to take the next step toward whatever goal they can hold in their mind. As the parent of a very willful child with autism and as a psychotherapist I can tell you from first hand experience that anyone can learn this skill. It's an executive functioning thing and an emotional regulation thing. I love the Rockets, and I'm looking forward to this season, because Morey has paired a team of exceptionally "smart" players with an exceptionally smart coach. I don't care if we end up last in our division (without Yao or T-mac for a time), which I don't think we will, because I believe this team is going to solve every problem it faces and find a way to compete. Battier being the poster boy for using smarts to beat more gifted adversaries.
Yes. Playing hard is not thought of conventionally as a skill, but it fits all the relevant criteria when I think about it. - Not all players do it to the same extent - Its something that you players to do in order to win games - Its something that a player can get better at with training - Its something a player can get worse at, if they stop doing it for a while
It is not a skill. it is one of the skill_factors, ranging from 0.0 to 1.0 a player's output= skill * skill_factors. A GM needs to calculate skill_factor correctly to avoid overpaying a player's skill.
It's the most important skill of all. Durvasa and backward head summed it up for me. You can't just turn the switch when you want to. Concentration, effort, focus. If I can sink free throws in practice, but cannot do it during the game, I wouldn't be considered a skilled player.
http://blogs.chron.com/nba/2009/11/lakers_103_rockets_102_is_more.html [rquoter] Lakers 103, Rockets 102: Is Morey right? Is playing hard "a skill?' Daryl Morey is fond of saying that playing hard is a skill, like any other. That never seemed quite right, but he might have a point. Perhaps it's more a 'quality' or a 'talent' than a 'skill.' But moving beyond the semantics, we can consider the Rockets five-game test to start the season, the stretch we knew would go a long way toward measuring the Rockets' no-stars style while Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady watch in suits, and draw certain conclusions. The Rockets really do play hard, and that has been the key to their wins against the Warriors, Trail Blazers and Jazz and Wednesday's 103-102 overtime loss to the Lakers. It's not just their faint hope for this season or a marketing effort. The Rockets have inspired those reviews from Nate McMillan, Jerry Sloan and Phil Jackson, three of the league's best coaches. Two are in the Hall of Fame and all three played just as the Rockets now must. They know. The Rockets did not have everything going on Wednesday. They did not shoot 3s the way they had been, hitting 7 of 24. Trevor Ariza struggled in every way offensively. Chase Budinger was out, reducing the rotation to basically seven players. They can be and have been better than this. But they did all the things that come from hustle, outrebounding the Lakers, scoring more in the paint and more on the break. This team of the 6-foot-6 center and 5-foot-something point guard is not without talents, but the impressive start to the season really does seem to be about how hard they play, to the point that playing hard does seem to be more of a talent (or a skill, as Daryl put it) than a simple matter of choice. Players can be willing to do the things the Rockets do, but never see the chance. Big men might want to offensive rebound but hesitate until it's too late. Guards can fall back on the habits of heading the other way, rather than fight for the defensive boards. Defenders might never see the chance to help and draw painful offensive fouls. Players might not see the time to dive for loose balls until someone else already has. They said all summer that their play against the Lakers after Yao Ming went out demonstrated what they could do now, but that was just four games, and two were blowout losses. If Wednesday's game was Game 8 of the Rockets series, the Rockets were very much the team that gave the Lakers a tougher time in last season's playoffs than any other. There are things they must do better, especially moving the ball and executing better down the stretch. But now, it seems clear that when they speak of their talents, playing hard really is at the top of the list. It is something that players cannot choose to have, any more than Chuck Hayes could choose to be taller or Luis Scola can decide to jump higher. It still seems weird when Daryl says it, but then the games begin and his point is clear. The Rockets have to overachieve, and could not quite get over that hump against the Lakers on Wednesday, but they really have made playing hard appear to be a special talent. [/rquoter]
That's not true, certain guys can turn it off and on when they want. Some players can coast through the regular season and turn it on for the playoffs. Robert Horry is a the most successful example of such a player. Some people say that Horry was clutch, I say he just played harder. There are certainly guys in the league that have a hard time maintaining their intensity all the time, but the main reason you don't see everyone playing as hard as KG or Scola or young Kobe is that they know how to pace themselves.
I'm coming late to this thread and have only read the first two and last page so pardon me if this has been addressed. As an athlete and a coach I definately don't think playing hard is a skill and I am somewhat troubled by the idea that it is considered a skill. Morey and most posters who say it is a skill seem to be only looking at it from where it leads to success but often playing hard doesn't lead to success. For instance Ryan Bowen plays hard, gives a lot of effort on the court, but that doesn't make him a great player. So while there are a lot of players who go out there give it there all and hustle that don't automatically lead to success. From the standpoint as a coach though I don't like the idea of playing hard to be a skill as I find it a bit of a copout. A player that looks at it as a skill or talent might decide that he feels that since its not something innate to him he doesn't need to work hard. Either it leads to defeatism where someone accepts they don't have that skill and quit or else it leads to laziness where someone decides that rather than working hard on all aspects of the game decide that they can get by on another aspect of the game. Playing hard should be viewed as a mindset that can be instilled in everyone rather than a skill that either somepeople have and some people don't.
The reality, though, is some players are just better at it than others. That's what it comes down to. And there are plenty of skills that don't necessarily translate into success. Having a great shooting stroke may not translate to anything if the player doesn't have other tools to take advantage of it.
True but then is that due to lack of a skill or just laziness? The problem I have with saying that playing hard is a skill innate to someone then the converse must be true that laziness is also innate to someone. From my stand point as a coach then do I say that so-so player isn't accountable for his lack of hustle because he is just innately lazy and can't help himself? But shooting touch is something that while you can coach it still requires some base level of innate ability to have any level of competence. Trying hard doesn't require an innate ability but is purely the level of effort. Now certainly there are players who play harder than others and we could chalk that to a will to win but its not like those that don't play harder don't have the ability to do so, barring injury. On the other hand though just working hard isn't going to guarentee success. So a Ryan Bowen can work as harder than T-Mac yet still not be as good as T-Mac. Conversely a T-mac can work as hard as a Ryan Bowen if he chooses to do so. Its not skill or lack of that prevents either from working hard or not working hard.
I don't agree that "trying hard" doesn't require some base level of innate ability. On draft day, you hear talk about players "with a motor" all the time. To a large degree, I'd say that attribute is innate.
So then do you think laziness is innate also? Do you think there are players that really can't play any harder than you see them do since they don't have the skill to play hard?
Yes. Again, to a degree. I think a big part of it is personality. That's not to say you can't get better at it. But you don't just all of a sudden become a hard worker. It's something you build up as habit, and some guys pick it up more easily than others. Much like with other attributes we refer to as skills.
Habit sure but not skill. The difference that I see is that everyone can be a hard worker but not everyone can be a great shooter, rebounder or have great court vision. Granted those things take work to perfect but unless you already have some base amount of talent no amount of effort will make those skills great unless you have some talent already. That said though anyone can be a hard worker through effort.
