More Thoughts on GOAT athletes

Can we distinguish athleticism and skill?

Several years ago, I wrote a long post with my thoughts on who should be considered the world’s greatest athlete. Of course, there is no real answer to this question, so the topic is admittedly silly. On the other hand, barroom debates about who is the GOAT are fun, and sometimes involve useful analysis that may apply to more real-world problems.

I mentioned this because I just recently noticed that Brian McCormick, author of an excellent blog on basketball, wrote a post on a similar subject, and referenced mine. I recommend Brian’s post, which you can read here. As with my post, one of the main topics was distinguishing the concepts of athleticism and skill, and describing how they relate to each other. This got me thinking about this topic again, and I wanted to share some of thoughts. Many involve the idea that athleticism and skill often blend together in ways that can make them hard tease apart.

Athleticism versus skill

Here's a conventional way to distinguish between athleticism and skill: Athleticism means having basic bio-motor capacities like strength, speed, power, endurance, and range of motion. Skill means the ability to coordinate the forces created by these capacities into useful work. Here's a simple analogy: athleticism is like the structure of a car, and skill is like the driver. Or we might say that athleticism is the hardware, and skill is the software. (See my previous post for far more detail and nuance on these basic distinctions.)

The skill/athleticism distinction is intuitive, and casual sports fans will mostly agree on which athletes are gifted in one area or lacking in the other. For example, most people would agree that a sport like golf demands extraordinary levels of technical skill, but only moderate levels of athleticism. Track and field is the opposite. The most popular sports tend to be those that demand both qualities, such as soccer, football, baseball, hockey, or basketball.

Basketball versus football

Brian’s post makes a specific claim that I tend to agree with, which is that basketball requires more technical skill than American football. I think this is true, but was wondering what evidence might prove this claim.

Consider this thought experiment. An 18-year old athlete has never played football before, but has all the basic athletic qualities of a Division I wide receiver: speed, strength, and jumping ability. How many years of technical training would it take to develop this player into someone who could make the team? My guess is that many athletes with the necessary desire and work ethic would succeed within a year or two. In fact, we have evidence that this has happened several times in the past, as revealed by the cases of Tyreek Hill, Ronaldo Nehemiah, or Willie Gault, all of whom turned raw speed from track into pro-level football performance with just a few years of specific practice.

Now imagine a similar hypothetical with respect to basketball. How many years of technical practice would it take to turn a raw athletic talent into someone who can play at the college level? Even for the lower skill positions like power forward or center, it will probably take more than a few years to develop the necessary shooting, passing and dribbling skills. And for a position like point guard, the timeline would be far longer. In fact, we might guess that many superior athletes could never acquire the necessary skills to be an NBA guard, even with a decade of high quality practice. Not everyone can do this!

Picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons..

So one way to measure the skill requirement of a sport is to ask how many years of specific practice the average pro needed to get where they are. In sports like golf, tennis and gymnastics, the best performers tend to start young, and specialize before their teens. In sports like football or baseball, general athletic ability will take you a long ways, and you can delay specialization until late high school or even college.

Nature versus nurture

Another interesting difference between athleticism and skill is the role of natural talent versus training. Many elite athletes don’t train much aside from just playing their sport. Bo Jackson avoided the weight room and so did Ken Griffey Jr. I've heard from a personal trainer for the Seahawks that one of their standout players literally did not lift weights. It seems that for some genetically gifted people, elite athleticism is their natural state, and they need to do very little to maintain it. And for those without genetic gifts, there is no amount of training that will allow them to dunk or run a sub-five 40-yard dash.

Technical skill is different. In most cases, it correlates closely with hours of practice. For example, if you look at third-grade kids playing with balls, you will notice major differences in hand-eye coordination. This is probably caused more by differences in hours of practice than natural talent. Some kids start playing with balls as soon as they can crawl, and soon accumulate hundreds of hours of practice. Others ignore balls completely and never gain any experience at all. For this reason, it can be difficult to separate natural talent from natural interest.

On the other hand, the existence of prodigies should make us confident that there is such a thing as natural talent for physical skill acquisition. Some kids learn sport techniques way faster than others, even when practicing the same amount of time. This is especially true in sports like golf, tennis or gymnastics, where young kids sometimes reach levels of technical expertise that many adults never achieve even after decades of practice.

What is it about someone that allows them to learn so much faster than someone else? Perhaps it has something to do with the efficiency of the nervous system in processing and storing information related to solving physical problems. In other words, some people simply have high movement IQs.

The speed of skill acquisition might also depend on athleticism. In tennis, good stroking technique requires some baseline levels of speed, power, and agility. I have watched many squash players (myself included!) decline in their technical skill over the years as they got older. Not because they were out of practice. But because their athletic abilities degraded, and this made it much harder for them to get into the positions required for good technique. When you watch them play, it looks like their racquet work is sloppy, but the feet might be to blame. I've noticed this myself. When my feet are slow, my hands feel dumb.

Skill versus structure

Good technique is also constrained by the structure of the body, and this is a highly underrated variable in determining coordinated movement. Good techniques are easier to find if your body is, for whatever reason, “attracted” to the correct movement patterns. And if your body doesn't really “want” to move in the right way, it will take much more practice to encourage it to do so.

In golf, most people will “swing their swing”, which means moving the club along the path of least resistance, according to the natural grooves of their particular body. This is determined by the relative strengths and flexibilities of all their muscles, and the shape of their joints. People with different body types will naturally swing along different trajectories, and some of these trajectories are far more functional and useful than others. A golf “natural” might simply be someone whose physical structure is highly attracted to the correct technique for swinging.

Another clue that structure matters a lot for coordination is our intuitive ability to identify good athletes based purely on appearance, even when they're not performing. Have you ever seen a person in street clothes and strongly suspected they were a professional athlete? How did you know? It's not just a matter of size - there are all sorts of subtle differences in proportion of the frame and musculature that create the appearance of functionality and movement capability.

I once saw Alexander Rodriguez in street clothes at my gym during the height of his career. I didn’t recognize him at first because I was behind him and couldn’t see his face. But I immediately thought this guy must be a professional athlete. In fact, I thought he must be a superstar. Maybe an NFL quarterback, or an NBA point guard, or a professional baseball player. It wasn’t just because he was big (6’ 3 220). There were other big guys in the gym as well, and they don’t necessarily look like athletes. It was something about his general proportions, or maybe just the way he was walking, that made him look extremely powerful and graceful, like a jungle cat.

When I used to travel to squash or tennis tournaments, I wanted to identify the best players. I found that I could make good guesses about who they were based on their general appearance, before seeing them play. At my daughters’ cross country races, or track events, I try to guess the winners when they walk up the start line. I succeed more often than I fail, which tells me there must be a lot of information about athletic ability in physical structure.

This is why people are so surprised that Nikolai Jokic is a top player. He's the exception that proves the rule. He doesn't look like one of the all-time greats, or even a starter. This is part of the reason he has a reputation for being a basketball genius. If it's not his body, it must be his mind.

Skill versus psychology

Another reason that some people learn physical skills faster than others is psychological – they simply love spending enormous amounts of time intensely focused on acquiring physical skills.

When Tiger Woods was only two years old, he loved to watch his dad practice his golf swing in the garage. And when he was old enough, all he wanted to do was swing. As an adult, he would ask his driver to stop the car on long trips, so he could get out by the side of the road and practice a new swing thought that had just come into his head. Tiger’s unusual talent for golf is inseparable from his unusual interest in golf.

Picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Wrapping up

In a comment on Brian's post, he speculated that someone like LeBron James would very quickly learn to achieve elite status in many different sports, including baseball and even tennis. His basic athletic qualities - strength, speed, power, fitness - would be extremely helpful. His innate movement IQ would be transferable as well. As would his natural ability to focus intensely, obsessively even, on acquiring physical skills. But I question whether the structure of his body (which is obviously optimal for basketball) would support elite performance in other sports. Who knows! I wouldn't be surprised if he wasn't a “natural” in soccer or tennis.

If you have any of your own speculations or comments on this barroom debate, feel free to add them in the comments.