
The threat of youth basketball - bkohlmann
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/27125793/these-kids-ticking-bombs-threat-youth-basketball
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sandworm101
>> the growing tendency for parents and kids to focus on one sport, year-
round, to the exclusion of all others.

>> But while the upsides of specialization are unclear, there are few doubts
about the downsides.

What doubts? Winning. To be the best, and being the best is all that matters
these days, you must focus on only one sport. For me it was swimming. To
compete at the national level you have to train all year, 20+ hours a week.
And to actually win at the national level you have to sub-specialize into
particular events, specific stroke/distance combinations. Sure, some stars can
win at everything, but the majority of swimmers focus. There aren't many
champion 50m sprinters who can also medal in 400/800 IMs, not in the last
decade or two.

So perhaps the NBA should stop taking only the best basketball players.
Perhaps they should look at people who are not literally 'the best' and look
at people who are well-rounded and therefor less likely to be injured in their
first pro year. But that doesn't win championships. Professional players are
essentially actors on a stage for an audience. They are tools for teams,
businesses that will be around long after any individual players are
injured/retired. What turns the most profit (winning) isn't necessarily what
is best for the human players.

~~~
jessaustin
This is what the grinders tell themselves. They still get beaten regularly (
_not_ all the time) by those with superior native talent. _Those_ people don't
focus as you suggest, and they still win. The NFL MVP last year could
certainly have been an MLB MVP, had he chosen to go that way. When he quit
college baseball, he was told by pro baseball players (e.g. A-Rod) that he was
"wasting his baseball talent". Patrick Mahomes was born with a lot of native
talent, so his time spent playing baseball didn't hurt him...

It's fine to play sports, but only so long as it's fun. If it ain't fun, you
don't have enough native talent for it, and you're wasting your time.

(This isn't the case for other competitions that don't attract so many
competitors. In those cases, sure, grind if you want.)

~~~
sandworm101
Ya, I do not believe in an elite group with "native" talent granting them
superiority. That might make you the best person in your home town but means
nothing on the national level. By the time you are looking at nationals, all
the non-talent people have been filtered out. Everyone now has the correct
body type. They all have near-perfect reflexes. There is also no grinding. The
guy who wins nationals doesn't do so because he tried harder than the guy in
second place. Everyone is trying as hard as is humanly possible, to the point
that trying any harder means inevitable injury. What matters is strategic
training, good coaching, and access to resources.

Want to be a good swimmer? Join a club and try hard. Want to be the best
swimmer in your city? Get a private coach and a 50 meter lane all to yourself
every afternoon. Want to win a medal? Be rich. Live across the street from the
50m pool, have control over that pool's water temperature, have 24/7 access to
a full gym, a dietitian, and a sports medicine doctor who won't make you sit
in a waiting room.

~~~
jessaustin
You don't have to believe it for it to be true. Maybe swimming is an outlier,
though I kind of doubt it. TFA is about basketball. It's obvious that a 7'
athletic guy with good coordination will be a better basketball player _the
first time he touches a basketball_ than a slow 5'5" dude with poor balance
would be after ten years of grinding.

The long tail dominates competition. All elite swimmers look the same to you,
so we can safely conclude that you are neither an elite swimmer nor an elite
swimming coach. You seem to think it's possible to buy one's way into swimming
dominance. It's not. Michael Phelps didn't win 23 gold medals by being rich
and getting better coaching than all the competitors in 23 different Olympic
fields. He is the child of a teacher and a cop (divorced), who held a national
record by the age of 10, having learned to swim at age 7. He is a supremely
talented swimmer.

~~~
puranjay
I'm a part-time musician and nowhere is this "native talent" more visible than
in music. I've been grinding at the guitar for years and can only call myself
above average at best. Yet, there are musicians I know who can literally pick
up a brand new instrument, fiddle around for a couple of hours, and start
playing intricate melodies on it all within a day.

Native talent is definitely a thing and anyone who says otherwise is either
lying or trying to sell you something.

Doesn't mean that hard work isn't important, of course. But a natively
talented guy with 10 hours of grinding will somehow be better than the
untalented guy with 100 hours of grinding

~~~
darkpuma
> _" anyone who says otherwise is either lying "_

Often to themselves in my experience. People who've not yet discovered any of
their own talents are sometimes bitter at the suggestion that talent is a real
thing.

~~~
dragandj
I think it is the opposite: there is a huge number of people in any nation, so
talent is _abundant_. The thing is that at the top tier _everyone_ is
talented, and usually the dedication and factors other than talent, including
luck, is what makes the difference.

~~~
toasterlovin
FWIW, it’s pretty clear to anybody who watches pro sports that talent differs
dramatically even at the highest level.

~~~
dragandj
I am not sure that most people that watch pro sports have knowledge to judge
the fine details. What is pretty clear to anybody is that someone plays
better, but what is not clear is _why_ is that so. For every dominant pro
athlete there might be many that were injured or had other problems that
degraded their performance.

~~~
toasterlovin
It's pretty clear to even unskilled watchers that, for instance, Lebron James
and Shaquille O'Neil are/were talented in a way that no players before or
since were. Both players can move with the speed and agility of payers that
weigh 50 lbs less. And if it's true that innate talent is the major
differentiator at literally the pinnacle of the sport, why would one assume
that it somehow ceases to be the case at the levels just below that?
Especially when every single professional player has access to the same
resources and hours in the day for the practice and training aspect of sports
performance?

And, FWIW, Shaq was notorious for his poor work ethic. He never practiced
basic skills (free throw shooting) and always started a new season overweight
and out of shape. Then there's the fastest person who ever lived, Usain Bolt,
who trains less than a motivated amateur cross fitter.

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ErikAugust
I have a hunch it has to do with the sort of fast twitch athleticism that is
required by the NBA combined with the volume that even young people play
competitively.

There was a study of a soccer club leagues in Europe. They found the higher in
competition you go, the slower twitch the players were. Why? Probably because
they could simply play more without injury, even though faster twitch should
provide an advantage in speed, etc. Instead though, faster twitch athletes
can’t handle the work load and become injured.

One suggestion would be to measure this, and tailor the training load
individually. Many athletes would benefit from less training because that is
how they are built.

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WalterBright
I recall reading about some archaeologists who studied the bones of early
American colonists. Their skeletons all showed signs of extreme, sustained
stress. They basically worked themselves to death and died young.

~~~
mruts
Founder’s effects are really interesting. One might hypothesis that this led
to the descendants of these colonists to have stronger bones. You see this
effect in many populations that originated from few individuals. A good
example is Polynesians, who nowadays have massive obesity problems. The
advantage that let these founders survive and reproduce is same that hurts
them today (low metabolism, efficient calorie usage, etc).

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axilmar
> You get a sophomore that can do a 360-degree dunk whereas 20 years ago you
> never saw that

Well, not true of course. I've been playing basketball my whole life, and I've
seen 15 year olds jumping from the free throw line, doing windmills and double
pump reverse dunks not only 20 years ago, but 30 years ago. And all of them
were white, since I live in Europe.

Do we really expect children of today to not become the fragile adults of
tomorrow, when children rarely go out and play? when we were young, we were
out for the better part of the day, playing, running, jumping, lifting, you
name it. And the generation before us were even more physical, doing lots of
work outside. And from these generations came out the super athletes that we
all know and love today.

~~~
MaconBacon
360 dunk is very different than a double pump or windmill. Spud Webb was doing
a double pump 30 years ago...

I think you are looking through rose colored glasses if you believe there was
a glut of 14 year old European dudes with the hops for 360 dunks in 1989...

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darkpuma
The problem is not year-round participation in sports; the problems are
specific to the sports themselves. Swimming year-round is very common and the
only thing likely to get harmed is the health of your hair. That's because
swimming is a low impact holistic exercise (at least for the majority, who are
swimming at a state level at best); basketball on the other hand is high
impact and is going to inherently have more of these problems, particularly
without recuperation periods. Even if a swimmer overspecializes and overtrains
without break for years, they are unlikely to cripple themselves because the
sport simply isn't dangerous _in that way_.

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quibbler
Unclear from the article how to prevent those injuries? I thought modern
sports already tries to cover all the bases, so people also do supplementary
strength training, for example.

Maybe the issue is not specialization, but too much sports in general?

