The Mind of a Basketball player

[KG Living Legend]

  It maybe the most underrated aspect of the evaluation and ultimately the rating of a player. Larry Bird, Magic, Kidd, Rondo, Marc Jackson, Lebron, Oscar, Bill Russell, Cousy, Stockton. What do they all have in common. A beautiful mind. For basketball that is.

 For the Celtics Kedrick Brown, Marcus Banks, Jerome Moiso, Fab Melo, Gerald Green. What do these players have in common. Tremendous physical abilities. Very low Basketball IQ, and ability to quickly process the game quickly and precisely.

 I would say it's God Given ability. You can't teach someone to see the court, and consistently be one step of ahead of the competition like Bird, Nash, Rondo. You either have it or you don't. It's very rare to be both an athlete and be a basketball Genius Lebron, Jordan. Kobe to an extent. Usually it's one or the other. When you have both your in the hall of fame.

 Going forward, I think Danny has been learning when in doubt go brains over brawn. Stay away from "projects" like Melo, Gerald Green, Marcus Banks. And go with guys that can actually play. Have a history of making the proper decisions  and using there heads.

 With regards to Melo, I will say that he looks better. He's lost weight, but at the end of the day he's seven feet tall, and a mental midget. Sorry Melo but it's true. I'm still pulling for you though big guy. He came a long way at Syracuse. Now just become the Defensive player of the year in are league. Then we will all be very happy with you. And I'll apologize for calling you a mental midget.

 

[KG Living Legend]

s far as the C's go. Sullinger and Olynk's brains look to be solid to very good. Bradley has a long way to go. He was more the Athlete pick than the polished skill pick. Although there is something to be said for his smarts on defense.

 Anybody have Basketball Brains that really stand out to you good or bad.

[CelticsFan9]

The thing I'm going to miss about Pierce and KG (other than getting to watch two HOF'ers) is their BBIQ.

Both guys were such smart players, both offensively and defensively.

[guava_wrench]

As Ray Allen says, those players work like crazy to get that way. It wasn't given to them. Yes, to intelligence has a genetic component, as does coordination. Personality has a genetic component too. Influences growing up also had an impact, no doubt.

But the greats worked incredibly hard to become what they became. It is a travesty to pretend they were just given these abilities when these guys spend ridiculous hours in the gym and on the court honing their abilities. Some spend hours watching tape to prepare for opponents. We have all heard stories of how intense Jordan was in practice.

[KG Living Legend]

 It may be developed and enhanced through practice. But are you denying that ultimately it's not god given to see the game like Magic,Bird,Lebron, The first time I saw Lebron he was 16 years old and he was more advanced than most NBA players. Ainge said there was only five players in the NBA that he would not trade for him when he was in high school.

 It's mostly god given ability. I could practice everyday all of my life three times longer than anyone watch tape all day long. I'm never gonna see the floor like Lebron could when he was 16. That's not god given?

[syfy9]

[lightspeed5]

this is why id give up on fab. Its a lost cause for him to develop a natural iq for the game.

[syfy9]

this is why id give up on fab. Its a lost cause for him to develop a natural iq for the game.

Fab's mind map for basketball is an enigma.

[Ogaju]

this is why id give up on fab. Its a lost cause for him to develop a natural iq for the game.

Fab's mind map for basketball is an enigma.

Fab Melo is not an enigma, he is a stiff.

[D.o.s.]

Great article on this subject from The Classical:

http://theclassical.org/articles/magicians-surgeons-and-the-nba

Where the league’s surgeons work in a style based on craft and applied talent, the magicians are able to work in a stranger space that’s not necessarily within the context of conventional basketball thought. This isn’t to say that the magicians work any less hard on their games than their craft-bound counterparts; they obviously don’t. But what makes them extraordinary can’t be taught, or maybe even learned; it just seems very deeply and strangely known

[KG Living Legend]

 TP Man Cool.

[KG Living Legend]

During LeBron’s unprecedentedly efficient hot streak earlier this season, I brought a friend from New Delhi to a game between the Heat and Grizzlies. I pitched it as a battle of the most transcendent player in the league against the team with the best defense, but hoped for my friend’s sake and mine that we’d witness some LeBron-ian spectacle.

But instead of showing out in classically LeBron fashion, he put up his worst shooting game of the season. Still, despite James missing 10 of his 14 shots, my friend was still impressed. My friend, who was new to basketball, did his best to understand the game by trying to guess where the ball was headed judging by the positions and roles of the other nine players. He got pretty good at it by the end of the game, except when the ball came to LeBron; then, he was as helpless as everyone else. This is the key to James, the thing at the center of his magic: he plays the game in the same physical space as the talented mortals who surround him on the court, but he engages the game on another plane.

It helps, of course, to be able to do this, and the shocking ease of LeBron’s transcendence remains the most consistently startling thing about him. But while LeBron intuitively grasps the proper angles of attack and defense -- he’s a magician to the core, but a pretty solid surgeon as well -- he also has both the cognition to look a few steps ahead of the action and the size, strength and sublime skill to live in that liminal future tense. Watch all the film on LeBron that exists, practice as hard as you wish, but there’s no way real way to play basketball like LeBron. That’s pure, practical magic.

[Celtics4ever]

Mark Jackson doesn't belong in the same sentence as Larry Bird.

[KG Living Legend]

 The point is not to compare the two as players, Jackson and Bird. Jackson at the end of his career was slower than dirt, but still was effective because of his Bball IQ