What makes a great athlete

wade boggs chicken dinner

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Considering the article is paywalled can you share a few quotes from it, or maybe add your own commentary.
Here's one snippet I found super interesting (edit: it's not really the "hook" of the article; the article is really trying to point out that one doesn't need to be "shredded" to be a great athlete and then talks about the "Dad Bod" - you can probably figure out the rest by now):
Jokić was 19 years old and two months removed from being drafted in the second round by the Denver Nuggets. He had come to P3 to undergo an advanced athlete assessment. When he attempted a vertical leap, he jumped 17 inches. It was, according to Elliott, the worst vertical jump they had ever recorded.
* * * *
As Elliott’s team evaluated Jokić, he was put through a series of tests. P3 tested his hip abduction, or how fast and far one can affect one’s hip when moving laterally. It measured second-order metrics like how quickly he could decelerate and how high he could jump two times in a row. And it looked at a list of what Elliott calls “granular biomechanics” — hundreds of variables that rate things like force production, loads and joint extension. When the tests were complete, P3 put the numbers into a machine-learning algorithm that clusters athletes into groups with similar attributes.
What was most revealing about Jokić was not the numbers themselves, but the players he compared to. He was right on the fringe of a group of guards that Elliot called “Swiss Army Knives” because of their ability to do anything on the court.
“They’re just like a B-minus to B-level in everything,” Elliott said. “And that’s Jokić. He may look herky-jerky to you. But looking at the data, we think it looks really beautiful.”
P3 gave the cluster a name: “The Kinematic Movers.” That cluster exists as a skeleton key to unlock how data and technology can unearth athletic genius and provide a fuller picture. A Kinematic Mover is not an explosive jumper. Nor particularly powerful. But grades out above average in almost everything, possessing a portfolio of some of the most useful physical tools and movements in basketball.
As a group, Kinematic Movers in the NBA have longer careers, on average, and accumulate more of the statistic Win Shares.
“I love the idea that if you can do everything pretty well, there’s a place for you at the highest level of sport,” Elliott said.
 
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SirPsychoSquints

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Jul 13, 2005
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Here's one snippet I found super interesting:
Jokić was 19 years old and two months removed from being drafted in the second round by the Denver Nuggets. He had come to P3 to undergo an advanced athlete assessment. When he attempted a vertical leap, he jumped 17 inches. It was, according to Elliott, the worst vertical jump they had ever recorded.
* * * *
As Elliott’s team evaluated Jokić, he was put through a series of tests. P3 tested his hip abduction, or how fast and far one can affect one’s hip when moving laterally. It measured second-order metrics like how quickly he could decelerate and how high he could jump two times in a row. And it looked at a list of what Elliott calls “granular biomechanics” — hundreds of variables that rate things like force production, loads and joint extension. When the tests were complete, P3 put the numbers into a machine-learning algorithm that clusters athletes into groups with similar attributes.
What was most revealing about Jokić was not the numbers themselves, but the players he compared to. He was right on the fringe of a group of guards that Elliot called “Swiss Army Knives” because of their ability to do anything on the court.
“They’re just like a B-minus to B-level in everything,” Elliott said. “And that’s Jokić. He may look herky-jerky to you. But looking at the data, we think it looks really beautiful.”
P3 gave the cluster a name: “The Kinematic Movers.” That cluster exists as a skeleton key to unlock how data and technology can unearth athletic genius and provide a fuller picture. A Kinematic Mover is not an explosive jumper. Nor particularly powerful. But grades out above average in almost everything, possessing a portfolio of some of the most useful physical tools and movements in basketball.
As a group, Kinematic Movers in the NBA have longer careers, on average, and accumulate more of the statistic Win Shares.
“I love the idea that if you can do everything pretty well, there’s a place for you at the highest level of sport,” Elliott said.
Do they have examples of other Kinematic Movers?
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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67YAZ

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Reminds me of this SI profile of Larry Bird by the Frank Deford from 1988.

Arguments can, of course, go on forever about Bird's superiority. It's common for his teammates to say that playing with Bird reveals him to be even more remarkable than he appears to the naked eye, and there's a tendency among mature blacks and whites alike in the NBA to forgive Rodman for his callow unenlightenment. Bird himself doesn't put any more credence in the other extreme, in the greatest-ever pronouncements of people like Auerbach. "That's nice stuff to hear, but I don't believe it," he says, shrugging and then adding that he'll be quite content if history is only kind enough to speak of him in the same breath as Magic Johnson and John Havlicek. However, it is difficult to believe that any athlete in any sport has demonstrated Bird's instinctive supernatural feel for his game.

But then, as a mere mortal, Bird also possesses touch, strength, stamina, hand-eye coordination, exceptional vision—he is forever spotting friends sitting way back in the bleachers—and overall court ken. This last gift is usually most vividly explained by saying that Bird is able to conduct a game in slow motion that everyone else is playing at breakneck speed.

Yet for all these extraordinary basketball-playing attributes, it is fashionable for observers to say that Bird overcomes not being an athlete. The most amazing thing has happened in America in the past few years. The definition of the word athlete has been narrowed from the dictionary's age-old "one who is trained in exercises, sports, or games requiring physical strength, agility or stamina" to exclusively mean someone who is quick (and, where it applies, can also jump high). It's understood, for example, that if it's reported that a coach needs more athletes, it means he needs some quick, black jumpers.

As a consequence, since strength, stamina, hand-eye coordination, etc., are no longer accepted as athletic attributes, when somebody like Bird succeeds in what's accepted to be an athletic endeavor, then it can only be because he's smarter and works harder than all the black guys. In Bird's case, he probably has worked as hard as anybody ever has in sport, and he does possess an incredible sixth sense, but that has no more to do with his race than it does with his Social Security number.