Basketball - unleashed athleticism. Seeing guys jump out of the gym, do 360 dunks, swat balls into the stands...it's all about how athletic it looks. There are fantastic college players who cannot even ride the pine in the pros because their skillsets are less valuable there. The rules of the pro game allow for athletic expression more than exorbitant skill. Which is how you get so many pro players who are terrible free throw shooters. That's not the defining aspect that allows them success.
Football - synchronized fury. If any sport was ever a manifestation of the Id, it's football. Football players are all great athletes too - you telling me another sport that has 6'6, 300 pound guys running 4.8 40s and broad jumping 10 feet? But the design of the sport is to leash that athletic, hard hitting fury and attempt to have an intellectual victory over raw emotion. It's a fascinating battle of the cerebral vs. the lizard brain.
Hockey - forced precision. I want you to skate backwards at 30 MPH and use a stupidly L-shaped stick to hit a little round object into a small net guarded by a large man in even larger pads. The game is physical and fast, with numerous line changes and steps on and off the field of play. You get 2 minutes to get all your line mates on the same page and orchestrate an attack on this net where you try to club that round thing into a VERY tiny space as men attempt to drive you off. It requires even more precision than baseball - 30% is a good success rate in baseball, but if you scored 30% of your shots on goal you'd never lose.
Baseball - elegant grace. From watching the CF glide over to snag a ball in midair to seeing the double play turned against a guy coming in spikes up, to the simple beauty of round ball on round bat, the crack of hide against wood or into leather is a gorgeous thing. It's why guys like Jose Canseco could never define baseball. Being a large, lumbering hulk is not representative of the sport. It's an elegant endeavor, whether at the plate or in the field, and I think that's why ugly defense carries such a stigma, and IMO one reason why we WANT defense to count for so much. It just feels more genuine to the sport.
I dunno if being a basketball player helps Taijuan, but I think being a graceful one absolutely does.
Love the thread, and the first post ghost.
~G
Add new comment
1