"The Peril of Ease" and Sports Psychology

Yesterday, I came across a blog post written by Dan Devine on Yahoo. In it, he quotes former NBA coach Jeff Van Gundy in a discussion about how well talent translates to performance, in athletics, specifically with regard to basketball and Houston Rocket Tracy McGrady.

"Much of the game was so easy — you see this in the AAU level, where they have freakishly talented players," he continued. "When it's that easy to dominate at that young age because of your physical tools — his wingspan was freakish, his size was enormous, his IQ — my sense was, all that did get in the way of Tracy reaching his highest heights."

The basic principle makes some sense. If you're bigger, stronger, faster and more talented than the competition you're playing against, you're not forced to develop the finer points of your game, because when push comes to shove, you can just rely on your superior gifts to give you the edge you need. And when those gifts start to fade, if you haven't been developing new skills (or sharpening old ones) for a rainy day, you'll find yourself soaking wet in a storm that might just wash you away from the league.

This presents a pretty interesting question: Do the most talented athletes in any sport tend to rely on their talent at the expense of developing, as Devine calls them, the "finer points" of his game? This is an impossible question to answer with complete accuracy, as talent evaluation is largely a subjective discipline. Take Alex Rodriguez, for example. Out of high school, he was the 1st pick in the MLB draft. He was considered extremely talented as a hitter with the potential to play shortstop, a premium defensive position, at the Major League level. Now, I don't know any scouts who were actually tasked with evaluating him, either as an amateur or later as a professional, but many of the reports I read about him indicated that he was a tireless worker, focused on improving all aspects of his game. In fact, his desire to be great may have been so pronounced that it led him to take steroids to improve his game. This does not sound like the "peril of ease" referenced in Devine's post.

Maybe the "peril of ease" varies with each individual player. Maybe some players with elite talent put more pressure on themselves to perform at an elite level, while others try not to wear themselves out when they aren't in between the lines.

Of course, we can never really know for sure what is going on inside the heads of professional athletes, but speculation has always been part of the fun of studying sports.