The Shrine

I was reading a sport manga article one day and the guy was saying the thing that really bugs him about the Japanese is that they seem to think effort is everything in sports. But if you watch any sports even casually you'll know this is not the case which is why most of the sports manga are spectcularly bad. The Denver Nuggets lost their coach since he was out for cancer treatment, and I forgot which writer (probably Bill Simmons) said that if this was a movie they'd rally together under the temporary coach to win round 1, coach makes a miraculous return by round 2 and they go on to win the NBA champion. However since this is reality Denver gets bounced in round 1 as the team is in disarray from being led by a guy who clearly have no idea what's going on. Shaq isn't known for a great work ethics and I think the only regrets he might have is maybe he could've won 8 rings instead of 4, but then who's to say if he wouldn't hurt himself in some way if he trained harder.

Back in the season when Lakers got Karl Malone the announcers was saying how Karl Malone was never injured in his life because he has a great work ethics, and then one game Shaq landed on Karl Malone's foot and he sure got injuried, and one of the announcer said no amount of training is going to save you from getting hurt when Shaq landed on you. I mean it's not just manga, most people tend to say Shaq's problem is that he didn't work hard enough, but there are arguably only two people in the last 15 years that have a more successful career than he did. LeBron James and Dwayne Wade doesn't strike me as super duper hard workers, at least they don't have a reputation of being one like Kobe Bryant, and yet they're better than him in some ways.

You'd see Derek Fisher go for 2 for 10 and then an analyst will tell you that he works hard and brings intangibles and makes a clutch shot at the end, but if you just replaced him with a generic average PG that shoots for 45% the game might not even be close. Yes I realize you don't always get to replace your bad players with a generic average player due to salary cap and all the other stuff, but if you can't measure a guy's value by his oncourt production he probably doesn't have very much value. It's kind of like FF12 when Ashe said the summoned monster gives them a treasure whose value cannot be measured, Balthier replied he rather have treasure whose value can be measured.

I'm not saying bow down to talent and forget working hard, but the Yankees and Lakers of the world do win and they obviously load up on talent, not effort. I think if you try to say everything comes from hard work it actually diminishes the accomlishment of the guys that are idolized. I mean if all I have to do is punch some bags every day to be a top MMA guy then what's so special about someone who's good at it? It's special because no matter how hard you try you'll almost certainly never be as good as those guys doing whatever they do. I mean sure I know people want to root for the underdog but if the undredog always win you end up with some kind of communist type of world where today the champion is Joe Average #1 and tomorrow it's Joe Average #3. The Yankees/Lakers wouldn't be the bad guys if they didn't usually win (relatively).

It's the combo of both that allows you to win championships. The Lakers with Kobe as their leader didn't win shit 'til they figured it out. In hockey, the most talented teams regularly get beat if they don't work as hard as the others. Same with football. Even the Yanks were like that last year. They may an astronomical payroll, but they only won their first championship in 10 years when they realized they needed to put forth full effort with that expensive talent to win

There's no guaranteed buying the most expensive guys necessarily means you have the best talent. After all it's not like people haven't made mistakes evaluating talents before. But you can't seriously say like Holliday who just pitched a no hitter and that was just because he 'worked hard'. I'm sure the top guys all work pretty hard but if that's all they did they wouldn't be so special.

What I don't get is how people seem to idolize hard work not just in fiction but also real life, and yet they don't actually follow through. The Spurs are probably the closest team that can be called a dynasty that relies more on hard work than raw talent (though even that is arguable, as they have good fundamentals but good fundamentals still depends on talent), and they routinely have the worst ratings in the NBA Finals. So clearly people want to see talent because if you want fundamentals it doesn't get more fundamental than the Spurs, but the numbers would show otherwise. People praise Shane Battier for being a fundamentally sound defensive player, yet I'm sure nobody is watching a Rockets game because he's there.

I was watching the MLB Playoffs and they use 3 or 4 pitchers for the playoffs. They sure don't let your random pitcher with a 10-15 record pitch even if he's a 'hard worker'. If any of the teams started their 5th string pitcher you'd want the manager to have their head examined, but I'm sure that guy probably works very hard (he's clearly not talented enough to get by with just talent).

People all talk about how hard work and efforts a lot, but when it's your favorite team that's on the line, I bet most peopel would rather you've a roster like the Yankees or the Lakers as opposed to the Bobcats.