If you take a look at the list of NBA All Defensive teams of NBA, you notice that there are usually one to three players that have made their names on the defensive end as opposed to superstar players.
Also the superstar players who do make the list tend to be the older players like Kobe Bryant, Chris Paul, San Antonio Spurs' Tim Duncan. Players who have been through the NBA post season battles.
Even the Defensive Player of the Year award has rarely been awarded to a player who was force on both ends of the court like David Robinson, Michael Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwan and Kevin Garnett.
Due to their superior athletic skills, today’s athletes are told from a very young age how they are the best thing since slice bread.
An example is the following clip of seventh grader William Dillard of Greensboro (N.C.) Day School, meaning he will graduate high school as a member of the class of 2018.
//www.youtube.com/v/bO9zY0cJ96o?version=3&hl=en_US
Now don’t get me wrong, the dunk itself is an amazing feat and I tip my hat to him for having the ability to do it. He is deserving of the all the accolades that he gets as a result of it.
There is often truth behind these statements and there is nothing wrong with enjoying some well earned praise.
The problem is that some of these kids are beginning junior high school (7th or 8th grade), and they start to believe the press clippings and feel that they have earned elite status in basketball and begin to rely on the fact that they are simply more talented than the opposition rather than working on improving their game to make them better all-around players.
So you end up with a player who is able to dominate when they are facing an unmatched opponent. After one of year of relying on talent alone in college, a player will enter the NBA before he may be truly ready and bypass a chance to develop his game to become a complete all-around player.
So when the player reaches the NBA and faces an opponent who is equally talented, the player will end up having to find out the game is not as easy as previously experienced in high school and college.
At this point, if he truly has the desire to be great, he will go and do the extra work and develop his game, otherwise he may never get the message and frustrate fans by not achieving his full potential.
So Spurs fans, do you ever think the younger players will ever be able to see the full potential of being a complete basketball players and how it will help them lead their team to a NBA title?
