Performance under Pressure, Part V

Donovan Bailey said that while athletes participating in the 100m dash share genetics and other physical characteristics, it’s entirely mental when they arrive in the stadium for the final heat. Swimmers and other athletes would be remiss not to take the 1996 Olympic Champion’s advice. Self-confidence, technique, overcoming fear (of success and failure) are among the essential skills possessed by an Olympic Champion.

Michael Phelps won eight gold medals in a single Olympics. He is an amazing athlete. But Phelps also performs consistently and never wavers from his game plan. He’d only have six medals if the competition were as diligent. In the Men’s 4x100m Feeestyle relay, Alain Bernard had a relatively large lead going into the final stretch over Jason Lezak but swam too close to the lane divider, allowing the American to draft behind and out-touch him at the wall. In the Men’s 100m Butterfly, Serbian Milorad Cavic appeared to have a half-meter lead with two meters to swim but lifted his head at the wall and lost by 0.01 seconds. Phelps realized that he was behind and that he was out of sync with his normal stroke rhythm. He took a “chopped stroke” and barely won the event.

In the 1992 Men’s 100m Backstroke, Mark Tewksbury spent the preceding year visualizing his race in Barcelona. He studied the pool when it was under construction and planned every detail of his race months in advance. When he got within meters of the wall, he realized that he was out of sync with his normal stroke pattern and didn’t have enough time for a full stroke. Consequently, Tewksbury reached backwards and won the race by milliseconds. Both Phelps and Tewksbury focused on the mental aspect of swimming and narrowly won gold medals as a result.

Egregious mental errors have occurred in other sports too.

• Women’s Marathon: the field allowed one athlete, Constantina Tomescu-Dita to breakaway and lead more than half the race. The Romanian won by half a minute and it seemed as if the chase pack had forgotten that she was in the race.
• Women’s 400m Freestyle Swim: Katie Hoff led most of the race but decided to touch the wall with a flat palm. Great Britain’s Rebecca Adlington made a last outstretched lunge for the wall and won by 0.07 seconds.
• Women’s Freestyle Wrestling 63kg Bronze Medal Match: Martine Dugrenier was up a point with thirty seconds remaining. After she had taken the lead with a leg-lace takedown, she quickly gave up her back and side control to opponent Randi Millar, losing with seconds remaining.

Why are these athletes losing focus at critical moments? Tewksbury hypothesizes that the fear of success and reaching a life-long dream is as prevalent as the fear of failure. C.B.C. commentators Steve Armitage and Byron McDonald praised Phelps for dominating every element of the race. Tewksbury told anchor Ron McLean that Canada needs to have benchmarks for all aspects of the performance.

What makes up a gold medal swim in London 2012 and what are our improvement targets for each year? Nothing is too small to be measured (and Omega has shown that every millisecond can be timed) and nothing too intangible to be considered. If Canada wants to “Own the Podium”, they have to own themselves first and aim to own all the mental and physical aspect of the competition, like Phelps did whilst winning eight medals.

Pour toute la gloire du monde

Rafael Nadal finally beat Roger Federer at Wimbledon. After five consecutive championships, Roger relinquished the crown in five sets. Even McEnroe finally beat Borg in 1981. Nadal’s game has the sense of inevitability about it: his athleticism, the longer rallies, Federer’s unforced errors, the sense he gets the ball back (with a lot of power and spin) and the opponent screws up….

Eventualy, it all caught up to Federer. Had he taken advantage of his break points, he would have been in a much better position. But he needs to develop new strategies to face Nadal; it was always the Spaniard who had the championship points in their Wimbledon final. As the match wore on, Nadal’s focus was tenacious, Federer seemed to lose control at times.

Occasionally, Federer was deep in a rally and went for too much. He felt that he couldn’t win the point unless he did something extraordinary. I think he should try to break down the matches into smaller pieces, game by game, point by point. There are many little things that Federer could practice which would enhance his highly skilled game by adding a little more power.

Federer had a clear advantage in serve and volley and aces. I think it would benefit him to try to shorten points, with more angled serves, deeper backhands, more spin and slice shots. I think he could go to the net more and he shouldn’t run around his forehand as much. Federer’s number two in the world now but he’s not as far back as the public believes.

The More Things Change...

San Antonio beat Dallas 97-94 last week. Same as usual (except for 2006). Tim Duncan scored the crucial points while Dirk Nowitzki fell short at crunch time. Each team demonstrated how the keys to success lie in the details.

During the penultimate play, Bruce Bowen blocked Jason Terry’s shot. Duncan immediately took the ball out of bounds because he is the Spurs’ worst free throw shooter. He inbounded as soon as possible and since the Mavericks were ill-prepared, more time elapsed and San Antonio had the best chance for points from the line.

Bowen deliberately missed the second shot with 0.4 seconds remaining and Duncan tipped the ball towards midcourt. This action started the clock and increased the time it would take to recover the ball so the concept could have been just as effective had more time been on the clock.

Not all was well-executed by the defending champions. Michael Finley overran a hot closeout, permitting Josh Howard to drive by him and dunk before help arrived. Duncan changed his pivot foot in the paint but a foul was called due to his reputation. Bowen climbed all over Terry but the official passed.

Dallas still shows many of the same flaws. When Tony Parker guard Nowitzki on a switch, Dallas’ star forward did not back down San Antonio’s point guard and post him up. Instead, Nowitzki shot a contested a fade-away jumper with a low chance of success. Dallas still lacks crunch-time shooters and needed to bench newly-acquired Jason Kidd in order to put more scorers on the court.

I don’t blame Avery Johnson for this game but it is clear that he still stands in Pop’s shadow. San Antonio knew exactly what they wanted to do and executed each play fairly well. On the other side, it seems like nobody on the Dallas team wants to take responsibility for making plays in critical situation. Despite ostensibly improving their team, the Mavericks have fallen from first overall to a fifth or sixth place team and can look forward to another long off-season.

Performance under Pressure, Part III

The Association Playoffs have provided a number of interesting moments regarding how decision-making, self-actualization, creativity, and aggressiveness come to the surface on the basketball court and in life.

First of all, ESPN Page 2 is entirely correct to congratulate “the Golden State Warriors for making us watch the N.B.A. again.” The Warriors - led by Baron Davis and playing with a five-second shot clock - provided one of the few surprising moments in an Association that had been mundane and predictable for the past eight or nine years.

As Bill Simmons wrote, at least Golden State took chances. A number of the team’s acquisitions were plagued with injuries or off-court troubles but the players provided excellent skill, speed and athleticism, and experience. Don Nelson’s strategies defied conventional wisdom: the team chose to play with a small line-up at an aggressive tempo and multiple defensive alignments disrupted the opponent’s plans. John Hollinger commented that a key difference between Don Nelson and Sam Mitchell is Nelson’s willingness to trust veteran players and leave stars on the court despite foul trouble if the team needs them.

General Manager Chris Mullin rolled the dice and hit the jackpot with his biggest move: re-hiring Don Nelson. Mullin had assembled a team that could play with energy and tenacity but needed someone to provided that extra bit of aggressiveness and confidence on the court. Despite the proximity to the basketball season, Mullin replaced Coach Mike Montgomery with Don Nelson in late August. Mullin knew it was the right move and felt he had to take initiative, even if the team was disrupted in the short-term.

Gambling is inherently risky -- Golden State could have missed the playoffs, Stephen Jackson could have been incarcerated, Baron Davis could have injured his knee, and Don Nelson could have exploded. But they didn’t. By taking chances, the Warriors took control of their destiny and put the pressure on their opponents.

On the East Coast, the Toronto Raptors illustrated some truths about ball and life. Unlike the Golden State, they did not seize control of their series with New Jersey and there were a number of awful performances under pressure.

I think that the Raptors did not do a good job evaluating and focusing on their strengths. There was an opportunity to attack the Nets inside, with Chris Bosh’s drives from the high-post or the screen and roll game with Bosh and Andrea Bargnani. When Toronto trapped New Jersey’s ballscreens, it pressured the Nets and forced some bad decisions. On the whole, the Raptors made the series too easy for their opponents by not playing with enough aggressiveness and confidence.

This was clearly displayed on Toronto’s last two possessions of the game: a missed fade-away jumpshot and a stolen lob pass. The experienced player will drive to the basket and go to the line in crunch time: this is what Michael Jordan did over six championships and it’s what stars like Steve Nash, Kobe Bryant, and Tim Duncan do today. Chris Bosh’s made a poor decision to shoot a long jumpshot when he could have penetrated into the lane and gone to the line to increase Toronto’s lead.

Chris Bosh possesses a number of very good moves from the high post. His decisions to rely too much on a square-up jumper and the occasional Rocker Step are frustrating to watch because he is choosing to limit his game.

The last possession, which was stolen when Richard Jefferson dropped to collapse on Chris Bosh, was poorly constructed. Apparently, Jose Calderon felt that the pass was “six-inches” short from being successful. Perhaps, but the pass could have also been three or four feet closer to the basket with a different spin.

The play lacked dynamism: from a stationary position it was very difficult for Calderon to complete the lob pass to Bosh. Due to the pressure of the moment, most of the Toronto team was very static, as was customary during tense offensive possessions throughout the series. More dribble penetration and weak-side action would have provided addition distractions for New Jersey’s defence and given Calderon greater options as time wound down.

Little Things Make All the Difference

Recalling the time when Homer made a bookshelf out of four planks and six cinder blocks:

Marge: Homer, we have a perfectly good bookcase.
Homer: Yeah, but this is what they’re doing on campus. Besides, it isn’t costing us: I swiped the cinderblocks from a construction site.

Meanwhile, at the construction site:

Worker: Sir, six cinderblocks are missing.
Boss: There’ll be no hospital, then. I’ll tell the children.

Neither passing nor cutting are what they used to be and motion offences are suffering as a result. But there’s a nice bookcase next to the bench by the pick-up court.

Little Things, Part III

The Michigan Basketball All-Stars defeated the Toronto All-Stars over the weekend. It was a boring game to watch -- there was a lot of one on one with four players watching. Toronto started the game with a really cool PHX set. Yonas Berhle came off a high rub going to his right, looked to turn the corner, and kicked to Jessie Simmons for a wide open three. That was a really good read but it was all downhill from there.

Michigan killed Toronto with defence and rebounding. At times, Toronto was effective in transition; other times the ballhandler would jack a three with no rebounders in place or someone who shouldn’t have handled the ball on the break would receive a pass.

In the eyes of the post-secondary coaches, everyone looks best when the team players together and wins, irrespective of individual glory. Those slow one on one moves to get an off-balance jumper won’t work at the next level so it’s better to try a passing game set or something uptempo.

Little Things, Part II

My friend told me that his Tae-Kwan-Do class was asked to perform some basic kicks. Despite their black belts, the class had trouble executing white belt maneuvers. The class was given a month to improve their fundamentals.

Irrespective of the level of play, the fundamentals remain the same. All coaches should pay attention to these details and devote time to the basics. Elite basketball players still need the time to develop skills like footwork, passing, or shot-faking. This concept is not a sport-specific lesson in any way.

Whether you are running the Princeton offence or trying to combine the playbooks of the Phoenix Suns and the Los Angeles Lakers into a few offensive sets, you need to maintain possession of the ball, put it in the basket, and stop the other team from doing the same.

Little Things, Part I

Gatorade produced a very nifty commercial highlighting the importance of executing the little things in key moments. Michael Jordan misses the jumpshot over Craig Ehlo, Derek Jeter doesn’t throw Jason Giambi out at home, and Joe Montana throws a pass off Dwight Clark’s fingers. The moral of the story: it’s the details that count; I agree entirely. Bret Hart is the best there was, the best there is, and the best there ever will be because he is the excellence of execution. Coaches should improve student-athletes by developing fundamental skills and teaching players how to work together on the court.

Furthermore, the altered videos were really cool. What if? But if things were different, they wouldn’t be the same.