Kevin Love: Why Does He Play So Hard When Others Don't?
On January 26, 2011 Bill Simmons posted his latest podcast of the B.S. Report. Guest included Kevin Love and Nick Collison.
What made this particular podcast interesting was two things. One Kevin Love giving us some inside information about Bill Laimbeer and an apparent two hands to the throat move he has. Kevin Love did not go into details, but it led to some great imagination on what it could have been.
I just vision Laimbeer jacking Kevin Mchale in the throat Jack Bauer style as he gets into position.
Second interesting point was what Bill Simmons has notice about Kevin Love’s generation. He said that all you guys - referring to Derrick Rose, Russell Westbrook, Kevin Durrant, etc.—always play hard. Not taking some quarters off, but also not taking any plays off.
Taking quarters and plays off is something you have started to see as of late in the NBA, the stars not turning it on until the fourth quarter when their team really needs them. Yet, recently these new stars of the NBA are not doing that.
If you remember back in the 80’s and early 90’s you did not see this. Players for whatever reason seemed to go 100 percent the whole game every game.
Why do players not do this anymore?
Why are players like Kevin Love being referred to as throw back players because of this new style of playing.
Bill Simmons never figured it out, but I think I have an answer.
First we need to figure out what section of time did players start taking plays off?
The star players that came into the league about half way through the NBA. And it did not really start taking effect until the early 2000’s because it took awhile for the rest of the NBA to follow their lead.
Then it ended about half way through the 2000’s.
What is the difference between that ten year stretch of players and the rest of the players in the history of the NBA?
Players stop going to college.
Kevin Garnett and Kobe Bryant among others started skipping college to go straight to the NBA. Then players started leaving college early to go to the NBA. Soon you had more under classmen entering the NBA draft than there were draft spots.
What is it about college that gets players to start playing hard every play?
Let’s look at the experience of a star player that is good enough to go to the NBA straight out of high school. One thing to remember, no one, other than the player, understands what a star player goes through, so don’t try to compare what you would do to that of what a star player would do.
Star players are identified early on in life. They win every basketball game from fourth grade to eighth grade. Because of this everybody wants to be the best friend of that star player. The reason ranging from if we play a pickup game he’ll pick me to be on his team that way I’ll win, to if he does go pro he’ll put me in his entourage and I’ll be rich with him. I talked about this entourage in this previous article.
Because they receive all this attention from not only guys their age, but every adult that also tries to associate themselves with that player for same reason as the close friends, not to be a part of the entourage, but maybe he will then “take care” of him once he makes his millions in the NBA.
With all this attention, and all the success of winning that usually follows at the high school and AAU level, the star player usually does not have to go 100 percent every play to be successful.
There was a study done that showed that students were not praised for trying hard they were praised for being smart. Or in our case being really good at basketball.
The study was reported in the book How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer. In this experiment, he had over 400 fifth graders taken individually to take a test consisting of a relatively easy nonverbal puzzle. Half the kids were praised for their intelligence the other half for their effort.
The kids were then given the option of choosing the next test they would take. One choice was a difficult test, but they would learn a lot from taking the test, the other choice was a easy test similar to the test they just took.
Of the group of kids praised for their efforts 90 percent choose the more difficult test. The group of kids praised for their intelligence, most choose the easy test.
Finally the same fifth graders were given a test that was designed for eighth graders.
Here’s what was concluded about the final test in the book.
The students that had been praised for their efforts in the initial test worked hard at figuring out the puzzles. “They got very involved, many of them remarked, unprovoked, ‘This is my favorite test.’” Kids that had initially been praised for their smarts, on the other hand, were easily discouraged. Students praised for their intelligence almost always chose to bolster their self-esteem by comparing themselves with students who had performed worse on the test. In contrast, kids praised for their hard work were more interested in the higher-scoring exams. They wanted to understand their mistakes, to learn from their errors, to figure out how to do better.
The stars of the NBA are the kids that were praised for their intelligence.
Why does this make players from that ten year stretch take plays off and now current stars, who have been praised for their intelligence not take plays off?
Simple, when Kevin Love and Kevin Durant went to college it was like those fifth graders having to take that test designed for eighth graders.
It was a wake up call. For the first time in their lives they had to work hard every possession or they would get beat and probably be benched.
Every year John Calipari has a new team because he recruits one and done players. Every year in November you hear Calipari always saying, “I have to get these kids to understand they have to play hard the entire practice.” Kids that have been praised for their efforts already play hard the entire practice.
Michael Jordan was definitely not praised for his talents as a player growing up. He had to have try hard every time he step on to the court or he never would have made it. I think we all know how that turned out.
