The Worst Player in the NBA

Reader Luke S. sent me a link to an article I enjoyed a lot. Here it is: "The Worst NBA Player Is Way Better Than You." I liked what veteran NBA journeyman Brian Scalabrine told an amateur challenger: "I'm closer to LeBron than you are to me."

It was interesting to read the comments of the WNBA professional player Devereaux Peters, too. I've heard the same thing about golfers—that a lot of guys with a USGA handicap of one or two or three think they're just a few strokes away from pro caliber—meaning they could get there if they just buckled down and worked for it—when in fact there's a huge yawning gulf between them and the average tour pro.

Reminds me of a similar photography-related story. A friend of mine used to shoot features for Air Force Magazine because the art director was a friend of his and they'd travel to locations together. This was back in the '80s when point-and-shoots were a relatively new thing. So the art director got a point-and-shoot and started shooting alongside my friend. The trouble was, my friend got paid by the picture and the art director was so proud of himself and his own work that he would often pick his own pictures over my friend's, even though my friend knew his pictures were better. So suddenly my friend's paycheck was cut in half because his friend the art director was choosing to run his own pictures half the time.

A while later I asked my friend about the Air Force situation, and he grinned. "Everything's back to normal again," he said. Turns out an Air Force general who happened to be a photography enthusiast had called the Air Force Association and went on a rant about how the quality of the photography in the magazine had suddenly taken an inexplicable nosedive. The general wanted to know what the hell had happened to the photographer—he named my friend, whose name was still bylined on the stories he shot—who "used to be good." He thought the guy ought to be fired.

Well, a photographer got "fired" all right...the chastened amateur-photographer art director who had been so impressed with his own snaps abruptly stopped running his own shots.

Luke S. thought the article about Brian Scalabrine called to mind my post about playing tennis with Chrissie Evert, in which I described ever-so-briefly being of the opinion that I could hang with a pro myself.

Tomorrow's housework day at TOP Rural World Headquarters, so see you back here on Sunday. Thanks so much for reading TOP. I really appreciate it.

Mike

Books o' the Week

Nikon fan are ya? Nikon: A Celebration by British automotive writer and Nikon collector Brian Long covers the history of the company from its beginnings to the end of the film era. A U.S. parallel with more concentration on opinions about the equipment is B. Moose Peterson's Nikon System Handbook. The 6th Edition covered film equipment up to 2000. <—These are portals to Amazon.com thru TOP; you can also search for Nikon books from The Book Depository, which offers free shipping worldwide.

Original contents copyright 2021 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Enrique: "I manage a studio of Photoshop artists in Cupertino. Yes, exactly what you’re thinking. You would not believe the number of applicants who think they know Photoshop."

Steve C: "It's the same in cycling. I watched national-level, A-grade racers—the local elite—being blown out the back of a handful of professionals who were sitting up at the front, in the wind, having a casual chat. Unbelievable. And it goes against what you regularly hear about diminishing returns."

hugh crawford: "My Porsche mechanic raced at LeMans, and won the 24 hours of Daytona. My car always ran better when he drove it. On the other hand I never hit the top of a tree at 200 MPH so there is that."

Dave Fultz: "Ha! That was fun!

"It’s complicated, though, as things often are. One of the curiosities of our modern, hyper-available information world is that all of us, whether Internet-connected or not, have access to the best in the world that was undreamed-of a hundred years ago. Want to listen to Itzhak Perlman playing the piece your violin teacher just told you to practice? How many versions do you want? How about looking at the sketches of Degas when you’re thinking about drawing ballerinas? Surfing the Internet, did you discover that Don Knuth just tossed off an algorithm in a day that solves a problem you’ve been tussling with for months?

"This access is wonderful; there’s no doubt of that. But it has two surprising effects. The first is the intimidation of such world-class skill—how can I, a kid in Mongolia, play like that? I should stop (don’t). The second is the familiarity bred by screens in your living room. They’re your friends, right? After all, they’re in your living room! Heh! Michael! Nice dunk! I bet I could do that.... Well, yes! You could! That’s what keeps us all going! Every once in a while you do something extraordinary. But, extraordinary, professional athletes and artists and engineers and leaders and skilled persons in every domain do that level way more often than you. They are different and they are the products of a long process where they’ve been challenged for years on a basketball court, in a lab, competing for a gallery show, spending months taking pictures of birds in the arctic, or just simply sitting and thinking about things.

"It’s complicated."

Mike replies: Re your first "surprising effect," I like to tell the story of the guy my first cousin Liz married. His name is Dan. Growing up he was a very good baseball player, but he quit playing seriously in his teen years. The reason was that he had a same-age first cousin whose name was Don, and Don was always a little better than Dan was. No matter how hard Dan tried, he couldn't surpass his cousin, and that discouraged him. Dan reasoned, how can I expect to be a good baseball player out in the world when I'm not even the best baseball player in my own family?

The kicker is that the cousins' last name is Mattingly. Don Mattingly, for those who remember the '80s and '90s, had a stellar career as the first baseman for the New York Yankees and is now a Major League manager. Dan, who now owns a concrete business, says (I'm paraphrasing), "How was I supposed to know that I was measuring myself against the kid who would grow up to be Don Mattingly?"

Not sure if he thinks he should have kept trying, but maybe he should have.

Jim Natale: "No brief, fleeting, moment of glory here. Just the story of a conversation. I once worked with a fellow who had played minor league baseball. I asked him, 'Major League pitchers have batting averages like .080 and .090. What would a guy with average or good athletic ability hit versus big league pitching—.050 maybe?' His answer: 'Try zero zero zero.'"

Mike replies: I was never a baseball player, but I played tennis and I could smack a softball at the work picnic, and I have a good way of knowing that what that guy said is true. I went to a batting cage once. I felt pretty good hitting 30-MPH pitches. But with the machine ratcheted up to spitting 50 MPH pitches at me, never mind getting the bat to connect with the ball, I couldn't physically bring the bat around fast enough so that it was even aligned properly to hit the ball. I was always too late. My reflexes weren't fast enough. My few touches were behind the ball such that they angled off into the net in front of me. Then, I figured, just extrapolate from a 50-MPH pitch to a 90-MPH pitch like the Major League pitchers throw. It was very obvious I wouldn't stand a snowflake's chance in a fire!

Gave me new respect for hitters.

Albert Smith: "I remember when people use to make fun of John McCain for coming in near last in his class at the Naval Academy. The attrition rate to just get accepted, then the drop out rate for those that couldn't hack it during the four years were things that most couldn't imagine. Besides academics, every cadet had to participate in a sport on a team. Then there was the military training, with all the cosmetic ceremony that that entailed. Oh yeah, those academics are still expected to be done at a high level, no making excuses for the pomp and sports taking up too much time. I'd match last in class at a service academy to a lot of top ten percenters from most universities."

John Y: "There are studies of this kind of thing. I have been in the software industry for more than 20 years. We know that good programmers are 10x more productive than mediocre programmers. 'This degree of variation isn't unique to software. A study by Norm Augustine found that in a variety of professions—writing, football, invention, police work, and other occupations—the top 20 percent of the people produced about 50 percent of the output, whether the output is touchdowns, patents, solved cases, or software (Augustine 1979).'"

Mike replies: ...Or blogging? In the early days—it never happens any more of course—I even had people ask for information interviews to help them establish a successful blog. Back then, I saw a lot of people start a blog with high ambitions and a handful of magnificent, well-researched, well-written posts, only to find it too onerous. They would take a break, perhaps adding one or several more posts after a week or a month or two, only to have the "break" eventually became permanent. My readers are intelligent, educated, interesting people, the great majority of whom could write dozens of absolutely outstanding blog posts if they put their minds to it (the only possible exceptions are those for whom English is not their first language, and in those cases I'd bet money they could do it in their own native language). The question is, what kind of person would or could do it more or less every day for sixteen years?

Wait, don't answer that!!  :-)

Tom R. Halfhill: "I heard an old joke about people who yearn to be a country-western music star. Before driving all the way into Nashville, stop at a gas station just outside of town. If you can't play guitar better than the station attendant, go home!"

Bear.: "My moment was as a young man playing table tennis—I thought I was pretty good—at least I held my own—until I met a top 100 world ranked player. Although my muscular reflexes were quick enough, I could barely see the ball, let alone process the spin rate, and return it except by chance. I did not and could not win a point. Since it was obvious to me that I had reached my level of incompetence—all the training in the world could not improve my visual processing speed—that was my last game. After all, the sole purpose of a solo sport is to win, which was just not going to happen, at least at the level I wanted to play.

"To my own surprise, I was not really disappointed but instead was privately quite proud that had made it as far as I did.

"It's been nearly 40 years now and I still have my bats in their case, as well as the ball from that game as a memento, in the attic somewhere. But the real lesson for me was to pursue sports and hobbies for enjoyment and preferably those in respect of which no objective measurement of output determines a sole winner—I expect that’s why I enjoy photography so much—if I enjoy myself, that is sufficient, and it’s just a bonus if anyone else enjoys my work too."

Comments

[Dennis Ng]

Not really want to touch upon and break my own bubble of that. I am good you know :-))))))).

But for another game called go or weiqi or b something (in Korea), the amateur ranking in the old days was up to 6 Dan then professional 1 Dan. It is still separated until the chinese pro taking advantage of their non-pro status in those days. Even now they are separated. However in that case I still wonder whether at least you can have talent that can trump one of them in one of the game you know. But to a certain extent you really want the pro well above. Not just ...

And back to the subject, I wonder for photography of those birds (iron aside) and if one can hold a d3-d5 and 600 f4 .... is the difference that large you cannot have a few going. Half is greedy. One or two ... not point abd shoot though. (After typing the last word the st ansel using his 35mm contax ....sigh).

[Rob de Loe]

I used to play squash, badly. One day I asked an older colleague at work to play me.

I ran rings around him! Except slowly but surely I realized I was the only one running. Robin was barely moving as he forced me to run rings around him, first one way, then the other. I got a good workout, and a lesson in our relative squash abilities. I always appreciated that he let me figure it out slowly.

[Bill Tyler]

To Dennis' comment. I occasionally play Go. Many years ago I visited the Go club in San Francisco's Japantown to watch a visiting pro. The man looked like he was in his 80s at the time, and he was playing the top amateur in the club. After the game, he played through an analysis showing sequences of, as I recall, something like 20 moves to illustrate why a particular move had been a good or bad one because of its consequences. It is as much as I can do to remember part of a game, and this guy did it effortlessly. That's the difference between a pro and an amateur.

[John Camp]

I've played golf for many years, and in my experience, most scratch (zero handicap) golfers know they couldn't make it as a pro, even if they yearn to. That's one of the things that makes golf the most magical of games -- at some point, no matter how hard you try, you can't get much better, and the difficulty usually isn't physical, it's mental. And as a mental thing, not a physical problem, you really believe in your heart that you should be able to improve, because it's *only* mental. But you can't. I was once told that the best way to judge a non-golfer's potential to play golf is how well he plays poker, because poker is all about decision-making and fear, and so is golf. Tiger Wood's unravelling is a case in point -- he didn't stop winning because he was suddenly physically inept, but because he came undone mentally. A pro golfer, by the way, would generally have a handicap of about –6, which is six strokes better than scratch, a level I can't even conceive of. Still, in any given round, I'll make at least a few shots that a pro would take in an instant, if given the chance to take them. (Wouldn't take my swing, or my decision making, but would take a particular result. That's another thing that makes golf magical.)

[s.wolters]

As design director I worked with many photographers, illustrators, designers or other visual artists. I remember situations in which I probably would have done a better job myself. But that’s an amateurish attitude. I would have been much too slow, too expensive and would have needed the evenings and weekends for it, because I also had other things to do.

In an ideal situation you can choose the right specialist for the job yourself. Often the client has an existing relation or someone on the payroll that you have to work with. Their professional level may vary.

It also happens that a client has a boyfriend who has a ‘professional camera.’ Or a wife who makes such beautiful knitting art, which would be very appropriate for the annual report.
Such cases are usually reason enough to refuse the job.

The worst level however is when clients want to be personally involved in the creative process. In those cases just throw in some technical verbs they don’t understand to let them now who’s the expert in charge.

[Speed]

Any time I start thinking that I'm any good as a photographer, I spend a few minutes looking at some of Peter Turnley's photographs.

[John Robison]

This post reminded me of an interview with Gary Larson, creator of ‘The Far Side’ cartoon. This was near the time he quit doing a daily cartoon.
He said the stress of being on deadline every single day of the week finally wore him out. It was mentioned that a lot of the uninformed thought he had an easy job, ‘just come up with 10 cartoons and take the next two weeks off’ as if these were flooding out of his mind. Of course it didn’t work like that at all. He said somedays he would be sitting there with a blank paper and nothing was happening.

[Clay Olmstead]

It's not a matter of "natural ability" or "just buckling down." To get the highest levels of anything takes endless hours of practice - and while you're going through those years of practice, not falling into one of the many traps that life sets up along the way.

[Dan]

This pretty well sums up why things look easy from a distance

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

On a personal level, the more I’ve learned about photography the less I feel like I know about photography. And life....

[Tom Burke]

Success in sport is so capricious. You have to be incredibly talented; you have to work hard; you have to avoid injury, especially at the key moments in your career; and you just have to be lucky. You need to be able to shine, without being overshadowed. In that situation, I always think of Teodora Ungureanu. She was an Rumanian Olympic gymnast in the mid-70s, and she won some medals - silver and bronze. Extremely good though she was, there was someone else around at the same time and in the same team who was even better - Nadia Comaneci. She won all the gold medals, and she's the one who's remembered.

Another example would the 6 or more members of the 1992 FA Youth Cup winning team from Manchester United who weren't called Beckham, Scholes, Giggs, Neville or Butt. Those five players had stellar careers, the other 6 or so mostly didn't; but at the time you would not have been able to predict that it would be those five, and not the other six, would become household names.

[Malcolm Myers]

This reminds me of this survey about taking a point off of Serena Williams.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/shortcuts/2019/jul/15/why-do-so-many-men-think-they-could-win-a-point-off-serena-williams

And I don't think it's just a man/woman thing. Lewis Hamilton (F1 World Champion) can go around a track in an F1 car in 1m30s. I bet if you asked 100 men if they could do the lap in 2m00s 10% would say yes. After all, anyone can drive a car fast!

Things ism an F1 car isn't a car. Yes it has wheels, an engine and a steering wheel, but it's really a guided missile. You need to be doing 120 mph for the downforce to work, need to be doing 10,000 rpm to stop it stalling and you need to take 3-4G every time you move the wheel or hit a pedal.

I think it just shows to me that the real professionals just make things look easy. That's why they're the best and why they earn so much.

[Joe Lipka]

Tom Kite once said the difference between professional and amateur golfers was the difference between lightning and lightning bugs.

This is true.