To you, what does athletics mean? For the majority, it entails sprinting the fastest and jumping the tallest.
But perhaps we should reconsider this classification in light of the player who is leading the league in scoring, consistently rating as MVP, and setting triple-double records.
It is said that Nikola Jokic and Luka Dončić are both unstoppable scorers. Coaches are frequently asked how they plan to stop one or the other, and their typical response is either “we can’t” or “pray.”
Long before he was hired as an NBA coach, JJ Redick discussed this subject on his podcast The Old Man and the Three last summer. And that made me wonder: Are we approaching this all incorrectly?
What if these two players’ dominance in the world’s top basketball league stems from their exceptional athletic ability? I take it they’re going up against the best?
Redick mentioned this after listening to Tom Haberstroh’s Basketball Illuminati podcast, which is another podcast. Here, Haberstroh spoke with Dr. Marcus Elliott, who established the Peak Performance Project and serves as its director (P3). As of January 2023, when the podcast aired, the P3 facilities had evaluated two thirds (64 percent) of active NBA players and had amassed data on players for more than a decade.
Additionally, sports medicine expert Dr. Marcus Elliott offered an entirely alternative perspective on athleticism than what is typically accepted even today. Dr. Marcus Elliott had a direct response when asked about the most amazing athlete they had evaluated, someone that some might not consider athletic: Luka Dončić.
Nobody believes he’s an athlete, even though our metrics for athleticism show him off the charts,” he remarked.
Athletes are typically thought of as people who can jump high and sprint quickly. However, there are a ton of measures that are more intriguing and successful prediction-based.
Luke is a lower jumper than the typical NBA guard. He doesn’t run extremely quickly or jump very high. However, he stops more skillfully than nearly every other athlete we’ve evaluated.
Luka Dončić was beaten only once by one player in the breaking (sometimes called deceleration) metrics:
“At his prime, James Harden was the finest NBA breaker we have ever evaluated. And Luka earned the second-highest metrics as a breaker despite only being eighteen years old.
“He just looks kind of doughy and slow, but he’s an amazing athlete,” the person said, “but we thought he was an incredible athlete.”
Thousands of data points on how athletes move, land, change directions, and slide are available at the P3 facilities, to name a few examples. And these show once more that the fastest runners and highest jumpers are not always the greatest and most successful athletes.
Another superstar who isn’t thought to be a particularly talented athlete, Nikola Jokic, excelled on every parameter when evaluated.
Jokic, at 980, has the lowest vertical jump of any NBA player that we have ever measured. However, the quality of his movement is really excellent.
According to Dr. Elliott, Jokic is what’s known as a “enigmatic mover,” akin to a Swiss Army knife. “From a movement perspective, he has the right answer for every job.”
The league is becoming more and more athletic, Dr. Elliott also pointed out, noting, “We can go back ten years and the athletes today are so much better.” This is particularly valid for larger athletes.
The fact that these two players—who are seen as “unathletic” and by some as being slow and out of shape—seem to be unstoppable has long perplexed basketball fans.
However, it’s evident from these experts’ numbers, data points, and measures that the picture is quite different. And these men just keep shattering records, even as the league becomes more athletic.
All of this indicates that our first perspective on this has been incorrect. Fancy dunks were thought to be a good indicator of athleticism.
However, the study of Dr. Marcus Elliott and his associates seriously casts doubt on that notion. It could be time for us to adopt a whole new perspective when discussing athleticism.