The most underrated athletic trait: deceleration [Harden/Doncic]

[Im Still Ballin]

Being able to hit the brakes, a change of pace. Athleticism is more than just how high you can jump, or how fast you can run. James' ability to accelerate and decelerate is what made him so effective as a scorer. You wonder if he can regain this ability to its fullest extent.

Age and a hamstring injury are against him. It'll be interesting to see if he can recoup this 'stop and go' capability.


Published On: 2019-12-04

https://www.stack.com/a/lukas-secret-superpower-the-overlooked-athletic-trait-that-makes-him-so-good/

...And in some sense, that’s true. Doncic’s speed is not blinding. His leaping skills aren’t awe-inspiring. His sheer strength is not overwhelming.

But Doncic is certifiably elite when it comes to a more unconventional measurable of athleticism—deceleration.

While acceleration is about how fast you can speed up, deceleration is about how quickly you can slow down. For athletes whose roles require frequent changes in direction and speed—such as a football wide receiver or a basketball ball-handler—the ability to cut on a dime or quickly alter velocity is highly valuable.

“Luka possesses an elite ability to go from 60 to 0, something you might use during a step-back or a crossover,” Eric Leidersdorf, Director of Biomechanics at P3 Applied Sports Science, explains in this video. “Luka possesses the ability to create a significant amount of force during the eccentric or deceleration phase of a counter-movement jump. This is a quality integral to change of direction performance.”

Doncic has been visiting P3, a high-tech training facility in Santa Barbara, California, at least once a year since he was 15 years old. P3 has amassed a huge amount of data on NBA players, as they’d evaluated 58% of the players who were on this season’s opening-night rosters.

Last November, they shared this graphic highlighting how Doncic’s eccentric force output and eccentric rate of force development—two key metrics of deceleration—compared to James Harden, another player who baffles defenses with his ability to quickly slam on the brakes:

While Harden ranks in the 99th percentile of P3’s NBA database for both eccentric force output and eccentric rate of force development, Doncic isn’t far behind, ranking in the 92nd and 93rd percentiles, respectively.

“Luka’s one of these guys that his most glaring performance advantages, his superpowers, are not the things that have traditionally defined athleticism in a basketball player,” Marcus Elliot, founder and director of P3, told The Athletic. “(That fact) makes him the perfect athlete for teams to get confused with (and) make bad decisions about his athleticism.”

[BarberSchool]

Having a heavier/stronger lower body and a medium/low center of gravity makes “putting on the brakes and gaining balance/stability very quickly” … much more natural and easy to do, than players with small pelvic bones and skinny legs.

Think:

Sprinter build (narrow hips, smaller/lighter pelvic bone, lighter leg bones and overall long slim legs with skinny ankles)

Vs

Wrestler/grappler build (larger wider hips, larger heavier pelvic bones, heavier leg bones, stronger heavier legs able to carry their own weight and another grown man hanging into them or banging into them)

Or deep threat 4.3 trackstar skinny wide receiver
-when contact is low, this body type’s speed wins the exchange.

Vs

Travis Kelce
-Heavier stronger legs are slower, but can decelerate and stabilize more quickly, and have the strength and stability advantage in instances of heavy repeated contact, or owning space.

This heavier type of body ratio, also gives much better stability and balance during high contact drives and post-ups.

Think the stability and balance thru contact of Barkley, Duncan, Embiid in high contact post moves and “slow drives”, versus the instability and ability to be “knocked off path” of the drives and post moves of Rudy Gobert, Dwight, Porzingis, or Giannis (skinny hips, skinny thighs and skinny legs despite wide muscular shoulders)

Harden and Luka use their heavier lower bodies not only to decelerate in ways that frustrate and confuse defenses, but also in pick and rolls, where they use their heavier bodies and legs to “reverse post up” the defender, eliminating them from the play, turning them into a useless off balance body standing at the 3pt line, then taking one explosive dribble into the paint and reading the defense as yet another series of body contact is intitatiated with the help defender.

It’s a way for harden or Luka to create 3-on-2’s and 2-on-1’s in a half court setting, whenever they want. It’s a relatively new thing that big heavy elite ball handlers can do, even more elite than magic Johnson used to, since Harden & Luka have such threatening jump shots from everywhere.