Speed Where Art Thou?

February 13, 2017

You can't help noticing the athletes on the field or court running around like their hair was on fire. Those are the energy guys, the hustlers not stopping until they are removed from the game. Those are the players whose bodies run a little hot and need to let loose on the other team. Can you imagine having a whole squad of these types of athletes? Two things would either happen, the team would implode from chaos, or the opposition would drop from exhaustion. From a marketing standpoint, it would put people in their seats, but in all seriousness, this experiment doesn't usually work.

Not a day goes by when a coach doesn't talk about speed. The Italian physicist Galileo Galilei is credited with measuring speed by considering the distance covered and the time it takes. The opposite of speed is the resistance of any physical object to any change in its state of motion. Speed will always be a go-to strategy for all sports but can never be the means to all ends. The slower teams will always try to impede and send the energetic ones into a spastic frenzy. On the other side of the coin, the methodical teams will dictate game flow often but can be exposed when high wire acts rattle their cages. The best teams that win championships are the ones who can adapt to either style and can turn on the switch when needed. This is more prevalent in the playoff rounds of sports when the winner dictates the game flow.

Fleetness without precision and inertia is reckless and worthless. Show me an athlete who is quick and skilled, and you will notice a player worthy of a lot of playing time. It doesn't matter if he weighs 350 pounds. If he can outmaneuver his opponent with his speed, you will look at a highly desirable performer.

In the NFL, the two-minute and the hurry-up offense are used almost every game. There is a reason they only play this way for only two minutes or limited plays. In the world of football, you can only ride your players so long before you wear them down. Sometimes you will find experiments in high school and college football where quick play calling is utilized and has been successful. Unfortunately, it can only be counted on for a while before they either sustain too many injuries or get out-strategized by superior talent.

In most team sports, the accelerated mode gets used as much as the ability level allows them to. If you have a group of gazelles, why wouldn't you try to tire out the other team? It can make for a good contest when you see them playing against the methodical taskmasters. In the NBA, all the rage is the "Small Ball Offense," which pits your guards and smaller forwards against the teams with the big front-court presence. What is driving a lot of the older NBA player's nuts is seeing small guys against small guys. They cry, "Where's the Beef?" Where are the dunks? Why all the three-point shots? Owners are saying, "Why do I need to sign a bunch of big men always getting hurt, and they're not easy to find?"

In baseball, it's hard to think of a game being accelerated, but there are plenty of teams in history that utilized speed as their biggest weapon. When teams don't have the big home run hitters, they need to rely on small ball. (Here is that term again) Give me a squad with guys who can steal bases regularly, and I will show you a group that scores runs. Ricky Henderson, the best base stealer of all-time, stole so often that I consider him the greatest leadoff hitter and one of the best players of all time.

Lastly, when it comes to our mundane daily lives, we seem to avoid resisting our forward-motion desires. Everybody wants speed. When we can harness our swiftness and fly, great things happen. Just try to use it wisely and not become the rabbit in Aesop's fables.