Jayson Tatum is unlike any of the
other precocious 20-year-olds near Boston in almost every way. He already has a
job. And he’s phenomenally good at it. He’s the leading scorer on a Celtics
team only two wins away from the NBA Finals, and to watch him these days is to
wonder how Tatum is this good this young.
But one
of the reasons he’s this good is because
He was 7 when YouTube was invented, and it wasn’t long until he
was searching for Kobe Bryant videos. “I’ve been watching Kobe ever since I can
remember,” he said. But what made him the player he is today is not that Tatum
simply watched Kobe. It was what he watched. And how he watched it. He studied
“Not just watching the dunks, but actually trying to learn,” he
said. “I think I learned that at a very young age.”
Tatum is the youngest player still in the NBA playoffs, and he’s
already played more postseason minutes than anyone his age ever had. He’s also
the most reliable playmaker on a Celtics team with an unlikely 2-0 lead on
LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference Finals. He
does things that rookies should not be able to do.
NBA players who grew up watching
Michael Jordan couldn’t even watch clips of Michael Jordan. LeBron James didn’t
have YouTube. He’s been in the league for longer than YouTube has been a
company.
But today’s young players have spent their entire lives watching
basketball on demand. The extraordinary amount of knowledge at their disposal
is one of the reasons they’re entering the league with polished skills and
making their influence felt immediately.
YouTube allowed Kristaps Porzingis to admire Kevin Durant all
the way from Latvia, Joel Embiid to emulate Hakeem Olajuwon and Tatum to geek
out about Bryant.
This article appealed to me because we often talk about
technology in the wrong way, but here we see one of the positive sides of
the contribution of technology in the sports world. The more time passes, we
see more and more athletes who come better armed to fight against veterans. The
difference between rookies and veterans is becoming less noticeable thanks to
the internet that gives access to Youtube.
Youtube has revolutionized every aspect of our lives such
as sports, dance, school, daily tasks and even in professional circles such as
finance, marketing, advertising and so on.
However, this article shows how despite the distance of the
players who come from the third world knew how to use this technology to be
able to improve and become the great players who are today
The NBA knew how to use Youtube to make its propaganda by
putting highlights of the matches and its star players.
Thanks to that, players like Batum have been able to
progress by watching videos of legends of the NBA before being selected.
No comments:
Post a Comment