NBA Half Time Read: What Happens Inside the Brains of Pro Ballers?
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
Nate Silver, editor-in-chief of ESPN’s FiveThirtyEight and seasoned sports statistician, knows his basketball. After watching thousands of games — he comprehends what’s happening on the courts and with the players better than most. So what separates him from the Golden State Warrior’s: Steph Curry?
These two individuals have something in similar: they both really comprehend the sport of basketball. Silver is able to call out certain outcomes and analyze players and plays because he really knows the game. But Curry’s followed the game religiously since he was a child — surely he comprehends what’s happening too? If they both know basketball, why is one of them the leading voice of great game analysis, and the other one the GOAT in terms of NBA shooting history?
There’s a critical difference, and it’s all in their heads. Or, more accurately, it’s all in their brains!
Curry’s been practicing his whole life, when we practice something, we transition between comprehending an action and becoming competent at the same. Curry’s prolonged, constant practice lets him shoot a ball from all angles of the court. In any condition and under any coverage. That practice is what allows him play effortlessly in games.
For anyone who grew up playing sports, we’ve all heard the phrase “practice makes perfect”. We were taught that the more you practice, the more competent you will become. Practice and competency boil down to one thing: habit. Getting to competency, not just comprehension, means wiring new habits in the brain to make your comprehended behaves into automatic, competent behaviors.
So what’s the difference, and how is that happening?
When Steph Curry shot his first basket, he had to think a lot about what was going on. How heavy is the ball? Are my wrists in the right angle? Did I follow through? Where did I bend? What kind of spin did I put on the ball — and how much? All of these thoughts go through our head when we first shoot a hoop because it’s a new behavior: it’s something we don’t yet have an automatic program for, something our muscles haven’t learned how to automate yet. So parts of our cerebral cortex (like our Primary Motor Area) responsible for muscle control go into overdrive to work out how fast and how many degrees to move each muscle to get the ball to the hoop. When we miss (and we often miss when we’re starting something new), other parts of our brain become extremely active to help us miss less next time — parts like our cerebellum and brain stem. They help us perform “error correction” to minimize the difference between our intended shot and our actual shot. That shot that was too far to the left after a few minutes starts getting a little more towards the center and — before we know it — we can hit it!
As we practice, something amazing happens in the brain. When we start developing a “muscle memory”, different brain regions become active when we shoot — distinct from when we started out. These regions don’t control the individual movement of our hands and limbs but instead control bigger-picture instructions to our muscles like “shoot the ball”. These new regions know how to command your muscles and limbs to move properly to hit a great shot without barely thinking about it. In neuroscience terms, we say that the “encoding shifted” to a more automatic part of the nervous system.
So both Curry’s and Silver’s brains comprehend how to shoot a great free-throw. But it’s only through consistent trial-and-error — practice — that Curry’s brain does it so automatically: that he can do it like a habit.
The difference isn’t just present when they shoot the ball — their brains are different even when they watch a good shot. In 2008 a team of Italian scientists published findings in Nature Neuroscience that explored what made pro ballers’ brains different from experts like coaches’ or analysts’ brains. They showed the experts and the pros footage of free throws while measuring their brain activity in different areas of the brain. The result? The experts’ brains were active as if they were just watching a free throw. But the pros’ brains were activated like they were the ones shooting. These differences in how their brains each perceive a shot are caused by all the practice the pros do. The habits and competence of shots, dribbles, and passes shape more than just their muscle memory — they change how their brains perceive the game of basketball itself.
This phrase “practice makes perfect” goes with a lot more than just sports. Practice is a broad term that can mean many things. For example, the more you study for a test the better you will do, the more you practice playing guitar the better you will become. And we’ve all tried something new and excelled through practice. When first picking up a new instrument, it’s foreign: we think about every little detail. Where our fingers go. How quickly we strum. Is it in tune? But at a certain point, we stop thinking about it. It becomes natural, automatic. This is because we have practiced so much and made a habit out of the little details. Our brain has shifted the encoding from an intentional to an automatic brain system.
Silver and Curry both comprehend what great basketball looks like. But only Curry’s brain contains the automatic circuits for actually PLAYING great ball. Even when they watch great ball together, their acquired differences in wiring cause them to watch two different games.
So tonight, will Stephen Curry’s competence be able to take the Golden State Warriors to a NBA Championship Title, or will LeBron James’ competence lead the Cavs to a repeat title?
