NBA players are a competitive bunch. We can see it as the trash talk flies during a game, and in how physical the playoffs become when every game takes on added importance. Guys want to win, and with the talent level in the league at an all-time high, often it’s the team that’s willing to get up and guard you for 48 minutes that comes out on top.
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It doesn’t get more competitive than playing 1-on-1.It’s often seen on the playground, how going mano-a-mano with another player can bring out those competitive instincts. On the most recent episode of Mind the Game, though, Steve Nash and LeBron James spoke about how 1-on-1 games between NBA players aren’t nearly as prevalent as they used to be.
Their discussion on the reason why was super interesting, and it provided a window into the way modern technology, while helping us in so many ways, also sometimes hinders progress.
“It feels like there was a lot more 1-on-1 [being played] 15, 20, 25 years ago after practice. Do you think that’s a fair statement?” Nash asked his cohost. After LeBron laughed and agreed that it was, Nash asked if living in the social media era had anything to do with it.
“In our day, you could go play 1-on-1, you could get your head kicked in every day all year and no one’s ever gonna know about it,” he said.
LeBron definitely thought Nash was on to something. “Now you gotta think that as soon as practice is over, especially in our league that the door’s open and now the media’s in there. And every media person has a camera, they all have phones that can record. It leaves it to the interpretation and to the narrative,” he said.
That creates an environment where even the best players in the world are fearful of being portrayed poorly. “A lot of the young guys, they play video games and then they read columns and they read comments, unfortunately,” LeBron said. “They don’t want to feel embarrassed or someone says something about them.”
“The more stuff that you read that’s negative, the more it creeps into your mind, and you don’t know what it could do to a young player,” he continued, before saying that rather than play 1-on-1, most players just work individually to get their own shots up.
Nash lamented that fact, because as he said, playing 1-on-1 can be so useful for improving your game. “What a tool to get beat every day by somebody and try to chase them down over the course of the season,” he said.
“Maybe I play a vet who’s 6’8”, and he’s a starter, and you’re a young guy trying to ply your trade, and he can bully you,” he continued. “But you have to figure stuff out, right? And having that journey with that guy over the course of a year or more is super valuable to your indoctrination into this game. Kind of a bummer for me that that’s not so much a part of the culture because of technology.”
That wasn’t the case at the Olympics last year, though, and maybe it’s why Team USA was able to persevere through adversity and find a way to take home the gold medal.
“I watched KD and Book and Ant play 1s,” LeBron continued.
“There was one practice where Steph just went out there and played all defense … Steph was out there just guarding the whole time, it didn’t matter who it was, he didn’t want to play offense, he just wanted to guard. And I thought that was just super cool to witness that,” he recalled.
Those guys are multi-time All-Stars, MVPs, and future Hall-of-Famers, so the presence of cameras didn’t bother them, they just wanted to get better and show what they could do. Maybe that’s why they’re legends in the first place, because they have such confidence in their games that they don’t care who sees it.
The prevalence of so many hateful comments and even accounts dedicated to trolling players has definitely created a different landscape, and one that hasn’t been good for players’ mental health. It’s a shame, because as Nash and LeBron showed, playing 1-on-1 can be extremely beneficial to a player. Unfortunately, it’s a new world we live in, so it’s unlikely that the old days are ever coming back.
