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文章連結 https://t.co/ZHGoYPqPTq (這篇可能需要subscribe才能看到)

這篇是在幾個禮拜前在華爾街日報介紹Harden的文章

被這文章的動圖給吸引住了  簡直就像是灌籃高手的漫畫一樣 所以想在這邊分享

順便翻譯一下這篇文章

動圖的連結在這邊

https://tinyurl.com/jhy6rnq

James Harden's Secret Talent Is Slowing Down

Most players in the NBA are more intimidating than Houston Rockets guard James
 Harden. He isn't uncommonly tall, doesn't jump especially high and can't run
all that quickly. His wingspan is ridiculous for a normal human being but only
 barely above average in his profession. There is almost nothing about his
physical makeup that seems exceptional.

大部分NBA球員的外表看起來都比火箭隊的Harden更嚇人,Harden並沒有特別高,而且跳不高
也沒也跑的那麼快. 他的臂展對於正常人來說是荒謬的長, 但相對於NBA球員僅是比平均
在高一點而已, Harden的體測幾乎沒有一項可以算是特優

"By all these traditional performance metrics that we track, he's pretty
pedestrian," said Marcus Elliott, the founder and director of the Peak
Performance Project, which has analyzed the biomechanics of hundreds of NBA
players.

Marcus Elliot, Peak Performance Project的創辦人和總裁說 "根據我們測的所有傳統
的體能測量, Harden就像是路人一樣" (他們已經分析過上百個NBA球員分的生理機制)

But something unexpected happened when Harden came here for a closer
examination last spring. There were actually several areas in which Harden
was an outlier-not only among basketball players, but among thousands of
athletes Elliott's lab has studied. And they were all related to the same
underlying trait.



Harden has a hidden advantage: deceleration. His braking system is the best in
sports. Harden is the fastest at slowing down.

Harden有一個隱藏的優勢 " 減速"!! 他的煞車系統是所有運動員中最佳的, Harden是所
有人當中可以最快減速的人

Once you notice his ability to stop, you start to understand his entire game.
This is the skill that allows Harden to improvise off the dribble. It's why
he can screech to a halt when he's driving, swerve in the lane as other players
skate past him and step-back with enough separation to sneak off a jumper.



Houston is good this year because Harden is great, and Harden is great
because of this obscure, imperceptible edge that even he didn't recognize
until recently.

火箭今年的好表現完全是因為鬍子的偉大, 而鬍子的偉大正是因為這個令人難以察覺的
技巧, 而鬍子自己本身也直到最近才認知到

"You can tell on the court," Harden said. "Athleticism, for me, is not being
able to jump the highest or run the fastest. It's being able to control it.
If you're not able to control it, you're just a loose cannon. I'm athletic
in my own way."



What he's doing has distinguished Harden even in a season of superlative NBA
performances. Kevin Durant has never been such an efficient scorer. Stephen
Curry is starting to resemble the supernova of last year. Isaiah Thomas is
better in the fourth quarter than anyone in decades, Russell Westbrook is
averaging a triple-double and LeBron James is still LeBron James.



But the frontrunner to win the NBA's most valuable player award is Harden.
He's averaging 28.9 points per game while also somehow leading the league
with 11.4 assists per game. His efficiency and usage have never been higher.
And the Rockets have emerged as the NBA's surprise contender with a 38-17
record that puts them behind only the Golden State Warriors and San Antonio
Spurs in their conference.

Harden目前是本季NBA MVP的領先者, 他每場可以拿到28.9分, 同時有著全聯盟第一的
11.4個助攻, 他的效率從來沒有這個高過, 而火箭隊本季也成為意外的爭冠者, 他們有
著38勝17敗的紀錄(現在是40-18), 在西區只落後勇士和馬刺

The question is how Harden plays the way he does when everyone on the court
knows exactly what he's trying to do. The answer can be found by coming to
an old, converted music venue in this sleepy town near the ocean.

問題是所有人都知道Harden在球場上要做什麼, 但他仍然可以按照他自己的方式打球,
解答這個問題必須來到 Peak Performance Project的總部
(他的總部是以前是一個舊的音樂廳, 在Santa Barbara 的海邊)

For the last decade, NBA players have been making the pilgrimage here to the
headquarters of P3, a warehouse-like space where they see a hanging print of
Leonardo da Vinci's "Vitruvian Man" when they walk in. They strap reflective
markers on their key joints-the same way videogames are made-and perform a
series of movements on the force plates embedded into the gym's floor. The
entire battery of tests can last about two hours, and the athletes leave
with an incredible trove of biometric data. There is no
basketball hoop in the entire building.



It's places likes P3 that have used a richer understanding of the human body
to redefine athleticism in recent years, and the NBA has embraced its
approach more than any other league. There are fewer players on each team,
they work on guaranteed contracts that give their employers incentives to
keep them healthy, and they're in a league with younger owners who made their
 fortunes using information to find edges. That explains why 46% of players
on NBA opening-day rosters had been scrutinized by P3, according to the
company


經被P3詳細研究過

Harden became the latest NBA player to be tested not long after the Rockets
lost in last season's playoffs. Elliott didn't know what to expect. He
doesn't watch much basketball and had never seen Harden on the court. He
also thought Harden seemed bashful for a player of his caliber.



"Some of the guys show up and want to show us what freaks they are," he said.

 "Harden was the opposite of that. It was almost like he was apologetic about
 the fact that he wasn't going to blow us away."

他說"有些傢伙來到這邊想向我們展現他們是怎樣的怪物, 而Harden則是正好相反,
感覺就像是他想要跟我們說抱歉, 因為他的表現並沒有讓我們大吃一驚

And he didn't blow them away. At least not in the way that NBA players have
always been evaluated. Harden's lateral acceleration placed him in the 36th
percentile and his vertical acceleration in the 54th percentile of players
studied by P3. "He's basically at the NBA norms in most acceleration metrics
," Elliott said. "But his deceleration metrics are off the charts."

的確Harden並沒有令他們大吃一驚, 他的橫向加速只有在所有球員中佔前百分之36,
直向加速更只有前百分之54, Harden基本上在加速這個項目就是處於NBA的平均, 但是
他在減速這個項目卻是異於常人

They were surprised when they saw those numbers. Harden's "eccentric force"
-which sounds like it should be the name of his next Adidas sneaker but is
actually the force he generates when he stops his downward momentum-ranked
in the 98th percentile. And his "rate of eccentric-force development" was
in the 99th percentile.



"I didn't know before I was tested, but I can feel the difference," Harden
said. "I know what I'm great at and what I'm not great at-and I use it to my
advantage."

Harden說 "在我測試之前我並不知道, 但我可以感覺到有所不同, 我知道我的優點和缺點
, 而我將這些變成我的優勢

That's apparent in the way he plays. Harden relies on the stepback jumper
more than anyone in the NBA, and his ability to decelerate is what frees him
for the split-second he requires to get a shot off. That's why it's basically
unstoppable

Harden打球的方式在明顯也不過了, 他比其他NBA球員更依靠著後撇步跳投,而他減速的
能力更是讓他可以在瞬間得到出手的空檔,這也是為什麼別人無法守住他

This is an underappreciated part of playing basketball. There are people
around the sport, in fact, who believe that changing speeds is the single
most important characteristic in the game today. "You look at the best
players in the NBA, and they can go full speed with a dribble and all of a
sudden-stop," said Rockets forward Ryan Anderson. "It's impossible to guard."



Harden vexes his defenders when he drives, too. But it's not because he blows
 past them. It's because he stops before the guy stuck guarding him can react
, leaving him no choice but to foul Harden, who has led the NBA in free throws
 for the last three years.



To play this way requires an extraordinary amount of body control. It's more
common to see players who are better at the exact opposite: accelerating
quickly and decelerating slowly. But there's a reason they don't start in the
All-Star Game. "Those systems aren't built to survive," Elliott said. "It's
like a Ferrari with a Volkswagen's braking system."




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