10 ms·

Total Recall: LeBron's mighty mind (2014)

167 points by wallflower 8y ago

William1000 8y ago
His memory has always been laughably impressive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNVJFRl6f6s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNVJFRl6f6s
- beebmam 8y ago
  Wow, this IS truly incredible. This reminds me of how many chess grandmasters can easily recall and recite and visualize every move in a game from years past. I think James deserves a little more credit than just being on par with chess GMs: to memorize something so complex as a basketball game without even attempting to commit it to memory speaks to his extraordinary intelligence.
  - vertline3 8y ago
    Steve Kerr said it's common for players at the top, said Draymond was the same way. I imagine Jordan as well. Did LeBron’s memory of the fourth quarter surprise you? Kerr: “Not for a great player. I think great players remember everything. It’s like a quarterback.” Your guys do? Kerr: “Yeah. Not all of them [laughs]. Draymond would be the same way. “We’ll be watching tape of a game from, we played Houston in December or something, and guys will be like, ‘Oh yeah, I remember that. This is what happened next.’ “So I don’t think it’s that rare. But the best players generally remember the most and have the sharpest memories.
    - asimpletune 8y ago
      Draymond is known for also being a very smart player.
  - fenomas 8y ago
    You probably already know this, but of course the companion trivia there is that chess masters' incredible recall for board positions only works for realistic layouts - when tested on randomly placed pieces, masters apparently remember them no better than beginners. If basketball is analogous, one could suppose that (A) there may not be anything special about LeBron's memory per se - e.g. he might remember the plays in a cricket match as poorly as anyone else - and (B) it argues that on the court LeBron is thinking out the game, and the implications of each exchange, in a way comparable to how chess masters think out moves (and he probably puts similar mental effort into the other pursuits the article describes).
    - FPGAhacker 8y ago
      I have heard, though no citations, a psychologist or two on podcasts say that memories as we commonly understand them are reconstructions from fragments and snapshots. If one accepts that hypothesis then it would make sense that you can reconstruct more accurately things that behave according to a fixed and small set of rules that you understand thoroughly and intuitively. *small relative to the universe of rules outside of things like chess and basketball.
    - philwelch 8y ago
      While true, there are also stories about LeBron having remarkable memory for non-basketball-related details, like remembering the color of the shirt a journalist was wearing the first time they met several years ago.
    - jmulho 8y ago
      This is presumably because the chess master understands the position. I see three pawns, a king, a rook, and a knight. The chess master sees a castled king. I see 30 pieces all over the board. The master sees the Sicilian Dragon Harrington-Glek variation. I have no idea what happened next. I see eight candidate moves. The master sees three but knows that only one will make this particular opponent uncomfortable. With this level of understanding, it is way easier for the master to remember the game.
      - jimbokun 8y ago
        It's like a compression algorithm, eliminating redundant details.
- jl2718 8y ago
  I’ve noticed a strong tendency toward eidetic memory in people that started in their professions without going to college. Very common in enlisted military, for instance. I think it might actually be quite natural. Education, I think, overloads a person with all of this useless stuff to make them ‘well-rounded’ and they lose their ability to focus on the details.
  - michaelmrose 8y ago
    Learning makes people stupid is a very strange thesis with zero support. It seems more likely that you have no idea what the instance of eidetic memory in either population, that memory doesn't work like that at all, and that small handful of anecdotes is leading to a spurious connection.
    - pitt1980 8y ago
      this seems overly hostile to what appears to be a hypothesis the idea that what we're trained to notice changes what we perceive, doesn't strike me as strange thesis at all I'm reminded of this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahg6qcgoay4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahg6qcgoay4
      - michaelmrose 8y ago
        Our brains are trained to find patterns. Prove it is a perfectly valid response to what appears to be a spurious one.
  - throwawaymath 8y ago
    The other commenter's reply is a tad aggressively stated but I agree with it. I think your conclusion is probably skewed by survivorship bias. When I began my career I didn't have any college experience and I have a fairly exceptional working and long term memory (as measured by an IQ test and other peoples' remarks on my work). As an example, I can typically recite most lines of dialogue from a TV show verbatim in order after watching the episode once. That does come in handy for professional work. However, I happen to know many people without any college education, and most do not have a particularly good memory; they don't have a particularly bad memory either, just sort of middling. So trading one set of anecdotes for another: I don't see support for your hypothesis. I think it's plausible that professionally successful people without college education tend to have a better memory, perhaps because they need to in order to compensate for lack of formal education. But even that is unsubstantiated. We probably can't draw any meaningful inferences from the n = 1 example of one of the most successful basketball players of all time. Many of Lebron James' qualities - both mental and physical - are likely several sigma from the mean.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  I have heard the same about the top Formula One Drivers. After the race they can recall almost every turn of the race in detail with their engineers. It takes hours to get all the information across. It makes sense that a good memory is big asset for an athlete. It allows them to replay a situation and learn from it. When I did martial arts my memory of a fight was pretty vague so I couldn't analyze and learn much.
  - prmph 8y ago
    I've noticed this ability as well in other fields: it seems those at the very top (chess grandmasters, piano virtuosos, etc) have an incredible ability to remember the details of performances in their field. The question is: is it their existing recall abilities that (in part) helps them to get to the top, or is it the process of becoming that good that greatly enhances their memory?
    - maxxxxx 8y ago
      I wonder if it's a function of being able to focus.
    - loblollyboy 8y ago
      Yup - here is a cool one about how baseball players scan things with their eyes https://source.wustl.edu/2006/08/st-louis-cardinals-slugger-pujols-gets-babe-ruth-test-at-washington-university/ https://source.wustl.edu/2006/08/st-louis-cardinals-slugger-...
    - ehaliewicz2 8y ago
      I'm sure a large part of it is improving your memory, but the very best in the world probably had some advantage to start off with. For example, if you start off learning a language, there are all kinds of tiny details to pronunciation that you don't even recognize and could never recall afterwards. If you try to repeat what someone's said, you might miss a lot of those details. But if you've become fluent at a native (or near-native) level, you've trained your brain to subconsciously recognize and focus on all of those details and can recite something that someone's said perfectly.
- jimbokun 8y ago
  Almost as laughably unimpressive is the vapidity of the next question asked, something like "down after one game, how concerned are you?" Um, 7? 6? 14? I think coaches and athletes don't necessarily get upset about having to answer questions per se. I think a lot of times they are upset that the people writing about their sport have so little knowledge or curiosity about it. Zach Lowe, as a counterexample, seems to get a lot of interesting answers out of players and coaches because he makes good observations and thus can actually ask interesting questions.
wallflower 8y ago
LeBron James is arguably the greatest player of his modern era (Wilt Chamberlain did not have as much competition), if not all time. Yes, he has tremendous physical gifts and dexterity. What most people don't know is he has an almost uncanny eidetic memory that allows him to truly know how the other players on a team have played against him or his team in the past without studying game video ipso facto... and also whup them at Madden. > "When I was a kid my coaches started to say to me that I remembered things that happened in games from a few tournaments back -- and that surprised them," James says. "I started to realize how important that could be years later, probably when I was in high school. And then, eventually, I realized that it can get me into trouble."
- ssharp 8y ago
  Besides his physical and mental talents, he's also an incredibly dedicated worker and has also embraced a lot of innovative playing, training and recovery ideas that has helped him extend his peak physical years beyond where they normally are. One of the surprising things I heard about last year was that the newer basketball cameras that record all aspects of play rated him as one of (maybe even the) slowest players in the game. Of course, if you've ever watched him run, especially on a chase-down block (such as the one he did in the 2016 NBA Finals game 7), you'd know he's one of the fastest players in the league. However, he's figured out ways to be effective without moving that much so he preserves energy. At age 33 last season, he played every single game of the regular season, plus 22 playoff games. He's made the NBA finals eight years in a row, which would be roughly the equivalent of 2 additional regular seasons, though playoff basketball is substantially more physically demanding, so the physical strain would be more than just 2 additional seasons. I think ultimately, the longevity of his dominance, coupled with how talented the rest of the league has been during his tenure, will be the factor that makes him the best player of all time.
  - philwelch 8y ago
    LeBron also has very healthy body mechanics, which is an underrated part of durability. The difference between more durable and less durable players isn’t only down to conditioning and training and genetics; an NBA player jumps and lands, cuts and stops, and generally subjects his body to the limits of what it can withstand. Constantly and repeatedly doing that in biomechanically vulnerable ways (bracing the knees inward, trying to stick one-footed landings, landing on the heels, letting the knees translate in front of the toes) will absolutely wear down and break any player.
jaggederest 8y ago
I have a similar sort of eidetic memory and I do find it often more hassle than help. Most people seem to remember about as much as they need to remember, so remembering more is often not about having extra access to information you need, but rather remembering minutiae that are discarded as irrelevant by others.
- glass_of_water 8y ago
  Could you elaborate on how you find it to be a hassle? I find it interesting that the imperfection of most people's memory could be a feature.
  - jaggederest 8y ago
    Suddenly being highly distracted by relevant, compelling, irresistible memory cascades at inopportune moments. Remembering every mistake and embarrassement from your entire life, age 4 to 35. There's some evidence that eidetic memory is tied to anxiety disorders and anecdotally I can believe it.
siruncledrew 8y ago
It's cool to watch alongside the game action he's describing: https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/8jajbd/lebrons_photographic_memory_overlayed_over_video/ https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/8jajbd/lebrons_photogr...
mattdeboard 8y ago
I've been thinking a lot lately about how intertwined memory and the brain's capacity for pattern matching are. I'm really curious how they interplay, neurologically/chemically
babesh 8y ago
He isn't smart enough to adjust his offensive game. His go to move is to lower his shoulder. The best defensive players and teams give way and then he is off balance and he tends to miss the shot. He has done that his entire career. See Durant and Iguodala's defense. Also his straight line drives are completely negated by a good shot blocker(s). See Tyson Chandler and the Mavericks. A more adaptable player would have developed a runner, a low post game, and a stop and pop. He consistently hasn't shown the adaptability or foresight to do that... other than to form new super teams.
- dagenix 8y ago
  He is already one of the best to ever play the game. Just imagine how much better he might become if he happens to read HN and sees what babesh has to say. For the sake of maintaining competitive balance in the league and for the sake of whatever NBA team babesh is undoubtedly coaching, let's hope LeBron is taking a day off from the internet today!
- 40acres 8y ago
  This is nonsense. LeBron has greatly improved his 3 point shooting over his career and in Miami he was able to develop a low post game.
  - parsnips 8y ago
    >and in Miami he was able to develop a low post game. After he couldn't post up 97 year old Shawn Marion, and 146 year old Jason Kidd.
    - whateveracct 8y ago
      That was year 1 at Miami..
- waynecochran 8y ago
  In general, it's smart to lower your shoulder and go to the rim if you have any daylight at all. Most of the time the defense will be called for a block if there is any contact (offensive fouls are rarely called -- only when you are perfectly set do you usually get the charge call). This is why defensive players "give way" -- it's the best hope you have. IMO the greatest flaw in how basketball is officiated is the strict conditions refs require to call a charge -- offensive players should exploit it more. Lebron is smart.
DisruptiveDave 8y ago
Sean McVay (NFL's LA Rams coach) has something similar going on: https://www.businessinsider.com/sean-mcvay-memory-hbo-real-sports-lebron-james-2018-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/sean-mcvay-memory-hbo-real-s...
- pitt1980 8y ago
  When Lane Kiffin was the offensive coordinator at Alabama in 2015, he interviewed a recent college grad who had done his undergraduate work at Florida and Kansas. Charlie Weis Jr., the son of the former Notre Dame and Kansas coach, sought an analyst job with the Crimson Tide, and Kiffin had been told the kid had a photographic memory. So during the interview, Kiffin handed Weis his driver’s license and his credit card. You can have these for three minutes, Kiffin recalled telling Weis. Then I’ll take them back and start asking questions. After the allotted time ended, Kiffin took back the cards and started the test. What street do I live on? Weis answered correctly. He correctly recited various facts gleaned from the two cards. The next day, Kiffin decided to test the job candidate’s retention. What’s the expiration date on my credit card? Weis answered correctly. If he didn’t already have the job, that cinched it. Weis and Kiffin spent two seasons together in Tuscaloosa. Well, most of two seasons. Kiffin jokes that they were 28–1 together and 0–1 apart. This year, they’re back together with different job titles. Kiffin is the second-year head coach at Florida Atlantic, leading a team that went 11–3 and won Conference USA last season. Weis, who turned 25 in April, is the offensive coordinator. “Sometimes it’s crazy to think about,” Weis said Sunday. Weis doesn’t think about it too often, though. He’s too busy for introspection. A night earlier, Kiffin and Weis had led the FAU offense through its most important scrimmage of the preseason. They’re trying to winnow down a quarterback race that features three transfer quarterbacks competing to take the job abdicated by 2017 starter Jason Driskel, who opted to retire from football in January and who obtained a civil engineering degree in May. In less than two weeks, the Owls will open the season at Oklahoma. They haven’t trailed in a game since October, but they haven’t been challenged the way they will by the three-time defending Big 12 champ. Whether former Sooner Chris Robison, former Florida State Seminole DeAndre Johnson or former Arkansas Razorback/SMU Mustang Rafe Peavey will win the job is a hot topic on campus, but an even more intriguing question is this: Which son of a famous football coach will call the plays? Will it be Kiffin—the son of legendary NFL defensive coordinator Monte—or Weis? Weis, asked what percentage of plays he called in Saturday’s scrimmage, deferred. “That’s up to coach Kiffin to talk about,” he said. “It’s not my place.” Kiffin didn’t give a direct answer either, and both men discussed a collaborative effort. Their collaboration at Alabama worked beautifully for the Crimson Tide. Kiffin designed the game plans with help from Weis, whose memory and attention to detail allowed him to find vulnerabilities in defenses that Kiffin could exploit on gameday. If the Owls can now combine Kiffin’s ability to spot potential huge plays in-game with Weis’s thorough prep and instant recall, the offense should be as good or better than the one that put up 6.8 yards a play and 40.6 points a game last season. That recall, Kiffin believes, will give FAU the equivalent of the photos that we see NFL quarterbacks thumbing through on the sidelines during games. Such photos aren’t allowed in college football, but there is no rule against a coach taking one in his head. Kiffin had an idea Weis could do that when, during his Alabama interview, Weis rattled off all 11 jersey numbers for the starting defense of a team he’d scouted earlier. After working so closely with Weis in ’15 and ’16, Kiffin is sure of it. https://www.si.com/college-football/2018/08/20/charlie-weis-jr-age-florida-atlantic-lane-kiffin https://www.si.com/college-football/2018/08/20/charlie-weis-...
jl2718 8y ago
First-off, I think this is interesting because athletes have hit the point of diminishing returns on physical abilities, and now the games are turning mental in every sport. The NBA has done a great job at turning strategy into a spectator sport. In the NFL, the possibly single worst athlete in the quarterback position is the best ever. They are changing too. I’m not sure MLB can adapt. I wonder whether this doesn’t just pave the way for eSports to take over.
- curuinor 8y ago
  There are no games where the top physical specimens are without exception the best in the sport. The mind is without exception of fundamental exception to every sport, no matter what. On the converse, esports also has fundamental physical characteristics: reaction time and ability to put out apm, for examples.
- philwelch 8y ago
  Eh...the NBA still has a ton of great athletes with dubious basketball IQ (Westbrook) and, conversely, guys with great basketball IQ who are held back by their limited physical skills (Ben Simmons, Rajon Rondo, dare I say Lonzo Ball). The best players are generally the ones who combine basketball IQ with the hand-eye coordination needed to sink jumpshots from anywhere or the athleticism to go over, through, or past the opponent at will.
  - fbernier 8y ago
    Westbrook does have a good IQ but I can understand why some people could think that. As for athleticism, I really, really, really dont understand where you are coming from with Ben Simmons lacking in that area. The only thing the guy doesn't have is a mid-range jumper. As for the rest he is a 6'10" point guard, so basically Magic Johnson with maybe a tad more athleticism.
    - philwelch 8y ago
      Simmons is a great athlete, but not being able to shoot jumpers is more of a physical limitation than a mental one, so he still serves as a good counterexample to the argument that NBA success is primarily mental in nature.
socrates1998 8y ago
Impressive, no doubt. This type of memory happens more often than people realize to athletes and coaches. Pattern recognition in competitive sports is extremely valuable. Lebron is one of the all time greats because he combines such unique gifts, his memory, his work ethic, his physicality, size and quickness. He is just a freak all the way around. His basketball IQ has some interesting affects on teams he plays though. He has problems submitting and listening to his coaches. Often because he thinks he is right, which he often is. Still, there can be only one person making decisions and Lebron does not like to give up his power. This is ultimately what caused him to leave Miami. He was the 4th most important person in the organization behind the owner, the GM Pat Riley, the head coach and the homegrown star (Dwayne Wade). When he went back to Cleveland, he went to an organization that he could dominate from top to bottom. I think his desire for influence and power has hurt his career to a certain extent. If he had gone to San Antonio, for example, he might have had several more titles by now. I don't see the Lakers winning one in the few years, so Lebron will probably end his career with 3.
- w0m 8y ago
  I think your overstating the 'LeBron needs power' narrative. In LA, he will be behind the shadow of Kobe as an example, with little hope to surpass him. I think it's more legacy definition, he's been talking 'Chasing a Ghost' for a years now and rebuilding LA (after 8 consecutive finals decimating the East, a Ring to Cle) would do that. Leaving Mia for Cle was due to (Kyrie + 2*(#1 overall)) > (Bosh+(Wade - 1.2 knees)), and the Coming Home narrative.
  - exclusiv 8y ago
    If you mean shadow as far as likeability for Lakers fans I agree. But nothing as far as talent. Kobe isn't even a top 3 Laker of all-time and LeBron is on another level which is a notch below Jordan.
    - tibyat 8y ago
      shallow troll
gargarplex 8y ago
The better you are at something, the more efficient your mind is at encoding the memory. It's like the brain has a Huffman codes table for all the various abstract ideas, so one may encode information efficiently and therefore have more elaborate recall
bsparker 8y ago
Lebron is also a genuinely good human being and as a Clevelander, I wish him the best of luck in LA.
rajacombinator 8y ago
This isn’t really surprising at all for anyone that competes at a high strategic level. However it is interesting how vivid and persistent these memories are compared to many other things.
mandeepj 8y ago
I think you must be a good listener, have sharp focus and dedication to be able to remember\store things for long term
dmoy 8y ago
Wow I would want to clone his brain to help me maintain legacy code systems.
- yosito 8y ago
  Seriously, I can't even remember the code I wrote last week.
coleca 8y ago
60 Minutes did a story on this condition four years ago or so. They called it "Super Memory". Actress Marilu Henner was one of the people that possess this super recall ability. Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHeEQ85m79I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHeEQ85m79I Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en23bCvp-Fw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en23bCvp-Fw
- beautifulfreak 8y ago
  They called it superior autobiographical memory.
atmosx 8y ago
As others suggested, this is common in sports. I believe the reason is epinephrine release. Epinephrine (also known as adrenaline) greatly improves attention to details and vivid memories by enhancing the brain, facilitating long-term memory recording. From wikipedia: --- Epinephrine acts by binding to a variety of adrenergic receptors [...]. Its actions are to increase peripheral resistance via α1 receptor-dependent vasoconstriction and to increase cardiac output via its binding to β1 receptors. The goal of reducing peripheral circulation is to increase coronary and cerebral perfusion pressures and therefore increase oxygen exchange at the cellular level.[64] While epinephrine does increase aortic, cerebral, and carotid circulation pressure, it lowers carotid blood flow and end-tidal CO2 or ETCO2 levels. It appears that epinephrine may be improving macrocirculation at the expense of the capillary beds where actual perfusion is taking place. --- I would argue that adrenaline can turn seconds in to years, the world suddenly starts going in slow motion, especially when your body is trained by having adrenaline rushes frequently. One of the reasons many newly hired SREs learn many things about their stack quickly over incidents is adrenaline rushes... Of course, in the case of incident response, it might have negative connotations as a recent talk at SRECon by a DO employee showed: nearly 70% of SREs had trouble sleeping because of anxiety after am incident.
raihansaputra 8y ago
I'm really curious on those who do have these kind of usable high memory capacity. I seem to be able to remember random facts in my head but for other, more important subjects (such as basic numbers about the company I'm working for, my emotions and feelings on a certain point in life, lessons and experiences that I've gone through in life) seem to pass me by and I feel like I just have these holes in my memory that I can't patch. I remember my friends sometimes ask me why I date my Instax pictures and I just realised that I cannot recall my memories easily without aids and/or concrete data (one of the reasons why it's hard for me to turn off my location history on Google). This is especially a hindrance in my personal/social life as I often forget significant life events for myself or others and come across as uncaring to others. How to improve my memory in general, basically, is my question. I've read 'Moonwalking with Einstein' that describes techniques used in memory competitions (such as recalling thousands of digits of pi) but I don't feel that is applicable in real life. Maybe someone here could chime in on that.

167 points by wallflower 8y ago

His memory has always been laughably impressive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNVJFRl6f6s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNVJFRl6f6s

beebmam 8y ago
Wow, this IS truly incredible. This reminds me of how many chess grandmasters can easily recall and recite and visualize every move in a game from years past. I think James deserves a little more credit than just being on par with chess GMs: to memorize something so complex as a basketball game without even attempting to commit it to memory speaks to his extraordinary intelligence.
- vertline3 8y ago
  Steve Kerr said it's common for players at the top, said Draymond was the same way. I imagine Jordan as well. Did LeBron’s memory of the fourth quarter surprise you? Kerr: “Not for a great player. I think great players remember everything. It’s like a quarterback.” Your guys do? Kerr: “Yeah. Not all of them [laughs]. Draymond would be the same way. “We’ll be watching tape of a game from, we played Houston in December or something, and guys will be like, ‘Oh yeah, I remember that. This is what happened next.’ “So I don’t think it’s that rare. But the best players generally remember the most and have the sharpest memories.
  - asimpletune 8y ago
    Draymond is known for also being a very smart player.
- fenomas 8y ago
  You probably already know this, but of course the companion trivia there is that chess masters' incredible recall for board positions only works for realistic layouts - when tested on randomly placed pieces, masters apparently remember them no better than beginners. If basketball is analogous, one could suppose that (A) there may not be anything special about LeBron's memory per se - e.g. he might remember the plays in a cricket match as poorly as anyone else - and (B) it argues that on the court LeBron is thinking out the game, and the implications of each exchange, in a way comparable to how chess masters think out moves (and he probably puts similar mental effort into the other pursuits the article describes).
  - FPGAhacker 8y ago
    I have heard, though no citations, a psychologist or two on podcasts say that memories as we commonly understand them are reconstructions from fragments and snapshots. If one accepts that hypothesis then it would make sense that you can reconstruct more accurately things that behave according to a fixed and small set of rules that you understand thoroughly and intuitively. *small relative to the universe of rules outside of things like chess and basketball.
  - philwelch 8y ago
    While true, there are also stories about LeBron having remarkable memory for non-basketball-related details, like remembering the color of the shirt a journalist was wearing the first time they met several years ago.
  - jmulho 8y ago
    This is presumably because the chess master understands the position. I see three pawns, a king, a rook, and a knight. The chess master sees a castled king. I see 30 pieces all over the board. The master sees the Sicilian Dragon Harrington-Glek variation. I have no idea what happened next. I see eight candidate moves. The master sees three but knows that only one will make this particular opponent uncomfortable. With this level of understanding, it is way easier for the master to remember the game.
    - jimbokun 8y ago
      It's like a compression algorithm, eliminating redundant details.
jl2718 8y ago
I’ve noticed a strong tendency toward eidetic memory in people that started in their professions without going to college. Very common in enlisted military, for instance. I think it might actually be quite natural. Education, I think, overloads a person with all of this useless stuff to make them ‘well-rounded’ and they lose their ability to focus on the details.
- michaelmrose 8y ago
  Learning makes people stupid is a very strange thesis with zero support. It seems more likely that you have no idea what the instance of eidetic memory in either population, that memory doesn't work like that at all, and that small handful of anecdotes is leading to a spurious connection.
  - pitt1980 8y ago
    this seems overly hostile to what appears to be a hypothesis the idea that what we're trained to notice changes what we perceive, doesn't strike me as strange thesis at all I'm reminded of this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahg6qcgoay4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahg6qcgoay4
    - michaelmrose 8y ago
      Our brains are trained to find patterns. Prove it is a perfectly valid response to what appears to be a spurious one.
- throwawaymath 8y ago
  The other commenter's reply is a tad aggressively stated but I agree with it. I think your conclusion is probably skewed by survivorship bias. When I began my career I didn't have any college experience and I have a fairly exceptional working and long term memory (as measured by an IQ test and other peoples' remarks on my work). As an example, I can typically recite most lines of dialogue from a TV show verbatim in order after watching the episode once. That does come in handy for professional work. However, I happen to know many people without any college education, and most do not have a particularly good memory; they don't have a particularly bad memory either, just sort of middling. So trading one set of anecdotes for another: I don't see support for your hypothesis. I think it's plausible that professionally successful people without college education tend to have a better memory, perhaps because they need to in order to compensate for lack of formal education. But even that is unsubstantiated. We probably can't draw any meaningful inferences from the n = 1 example of one of the most successful basketball players of all time. Many of Lebron James' qualities - both mental and physical - are likely several sigma from the mean.
maxxxxx 8y ago
I have heard the same about the top Formula One Drivers. After the race they can recall almost every turn of the race in detail with their engineers. It takes hours to get all the information across. It makes sense that a good memory is big asset for an athlete. It allows them to replay a situation and learn from it. When I did martial arts my memory of a fight was pretty vague so I couldn't analyze and learn much.
- prmph 8y ago
  I've noticed this ability as well in other fields: it seems those at the very top (chess grandmasters, piano virtuosos, etc) have an incredible ability to remember the details of performances in their field. The question is: is it their existing recall abilities that (in part) helps them to get to the top, or is it the process of becoming that good that greatly enhances their memory?
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    I wonder if it's a function of being able to focus.
  - loblollyboy 8y ago
    Yup - here is a cool one about how baseball players scan things with their eyes https://source.wustl.edu/2006/08/st-louis-cardinals-slugger-pujols-gets-babe-ruth-test-at-washington-university/ https://source.wustl.edu/2006/08/st-louis-cardinals-slugger-...
  - ehaliewicz2 8y ago
    I'm sure a large part of it is improving your memory, but the very best in the world probably had some advantage to start off with. For example, if you start off learning a language, there are all kinds of tiny details to pronunciation that you don't even recognize and could never recall afterwards. If you try to repeat what someone's said, you might miss a lot of those details. But if you've become fluent at a native (or near-native) level, you've trained your brain to subconsciously recognize and focus on all of those details and can recite something that someone's said perfectly.
jimbokun 8y ago
Almost as laughably unimpressive is the vapidity of the next question asked, something like "down after one game, how concerned are you?" Um, 7? 6? 14? I think coaches and athletes don't necessarily get upset about having to answer questions per se. I think a lot of times they are upset that the people writing about their sport have so little knowledge or curiosity about it. Zach Lowe, as a counterexample, seems to get a lot of interesting answers out of players and coaches because he makes good observations and thus can actually ask interesting questions.

wallflower 8y ago

LeBron James is arguably the greatest player of his modern era (Wilt Chamberlain did not have as much competition), if not all time. Yes, he has tremendous physical gifts and dexterity. What most people don't know is he has an almost uncanny eidetic memory that allows him to truly know how the other players on a team have played against him or his team in the past without studying game video ipso facto... and also whup them at Madden. > "When I was a kid my coaches started to say to me that I remembered things that happened in games from a few tournaments back -- and that surprised them," James says. "I started to realize how important that could be years later, probably when I was in high school. And then, eventually, I realized that it can get me into trouble."

ssharp 8y ago
Besides his physical and mental talents, he's also an incredibly dedicated worker and has also embraced a lot of innovative playing, training and recovery ideas that has helped him extend his peak physical years beyond where they normally are. One of the surprising things I heard about last year was that the newer basketball cameras that record all aspects of play rated him as one of (maybe even the) slowest players in the game. Of course, if you've ever watched him run, especially on a chase-down block (such as the one he did in the 2016 NBA Finals game 7), you'd know he's one of the fastest players in the league. However, he's figured out ways to be effective without moving that much so he preserves energy. At age 33 last season, he played every single game of the regular season, plus 22 playoff games. He's made the NBA finals eight years in a row, which would be roughly the equivalent of 2 additional regular seasons, though playoff basketball is substantially more physically demanding, so the physical strain would be more than just 2 additional seasons. I think ultimately, the longevity of his dominance, coupled with how talented the rest of the league has been during his tenure, will be the factor that makes him the best player of all time.
- philwelch 8y ago
  LeBron also has very healthy body mechanics, which is an underrated part of durability. The difference between more durable and less durable players isn’t only down to conditioning and training and genetics; an NBA player jumps and lands, cuts and stops, and generally subjects his body to the limits of what it can withstand. Constantly and repeatedly doing that in biomechanically vulnerable ways (bracing the knees inward, trying to stick one-footed landings, landing on the heels, letting the knees translate in front of the toes) will absolutely wear down and break any player.

jaggederest 8y ago

I have a similar sort of eidetic memory and I do find it often more hassle than help. Most people seem to remember about as much as they need to remember, so remembering more is often not about having extra access to information you need, but rather remembering minutiae that are discarded as irrelevant by others.

glass_of_water 8y ago
Could you elaborate on how you find it to be a hassle? I find it interesting that the imperfection of most people's memory could be a feature.
- jaggederest 8y ago
  Suddenly being highly distracted by relevant, compelling, irresistible memory cascades at inopportune moments. Remembering every mistake and embarrassement from your entire life, age 4 to 35. There's some evidence that eidetic memory is tied to anxiety disorders and anecdotally I can believe it.

siruncledrew 8y ago

It's cool to watch alongside the game action he's describing: https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/8jajbd/lebrons_photographic_memory_overlayed_over_video/ https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/8jajbd/lebrons_photogr...

mattdeboard 8y ago

I've been thinking a lot lately about how intertwined memory and the brain's capacity for pattern matching are. I'm really curious how they interplay, neurologically/chemically

babesh 8y ago

He isn't smart enough to adjust his offensive game. His go to move is to lower his shoulder. The best defensive players and teams give way and then he is off balance and he tends to miss the shot. He has done that his entire career. See Durant and Iguodala's defense. Also his straight line drives are completely negated by a good shot blocker(s). See Tyson Chandler and the Mavericks. A more adaptable player would have developed a runner, a low post game, and a stop and pop. He consistently hasn't shown the adaptability or foresight to do that... other than to form new super teams.

dagenix 8y ago
He is already one of the best to ever play the game. Just imagine how much better he might become if he happens to read HN and sees what babesh has to say. For the sake of maintaining competitive balance in the league and for the sake of whatever NBA team babesh is undoubtedly coaching, let's hope LeBron is taking a day off from the internet today!
40acres 8y ago
This is nonsense. LeBron has greatly improved his 3 point shooting over his career and in Miami he was able to develop a low post game.
- parsnips 8y ago
  >and in Miami he was able to develop a low post game. After he couldn't post up 97 year old Shawn Marion, and 146 year old Jason Kidd.
  - whateveracct 8y ago
    That was year 1 at Miami..
waynecochran 8y ago
In general, it's smart to lower your shoulder and go to the rim if you have any daylight at all. Most of the time the defense will be called for a block if there is any contact (offensive fouls are rarely called -- only when you are perfectly set do you usually get the charge call). This is why defensive players "give way" -- it's the best hope you have. IMO the greatest flaw in how basketball is officiated is the strict conditions refs require to call a charge -- offensive players should exploit it more. Lebron is smart.

DisruptiveDave 8y ago

Sean McVay (NFL's LA Rams coach) has something similar going on: https://www.businessinsider.com/sean-mcvay-memory-hbo-real-sports-lebron-james-2018-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/sean-mcvay-memory-hbo-real-s...

pitt1980 8y ago
When Lane Kiffin was the offensive coordinator at Alabama in 2015, he interviewed a recent college grad who had done his undergraduate work at Florida and Kansas. Charlie Weis Jr., the son of the former Notre Dame and Kansas coach, sought an analyst job with the Crimson Tide, and Kiffin had been told the kid had a photographic memory. So during the interview, Kiffin handed Weis his driver’s license and his credit card. You can have these for three minutes, Kiffin recalled telling Weis. Then I’ll take them back and start asking questions. After the allotted time ended, Kiffin took back the cards and started the test. What street do I live on? Weis answered correctly. He correctly recited various facts gleaned from the two cards. The next day, Kiffin decided to test the job candidate’s retention. What’s the expiration date on my credit card? Weis answered correctly. If he didn’t already have the job, that cinched it. Weis and Kiffin spent two seasons together in Tuscaloosa. Well, most of two seasons. Kiffin jokes that they were 28–1 together and 0–1 apart. This year, they’re back together with different job titles. Kiffin is the second-year head coach at Florida Atlantic, leading a team that went 11–3 and won Conference USA last season. Weis, who turned 25 in April, is the offensive coordinator. “Sometimes it’s crazy to think about,” Weis said Sunday. Weis doesn’t think about it too often, though. He’s too busy for introspection. A night earlier, Kiffin and Weis had led the FAU offense through its most important scrimmage of the preseason. They’re trying to winnow down a quarterback race that features three transfer quarterbacks competing to take the job abdicated by 2017 starter Jason Driskel, who opted to retire from football in January and who obtained a civil engineering degree in May. In less than two weeks, the Owls will open the season at Oklahoma. They haven’t trailed in a game since October, but they haven’t been challenged the way they will by the three-time defending Big 12 champ. Whether former Sooner Chris Robison, former Florida State Seminole DeAndre Johnson or former Arkansas Razorback/SMU Mustang Rafe Peavey will win the job is a hot topic on campus, but an even more intriguing question is this: Which son of a famous football coach will call the plays? Will it be Kiffin—the son of legendary NFL defensive coordinator Monte—or Weis? Weis, asked what percentage of plays he called in Saturday’s scrimmage, deferred. “That’s up to coach Kiffin to talk about,” he said. “It’s not my place.” Kiffin didn’t give a direct answer either, and both men discussed a collaborative effort. Their collaboration at Alabama worked beautifully for the Crimson Tide. Kiffin designed the game plans with help from Weis, whose memory and attention to detail allowed him to find vulnerabilities in defenses that Kiffin could exploit on gameday. If the Owls can now combine Kiffin’s ability to spot potential huge plays in-game with Weis’s thorough prep and instant recall, the offense should be as good or better than the one that put up 6.8 yards a play and 40.6 points a game last season. That recall, Kiffin believes, will give FAU the equivalent of the photos that we see NFL quarterbacks thumbing through on the sidelines during games. Such photos aren’t allowed in college football, but there is no rule against a coach taking one in his head. Kiffin had an idea Weis could do that when, during his Alabama interview, Weis rattled off all 11 jersey numbers for the starting defense of a team he’d scouted earlier. After working so closely with Weis in ’15 and ’16, Kiffin is sure of it. https://www.si.com/college-football/2018/08/20/charlie-weis-jr-age-florida-atlantic-lane-kiffin https://www.si.com/college-football/2018/08/20/charlie-weis-...

jl2718 8y ago

First-off, I think this is interesting because athletes have hit the point of diminishing returns on physical abilities, and now the games are turning mental in every sport. The NBA has done a great job at turning strategy into a spectator sport. In the NFL, the possibly single worst athlete in the quarterback position is the best ever. They are changing too. I’m not sure MLB can adapt. I wonder whether this doesn’t just pave the way for eSports to take over.

curuinor 8y ago
There are no games where the top physical specimens are without exception the best in the sport. The mind is without exception of fundamental exception to every sport, no matter what. On the converse, esports also has fundamental physical characteristics: reaction time and ability to put out apm, for examples.
philwelch 8y ago
Eh...the NBA still has a ton of great athletes with dubious basketball IQ (Westbrook) and, conversely, guys with great basketball IQ who are held back by their limited physical skills (Ben Simmons, Rajon Rondo, dare I say Lonzo Ball). The best players are generally the ones who combine basketball IQ with the hand-eye coordination needed to sink jumpshots from anywhere or the athleticism to go over, through, or past the opponent at will.
- fbernier 8y ago
  Westbrook does have a good IQ but I can understand why some people could think that. As for athleticism, I really, really, really dont understand where you are coming from with Ben Simmons lacking in that area. The only thing the guy doesn't have is a mid-range jumper. As for the rest he is a 6'10" point guard, so basically Magic Johnson with maybe a tad more athleticism.
  - philwelch 8y ago
    Simmons is a great athlete, but not being able to shoot jumpers is more of a physical limitation than a mental one, so he still serves as a good counterexample to the argument that NBA success is primarily mental in nature.

socrates1998 8y ago

Impressive, no doubt. This type of memory happens more often than people realize to athletes and coaches. Pattern recognition in competitive sports is extremely valuable. Lebron is one of the all time greats because he combines such unique gifts, his memory, his work ethic, his physicality, size and quickness. He is just a freak all the way around. His basketball IQ has some interesting affects on teams he plays though. He has problems submitting and listening to his coaches. Often because he thinks he is right, which he often is. Still, there can be only one person making decisions and Lebron does not like to give up his power. This is ultimately what caused him to leave Miami. He was the 4th most important person in the organization behind the owner, the GM Pat Riley, the head coach and the homegrown star (Dwayne Wade). When he went back to Cleveland, he went to an organization that he could dominate from top to bottom. I think his desire for influence and power has hurt his career to a certain extent. If he had gone to San Antonio, for example, he might have had several more titles by now. I don't see the Lakers winning one in the few years, so Lebron will probably end his career with 3.

w0m 8y ago
I think your overstating the 'LeBron needs power' narrative. In LA, he will be behind the shadow of Kobe as an example, with little hope to surpass him. I think it's more legacy definition, he's been talking 'Chasing a Ghost' for a years now and rebuilding LA (after 8 consecutive finals decimating the East, a Ring to Cle) would do that. Leaving Mia for Cle was due to (Kyrie + 2*(#1 overall)) > (Bosh+(Wade - 1.2 knees)), and the Coming Home narrative.
- exclusiv 8y ago
  If you mean shadow as far as likeability for Lakers fans I agree. But nothing as far as talent. Kobe isn't even a top 3 Laker of all-time and LeBron is on another level which is a notch below Jordan.
  - tibyat 8y ago
    shallow troll

gargarplex 8y ago

The better you are at something, the more efficient your mind is at encoding the memory. It's like the brain has a Huffman codes table for all the various abstract ideas, so one may encode information efficiently and therefore have more elaborate recall

bsparker 8y ago

Lebron is also a genuinely good human being and as a Clevelander, I wish him the best of luck in LA.

rajacombinator 8y ago

This isn’t really surprising at all for anyone that competes at a high strategic level. However it is interesting how vivid and persistent these memories are compared to many other things.

mandeepj 8y ago

I think you must be a good listener, have sharp focus and dedication to be able to remember\store things for long term

dmoy 8y ago

Wow I would want to clone his brain to help me maintain legacy code systems.

yosito 8y ago
Seriously, I can't even remember the code I wrote last week.

coleca 8y ago

60 Minutes did a story on this condition four years ago or so. They called it "Super Memory". Actress Marilu Henner was one of the people that possess this super recall ability. Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHeEQ85m79I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHeEQ85m79I Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en23bCvp-Fw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en23bCvp-Fw

beautifulfreak 8y ago
They called it superior autobiographical memory.

atmosx 8y ago

As others suggested, this is common in sports. I believe the reason is epinephrine release. Epinephrine (also known as adrenaline) greatly improves attention to details and vivid memories by enhancing the brain, facilitating long-term memory recording. From wikipedia: --- Epinephrine acts by binding to a variety of adrenergic receptors [...]. Its actions are to increase peripheral resistance via α1 receptor-dependent vasoconstriction and to increase cardiac output via its binding to β1 receptors. The goal of reducing peripheral circulation is to increase coronary and cerebral perfusion pressures and therefore increase oxygen exchange at the cellular level.[64] While epinephrine does increase aortic, cerebral, and carotid circulation pressure, it lowers carotid blood flow and end-tidal CO2 or ETCO2 levels. It appears that epinephrine may be improving macrocirculation at the expense of the capillary beds where actual perfusion is taking place. --- I would argue that adrenaline can turn seconds in to years, the world suddenly starts going in slow motion, especially when your body is trained by having adrenaline rushes frequently. One of the reasons many newly hired SREs learn many things about their stack quickly over incidents is adrenaline rushes... Of course, in the case of incident response, it might have negative connotations as a recent talk at SRECon by a DO employee showed: nearly 70% of SREs had trouble sleeping because of anxiety after am incident.

raihansaputra 8y ago

I'm really curious on those who do have these kind of usable high memory capacity. I seem to be able to remember random facts in my head but for other, more important subjects (such as basic numbers about the company I'm working for, my emotions and feelings on a certain point in life, lessons and experiences that I've gone through in life) seem to pass me by and I feel like I just have these holes in my memory that I can't patch. I remember my friends sometimes ask me why I date my Instax pictures and I just realised that I cannot recall my memories easily without aids and/or concrete data (one of the reasons why it's hard for me to turn off my location history on Google). This is especially a hindrance in my personal/social life as I often forget significant life events for myself or others and come across as uncaring to others. How to improve my memory in general, basically, is my question. I've read 'Moonwalking with Einstein' that describes techniques used in memory competitions (such as recalling thousands of digits of pi) but I don't feel that is applicable in real life. Maybe someone here could chime in on that.