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Message: [QUOTE="champs99and04, post: 2734542, member: 488"] Why is Steph not mentally tough? Serious question. Also, I think that, because of the way the world has evolved, we tend to overstate the mental toughness of older players and understate their athleticism. One of the reasons Bird wasn't a great athlete by today's standards is that the entire league wasn't very athletic by today's standards. But he wasn't Doug McDermott - he was a perfectly competent athlete, even relative to other players in the NBA, and I find the idea that he was less athletic than Dirk comparatively to be pretty unlikely. It's also a lot easier to come across as mentally tough when people aren't scrutinizing your every move and you don't have every bad thing people have ever said about you at the tip of your fingers and you don't have Stephen A. Smith on ESPN every day questioning why you can't win the big game. One could reasonably argue that LeBron is the toughest player, mentally, to ever play the sport. Jordan could have wilted under half the pressure given the fact that, I don't know, he left to play baseball for two years. We shouldn't confuse being needlessly psychotic for mentally tough. That's not to say Bird wasn't[I] [/I]tough as nails, but how much of that perception is enhanced by his notorious trash talking? Legends are often legends because they have the luxury of being a legend. Nobody remembers all the times that Bird or Jordan got mad and then didn't hit ten shots in a row. [/QUOTE]

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