While Most Athletes Possess Great Physical Skills, It’s the Mind That Separates the Best From the Rest : BRAIN MATTERS

Laker guard Jerry West’s last-second, score-tying, 63-foot shot against the New York Knicks in Game 3 of the 1970 NBA finals was not amazing only because he swished it.

It was incredible in that at least one Knick thought West might make it.

Longtime Laker announcer Chick Hearn has a photograph of the famous shot hanging in his home.

“Willis Reed was out there trying to block it,” Hearn says.

Reed, the Knicks’ star center, knew West wasn’t known around the league as “Mr. Clutch” because of his skills as an auto mechanic.

Lucky basket?

Hearn notes West’s perfect form, the way the guard squared his body to the rim, the ball’s precise trajectory, West’s right hand releasing the ball in classic, textbook form.

The shot sealed West’s place in lore; his silhouette to be forwarded to NBA headquarters for promotional use.

Nothing captivates us more than the consequence of an all-or-nothing shot, pitch, throw or putt. Nothing delineates more clearly an athlete’s place in history.

Why are some players better under pressure than others? Why did West and Michael Jordan and Joe Montana excel when the stakes got higher? Were their brains, as one sports researcher postulates, simply wired differently than their peers? Was it an insatiable quest for victory or, as some say in West’s case, an almost pathological fear of losing?

Dozens of interviews with top sports figures and observers revealed no definitive answer, no tidy, hard-bound clinical synopsis.

What we attempted to do in this project was explore the mysteries of the athletes’ minds in an effort to better understand what makes them different from us under pressure--different from one another.

Might it possibly be as simple as former USC and NFL quarterback Paul McDonald posits?

“Certain people are born with the ability to have ice in their veins,” McDonald says. “Other people choke their brains out in pressure.”

Fatigue may well make cowards of us all, but pressure has the market cornered on heroes and goats, not to mention antacids.

“I couldn’t imagine anything worse than finding myself in center field in Yankee Stadium and expected to catch a long, high drive in the bottom of the ninth of the seventh game of the World Series with my team one run ahead,” Times sports columnist Jim Murray writes in his autobiography. “I knew I could never catch it.”

How is it that Jordan could miss 20 shots in Game 6 of this year’s NBA finals but coolly stick the game-winner against the Utah Jazz? Why didn’t Jazz superstar forward Karl Malone take the final shot for his team?

How is it that former UCLA center Bill Walton claims to have had no butterflies before stepping on the court and making 21 of 22 shots against Memphis State in the 1973 NCAA title game?

“You loved those games,” Walton tries to explain. “That’s what you live for, where you walk out there and you say, ‘Let’s go. Catch me.’ ”

How do you explain golfer Ian Baker-Finch’s winning the British Open in 1991 and his not being able to find a fairway a few years later?

Had there once been robust round-table debate over which athlete was the best under pressure, it has presumably ended with Jordan’s latest, and possibly last, game-winning shot.

That stand-still moment lifted the Chicago Bull superstar--on the wings of headline writers--to the title of exalted one in the pressure pantheon.

Jordan’s sheer physical superiority long had been conceded.

What separates Jordan in this all-time pressure pack has been his steely-eyed, unrelenting, almost coldblooded dominance in pressure situations.

“You almost have to discount Jordan,” tennis legend John McEnroe says. “What he’s doing is unbelievable. At one time in my career, I thought I could relate to Jordan. Now, I don’t think I can. He’s like the exception to almost every rule.”

When future sports scientists look back on Jordan, they probably will be as intrigued with his cerebral cortex as his reflex.

St. Louis Cardinal Manager Tony La Russa has a dugout seat for Mark McGwire’s pursuit of Roger Maris’ single-season home run record this season.

But a recent discussion of McGwire’s poise under pressure ultimately led to Jordan.

“He’s the most remarkable athlete between the ears,” La Russa says of Jordan. “He’s the best of all the current athletes in any sport. He’s the best practice player on his team. It’s the will to win or die trying. How many guys are like that these days?”

Walton, no basketball slouch, says Jordan held the NBA on a yo-yo string.

“Michael Jordan just has such mental control over the environment of the NBA,” Walton says. “It’s his whole domain, and he sits atop it. Not physically, but mentally. A lot of the other players don’t think they can win.”

Defining Moments

Performance under pressure can brand, break, define and deify.

Reggie Jackson struck out 2,597 times, more than any other player in major league history, but his legend as baseball’s “Mr. October” is secure.

Joe Namath threw more interceptions than touchdown passes in his career, but numbers meant little after the New York Jet quarterback had brazenly guaranteed, then delivered, a victory over the heavily favored Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III.

Kirk Gibson was a .268 lifetime hitter, yet carved out a niche as a late-inning cult hero.

Sparky Anderson managed a chorus line of swinging stars--Pete Rose, Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan, Tony Perez, George Foster--in tenures with the Cincinnati Reds and Detroit Tigers.

The best player under pressure?

Easy, Anderson says. Gibson.

“In 26 years, I never had anyone that hit as many, I’m talking as many big home runs in the seventh, eighth and ninth inning that turned the tide of the game,” Anderson says. “Now, do you talk about Gibson in the same breath with Al Kaline? No. But . . . when things were on the line, he performed his best.”

And those were only the Gibson-in-Detroit years. Gibson hit his most dramatic home run as a Dodger in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series.

“When you’re playing, you don’t have time to get nervous,” Gibson says. “You’re locked in. You’ve got a job to do.”

But some athletes are nervous.

“They are, no question,” Gibson continues. “I wrote a book about the beast getting the best of your money because you’re standing up there worried about failure. I never worried about failure. I was always consistently challenged to at least put myself in the situation to succeed.”

Conversely, reputations of otherwise superb performers, such as Utah’s Malone, can be sullied for not coming through when it counts.

Bill Buckner’s otherwise stellar big league baseball career is forever marred by a ground ball that went through his legs in the 1986 World Series.

Former Ram Jim Everett looked like the next superstar NFL quarterback until he downed himself without being touched against the San Francisco 49ers in the 1989 season NFC championship game.

That isolated play, the so-called “phantom sack,” played on Everett’s psyche for years and, one could sensibly argue, reduced a potential Hall of Famer to a journeyman backup.

Pressure isn’t a concept.

“You can sense it, the tension in the air,” Angel Tim Salmon says. “You can feel it in the crowd, you can see it in a pitcher’s face. Yeah, it’s real.”

Pressure can inspire a player to tremendous feats, or conspire in a ruinous conclusion.

Relief pitcher Mitch Williams of the Philadelphia Phillies was out of baseball less than three years after giving up the World Series-clinching home run to Toronto’s Joe Carter in 1993.

Three years after surrendering his infamous home run to Boston’s Dave Henderson in the 1986 American League championship series, Angel reliever Donnie Moore committed suicide.

Moore’s wife and agent maintain that pitch to Henderson, with resultant ridicule and scorn, haunted Moore to the end.

Ken Ravizza, the Angel team psychologist then and now, says Moore’s problems were more complex than a single pitch.

“He was the first reliever to get $1 million, and he was broke when he left baseball,” Ravizza says. “His issue happened three years after the fact. So many other factors came into play.”

Ravizza says that what separates the weak from strong in sport is the ability to bounce back, focus, compensate and adjust.

“After failure, you have to locate the black box, just like in a plane crash,” Ravizza says. “What is the information, what will you do in practice to make it different? You’re going to fail. The issue is learning to deal with it.”

Perhaps no athlete rebounded so resolutely from a crushing blow than relief pitcher Dennis Eckersley, who enjoyed his best seasons after giving up the 1988 home run to Gibson.

In 1992, Eckersley won the American League Cy Young Award.

Why was Eckersley different from Mitch Williams?

“He had that long hair, and he was tan, but he was tough as nails [mentally],” La Russa says.

Then, there’s the ongoing saga of poor Ralph Branca, the former Brooklyn Dodger. One of Donnie Moore’s fears was that his name would be linked with Branca’s in baseball infamy.

Branca is now 72 and living in Rye, N.Y. Hardly a week has passed since 1951 that he hasn’t been reminded of the home run he surrendered to Bobby Thomson--”Giants win the pennant! Giants win the pennant!”--in a National League playoff game at the Polo Grounds.

Branca’s career was never the same, though he blames an off-season back injury for his downfall, not the pitch he fed to Thomson.

Branca bore his cross well, becoming a successful insurance man in his baseball afterlife.

Yet, it eats at him that some people still think of him as a choker.

“I was the best pitcher on that ballclub,” Branca says. “I don’t say that bragging.”

Like it or not, Thomson’s home run became Branca’s lifetime companion.

“I achieved some notoriety, and it helped in my business,” he says. “But it had the negative aspect of having to fend off, and keep in control when people are stupid, just plain-ass stupid, talking like I was the worst pitcher to come down the pike. The negative was man’s inhumanity toward man.”

What’s the Difference?

How do the great ones do it, time after time? Why do they demand the ball in crunch time while others look for crawl space?

How can Montana, popping his head in the huddle before his game-winning drive against the Cincinnati Bengals in Super Bowl XXIII, look up and casually note comedian John Candy sitting in the stands.

Beyond the physical, there certainly was something different about Jordan, Larry Bird, West, Montana, John Elway, Jack Nicklaus, Troy Aikman and Jackson.

“The great ones like Michael, Magic and Larry, they drag the others along,” says Walton, a one-time Boston Celtic teammate of Bird. “They just have to win, and they’ll just keep playing until they do.”

Yogi Berra didn’t quite have the math right when he muttered “Ninety percent of baseball is half mental” but he was onto something.

“In the big leagues, 90% of the players have about the same ability,” the Angels’ Salmon says. “The difference is between the ears. The great athletes are the ones that control their minds. The key is slowing things down. I can’t do it all the time. The great hitters can.”

Are clutch players smarter?

“Look,” Paul McDonald says. “Troy Aikman is not going to invent the cure for cancer, but you put him on a football field and he’s a genius.”

Pressure players are also far from perfect. Lost in the euphoria of Montana’s game-winning pass to Dwight Clark in the NFC title game of the 1981 season? Montana threw three interceptions in that game.

Great pressure players have uncommon resiliency, though, the ability to focus in the present, and a passion for the game.

Remember the sheer exuberance in Laker rookie Magic Johnson’s 42-point, one-man-band performance in the 1980 NBA title-clinching victory over the Philadelphia 76ers?

Before Jordan made his title-winning jump shot against Utah, he had made only 14 of 34.

“With Jordan, it’s not about being perfect,” Ravizza says. “Michael’s greatest performance, in my perspective, was that game last year when he was sick and was not his usual Michael. But, damn it, he was going to get it done.”

Washington Redskin Coach Norv Turner, Aikman’s one-time offensive coordinator in Dallas, says Aikman, a three-time Super Bowl champion, does not perform better under pressure. Rather, Aikman plays the same under pressure while those around him wilt.

“People go as far as to say the greatest athletes just don’t have imagination, because they can’t afford it,” Leigh Steinberg, Aikman’s agent, says. “Great athletes are so much in the moment, are so completely zoned and tuned and focused to the moment, that they’re oblivious to other considerations.”

McDonald thought he was a pretty good quarterback until he watched No. 16 in San Francisco.

“Joe Montana could throw an interception and it didn’t bother him at all,” McDonald says. “In his brain, it wasn’t his fault. In my brain, I was saying, ‘Why did you throw that? What’s wrong with me?’ I’d beat myself up.”

Not all great pressure players are alike, though.

While Montana was Joe Cool, West could have been a poster boy for caffeine.

“A highly nervous person,” Hearn says of West, whom Hearn gave the moniker “Mr. Clutch” in the early 1960s. “His hands almost dripped like faucets. But with the game on the line, he wanted the ball.”

Michael Young, a 10-year NFL receiver who played with Elway in Denver and Montana in Kansas City, says the two greatest comeback quarterbacks of all time were personality opposites.

“The difference between Joe and John, I think, is that John truly thought about the consequences of failure, which helped him. Where Joe, I don’t think he really thought about the consequences of failure,” Young says. “He was better suited not thinking about it.

“Joe was no different in the huddle when the game was won or when the game was lost. I never saw anyone with a demeanor like him.”

Young says Elway got so excited in pressure situations he would slur his words.

Young recalled a scene during Denver’s 1991 AFC playoff game against the Houston Oilers, in which Elway had one of his NFL-record 44 comeback wins, driving his team 87 yards in 12 plays toward the game-winning field goal.

“John came into the huddle and everyone was wondering what the hell we were going to do.” Young recalled. “The first play was a crossing route for me. He said, ‘Michael, I’m coming to you and you’d better catch the ball. If you do, I’ll take care of the rest.’ It was sort of, ‘My God, he really thinks we can do this.’

“Look at pictures of him in critical moments. Just look at his eyes. They’re huge.”

Young was also a Ram teammate of the young Jim Everett, destined to become the next Elway.

Young was no longer with the Rams when Everett sacked himself in Candlestick Park.

“There is a rush of adrenaline that comes with fear,” Young says. “Some people get locked up. Truly, their body locks up. You feel like you’re in a bad dream.”

Everett?

“That one is hard to explain,” Young says. “Jim had some qualities that had superstar written all over him.”

Jimmy Connors and McEnroe, arguably the toughest pressure players in tennis history, had different perspectives.

McEnroe: “What pushes people, I think, is not the joy of success, but the fear of failure.”

Connors: “I played with no fear. I was never, ever not going to go for it.”

McEnroe says success under pressure comes down to playing your normal game.

“Choking is something you would have done naturally in practice that you can’t pull off in a game,” he says. “It happens constantly. Some athletes are more afraid to discuss it than others.”

Walton says “choke” is too strong a word.

“Mostly, the failure to accomplish goals is a result of limitations you have in your game, your personality and your life,” Walton says.

McEnroe and Walton do agree on which athlete was the greatest in the clutch.

That would be M.J.

“I’m not sure he’s human,” McEnroe says of Jordan.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

WHAT THE LETTERS STAND FOR

Jonathan P. Niednagel, aka the “Brain Doctor,” says everyone has one preference from each of four pairs of personality preferences: Introverted or Extroverted. Sensing or Intuitive. Thinking or Feeling, and Judging or Perceiving.

ENTJ

ENFJ

ESTJ

ESFJ

ISFJ

ISTJ

INFJ

INTJ

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ENTP

ENFP

ESTP

ESFP

ISFP

ISTP

INFP

INTP

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ENTJ / BASEBALL

Greg Maddux

Left-brain thinkers, ENTJs have a strong desire to lead, are very mechanical and are typically among the best athletes. They possess uncanny ability to work themselves out of trouble.

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ISTJ / GOLF

Jack Nicklaus

Their deliberate, mechanical approach to the game makes ISTJs ideally suited for golf. They excel with the mind, loving to consider all the nuances of the game and the course.

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ESTP / FOOTBALL

Joe Montana

ESTPs make the best quarterbacks because as sensing, dominant right-brain athletes, they have superb visual awareness and athletic nimbleness. They are daring and love to excite crowds.

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ISTP / BASKETBALL

Michael Jordan

ISTPs are the fiercest competitors in sports and respond consistently to pressure better than other brain types. Jordan’s No. 1 gift is spatial thinking. It’s what he is seeing now or what he has seen before.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

PRESSURE PLAYERS

We’ve confined our top 25 list to the modern era, post-1950s, which prevented having to scour the books for Honus Wagner’s batting average with runners in scoring position. Also, it takes us off the hook for the two most significant performances under pressure this century: Jesse Owens at the 1936 Berlin Olympics and Jackie Robinson’s breaking of baseball’s color barrier in 1947.

1. Michael Jordan: If God says we need one last-second shot to save the planet, M.J. takes it. Ahmad, naturally, gets the post-shot interview.

2. Joe Montana: Extensive Mayo Clinic exam reveals ice water in veins, no nervous system.

3. Muhammad Ali: He snookered Liston, rope-a-doped Foreman and fought Frazier three times. Any questions?

4. Jerry West: Jittery as a cat, known in GM circles as “Mr. Ulcer.”

5. John Elway: Go ahead, pin him back on his one-yard line with a minute left.

6. Larry Bird: The sort of guy who loved to bury a 22-footer while laughing in your face.

7. Magic Johnson: Forget the TV show and remember Junior Sky Hook.

8. Reggie Jackson: The straw that stirred the drink, or so said baseball’s Mr. October.

9. Sandy Koufax: A 1960s comet-flash of fastball and facial pain. His curveball could buckle your knees, too.

10. Jack Nicklaus: The last man wearing a cardigan you’d want chasing you down the back nine.

11. Kirk Gibson: Friction between Gibby’s hands and a bat handle could start a forest fire.

12. Dennis Eckersley: You thought he’d go bonkers after Gibson’s homer? Heck, Eck got better.

13. John Havlicek: “Havlicek stole the ball! Havlicek stole the ball!”

14. Carl Lewis: One small step for man, one giant long jump in Atlanta.

15. Evander Holyfield: Wouldn’t have made this list five years ago. Holyfield and his heart--and a piece of his ear--make it now.

16. Pele: Look, Ma, no hands! Soccer’s all-time best player and a clutch player to boot.

17. Roger Staubach: Twenty-three fourth-quarter comebacks in 11 seasons for Roger the Dodger, 14 in the last two minutes or overtime.

18. Bob Gibson: Would knock Grandma on her backside if a game was on the line.

19. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Sky hook remains the most dependable shot under pressure ever devised.

20. Al Oerter: Never the favorite, won four consecutive Olympic golds in the discus, defeating the world-record holder each time.

21. Hank Aaron: Makes list if only for making it around the bases after home run No. 715.

22. Jimmy Connors/John McEnroe: Two peas in a pressure-cooker pod before they became Grumpier Old Men on the senior circuit.

23. Reggie Miller: Eight points in eight seconds. Ask the Knicks about it.

24. Wayne Gretzky: Forget Nagano. He really was the Great One.

25. Orel Hershiser: Looked like your sophomore biology teacher until the ball left his hand.

On the Bubble: Bill Russell (the Celtic), Bill Walton, Joe Namath, Evelyn Ashford, Johnny Unitas, Isiah Thomas, Picabo Street, Oscar Robertson, George Brett, Chris Evert, Pete Rose, Joe Morgan, Marcus Allen, Mickey Mantle, Dan Marino, Troy Aikman, Terry Bradshaw, Jack Morris, Emmitt Smith, Jerry Rice, Tony Perez, Bobby Orr, Sugar Ray Leonard, Ken Griffey Jr., Rollie Fingers.

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ALSO

* SKULL SESSIONS

There are many forms of therapy availableto help today’s stressed-out, struggling athlete cope with the mental side of sports. C12

* NO-BRAINER

Golf gurus say that the best way to play the game is to use your mind and learn from adversity. C13