Seriously??? wrote:
How are people seriously doubting NBA players can run a 5 minute mile? I coach several unathletic high school boys who can run a 5 minute mile off of three weeks training that would be less intense than NBA conditioning. A 5 minute mile is SLOW. Nearly every NBA guard could run under a 5 minute mile without specific training.
Those "unathletic" HS boys were not as specialized as NBA players are for sprinting and mostly jogging at 4,5 MPH the vast majority of the time.
If you specialize in one task, you will get pretty crappy at a lot of other ones. And a lot of NBA players are NOT very skilled. A lot of them can't shoot for crap and are just damn athletic. (looking at you Rajon Rondo, Brake Griffin, Shaq)
A lot of you guys overestimate NBA players and also underestimate how hard a 5 minute mile is for even trained people. In our HS class there were 2 people out of over 400 that did it; and we were a solid team. Well, we made states at least for Division 1. And the 2 people were sure as heck not basketball players; they were stereotypical distance runners.
I imagine there are letsrun posters that think that Rafael Nadal could run a sub 11 100 meter dash right now or that Justin Verlander could do a 5 minute mile. Their sports have very little to do with endurance and, to a lesser extent, basketball doesn't either.
Soccer is probably the closest, but they would be only ok at the 800 and sucky at the 1600 and up.