Are you telling me pro-tennis players could not dominate rec league basketball games after they retire?

That seems to be what Gilbert Arenas/Agent Zero (one of the truly great nicknames in the history of sports) was/is saying (PG-13 Language in the Video Below)

Arenas is Wrong, Right, and Maybe Correct on 3 Fronts

Front 1 – Arenas is Wrong – Retired tennis pros would, at worst, be defensive nightmares and rebounding machines in rec league basketball

The lateral movement required to play professional tennis would make most leisurely basketball players beg for a soft zone defense if they were being defended by nearly any retired tennis player not named Marc Rosset* in a man-to-man scenario.

The reflexes required to play professional tennis would also translate into being able to read where missed shots are likely to go.

At worst, retired tennis players may not be good at shooting. If their opponents in a rec league situation have tongues dragging on the ground due to fatigue setting in, the retired tennis player would like have many open lanes to drive once even modest dribbling skills were pursued and acquired.

Front 2 – Arenas is Correct – Retired NBA players would be nightmares at rec league tennis matches due to nearly the same scenario.

Speed, closing the net, reach, height when serving, … these would all have hackers and even decent club players in some trouble once a minimal skill level was achieved. A former NBA player could play effective “old man tennis” by learning to block and slice a lot of shots and just cover the court with speed most mortals dream of approximating. Clyde Drexler played a lot of tennis. Who wants to fend off a 6’7″ man with a huge vertical leap off of the net? Not me.

Front 3 – NBA vs ATP – That is a Debate That Has Both Overlaps and Points of Contrast

John Lucas II and Tony Trabert were both outstanding NCAA Division 1 tennis and basketball players. Lucas went on to play in the NBA, and Tony Trabert played top-level tennis prior to the Open Era of tennis.

Basketball and tennis actually ask a lot of similar questions to athletes in terms of movement and balance. I put it this way in a non-debate with a colleague who played college basketball, who told me she wished she had played tennis as well. I used the first video of Alcaraz practicing to illustrate what a coach does when using the glib phrase “move your feet” with players:

Alcaraz moving like that for nearly 4 hours vs. Djokovic in 100+ degree on-court heat is the goal we’ll never reach (as coaches) when we tell someone to always be on his toes. I think it is somewhat similar to being in a good defensive stance in basketball. Still, tennis players don’t have a player lowering a shoulder while driving into them, and basketball players don’t have an indefinite time limit for a game. Hence, it is not a perfect analogy. 

This may be repetitive, but basketball players endure a lot of physical contact and run vertically more than tennis players. Tennis players move horizontally more often, cannot be subbed out of matches if an ankle twists or fatigue sets in, and play with an indefinite time limit. To be sure, both sets of athletes do quite a bit more horizontal and vertical moving on the court/field than many athletes in other sports do. As I said in part 1, elite basketball is one of the sports I think could be harder than elite tennis.

• Marc Rosset at 6’7″ would have been pretty nasty in rec league basketball. I just made the Rosset comment due to an inside joke dating back to my college days.