Bud Black talks about the preparation a team needs to make to play well every day, including performing with the same intensity regardless of the importance of the game.
“One of my messages is to treat a spring training game, a game in April, July, October, it’s the same game,” Black said. “You talk to players who’ve played in big games, across the board, all sports, talk to psychologists, coaches, people who’ve done this for a long time, they’ll say you can’t just turn it up when you want. That’s not how it should be done.
“There should be a high-level of intensity every game you play. And then the bigger game becomes just another game that you play.”
It’s not about elevating the importance of a particular game, but keeping a big game from overwhelming players.
“You can’t ride that roller coaster,” Black said. “It’s natural to wonder, ‘Is this the most important game of the year?’ At the end of it all, you can look back and say, ‘Hey, that was a critical game or a series.’ But you can’t do that every single game.”
Win the games in April, and you may not need to win as many in September.
That approach seems plausible, but I’ve also seen arguments in the exact opposite direction—that we have a limited reserve of intensity or concentration, and that truly great athletes conserve their concentration for the most important moments. Roger Federer is a common example—he glides through matches but grows noticeably more focused when a game grows tight. Both approaches might work, and might be appropriate for different types of situations: the constant intensity of Michael Jordan vs the selective intensity of Roger Federer.