A Theoretical Analysis Of 'Tough' By Jay Bilas

You often hear the word “tough” used in context to describe a person or to define how difficult something may be. When it comes to basketball or sports in general, the word “tough” is much more complicated than that. Toughness is something that has to be learned. Jay Bilas, a former player of the Duke Blue Devils, believes toughness is often thought to be a physical strength, when in reality toughness is a skill (Bilas). Bilas recalls hearing the word “toughness” getting thrown around a lot on television by reporters and players. He remembers wondering “Do people really understand what coaches and experienced players mean when they emphasize toughness in basketball?” (Bilas 1). His curiosity drove him to dig deeper and write about how toughness

Instead of using strictly paragraph form, like many writers do, Bilas decided to write his information as a list rather than in traditional essay form. The list thoroughly describes how toughness affects certain basketball techniques. The idea of positioning the paragraphs into a list gives the article a very organized aspect. It is easy to look at the heading of each paragraph and know what the paragraph talks about. Despite being very organized, the list makes the article very choppy, going from one paragraph to the next. Each paragraph talks about a topic completely different from the previous one. Toughness and how it correlates with basketball is represented in each paragraph, but the main points to each paragraph do not complement each other. For example, the paragraph tiled “Set up your cut” is directly followed by a paragraph tiled, “Talk on defense” (Bilas 2). At times this can give the impression that the article is unbalanced. Although it can be unbalanced at times, each paragraph is ended by a sentence that states the positivity toughness brings. Bilas writes, “Tough players are also great teammates” (Bilas