Even when you possess elite skills, physicality and elaborate Xs and Os, if you don't have a burning desire to win, you'll just waste those gifts.
That's one of the concerns of Japan men's national basketball team head coach Kenji Hasegawa.
"Physicality, height, the skill to make shots and the skill to make accurate passes . . . to name a few," Hasegawa said of what his team needs to improve on Saturday at Tokyo's National Training Center, where the "Akatsuki Five" tuned up for the Sept. 9-18 FIBA Asia Challenge in Tehran. "But if I had to narrow it down to just one, it would be the go-for-broke mindset, like you try to score by any means and something like that. The go-for-broke mentality, that's something we are lacking."