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I walked into the 2011 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference thinking I needed to be quick on the draw with a graphing calculator and had to know my way around a scatter plot to keep up with the next-lev chatter whizzing past my ample Irish melon. At Friday’s first session, though, I quickly found out that I mostly just needed to be willing to ponder Tracy McGrady’s(notes) place in basketball’s space-time continuum. Done and done!

Well, that, and two other things. I needed to be willing to consider that being AMAZING at something — like, tallest letters on the marquee, top five in the world, stunningly and nigh-on-unfathomably gifted — could be not only bad, but also a massive impediment to becoming the best version of yourself.

Huh and huh?

Best-selling author and noted hairsman Malcolm Gladwell introduced the concept while moderating the opening session of this year’s Sloan conference. The talk dealt with how the “10,000 hour rule” that Gladwell discussed in his 2008 book “Outliers” — that the key to success in any field is the purposeful practice of a specific task for 10,000 hours — relates to an athlete’s development.

In considering that notion, Gladwell asked the panelists what value should be placed on pure natural talent — the innate genetic gift that we often view as the line of demarcation between the elite and the merely professional — in relationship to, say, work ethic and the capacity to accept instruction.

As often occurs when discussing abstract ideas, talk turned quickly to a physical example — in this case, McGrady, whose combination of size, speed, power and grace beguiled the NBA in the last years of the 20th century and made him one of the league’s most dominant offensive forces in the early years of the 21st.

But while McGrady’s abilities were awe-inspiring, his willingness to further cultivate them wasn’t, according to panelist and ESPN NBA analyst Jeff Van Gundy, who coached the Florida-born star with the Houston Rockets from 2004 through 2007.

Van Gundy estimated McGrady at “probably 1,000 hours of practice,” just one-tenth of Gladwell’s rule, a figure that elicited laughter from the crowd. Noting that McGrady was as close to he’s ever seen as a basketball natural, Van Gundy went on to say that T-Mac “should be a Hall of Fame player.”

“His talent was otherworldly,” Van Gundy said.