What Are The Mental Skills Involved In The Movie Space Jam

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I will discuss the mental skills involved in the movie Space Jam for this paper. The topics that I am focusing on are concentration and leadership as I believe these categories played a role in the development of this movie. In summary, Space Jam is about an amusement park owner who intends to bring new attractions to his park by using Looney Tune characters. He is tricked into having a basketball competition a wager for their compliance. The amusement park owner has underlings who will compete in the competition, and they steal the talent of various NBA stars and transform into giant muscular monster athletes. The Looney Tune characters recruit Michael Jordan to help prepare for this competition and their freedom is at stake. Michael Jordan …show more content…

These components include; focusing on the relevant cues in the environment, maintaining the attentional focus over time, having awareness of the situation and performance error, and shifting attentional focus when necessary (reference). During the main basketball game in Space Jam the concentration of Michael Jordan is fully exposed. He is placed in a situation where he is competing in a high stake game in a stadium that is packed full of spectators, and he is competing against giant monsters who are seemingly very talented and intimidating. However, Michael does not let any of these distractions effect his gameplay, instead he thrives under the pressure and makes impressive plays that worry the amusement park owner. He manages to maintain his attentional focus throughout the whole game despite being highly outscored in the first half and realizes he needs to boost the confidence of his team. He tells his team to “keep their head up” and uses a placebo drink of “Michael’s secret stuff” which makes his teammates think they have increased performance. By being situationally aware he is able to make adjustments to his teammate’s mindset and they begin to comeback score-wise in the second half. Finally, he uses shifting attentional focus when making the last shot of the game. First he assess the court and where his opponents are, next he recalls that he can do extraordinary things in Looney Toon Land, then he narrows his focus to stretch his arm further than humanly possible, and finally he slam-dunks the ball to win the