James Earl Jones as Darth Vader? A+ casting choice. As a karate master? I have some questions. People watch sports movies for different reasons than they do other movies, but casting still matters. Here’s why.

Every sport has a fanbase convinced its athletes are built different. So the internet keeps asking what would happen if you dropped a soccer star into a batter’s box, a basketball alien onto skates, or a baseball flamethrower in front of Derrick Henry. The answer is usually humiliation — and that proves almost nothing. Great athletes are not cheat codes. They’re specialists who have spent their lives getting absurdly good at one very specific thing.