Beautiful piece! In a league where every movement is tracked and analyzed, where guys literally cover their mouths to talk to each other, those "soft touches" you mention, especially the ones that aren't recorded, are maybe the closest thing players have to a secret language.
This has been studied!!!!
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21038960/
Beautiful piece! In a league where every movement is tracked and analyzed, where guys literally cover their mouths to talk to each other, those "soft touches" you mention, especially the ones that aren't recorded, are maybe the closest thing players have to a secret language.