It's certainly likely that teams weighed his fiery outspokenness against a potentially diminishing skill set.
He retired from World Cup racing rather than continue with diminishing skills.
(Two-on-two has lost its charm over the many years — too strenuous, and too complicit in exposing one's diminishing skills).
Arenas is a prime candidate because of his bad knees, his diminishing skills and his reputation for causing locker-room friction.
Age and diminished skills led to losses in recent years to Felix Trinidad, Shane Mosley, Bernard Hopkins and Floyd Mayweather Jr. De La Hoya won his last title in May 2006, beating Ricardo Mayorga in six rounds for the W.B.C. super-welterweight title.
Perhaps comparing Kane to a mosquito is to somewhat diminish his skill and effect, annoying as it was to the Bruins.
I'm not diminishing the skill involved, mind - that was a textbook volley.
Many of the medications taken to treat the various infirmities of age can further diminish driving skills.
After several of his wealthier, long-time clients scaled back their involvement or passed away, Lukas downsized his operation out of necessity in recent years, but the reduction in the number of horses in his barn hasn't diminished his skill in spotting promising prospects and cultivating them into star runners.
Research shows that sleep deprivation, common among parents of young children, can diminish motor skills — for example, "the sense to dodge a ball or something that is coming to hit you," said Dr. Ana C. Krieger, director of the Center for Sleep Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York.
She gets to know the courtly Idris, whose day job as a pirate leader does nothing to diminish his skills as a debonair party host, and Ari Ahmed Sheikh Bakar, a Saudi diplomat who has done his best to anglicize his name into "Harry".
