Chess is like triathlon.
You have the first leg, a swim to the centre of the board. Then you have a bike race where all of the pieces can smash each other up demolition derby style with bicycles and then you have a gut-busting final run with the competitors spaced out from the first two legs - that's like the open board and few pieces in the endgame.
For example, Basketball!
The opening preparation in chess would be the opening set up the coaches put on the floor for example who defends who, what zone each man defends, where he places his shooters on the floor, etc...
practising tactics is like practising shots. Before the game you wanna get warmed up so when your in the game and have that open 18 footer you want to be able to drill it! In chess you need to practise chess tactics and get aquainted with the patterns so you can drill tactics in games.
Reading books about positional chess- This is the coaches spending hours before games watching tapes to see how to make their players more comfortable and where to place them on the floor and who to pass the ball to etc.
player wise we have...
Anand= suprisingly Lebron James who is the reigning MVP at the moment.
Carlsen- Durant. Soft spoken but screaming great actions on the court/board.
Kramnik- Kobe Bryant the old dag who played with guys like kasparov, karpov, and shaq.