The point of the "diminishing returns" comment was that athletes in sports (other than bodybuilding, weightlifting, powerlifting and strongman) should spend more time on sport-specific practice and not sweat the strength stuff much, once they have achieved a good baseline of strength.

As someone wrote once, "it's all about how you put it together", meaning performance on the field/track/hall/ring/whatever. I'm pretty sure I could outlift Vitaly Klitschko or Mike Tyson (at least in a few lifts), but in a ring they would turn me into hamburger meat within the first 3 minutes. And Michael Jordan can still jump about 10 feet higher than me although I doubt he can squat/DL as much (not anymore, at least). He's also slightly better at shooting hoops.

Same can be said about conditioning, etc. I have seen some of the athletes I used to train with turn into regular monsters in the gym or running laps on the track, but the guys who actually knew how to play the sport were still better at the sport. Just a thought.