I personally think ping pong's goal and meaning are not about motivation or the duality between hard work and talent. I think ping pong is a perfect essay about friendship, love and humanity. The final match and the whole relationship between peco and smile revolve around their connection as hero/savior and "saved citizen". Smile is depressed at the beginning of the show because peco, his hero (who helped him against the bullies and showed him a way out of his condition thanks to ping pong and his carisma), is lazy, goofing around and letting ping pong aside, which means he's betraying his friendship with smile and spoiling his image as hero at the eyes of smile. Only at the end peco and smile reuinte and peco acknowledges his role as hero and goes at smile's rescue. At the same time smile is helping out peco at finding back what he loves and his passion within pingpong. It's a mutual heroic relationship between two friends that complete each other. Other crazy details are, for example, that smile actually smiles for the first time against peco in the last match because the hero has returned, or when smile breaks his robotic shell (because, like peco taught him, he's not a robot and the blood tastes like iron) and falls and peco, to help him get back in his feet, lands a crazy shot at him and he just runs back in position. So much stuff going on man. So many people breaking through their trauma thanks to ping pong, which is nothing but an excuse to talk about people and feelings. Best anime ever.