Kobe Bryant Isn’t Wrong About AAU Basketball
By Phil Watson
Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant, after a loss to the Memphis Grizzlies, went on a little rant about what he believes is wrong with the American basketball model vs. the European one.
“I just think European players are just way more skillful,” Bryant said, via ESPN Los Angeles. “They are just taught the game the right way at an early age. … They’re more skillful. It’s something we really have to fix. We really have to address that. We have to teach our kids to play the right way.
“AAU basketball. Horrible, terrible AAU basketball. It’s stupid. It doesn’t teach our kids how to play the game at all so you wind up having players that are big and they bring it up and they do all this fancy crap and they don’t know how to post. They don’t know the fundamentals of the game. It’s stupid.”
It was a clumsy delivery, but in broad terms, Bryant isn’t wrong.
One of the most often-heard complaints about the NBA is that the season is too long, leading to injuries to young stars.
At its longest, an NBA schedule pales in comparison to the number of games these “elite” AAU programs play.
And perhaps before blaming the length of an NBA schedule on injury problems—particularly to young players, perhaps we should look at the fact that these players, such as 19-year-old Milwaukee Bucks rookie Jabari Parker, who tore an ACL last month and will miss the remainder of the season, get to the NBA as teenagers, yet they have as many minutes on their legs because of the constant play, play, play mentality of AAU programs as guys 30 years ago would accumulate in seven or eight professional seasons.
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Given Parker’s AAU play, combined with high-school basketball, he probably had 500-600 games worth of wear and tear on that ACL before the NBA took him into the fold.
In the days before the shoe companies ran amateur basketball, players played in the summer. But it was generally at camps based on instruction, not forming teams and playing games.
Games are not teaching exercises. Games are competition.
And from the player’s standpoint, games are fun. Practices are work. So when that smooth-talking AAU coach in the tailor-made Nike, Under Armour or adidas gear tells you that his program only has two practices a month and it plays 100 games or more throughout the summer, a kid will jump at it.
Throw in buzz-phrases such as “showcasing your skill,” and now the hangers-on around the youngster come into play.
The shoe companies don’t see a kid who needs to learn how to play the game. They see a commodity to push, cajole and maneuver into the right college program, so they can get them into the NBA to sell shoes, caps and clothes for them.
The fact that the U.S. system somehow takes pride in the fact that 6- and 7-year-old kids are playing in games with sponsor-bought uniforms, referees and screaming coaches shows how perverted the system truly has become.
And it was interesting that the journalists who chimed in almost immediately to chastise Bryant as the same journalists who get their own bread buttered by having “insider” access to these tournaments, jamborees and other events where they can do their job by looking at 50 or 60 top prospects at one time, rather than having to do actual leg work during the high-school basketball season.
Because that’s another part of the problem; the fact that an entire cottage industry has sprung up in exploiting these young players even further through recruiting services, either the ones who offer to “help” get players into scholarships or the ones who are out there at these AAU events putting together detailed scouting reports on 10- and 11-year-old kids.
Who has the time to actually learn how to properly establish position in the low post, throw a bounce pass, execute a back cut or learn how to move without the basketball when there are 120 games to be played over the next four months?
Who has the time to learn how to shoot free throws when dunks and 3-pointers are where the money is made?
Who has the time to remain in college three or four years learning how to play the game when there is an entire brigade of family, friends and hangers-on telling you how you are going to be their way out of the projects, putting the onus of making something of their lives the responsibility of a 16- or 17-year-old kid?
CBS Sports’ Gary Parrish used Golden State Warriors’ star Stephen Curry as an example of a player who came through the American system who is as fundamentally sound as any player in the game.
On the surface, Parrish is correct—Curry is a fundamentally outstanding player.
But Curry isn’t a product of the AAU system, which is the main reason why he ended up at tiny Davidson College instead of at one of the mega-programs in college basketball. It’s why his younger brother Seth Curry started his collegiate career at Liberty University in the Big South Conference before transferring to Duke and the Atlantic Coast Conference.
Because college coaches like things easy and convenient, too. The guys with the contracts with the shoe companies don’t have to spend a lot of time going to high-school games in the winter when they can go to shoemaker-sponsored summer events.
Mike DeCourcy of The Sporting News launched a sarcastic screed in response to Kobe’s rant, confusing statistical dominance in the NBA with fundamental skills, which is part of the problem Bryant was speaking of in the first place.
I mean, I get it—dribbling drills are boring. Fundamentals are boring. Dunks and 3-pointers are exciting and that’s what we’re all about—the quick thrill.
But as a longtime fan of the sport, it can be incredibly frustrating to see these specimens who are content to just get by on pure athleticism without ever really learning the game.
But it’s hard to blame the players. It’s what they learn … instead of fundamentals.