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If y'all want a taste of the AAU meat market...

gary-7

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Jan 27, 2003
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...this article is pretty spot-on.
http://www.greensboro.com/sports/hs...cle_e9e84e82-2b59-11e5-9572-43a02e5069c1.html
Definitely contributes to the current OAD and transfer-happy college environment.

One particular point that is noteworthy (and true) is that among AAU "coaches", the actual legit basketball coaches are definitely a minority... and the travel ball often ends up taking kids away from the influence of their HS coaches. Little surprise that we see more and more kids come out with mad individual skillz but little feel or appreciation for the nuance of team basketball.
 
...this article is pretty spot-on.
http://www.greensboro.com/sports/hs...cle_e9e84e82-2b59-11e5-9572-43a02e5069c1.html
Definitely contributes to the current OAD and transfer-happy college environment.

One particular point that is noteworthy (and true) is that among AAU "coaches", the actual legit basketball coaches are definitely a minority... and the travel ball often ends up taking kids away from the influence of their HS coaches. Little surprise that we see more and more kids come out with mad individual skillz but little feel or appreciation for the nuance of team basketball.


Gary, to me this article is one every college basketball fan in the country should really read and think about. It speaks to a topic that has worried me progressively more for years.

It shows very clearly why we see so many of these kids are more concerned with their individual success and just don't think as much about their team any more, they really don't have a team they are loyal to. They get so used to going from one team to another as need arrises from one week to another. They bond with buds that play off the court but on the court they really don't have a single team they define themselves as.

Keep in mind, we are not just talking about high school kids, we are talking about kids as young as 5th grade. At a point in their development as kids where they learn lessons like loyality that most of us translated in to teams, these kids are learning a very different lesson. That it isn't about being part of a team, that the teams you play for are nothing more than a collection of individuals. You cannot move from one team to another as quickly as they do and learn the team concept the same way we did when I was a kid.

Yet we expect them to commit to a collge program and all the sudden play, be loyal, respect one and only 1 team for multiple years, for most the first time in their lives since maybe little league. Pretty clearly shows me why this one & done thing has taken the path it has, why we see kids now days leave earlier that were not expected to leave when they did.

Now we can call it selfish but the truth is it is more what they have been taught to be, it is what they feel like they have to be in order to achieve at the highest levels. You are a product of your experience and these kids experience is just not as a team but as individuals.

They see it it their dream destination, the NBA, players there change teams like many change their underware chasing not only the ability to make more money but lately their opportunity for the players to craft their own team rather than allowing a coach to do so. Labron brings in the players he wants to play with at Miami and now Cleveland, these kids are watching. And all the sudden these high school level kids decide they want to do the same thing, the result is these package deals of recruits. The only team these kids feel alinged to is the group of talents hyped at their same level of hype rather than the guys that may wear the same jersey this week.

Now you have college coaches that are scrapping their own coaching systems and electing to craft their style of play so that it show cases the tempory player that has little if any real bond to his school just to be able to secure the services of greater talents. They come in demanding to not only play huge minutes but demanding that before they commit they know their buddy or buddies also highly hyped get the same. The coaches make the decision to move from the team concept and hand over their team to their freshmen, not the senior leaders but the freshman leaders?

Truth is that is a larger problem, a larger problem for UNC right now IMO than the NCAA stuff. Because Roy is about team, school, team mates, loyality, family. These kids are not so much about that any more, fact is most of the top 20 talents see comitting to a college as more something they have to do much more so than what they want to do. They excit their college fan base by the great talent committing to their beloved school as well as his hyped buds but those players care little for those fans or that school because it is not about fans or schools, it is about getting this road block to the NBA out of the way. That is what these kids are buying, it ain't what Roy sells, it really ain't what I want him selling either.

But many, to many, fans don't care about all of that, they only care about wins, they don't really care how those wins occur or what has to happen to gain them. To many fans now days can forgive pretty much anything except not winning.

The real question is not what is going on, that is pretty easy to see, the real question is how do we stop it, how do we go back to a day where your team was the most important thing, that an individual was not more important than the team? The answer is, I don't know that we can because AAU and its spin offs have become to ingrained is to deeply entrenched because it reaches out to these kids, begins setting it hooks in these kids at earlier and earlier ages, it reaches not just the kids but their families as well.

This has turned basketball away from being a team sport to a sport of collected individuals looking out for themselves, it is killing the sport at every level. Loyality means little to nothing and these kids and they become role models themselves, not just for talented players but for all kids that dream of being what their role models are, it is a statement on this generation and in my view, not a good one...
 
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