I don’t know what Kobe Bryant and haters of the AAU basketball system are talking about.
At least you have a system! Come to England, we barely have a system. I didn’t have the opportunity to play basketball until I was 11 and even then they did a half assed job. Then if you’re really dedicated and make it to University, you can finally play on a team where they actually care, that’s a seven year gap of any iota of a system. No wonder our national team is trash.
But I understand where Kobe Bryant is coming from when it comes to the AAU system. They’re teaching the wrong things.
“I hate it because it doesn’t teach our players how to play the right way, how to think the game, how to play in combinations of threes,”
“Yeah, but I think that is just by luck in the generation that I grew up in,” he said. “My generation is when AAU basketball really started becoming s—. I got lucky because I grew up in Europe and everything there was still fundamental, so I learned all the basics.”
“I think we’re doing a tremendous disservice to our young basketball players right now,” Bryant said. “That’s something that definitely needs to be fixed and it’s going to definitely be one of the things that I focus on.“
I’ve seen a few people talk about the ineptitude of the AAU system but it’s never been a constant conversation. People say it’s terrible and all this but then it’s not mentioned for months. The only way Kobe Bryant is going to make waves with this is to get people talking about it, forcing change. No point saying all this and then not talking about it for the next year or so.
