AAU Basketball is indeed the devil

No they can't. The NCAA can't order high schools to fund and support basketball programs, or keep the best players from gravitating to the travel teams.

 

Zag,

I saw it from the female side...Travel softball. Same problems with kids, same problems with coaches, and my oh my, the expense.

My daughter got a partial D-II scholarship, 50 %. She got hurt at the third or fourth practice and hasn't played since. We are still paying off trips to Las Vegas, Colorado, etc...

We didn't do it for the scholarship, she wanted to play, and she continued to play with her friends in high school.

But the money my friend, can add up in a hurry.

 

But the NCAA can change the college recruiting calendar. If the summer was no longer an evaluation period and coaches were prohibited from attending AAU tournaments that would have the same effect. And they would be well within their rights to do so.

 

The one thing the NCAA could do is make the summer a dead period in terms of recruiting and make a rule that coaches can't attend AAU events or non-school sponsored events.

If that were to happen it would really take a lot of the wind out of the sails of some of these AAU programs because, for instance, what would be the point of the Boo Williams tournament going on this weekend if there is no college coaches in attendance to scout the players?

Edit: Armchair beat me to it.

 

They could ban their coaches and affiliates from going to AAU games. Drastic, and probably not too practical, I know.

EDIT: Beaten twice by Starman and Armchair.

 

AAU "coaches" are in the game because, in many cases, they lack the credentials (college degree, teaching certificate, etc.) to work in high schools.
And don't get me started about the charitable foundations that sponsor these summer teams and funnel colleges' money to the players. Sorry, but you can't engage in that charade and then berate the NCAA for hypocrisy.

 

And here we go with the "fundamentals" bullshit again.

Players in basketball (this is generally true in all other sports too) are better at "fundamentals" than they ever have been. Players today know how to dribble, pass, shoot, rebound, set screens, box out, play position defense, etc etc, much better and at a younger age than the players of 15, 20, 30 or 40 years ago. WAY better. Watch a tape of a game (HS, college or NBA ) from 30-40 years ago, and at every level, you'll be astonished at the number of plays where you just say, "WTF were they thinking?"

That's because almost all players start playing at about the age of 6 on some freaking youth league, and the youth league practices four times (or however many) a week, and plays once or twice a week maybe.

Of course a lot of coaches are pretty lackadaisacal and their idea of practice is to roll out the balls, but EVEN the roll-out-the-balls guys have whistles, and clipboards, and they use them. They use them to inflate their own self-image as John Wooden or Bobby Knight or Coach K or Calipari whatever, and even if they let the players do what they want, they're still standing there blowing the whistles.

What players of today DO NOT get that they got INNNN MYYYY DAYYYYYYY (shaking cane at the sky), is experience PLAYING BASKETBALL (or the other sports).

The vast majority of players never, virtually never, just play basketball for the hell of it, for fun or recreation, in an unstructured and unsupervised environment. Just about every time they pick up a goddamn ball, some Bobby Knight AAU-coach wannabee is standing there telling them to square up their shoulders before the shot, never take a layup unless you have a breakaway, drop back into the lane on defense, etc etc etc.

As a result, players reach maturity with little or no experience in ACTUALLY PLAYING BASKETBALL. They've spent lots of time running drills and running in controlled scrimmages with Bobby Knight standing there with his clipboard. They've never actually played the game themselves and had to figure out for themselves what works and what doesn't. They've never had to figure out how to be creative and make something happen without Bobby Knight and his clipboard.

That's why we get 6 time outs in the final 30 seconds of major-college games. That's why 90% of the time if a team is trailing by 1 with the ball with 10 seconds left and the ball in the frontcourt, they call time out. Players have no experience actually thinking on the court. All their thinking is done for them, from age 6, by Bobby Knight on the sidelines.

 

Club volleyball is the equivalent of AAU basketball for girls. I did a story a few months ago and several of the sources said the club level is where most of the college recruiting is going on these days.

Not sure if the parents are as loony there, but I'd imagine they are.

Even at that level, girls are being pressured to pick one sport and play all year round.

 

This I agree with 100 percent - kids don't play the game without adults nearly enough - but this isn't limited to basketball.

I mean, I can't remember the last time I rolled by the park and saw a pick-up baseball game.

I also agree the whole "lacking fundamentals" stuff is way overdone by some people with regards to basketball. Players today have plenty of fundamentals.

That being said - in AAU there is far, I mean, far, too much emphasis on winning games and tournaments and not nearly enough emphasis on coaching and teaching.

 

You know what really pisses me off? When I hear a kid say that they cannot play baseball for example because they play basketball, and the hoops coach does not want another sport taking the place of thier off season conditioning program.

What. The. Flying. Fuck?

If I am ever in a position to dress down a fucking coach that tells a kid what sport they can and cannot play...

A high school in my area could barely field a football team, and one day I was out at their field and saw 7-8 big strong kids running around the track. I asked the AD who the hell those kids were, and he said the were basketball players. I asked around a little more why these kids were not playing football, and the word came back to me that the coach would not allow it.

Funny thing is, the hoops team sucked ass, too.

Bunch of fucking idiots.

 

Substitute soccer, baseball, softball and you'll still be right. For boys as well as girls.

 

The only good thing about all of this is that parents now have a choice, except in football, if they don't like the douchebag coach of local high school and don't want to pay for Catholic school.

So if you have a kid who is a great basketball player, he doesn't need to play high school basketball to get noticed if he is in the right AAU program.