Youth Basketball

Youth basketball is all about AAU.  AAU is looked at as a more competitive type of basketball and it is supposed to get you more college exposure. Last week was the McDonald's All-American Game, where the top 48 college recruits play in a game.  Each of those 48 kids all played and may still play AAU basketball.  AAU basketball teams play in, what is known as a showcase tournament where they play in a tournament where colleges will attend.  This gives kids a great chance to get their name out their and be recruited.  For instance the #1 prospect in the country, Ben Simmons, an LSU commit, got noticed at the 2012 Pangos Camp, which is a very large showcase camp that gained him national attention.  AAU basketball gives kids great attention and good competition but do the kids gain skill and work on fundamentals?  Most coaches expect the kids to have good skills and fundamentals.  With that being said the coaches do not necessarily stress basic fundamentals and growth of skills and only care about getting the athletes exposed to college coaches.  Having coaches only focus on college and playing at the next level is not always a bad thing but I think if parents are paying a good amount of money they would want their kid to be trained and become a better player not just doing showcases and tournaments.  Kobe Bryant even went on to say things about AAU basketball.  “I just think European players are just way more skillful,” Bryant said Friday Night. “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.”  The main culprit, Bryant believes, is AAU basketball:  “AAU basketball,” Bryant said. “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.”  In my opinion Kobe is exactly right,  AAU basketball players are not taught the basic fundamentals of the game.