Photo Credit: Jimmy Knutson

The Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) is supposed to help prepare young basketball players and is also the best way for the young ballers to get their names out there.  Many players in the NBA, grew up and are familiar with each other as most of them participated in that league.  The AAU also has its downside.  Kobe Bryant, who grew up in Italy before returning to Philly, previously said European players are more skillful, and AAU doesn’t teach them properly.  Kevin Garnett agrees.

Here’s part of Kobe’s quote:

“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 an interview with Kevin McHale on NBATV, KG went off on how AAU has ruined the state of the NBA. From his perspective it creates entitled kids.:

Our league now is at a point where you have to teach more than anything. AAU has killed our league. Seriously, I hate to even say this, but it’s real. From the perspective that these kids are not being taught anything. They have intentions and they want things, but the way they see it is not how our league works. You earn everything in this league. You’re not entitled to anything.

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