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.
Kevin Garnett on how AAU has ruined the NBA because it’s created entitled kids pic.twitter.com/M9kDuJCHsn
— Jimmy Knutson (@JimmyKnutson) February 21, 2017
The worst part about say is this generation doesn’t know how to compete. They go to AAU tournaments get guaranteed so many games. On the playgrounds which in the eighties were full you lost you might not get back on the court for a while. Plus you had four others guys also trying to stay on the court. People’s bullshit wasn’t tolerated. The older guys taught little tricks and nuances of the game that have pretty much disappeared. The competition would be so intense there were always fights. I saw a kid from Arizona last night down to take a three at the end of the game. You know he never had a old dude put a guy in his ass for shooting a 20 footer at game point. You knew to go to the hole but you see it all the time now. They used to say euros were mechanical now Americans are there game has no flare no style. There aren’t any more David Rivers or Pearl Washington’s. I remember coaches bitching about playground basketball but I bet now they would take the asphalt over the AAU circuit anyway.