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By Brian
McCormick
I am an Internet junkie. I read article after article and post after
post on Internet boards, and I am concerned by what I have read over the
last month. AAU is not the problem. Writers, coaches, experts, pundits,
etc. all seem to think that AAU is an evil force plotting to prevent
high school players from developing skills. This panic has escalated
since the NBA Draft because NBA teams seem to like the game of Nowitski
and Nash, Peja and Hedo, Kovalenko and Radmanavic more than Khalid El-Amin,
Miles Simon, William Avery and other recent NCAA Champions.
I have been an AAU coach and I have been to Nationals at the youth
levels. I coached against good coaches and bad coaches, just as I have
at the high school, junior college and college levels. AAU is not the
culprit for this perceived lack of development. After all, Lebron James
is said to have NBA skills as a junior in high school and he has played
with two AAU teams (though not anymore due to the NCAA’s latest
restrictive ruling).
AAU (summer ball), along with camps like ABCD and Nike and to a
lesser degree Five-Star, provide the opportunity for the best players
from across the country to play against each other, meaning players from
Los Angeles can test their skills against players from Michigan and a
kid from Akron can become great friends with a kid from New York.
The problem, therefore, is not playing against competition. The
problem is the amount of tournaments, the time spent traveling and the
poor club coaches who do little more than put together a local/regional
all-star team and let them run. With tournaments running from April
through July, there is little time spent practicing. Instead of merely
being the gatherers of talent, these coaches need to be teachers,
teaching skills that are not taught by high school coaches. With a
collection of all-star players, coaches can teach skills and concepts
that may not be pertinent or relevant to a high school team where there
may be only one really good player and a number of average players. This
high school coach would face many more challenges than teaching the
all-star player some fine points on his game. In many high school
programs, coaches do not have the resources, either the knowledge and
capability or the needed assistants, to truly spend time with the one
gifted player to make minor adjustments on his game. Instead, the coach
is forced to ignore the needs of the exceptional in order to meet the
needs of the typical. This would be like forcing gifted students to take
regular courses as opposed to challenging them with honors and AP
courses. Would students who excel in AP courses receive any benefit from
a school system devoid of the honors curriculum? For gifted basketball
players, their honors courses are playing for the best club teams and
attending the star-studded camps. But, just because they are talented,
should coaches fail to challenge them in these advanced settings?
In soccer, many players turn their back on high school soccer because
it fails to do anything positive for their game. They develop bad habits
and play against sub-par competition. They stick to club soccer where
the coaches teach more, skills are developed and the competition is
greater. Why don’t club basketball coaches approach their teams in the
same manner? Club coaches are lucky; they do not have the undedicated
players or the marginally skilled players: they have the cream of the
crop, the best of the best and a real opportunity to work with the
talented and increase their skill level, which often lags behind their
athleticism. I would relish the opportunity to coach a club team with
ten college-bound players; not because I’m concerned with winning the
Big Time Tournament or the Peach Jam, but because it would excite me as
a coach to practice with these players and try and make them better than
they already are: to take their game to the next level and truly prepare
them for college ball, especially with an improved skill set. Players
need to improve their footwork to get their shot off, as they will no
longer be the most athletic player in every game. They need improved
ball handling ability to handle the pressure faced at the college level;
they need to be taught where and how to move without the ball, to create
space and find an opening to be a scoring threat. They need better
footwork in the post to be able to battle against players equally
athletic and just as big. It is in these “honors” classes, the practices
and workouts with the best club programs, where these elite players
really have the chance to develop. However, in many cases, this
opportunity is squandered.
Basically the question becomes: Do players play on club teams to gain
exposure and get a scholarship, or do they play to develop skills and
compete against the best players in the nation? My contention is that it
should be possible to do both. By concentrating efforts on selected
tournaments instead of trying to play in every tournament possible from
April to June, coaches can work with teams and improve the individual
skills, the shooting, the ball handling, the passing, the defense, the
decision-making, movement without the ball, etc that the players must
learn to be successful at the next level. As long as coaches merely roll
the ball out and let the talented rely on their innate talent, they are
acting more as a babysitter/travel agent than they are as a coach. Why
can’t these elite programs find coaches who can coach, who can develop
and refine skills and prepare players for the next level? I am sure
there are those select programs out there that do; but, if so, they get
far less publicity than the ones who don’t. I think the emphasis in
summer ball should be on preparation, development and competition, not
on simply compiling the most well known players or winning an otherwise
meaningless summer tournament.
Writer Brian McCormick coaches professionally in Europe and runs the
High Five Hoop School and Hard 2 Guard Camp in Sacramento, CA. He is a
frequent contributor to basketball coaching magazines, and his first
book, The Art of Ball Handling: Get a Handle on Your Game, will
be available in the coming weeks at www.basketballsense.com.
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