Another 'AAU hoops is ruining basketball' article

There is so much to write about vis-a-vis the following article.

First off, the headline's focus, while semi-accurate, is misplaced. The onus should be on those adults who attach themselves to kids and will stop at nothing in order to eventually financially benefit from entry into the mega riches world of NBA contracts.

What Michael Beasley fails to say (or wasn't asked) in the article is would he have stayed on a team and played for a coach who insisted that he play defense? You and I both know the answer.

His promise was evident very early on and it was all about currying his favor. One of his club team coaches has a job as an assistant coach at Kansas State, making over $400,000 a year. This is his second year there. Of course, he got the job due to getting Beasley to come to Manhattan. The assistant coach was previously at Charlotte and Beasley was headed there until the assistant coach made a better financial move to K-State.

Plus, shoe companies are a financial force behind the high level club basketball teams. Take them out of the equation somehow (yeah, as if that is going to happen) and much of the chicanery would end (until they found another way to fund the most promising players).

Then there are the street agents who will do anything asked of them as they are compensated by the NBA certified agents who are trying to lock up the next Michael Jordan.

But we salute those mentors in AAU and club team basketball who do it to make the kids, the basketball community and the world better. They certainly do exist, even if we don't read about them very often.

American kids flunk Basketball 101
Kevin Clark
The Wall Street Journal
June 30, 2009

One system that prepares young American players for the pros, the Amateur Athletic Union, is, by most accounts, broken. Without a rigid minor-league system like baseball's or the extra seasoning football players get in college, America's basketball gems increasingly get their training from teams affiliated with the Amateur Athletic Union, a vast national youth-basketball circuit that has groomed many of the sport's top stars.

For some time, coaches have grumbled that the AAU's emphasis on building stars and playing games over practicing produces a lot of talented prospects who have great physical skills but limited knowledge of the fundamentals. Now some players are speaking out.

By the middle of the last NBA season, as concerns build about his dwindling playing time and rough transition to the NBA, last year's No. 2 overall pick, Michael Beasley of the Miami Heat, finally conceded a fundamental flaw: No one, at any level in his basketball career, had asked him to play defense. And especially not in AAU. "If you're playing defense in AAU, you don't need to be playing," he says. "I've honestly never seen anyone play defense in AAU."

Go here for the remainder.