Steve Kerr makes a good argument for an increased NBA age-limit (from an NBA business perspective).
I found the following excerpt describing the AAU culture interesting:
The idea of learning sports in a club-environment as opposed to a scholastic environment is not the problem (most of the rest of the world does that). However, as AAU and 7-on-7 are set up, they seem to be all about who can recruit the most talent to their team, and very little about developing the participants as players, as teammates, or as athletes.
I found the following excerpt describing the AAU culture interesting:
Even if today's players are incredibly gifted, they grow up in a basketball environment that can only be called counterproductive. AAU basketball has replaced high school ball as the dominant form of development in the teen years. I coached my son's AAU team for three years; it's a genuinely weird subculture. Like everywhere else, you have good coaches and bad coaches, or strong programs and weak ones, but what troubled me was how much winning is devalued in the AAU structure. Teams play game after game after game, sometimes winning or losing four times in one day. Very rarely do teams ever hold a practice. Some programs fly in top players from out of state for a single weekend to join their team. Certain players play for one team in the morning and another one in the afternoon. If mom and dad aren't happy with their son's playing time, they switch club teams and stick him on a different one the following week. The process of growing as a team basketball player — learning how to become part of a whole, how to fit into something bigger than oneself — becomes completely lost within the AAU fabric.
And for elite players who play one college year before turning pro, that process remains stunted. That's the single most important part of a player's development and we ignore it like it doesn't totally matter — basic foundation points like learning how to commit to a team, embracing the unity of a group, trusting your teammates, and working within a larger framework. Harvard coach Tommy Amaker puts it well, saying, "We've become a culture of skipping steps." So many young NBA players might be physically gifted, but they skipped crucial development steps along the way. It would help if they were forced to make one or two more of those steps within the framework of the college game.
There are a lot of issues with youth-sports in this country, but I think the recent de-emphasis on high school sports and the increased emphasis on things like AAU and 7-on-7 passing leagues is one of the biggest issues. And for elite players who play one college year before turning pro, that process remains stunted. That's the single most important part of a player's development and we ignore it like it doesn't totally matter — basic foundation points like learning how to commit to a team, embracing the unity of a group, trusting your teammates, and working within a larger framework. Harvard coach Tommy Amaker puts it well, saying, "We've become a culture of skipping steps." So many young NBA players might be physically gifted, but they skipped crucial development steps along the way. It would help if they were forced to make one or two more of those steps within the framework of the college game.
The idea of learning sports in a club-environment as opposed to a scholastic environment is not the problem (most of the rest of the world does that). However, as AAU and 7-on-7 are set up, they seem to be all about who can recruit the most talent to their team, and very little about developing the participants as players, as teammates, or as athletes.
