Youth Basketball Picking Up Bad Habits

In youth basketball today, there have been a lot of discussion about how kids are being taught. Adam Filippi who is a basketball trainer, believes that kids are dribbling too much, playing too many games, and not enough teaching. With so many youth basketball teams today, there are a huge number of kids that fall into these categories.

Most youth basketball teams that don't teach and play a lot of games, usually do it for the money. For example, they will charge each player $300 to play, while practicing only once a week. They play in a bunch of tournaments, but the kid isn't really learning. Lack of teaching kids the fundamentals has really hurt youth basketball, which is why Basketball Legends such as Kobe Bryant, and Charles Barkley have been verbal about their frustrations about youth basketball.

"I hate it because it doesn't teach our players how to play the right way, how to think the game, how to play in combinations of threes". These were the words of the 37 year old future hall of famer, Kobe Bryant. For Kobe Bryant, he gives credit to playing professionally overseas for teaching him the fundamentals of the game. Charles Barkley said that, "AAU is the worst thing to happen to college basketball ever. I hate AAU more than anything in the world. These kids aren't getting good coaching. They're playing too many games and not working on their game enough." Due to these legends being unsatisfied with youth basketball, it has forced some people to look at AAU in a negative way.

For the coaches who coach these programs, there isn't any qualifications of coaching experience in order to coach AAU. As long as the coach passes the background check, he or she can coach the program with no experience. Today in AAU, there are a lot of coaches with no experience, and are just coaching to collect money from the kids. There is no goal for some coaches in terms of what do they want to get out of coaching in AAU, besides money.

The only way the outlook on AAU changes, is if more coaches and programs focus on teaching the kids basketball fundamentals, as well as life lessons. Youth sports is meant to help kids stay out of trouble, build lifelong relationships, and to get better in the sport that they are participating in. Over the last few years according to some of basketball legends, youth sports in particular basketball, have lost sight of that. If more people that care about helping kids get involved, AAU basketball can change. As the head coach for Team Rampage, my goal is to make each and every kid get better. Even if the kids are paying to play, at least the kids are becoming better basketball players than they were before.

Since the criticism of some of the basketball legends, more NBA players are getting involved with AAU. NBA Superstars such as Damien Lillard, Brandon Roy, Chris Paul, and Lebron James, all have their own AAU team named after themselves. Each of these superstar player's AAU teams are all among the top programs in the nation, and each player makes guest appearances at games, practices and camps. With more NBA players getting involved with AAU, more kids will get the proper learning that they need to advance to the next level.