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.”
An AAU official declined to comment for this article.
The chorus of critics ranges from AAU player Alex Oriakhi, a McDonald’s
All-American center who plans to play for the University of Connecticut, who
says shooting guards he’s seen in AAU are in for a “rude awakening” to USA
Basketball officials and NBA coaches.
Founded in 1888, the AAU’s first goal was to represent American sports
internationally. AAU teams blossomed in many sports, and the organization
became a driving force in preparing Olympic athletes. In 1978, the Amateur
Sports Act established a governing body for American Olympic sports, usurping
the AAU’s role as an Olympic launching pad. Its most notable sport today is
basketball, where it counts Magic Johnson, Shaquille O’Neal and LeBron James
among its alumni.
In recent years the circuit has gone from a high school diversion—a way to
supplement school teams—to a highly organized and often well-funded operation.
The non-profit AAU moved its headquarters in 1996 from Indianapolis to Orlando,
where it hosts national championships at a palatial Disney World complex.
Shoe companies have sponsored AAU teams as a way to develop early relationships
with future superstars. Agents and college coaches have flocked to AAU games,
where they can get to know players outside the watchful high-school system. The
opportunity to travel across the country and play in front of these
kingmakers—often on teams with other top prospects—is something high schools
can’t deliver.
The result is a mixture of unrestrained offense and Harlem Globetrotter
defense: Even with 32-minute games, far shorter than the NBA’s 48 or NCAA’s 40,
top AAU teams often score more than 70 points and sometimes more than 80.
“It’s a bad system for developing players,” says Orlando Magic coach Stan Van
Gundy. “They aren’t learning to handle the ball, they aren’t learning to make
plays against pressure. The emphasis with our high-school players is to get exposure
and play as many games as you can and show everybody how great you are. If I
can win the 11-and-12 year old league and tell all my friends about it, that is
a whole lot more important than if my kids actually get any better or learn
anything about the game.”
In Europe, Mr. Van Gundy says, “those guys are doing five or six practices for
every game. They are spending a lot of time in the gym working on individual
skills. It’s reversed here.”
New Orleans Hornets forward Peja Stojakovic, who is Serbian, remembers spending
four hours a day dribbling through chairs and working on defense and other
fundamentals in practices. Mr. Beasley, on the other hand, says he can’t
remember any specific defensive drills his AAU teams ran. “If you put structure
into AAU,” he says, “no one would play.”
No prospect in this year’s draft knows this better than point guard Brandon
Jennings. Last year, Mr. Jennings was one of America’s best high-school point
guards and the quintessential product of AAU. Rather than doing a one-year
minimum stint in college before entering the NBA draft, he played a season in
Italy where, he says, things were different.
His time in Europe began with a rare stretch for an AAU product: He went weeks
without touching a basketball. His team spent the preseason running across
Roman parks and soccer fields.
In September, they retreated to an Italian mountain hideaway for two weeks and
ran there, too. They practiced fundamentals and rarely scrimmaged. Coming from
the AAU, this was new for Mr. Jennings, who averaged 5.5 points per game in
limited minutes during the in Italy.
It was, he says, the most intense two weeks of his basketball life. If he’d
never gone to Europe, he says, “I wouldn’t know the pick-and-roll game. I
wouldn’t know how to guard, wouldn’t know how to fight through screens. I’m
stronger now.”
Mr. Jennings, who will almost certainly be a first-round pick Thursday, says
the experience will give him an edge over other players in the draft.
In a bid to make sure players are more ed before they go pro, the NBA, in 2006,
began requiring players to be 19 and a year out of high school to enter the
draft. While college’s best players often leave after one or two years, four
years of college can sometimes help a career: take fundamentally sound North
Carolina forward Tyler Hansbrough, who could be a first-round pick Thursday,
despite widespread knocks on his athleticism. The league has also built a minor
league system, the NBA Developmental League, though it is only used for high
draft picks in extreme cases.
In 2008, the NBA and NCAA also announced a youth initiative, called iHoops, to
improve the American structure.
While the U.S. national basketball team redeemed itself with a gold medal in
Beijing after a string of embarrassments in international play, Jerry
Colangelo, the national director of USA Basketball who is in charge of the
Olympic team, says the system is still deeply flawed. He suggests giving high
school coaches more access to their players, especially in the summer.
The AAU system has its defenders. New Orleans Hornets guard Chris Paul says
that thanks to the AAU, he learned to play the style of the Utah Jazz’s offense
when he was 11-years old and credits AAU for starting his development into one
of the top point guards in the NBA. He now runs his own AAU team, the CP3
All-Stars in North Carolina.
“Some coaches teach fundamentals, some coaches run and show athleticism. It’s
not necessarily a problem because it’s up to you to watch and concentrate,” he
says.
Anthony Lewis, an AAU coach from Baltimore who helped develop Rudy Gay of the
Memphis Grizzlies, who was the No. 8 draft pick in 2006, says AAU helped teach
the skinny 13-year-old not to settle for easy shots.
“We taught him to work away from the bucket,” Mr. Lewis says. “Working on
mid-range at a young age, putting the ball on the floor, making him
aggressive.”
