AAU Basketball: About the money, not the kids

Last week, the Wall Street Journal ran a article criticizing AAU basketball. They pretty much got it right - the culture of AAU basketball centers around 1-on-1 play, emphasizes playing games over practicing skills, and rewards selfishness (i.e. scoring 40 on the guy ranked 10 spots above you is more important than winning the game).

But they missed the source of the problem.

AAU basketball has become a business. For many of the AAU coaches at the highest levels of the sport, this isn't just a fun way for them to spend their weekends or something they do because they love the game of basketball. Instead, it is a money-making venture, and for some it is probably their main source of income.

Think about it: between appearance fees for bringing high profile recruits to a tournament, the "sponsorship" these teams get from shoe companies, or the money that coaches make off of trips to elite camps, there is a pretty big chunk of change for these coaches to cash in on.

On paper, the idea of AAU is quite appealing. Essentially, these are traveling teams that play tournaments in and around their region, with the better teams playing around the country. Not only does it give you a chance to play competitive basketball during the spring and summer, the kids get a chance to get some exposure to college coaches and play against the best in your age group.

I played AAU basketball growing up, and while my team had a few kids play D1 (we sent players to two A-10 schools), it was not quite the elite level of AAU hoops. Nobody got paid when I visited Vassar College. But I loved it. We would have practices twice a week where we would scrimmage the entire two hours against the program's alumni playing college ball at the time. We also would travel to tournaments two or three weekends out of the month.

Skill work was done on your own time, as we only had a limited number of hours to use the gym. And that is exactly where the issue lies. Since we only travelled on the weekends, and I wasn't visiting every school in the country, I had plenty of time to work out on my own. If you are playing in a tournament in Vegas one weekend, one at Villanova the next weekend, one in Orlando the weekend after that, then visiting a bunch of campus's the following week, etc., where do you find the time to take 500 shots every day, to lift every day, to do something to improve your dribbling every day.

For these kids, it becomes a vicious circle. If you are working out on your own, you aren't playing games and getting exposure. If you aren't getting exposure, you aren't going to be ranked on recruiting websites. If you aren't ranked on recruiting websites, tournament organizers aren't going to pay to get you to come.

I could go on and on about the things wrong with youth basketball in this country (they start too young, ranking recruits on websites that charge for membership, shoe companies, agents, yada yada yada). But when it comes to AAU ball, the bottom line is this: its not the system that is flawed, it is the way that people abuse the system to make a buck that ruins what could be a fantastic program.