Rush The Court

For as long as there has been college basketball, we have heard coaches across the country complain about youth sports. The correlation between those complaints and a head coach’s advancing age appears to be scientifically sound, but that doesn’t mean they don’t sometimes have a point. Last week Louisville women’s basketball coach Jeff Walz took time out of his postgame press conference to lament that “everybody gets a damn trophy” in today’s youth sports.

CBSSports.com’s Matt Norlander then did us a service by highlighting a series of quotes made by West Virginia coach Bob Huggins last weekend. The irascible head coach’s commentary centers on how playground and AAU basketball are different animals, but he prefers the former on how it teaches young players to learn the game. A few of his most illustrative lines:

• “I don’t think they know how to play.”
• “I think they play all of the time but they don’t. It’s kind of long and complicated and I’m not trying to kill AAU because I think it has some good. But I think when you used to have to go to the playground to play, you had to win, or you sat for four or five games.”
• “You learn how to win.”
• “You drive by courts now, you don’t see anyone out there playing. It’s just a different culture, I think. And in fairness, the athletes now are bigger, stronger, faster. They’re better. It’s just their idea of how to play sometimes baffles me.”

It goes without saying that Huggins and his peers typically try their best to avoid undermining the AAU programs because they know they will need those players to keep their programs nationally relevant. But some of Huggins’ comments ring true. AAU tournaments can take up the majority of a given day and teams often play for consecutive days at a time. Indeed, participating teams receive shoes and other apparel regardless of how they finish. And criss-crossing the country to play basketball can take a toll on these kids’ developing bodies. But these weren’t Huggins’ main points. Rather, he believes that the drying up of playground basketball around the country has produced a wave of prospects who don’t know how to play the game.

And now, a completely serious dissection of Huggins’ points.

“I don’t think they know how to play.”

“I think they play all of the time but they don’t. It’s kind of long and complicated and I’m not trying to kill AAU because I think it has some good. But I think when you used to have to go to the playground to play, you had to win, or you sat for four or five games.”

It’s hard to agree with Huggins here because playground basketball is as unstructured as it gets. There isn’t a coach on the sideline calling for his team to run a matchup zone or to block out better on the weak side. But if there was, you’d figure it would be a micromanaging type. Maybe a Tom Izzo or a Mick Cronin. Imagine Rick Pitino dressed in an all-white getup in 98-degree weather as sweat rolls down his forehead while he calls unlimited timeouts without fear of technical fouls (remember, no referees). Is that it? Is that what the coaches want? Yes. It’s practically a coach’s paradise.

“You learn how to win.”

AAU ball is arguably just as unstructured as playground ball but their teams are sometimes coached by people who know the game very well. Other times, however, the coaches are people without any basketball experience but enough money to start their own AAU outfit. Oh my, is that former baseball manager Jim Leyland on the sideline? What’s he doing with an AAU team? How strange, but Jim is a winner after all! Boy, his club is really active defensively and he doesn’t even say a word! I wonder why that is. Hmmm, it looks like he’s flicking something towards his players as they keep hopping around as they wince in pain. Now I see that those are cigarette butts. He’s got a wheelbarrow full of them. The butts are burning the children. It does explain why his players are always moving, but that’s just extremely wasteful.

“You drive by courts now, you don’t see anyone out there playing. It’s just a different culture, I think. And in fairness, the athletes now are bigger, stronger, faster. They’re better. It’s just their idea of how to play sometimes baffles me.“

He’s right. It’s a different culture we’re living in. Athletes are more developed than they’ve ever been in part because of institutions like AAU basketball. What might be baffling to the aging Huggins is that decisions made by young adults typically aren’t all that sound to begin with, and that fact has nothing to do with making an errant bounce pass in traffic. His team is learning how to win right now and it is in good hands with a guy who will likely notch his 800th win this Saturday against UMKC. He’s the man who knows how to play, and it’s his job to teach his players to execute his wishes.

So what’s really going on here? Could there be something else that is bothering the future Hall of Famer or is he just showing his typical grumpiness? What if Nike decided to discontinue his trademark tracksuits and that decision cut him so deep to the core that a wound emerged that could never be healed? If that is the case, I’d be mad right there with him.