Bean Bryant voices displeasure of current state of nba talent
Following a home loss earlier this weekend to the Memphis Grizzlies, Kobe Bryant voiced his displeasure with the current trend of current NBA rookies coming into the league not properly trained and guided. In a brief post-game interview with ESPN’s Arash Markazi The Mamba stated that European basketball players are more skillful than Americans right now, which is a trend rising at a rapid rate.
He soon blamed the greed and coaching at the AAU level – which he opted to not participate in the 1990s, to receive proper training and coaching in Europe. Kobe cited the NBA’s only active dynasty, San Antonio Spurs having 90 percent of their roster from Europe – which has been complimented from even better coaching.
At the age of 36, Bryant’s leading the league as a top scorer, averaging 24 points an outing. With his career coming to an end next year, we’re hopeful he keeps voicing out on issues like this one that he’s kept private this long.
“I just think European players are just way more skillful. They are just taught the game the right way at an early age. … They’re more skillful. It’s something we really have to fix. We really have to address that. We have to teach our kids to play the right way. AAU basketball, Horrible, terrible AAU basketball. It’s stupid. It doesn’t teach our kids how to play the game at all so you wind up having players that are big and they bring it up and they do all this fancy crap and they don’t know how to post. They don’t know the fundamentals of the game. It’s stupid. When you have limitations and you understand your limitations and you stay within yourself, you can be great. You know what you can do and what you can’t do. In America, it’s a big problem for us because we’re not teaching players how to play all-around basketball.
That’s why you have Pau and Marc [Gasol], and that’s the reason why 90 percent of the Spurs’ roster is European players, because they have more skill. I probably wouldn’t be able to dribble with my left and shoot with my left and have good footwork,” Bryant said. “I was kind of fortunate because when I was growing up in Italy, the Red Auerbachs and the Tex Winters and all those great coaches were doing clinics and camps in Europe. They were teaching all the club coaches, and the club coaches were following their advice and their fundamentals like the bible, and they were teaching all of us kids that type of stuff. Me, Manu [Ginobili] and all these guys that grew up around that same time, we’re a product of that. It’s a big difference. Teach players the game at an early age and stop treating them like cash cows for everyone to profit off of,” he said. “That’s how you do that. You have to teach them the game. Give them instruction.
That’s a deep well because then you start cutting into people’s pockets. People get really upset when you start cutting into their pockets because all they do is try to profit off these poor kids. There’s no quick answer.
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