Lakers G Kobe Bryant believes that European basketball players "are more skillful than American basketball players, and says it's a growing trend that can be blamed on the greed and coaching at the AAU level," according to Arash Markazi of ESPN L.A. Bryant said, "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." Bryant was "quick to point the finger for the decline of skilled players" in the U.S. Bryant: "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." Markazi noted Bryant also was "quick to point out that any solution involving changing the current culture of AAU basketball won't happen overnight." Bryant: "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" (ESPNLA.com, 1/3). In L.A., Eric Pincus noted while he "has some ideas on how to address the problem, Bryant isn't sure there is a way to actually fix it." Bryant: "Teach players the game at an earlier age and stop treating them like cash cows for everybody to profit off of them" (L.A. TIMES, 1/3). CBSSPORTS.com's Gary Parrish wrote there are "lots of problems with summer hoops in this country; no smart person would deny that." But the system "does produce countless opportunities for kids who wouldn't otherwise have them." Parrish: "Is AAU basketball, as Bryant put it, 'horrible' and 'terrible?' Parts of it, sure. But certainly not all of it." Parrish: "I texted or called six different NBA front-office executives or scouts Saturday morning, and five of the six said that, yes, Bryant is probably right that European players, in general, are taught basketball more effectively than American players, and that they, per capita, become better passers and cutters and fundamentally sound prospects" (CBSSPORTS.com, 1/3).
