Issues Surround Travel Team Hoops
I have often remarked to people outside of basketball, or just delving into it, that the world of travel team basketball and recruiting is a very interesting one, if nothing else. There are a lot of things that can be said about it, with a wide range of characters, talents, issues, life stories and back stories. There are numerous kids, numerous teams, and the number of different tournaments, camps or other showcase events seems to grow all the time.
Most notably, the AAU season is one of tremendous importance in the grand scheme of things. The importance of recruiting is constantly emphasized by college coaches, who go right from the end of the college season into recruiting. Because more players who have the potential to play at the highest level can be observed in one setting here than at high school games, the AAU season now takes on more importance than the high school season.
Many will read that last statement and instantly react that this is a terrible thing, and while it’s far from perfect, it is what we have right now. There is a perfectly valid and practical explanation for why that is. One might say that a player’s high school season should matter more, and that might be true in a perfect world.
Welcome to our imperfect world.
Indeed, this is an imperfect world in many respects. In terms of basketball and the travel team scene, it is quite imperfect, but not just in the ways that one might initially think. There are cynics who view it as being full of corruption and unsavory characters, and ultimately very damaging to the game and the young people playing it. While there may be some grain of truth to that, it’s largely overstated. There are also issues that affect college coaches and members of the media that are well worth mentioning.
Here, in part 2 of our look back at the crucial spring and summer recruiting period, we take a look at some of the top issues surrounding the world of AAU and travel team basketball. All of them are important, and improvements on each would make many people’s lives easier, although there is one group that will surely benefit most of all – the young men who play this game. They are the ultimate winners or losers in how all of this shakes out.
You’ll Need a Program
It’s been said here in this space before, but it bears repeating because it isn’t getting better: the number one problem for coaches and media is the state of programs and rosters.
Too much time is wasted checking uniform numbers or making sure players listed are actually there. Rosters have become so unreliable that many coaches and media make a point of checking the score sheets before a game, anticipating at least one disparity and perhaps many. It’s even gotten to the point that this year, there may have been a record number of changes at the Bob Gibbons Tournament of Champions, one of the rare tournaments where rosters are mostly correct. At least one team had a roster where almost nothing was complete or accurate.
Where this is also problematic for coaches is that they pay good money to get these packets, often well over $100. At the King James Shooting Stars Classic in late April, coaches paid $150 for the roster book, containing rosters of teams competing in the three high school divisions. As a media outlet covering the event, Hoopville obtained the same roster book and saw that it left a lot to be desired. For starters, over 30 teams had blank roster forms. Of the teams that did have information, a number of them were incomplete, missing things like uniform numbers or year of graduation. There were a few teams that didn’t even have a blank roster form in the book. Only making things worse is when a team just fills in uniform numbers on the game score sheet, especially when the roster lacks such information in the first place.
This problem has gotten so bad that I routinely travel to events with programs from past events if I know some of the same teams will be there. It turns out to be more helpful that one might initially think, because there have been many times that I have had to call upon those rosters due to their absence in the current program or a mix-up with another team. At the Rumble in the Bronx, for example, having rosters from prior spring events for younger teams is a major plus, because most of the teams that are in the program are in the older divisions.
The blame for this can’t be put on those running the event, because there’s only so much they can do. It isn’t their fault that a team may not submit a roster, or even one with the kind of information coaches and media need. But this is a problem that is not getting better, and coaches and media alike are bothered by this. Having to constantly check uniform numbers and get roster info takes away from other things we need to do, from watching games to interviewing players. For coaches, it takes away from watching the games and also makes their investment in the packets look more like a waste of money when the information is generally no good. And proving that the kids can be the ultimate losers in all of this, there are some who will just not be bothered if the information isn’t there (because enough time is already wasted tracking down this information in the first place), which means a kid can lose out on getting some press that could help his recruitment.
Scheduling Nightmare: Friday Nights in the Spring
There has been some talk that the NCAA may make a much-needed change in the live spring periods, which would be to allow coaches on the road on Friday. This is a change that would affect everyone for the better.
For tournament organizers, the current setup can either be a scheduling nightmare or, in the case of a large tournament such as the Kingwood Classic, resignation to kids not getting to play every single game in front of college coaches. Charlie Weber, who usually runs tournaments on the east coast during those weekends, usually manages to have no 17-under teams – which typically have the top prospects and also the ones college coaches are most likely to watch because they are primarily older players – play on Friday night. Instead, all Friday night games involve underclassmen in 16-under and occasionally 15-under as well.
But for other tournaments, most if not all teams will start out playing without the college coaches present. While that shouldn’t matter, especially since a lot of media are present in many cases, one must remember that we are still talking about young men here. Not all of them have learned by now the value of giving a consistent effort, such that giving the full effort in a big game is nothing out of the ordinary. While not playing every game with a crowd of college coaches isn’t so bad, there was one extreme case this spring that was noteworthy. At the King James Shooting Stars Classic in late April, a number of teams in the 17-under division played both of their pool play games on Friday night of the tournament. College coaches might only wind up getting to see one game of a team the entire weekend as a result, because the next game for those teams would be in the single-elimination playoff bracket.
For the players, making Friday a live day would give them the chance to show college coaches what they can do while allowing the organizers to spread the games out better. As it is, most teams need to win three games on Sunday of a weekend tournament if they want to emerge as champions, so having to also play three games on Saturday as well isn’t exactly just what the doctor ordered. But in many tournaments, even the older teams play a game on Friday night of a weekend tournament, meaning they will only get to play as many games in front of college coaches as their winning will allow them to; the more they win in the playoff round, the more games they get in front of college coaches. They also get their games spaced out better with one on Friday night in addition to their Saturday and Sunday slates.
For college coaches, it simply makes all the sense in the world. They arrive from out of town on Friday anyway, and at many of these events they can come to the site of the event to pick up the coaches packet to save time the next day and plan out their weekend. They don’t need to get out of school for a day, so coming on Friday isn’t a problem for them. Furthermore, many coaches leave before the tournament is over; it’s not uncommon for only a handful to remain for the championship game. Between teams with players they are recruiting getting eliminated and having seen enough to know about the progress of those players, coaches will go to get a break in the action. Many also plan on leaving before the tournament is over, sometimes booking flights early in the afternoon and arriving back on campus that same night. Indeed, for many coaches, Saturday is the main day they come for. Adding Friday night would add to the value of making the trip.
Forget the Fundamentals
It’s been lamented by many, including this writer, but it needs to be mentioned again: this is not the place to see the best fundamentals of basketball. Shot selection will routinely leave coaches shaking their heads, entry passes won’t exactly be a dime a dozen, and let’s not even touch the subject of playing defense. There’s no need to go into further detail about it here, especially since this problem is much larger than the travel team scene. Blaming this for the lack of fundamentals with today’s young players isn’t the answer; it’s not the cause of the problem, although it doesn’t help much.
Indeed, one assistant coach remarked this past July, as one of the first events of the busy month commenced, “So begins the worst month of basketball.” While it was said tongue-in-cheek, the old saying about how many a truth is spoke in jest applies here.
Don’t Settle
Every year, one of the most maddening things to watch at times is power forwards who are so good at scoring inside decide that they want to step out a little. All of a sudden, a player who a while ago looked like a strong post scorer, perhaps even an elite prospect at that position, is now hoisting three-pointers with regularity. And all too often, those shots don’t go, and in the meantime the player doesn’t then go back to his bread-and-butter post game inside so he can still be effective.
Some players work out fine and even make a full transition to the small forward spot, but many don’t and wind up hurting their teams and ultimately their own stock. Part of it is that becoming a small forward involves more than just being able to shoot from long range; it means being athletic enough and having the ball skills for the position as well, and it means being able to guard someone on the perimeter. But a bigger issue can be found within the focus by most such players on shooting three-pointers.
Becoming a long-range shooter means more than just the simple ability to hit such shots, because as is often the case, shot selection matters a great deal. Many power forwards who start hoisting up three-pointers don’t realize that there is a difference between a three-pointer that comes in the flow of the offense and one that they get as soon as they come down the floor. Those who don’t make the transition are often the ones who settle for such shots, instead of taking them when the flow dictates it.
This past spring, there was a great example of this in Wake Forest commit Al-Farouq Aminu. After looking like a dominant post scorer last spring, he spent a lot of time on the three-point line this spring and didn’t look as good. But there were times when he took shots that came in the flow and times when he just settled for them. When he settled, he didn’t shoot nearly as well and wasn’t as effective overall because he didn’t always do other things as well as he used to.
Aminu is one example, but a very good one. The reason many power forwards don’t become shooters is that many don’t understand, at least not initially and in some cases for a while, the difference between settling for a shot and taking a good one. The sooner players understand this, the better for them.
Exposure or Exposed
No matter what one feels about AAU, one thing can’t be denied: numerous players get chances through this circuit that they otherwise would not have. As mentioned earlier, more prospective college players can be seen here than at a simple high school game, so this takes on more importance. It means there is more opportunity.
Life is full of circumstances where the possibilities have trade-offs, and this is no different. A player can get seen more in these settings, but that can have a down side as well. While the player gets seen by more college coaches and media, it not only means the coaches and media can see what a player can do, but also what he can’t do. It means there are numerous opportunities for a player’s game to be picked apart, which is both good and bad. Ultimately, it depends on just how well he plays game in and game out.
So while there is opportunity, a player has to take full advantage of it in order to get what he desires. A player can be out every weekend playing in a tournament or camp where coaches and/or members of the media are present, but if he doesn’t have what it takes to play at the next level, all that will happens isn’t that he gets exposure, but rather, exposed – exposed as someone not good enough to play at the next level. Playing in these tournaments is far from a guarantee of a Division I scholarship, even if the team has sent numerous players there before. (The same can be said of prep schools, for that matter, but that’s another subject entirely.)
Not Everyone Can Be “The Man”
Every year, we see a number of new AAU teams sprout up. The motives are many, and there are always new ones every year that make waves right away; some notable ones in recent years that wasted little time include the Ohio-based D-1 Greyhounds, Baltimore-based Team Melo and Orlando-based Marquis Daniels Showtime Ballers. There are some that come to life because of one player, and not a former star or even a current premier player (the latter being the case with the D-1 Greyhounds, who initially featured O.J. Mayo and Bill Walker).
Indeed, some come into being because a father of a player didn’t feel his son got enough playing time or enough of a role on a team he was playing on. Rather than let the player develop in that role, a new team could mean the player can then be a go-to guy and play most minutes of each game. In theory, this could help his recruitment because he’ll be seen more and can do more – he will no longer be “hidden” on a deeper team.
From here, this note serves as a corollary to the last one. Not every player is meant to be a go-to guy. That’s a role reserved for the best players, the ones who are capable of leading a team and making big shots. When some players try to take this role on, they get exposed as players who aren’t go-to guys, but role players or complementary players. There’s no shame in being either, but just like the difference between settling for three-point shots and taking good ones, the sooner players realize this, the better for them.
When Is It Too Much?
Ever since Reebok jumped into the fray with its slate of events, the spring and summer scene has been a mess when it comes to the schedule of events. It’s hard to get an accurate count, but in July alone there are well over 200 events crammed into two live periods of ten days each. For good measure, there are often about a half dozen live tournaments on April weekends, meaning a school can’t have one coach at each one.
This has trade-offs. On one hand, events can be smaller, which is generally better – as an example, Rbk U was much smaller this year than last year’s ABCD Camp was. It’s better for all involved, as coaches and media have a better chance to get a good look at everyone present, while the players get better exposure as a result. But it also means that a number of prospects can wind up at events with a relatively low turnout for coaches and media and vice versa.
For the players, it’s a missed opportunity, while for coaches and media it’s a waste of valuable time and money. As it is, coaches and media may not even take the chance of going to an event where the talent level is uncertain, especially when there are about five or six others at the same time that are almost certain to be well worth their time. As the number of events keeps rising, the ultimate losers wind up being the players. There are more events, but they aren’t all created equal.
What’s Next?
As mentioned, the travel team circuit is the most important part of the year. That may not be ideal, but that isn’t about to change anytime soon, so we need to work with it as best we can. The issues highlighted here involve all of the protagonists in various ways, so everyone affiliated with it has something to gain from improvements.
