The Take Bakery: Make America(n Basketball Prospects) Great Again

The NBA needs to establish a domestic development pipeline

For America’s best amateur basketball players, March Madness is an opportunity to demonstrate their basketball bonafides in front of an audience of millions. Unfortunately, it’s also likely to be some of the last meaningful basketball they play in their lives.

This is in part because making it beyond the amateur level and into the NBA is an accomplishment reserved for the genetically rarified few. It’s also because the NBA is evolving into a league that attracts increasing levels of international talent. And unlike many of our American prospects, a lot of these international players grow up in professionalized youth clubs, honing a skillset that is just better suited for the NBA.

America is the basketball mecca of the world. And our youth prospects deserve a training program that is reflective of our country’s true basketball prowess. It’s high time that the NBA revamp the current American prospect culture and develop clubs that will train players themselves.

Yes, today, I’m asking you to develop strong feelings about youth basketball.

This argument is not rooted in a protectionist NBA prospect policy. I’m a total open basketball borders guy, and I believe a globalized game is better for the sport. But I also have some national pride and want to ensure that America continues to produce basketball stars.

The last five (and likely soon to be six) MVP awards have gone to non-American players. Eight of last year’s All-Stars were non-American players. The greatest rookie in the past two decades is just one giant French dunking limb. LeBron James and Steph Curry, the American faces of the league, are knocking on retirement’s door. And while American stars still exist, of course, our current recruitment pipeline is failing to develop more of them.

We need a plan to change that.

The National Basketball Development Association

In recognition of the fact that American prospects need a more structured development program to compete with their foreign counterparts, the NBA should use a portion of their upcoming $75 billion media rights deal to fund the National Basketball Development Association (NBDA). Here are the specifics:

• Each NBA team develops a youth club program for players ages 13 and up. Similar to European basketball and football clubs, these players train with professional coaches and play a 30-game season that runs concurrently with the NBA season. Think, now playing on NBATV, Thunder U16 vs. Nuggets U16!

• Youth prospects must play for the club that is geographically closest to where they live. They may switch clubs if they are forced to moved to another location due to unrelated matters. But teams can’t meddle and recruit players to move to their club.

• To incentivize the investment in these programs, the NBA establishes the “Hometown rule,” where teams are allowed to reserve the players who grow up in their programs as long as they are not selected as a first-round draft pick. This rule is still maintained even if the player plays college in another state.

• The 19-year-old NBA eligibility age requirement is abolished; players are free to enter the league at any age.

This is a basketball development program that is truly reflective of the greatest basketball country in the world. And it’s an idea worth getting behind if you have one ounce of sports enthusiasm and patriotism. That’s because the NBDA will bring badly needed professionalism to our current system, and guarantee young prospects the type of coaching and mentorship that will actually prepare them to succeed in the NBA.

Now, you’re forgiven if you’re unfamiliar with the current contours of youth basketball in America. There are, after all, more important things to worry about. But most American prospects play in a league called the AAU, which essentially functions as a collection of travel basketball tournaments. It’s also constantly derided for its failure to develop refined basketball skills and team-oriented players due to its poor coaching, game-heavy schedule, and lack of practices. The late and great Kobe Bryant explains it all:

“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.”

Conversely, Kobe thinks the European club system is training prospects the right way:

"I just think European players are just way more skillful. They are just taught the game the right way at an early age."

The National Basketball Development Association will emulate exactly what these European clubs do so right. Albeit, with the financial resources and coaching that only a world class league like the NBA can offer.

The best way to understand why these clubs will succeed is to look more closely at our current prospect development system’s failures.

While the AAU stuffs tournaments with 4-5 games a day, the NBDA focuses on practice and skill refinement. While AAU coaches overwhelmingly rely on star power to compete in games, the NBDA has an eye towards long-term development and teaches team basketball at the expense of a win-loss record. Most importantly, while AAU teams travel across the country and suck youth players into a lifestyle that focuses almost overwhelmingly on basketball, the NBDA offers academic tutors and support networks to help prospects find success off the court as well.

An exciting twist on the club prospect development pipeline is the “Hometown rule,” which incentivizes teams to develop the skills of the prospects on their doorstep. In turn, this will help deepen the cultural connection between the players and fanbase. Think about LeBron’s connection to Cleveland. Or, when Clyde Drexler came back to Houston at the end of his career and led the Rockets to a championship. When players ascend from their communities to lead their local teams, it forges an indelible bond and is the stuff of sports legends.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver styles himself as a forward looking basketball thinker, one who is completely unrestricted in his pursuit to make the league better. Adopting this idea is an opportunity to do exactly that. It’s a chance to drop a flag in the ground and say the NBA cares about its American youth players, it has pride in the country it represents.

Who cares if we outsource the NBA?

Ok, so who really cares about the foreign influx of talent into the NBA? Better basketball is better basketball, right? Free basketball trade creates winners and losers, and American basketball players losing their jobs is the inevitable result of this process. It’s all worth it because the product is better for the basketball consumer.

Moreover, the internationalization of the NBA is an objectively cool phenomenon. Last year’s MVP, Joel Embiid, is from Cameroon. His ascent to NBA stardom has shined a real spotlight on the country’s basketball industry and could pave the way for more recruits to gain scholarships to play at American colleges. The best player in the NBA is Nikola Jokić, and the pride that his Serbian hometown of Sombor has for that man will make your heart melt. In a way, the internationalization of the NBA represents the best of what America can be. It takes the distinctly American concept of basketball, fuses it with elements from elsewhere, and makes a product that is even better and more cherished across the world.

There’s also the question of whether this NBA club system will actually boost American star power. The AAU is rightfully villainized for ruining youth prospects, but who knows if our country actually possesses the raw basketball talent necessary to completely dominate in a truly globalized game. This could just be the inevitable outcome of a league that has spent millions expanding their talent pipeline and creating basketball development clubs on every continent.

Players deserve better then the AAU

Skepticism aside, I believe in investing in the American basketball player, even if the recent dominance of foreign players is the result of talent parity, rather than actual player development. We need the NBDA because we need to get rid of the AAU.

I led with the Kobe Bryant quote, but that sentiment is shared across the league. Warriors coaching legend, Steve Kerr, called the AAU “counterproductive.” Former NBA superstar and diabolical winner, Kevin Garnett, said that the AAU was “killing our league.” By all means, I’m sure there are good coaches out there in the AAU system. But as a whole, the AAU is failing its players and the true stewards of the game are taking notice.

So really, that’s the other hidden benefit of the foreign dominance in the NBA. These players aren’t just making the game better, they’re offering a wakeup call for how much better our domestic prospect system can be.

Adam Silver, it’s time to implement the NBDA. The ball is in your court.