Is AAU Basketball Creating Injury-Prone Man-Boys?

What if I told you basketball teams exist who have no set roster, don’t practice, and you have to pay to be a part of them?

You’d probably think I was some shady basketball cult leader. Anywhere else in the world this may be true, except in the United States.

Stateside, this is just good ol’ American Athletic Union (AAU) basketball. At its inception back in the horse and buggy days, the non-profit organization was all about the development of youth sports and promoting physical fitness…until it wasn’t.

As basketball’s popularity grew, so too did the money involved with the sport. This is the story of how billionaires, opportunists, and highlight mixtapes have devolved youth basketball and created a generation of injury-prone man-boys.

It’s Not Personal, Sonny

Dubbed the “Godfather of Grassroots Basketball”, John “Sonny” Vaccaro is the man who put AAU ball on the map in the 80s.

By partnering with the Godfather of Swoosh, Phil Knight. The two Godfathers began the concept of athletic shoe companies sponsoring amateur basketball camps and tournaments.

In concept, this doesn’t sound so nefarious.

• Coaches receive some resources to cover their expenses and get paid for their efforts
• Amateur athletes receive gear and kicks
• Brands get exposure for their marketing dollars

But leave it to humans to fuck up a good thing.

Its All Been Downhill

If you make a little money doing something you enjoy, it’s human nature to ponder how you can make even more money doing that thing.

Except in this particular case, the combo of youth basketball and money has been about as good as spreading peanut butter on uncooked ramen noodles🤮 

Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich has shared his take on AAU basketball:

“Ever since AAU became the de facto leader in ‘preparing kids’, it’s been all downhill.”

Gregg Popovich

In my mind, this is no doubt due to some “coaches” with constipated mentalities giving in to their natural inclinations and doing more of what is bringing them the bread.

This means more emphasis is placed on sponsorships and playing in as many tournaments as possible to justify said sponsorship. Instead of actual player development and teaching the fundamentals of the game.

Without exaggerating, there are 164-team tournaments that run for an entire week and see teams play in as many as four games per day. If you thought the 68-team March Madness bracket was crazy, you ain’t seen anything yet.

$30 A Pop

Anytime you let someone with $30 to their name start a whole youth basketball team shit is bound to go awry.

But this is not all. For $300 per year, anyone can become eligible to apply for a license to host an event (tournament) and receive tax-exempt donations.

Doe-eyed youngsters and their parents then pay a bare minimum of $14 to join a registered team and oftentimes way more, with team fees and travel expenses regularly amounting to thousands of dollars per year.

The costs quickly add up because many of the “showcase” tournaments, which Division I college coaches are sometimes known to attend, cost hundreds of dollars to participate in.

But these well-documented downsides aside, there’s one that is the icing on the AAU grifter cake, which I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere.

They’re All AAU Babies

A big part of playing any sport, especially a contact sport is physical fitness.

This means actually getting in the gym and working on your strength and conditioning.

When you’re playing multiple games per day even during the off-season of spring and summer, there is little, if any time to do this.

Take a look at the two pics below:

On the left, you have recently drafted and immediately injured man-boy Chet Holmgren. On the right is college basketball hall-of-Famer and man-beast Larry Johnson.

Both were around the same age in their respective photo and both play the power forward position.

The former is a product of AAU basketball, the latter isn’t.

This isn’t just me trying to drive home a narrative either, stats show that the number of players missing 20 games or more during a season has increased by more than 100% since the early 80s.

The timeline directly coincides with the rise in popularity and participation in AAU ball.

Secondary Factors

Besides young athletes skipping leg and chest and arms day, there are also some other modern factors that could be contributing to the Diary of a Wimpy Kid aesthetic.

We’ve all heard that marijuana of the medical variety can help relieve pain and perhaps even aid in athletic recovery. But it can also lead to some adverse side effects, like difficulty concentrating and increased anxiety.

Those two things alone can kneecap a training regime, which requires focus and discipline above all else.

On a more alarming note, male estrogen levels are also rising. This is likely due to increased body fat and anxiety in men. Things that come from not pumping iron like Schwarzenegger and smoking too much bud…which lead us back to AAU basketball as the root cause.

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