AAU basketball gets blamed for many things and Kevin Garnett has officially joined the increasingly long line of people from the basketball world ready to tee off on the organization. In a lengthy interview with NBA TV that aired on Monday, Garnett went in a number of directions, but his take on the fact that AAU has killed the NBA was the most noteworthy.
“Our league now is at a point where you have to teach more than anything. AAU has killed our league. Seriously. I hate to even say this, but it’s real,” Garnett said. “From the perspective that these kids are not being taught anything. They have intentions and they want things but the way they see it is not how our league works. You earn everything in this league. You’re not entitled to anything. And it’s more entitlement than anything.”
This take has received some praise from folks both around and inside the league, but it is also a flawed premise. High school basketball is very strong in some parts of the country but, in others, AAU programs easily represent the best outlet for quality competition for some of the best and brightest in the sport. While there are issues with the set up that AAU presents, including an argument against (far) too many games over a short period of time, it would be unwise to blame the organization chiefly for some of the issues plaguing basketball as a whole in the United States.
Garnett’s stance on entitlement isn’t a ground-breaking one and it also has something of a whiff of “retired player looks down on current generation,” even with the fact that he was active just one year ago. AAU basketball is many things, not all of them positive, but blaming widespread entitlement and other issues from the current NBA on that particular development point would be a misstep.
