This courtship is a bunch of courtshit

Preface: This post will piss some people off. It will probably piss off some people I really like. During my time coaching AAU I met some wonderful people. Not just people, friends. Good friends. There are great people, doing great things for our young basketball players. Here comes the but...BUT, even the best intentioned AAU coaches are stuck playing a game that has no rules. 


A grown man (or woman) is texting your son (or daughter) after every single game they play. They are facebooking them after every game they play. They are tweeting at them after every game they play. They are telling them how good they are, how good they played, how much they can help their game, how crappy their HS coach is, how crappy the other AAU program is (while that program is probably texting the player at the same time). I know they are, because I did it. I woke up on Wednesdays and Saturdays and looked at the paper (it was the old days) and looked for high scorers, stat-stuffers, etc. Once I narrowed in on a player, I texted my existing teenage contacts and tried to get the number for my newly discovered teenage talent. Then, once I got the number, I texted them. I tried early on to call, and not text. The problem is, teenagers don't answer the phone. But we, the AAU coaches, we can't handle not making contact, the chance that another program is beating us to them, not telling them how much we think of them, so we text. We text teenagers. Texting turned in to facebooking, which turned into tweeting. There are grown ups telling our teenage players how good they are at every single turn. Those grown ups aren't their parents, they're basketball people, basketball coaches. They are the exact same basketball people that bitch about entitlement and transfer-itis. This makes no sense. What we are doing, or allowing, makes no sense.

This is just the beginning. I'm going to write more on this. I'm going to start asking HS coaches what they think about their players being courted during the season. I'm going to ask them how they feel about their players being forced to think about April in January. I'm going to ask the parents of the players that are being courted what they think about their son or daughter's courtship. I have no doubt that plenty of players and their parents love being courted. Attention feels good to us all. My question is, is it good for the player? Is it good for the team? And, most importantly, is it good for basketball.

My premise is that basketball is, or should be, better than this. That this courtship is a bunch of courtshit and is bad for the people, bad for teams and bad for the game.

Some of this is written for effect. I want to make it sound bad. I think it is bad. How bad? That I don't know, but I am going to try and find out. Most of you wont want to touch this issue, so...If you have comment on AAU courtship and wish to remain anonymous, feel free to email me at 10khoops.josh@gmail.com or call/text me at 612-390-9047
 .