I’m sure you’ve heard it a few times.
You’ve probably heard that the European model is said to be extremely good at developing basketball players when it comes to ball movement, defense, fundamentals and all that other nonsense.
You’ve all heard about the harmful AAU model in the US and how it breeds selfishness, narcissism and isoballs.
You’ve probably heard about basketball’s international reach. The more countries that are interested in basketball, the more potential revenue there is, so this is something the NBA wants to encourage.
However, as of 2024, more than 30 years after the formation of the Dream Team, the United States continues to dominate basketball, the second most popular sport in the world after soccer.
There’s no comparison in major team sports: The U.S. basketball team, women’s and men’s combined, has swept the gold medals in the last four Olympic Games. By comparison, hockey has seen four different teams win the last five Olympic Games, six different countries win the last six FIFA World Cups, and three different teams win the last five World Baseball Classics.
“The whole system is bullshit,” Jim Boeheim, the legendary Syracuse University coach and former U.S. team assistant coach, told The Post. “Our kids are going to develop. Criticize them or not, AAU develops players. If you don’t play well, [butt] Kick it off with AAU. The cream will rise to the top.”
Boeheim offered a true and valid warning that the U.S. is not invincible. Anything can happen. The three-time Olympic gold medalist as an assistant pointed to the 2008 Redeem team led by Kobe Bryant and LeBron James, who beat Spain by just two points in the Olympic final.
But there’s a reason why Team USA, which faces Brazil in Tuesday’s quarterfinals, is a 26.5-point favorite. Despite a supposedly inferior development system, I’m already predicting the U.S. will be in the gold medal game. Group C was so easy that coach Steve Kerr satisfied his ego by playing a balanced 10-man rotation. No player played more than 27 minutes in the first three games.
And almost all of Kerr’s players, with a few exceptions, have followed the well-known American pipeline of AAU, prep school, NCAA and pro, a path that has proven effective at identifying and developing the best talent.
For this story, I called Sonny Vaccaro, now 85 years old, and always eager to talk about basketball. If you don’t remember, Vaccaro is a Nike executive who founded ABCD Camp, a long-standing staple of summer basketball advertising and recruiting. Vaccaro was the first to shape grassroots basketball with the money of a major sneaker company, attracting players like LeBron, Kobe, Tracy McGrady, Carmelo Anthony, Kevin Garnett, Jason Kidd, Derrick Rose, and many others.
To truly open up the country’s talent pool, sports must be accessible to everyone, regardless of income level, and Vaccaro understood that the pay-to-play model was too exclusive.
2024 Paris Olympics
There, he found a way to give young players free exposure and perks while building the Nike brand (and later Adidas and Reebok, who also sponsored ABCD camps.) This model is now best known for NIL payouts, but has been imitated, expanded, legitimized and celebrated in leagues like Overtime Elite.
In his heyday, Vaccaro was shunned as a shady presence that tarnished the integrity of amateur basketball, much like the NIL system is today.
“It was a disgrace to do it,” Vaccaro told the Post, “because some people criticized it, especially the NCAA.”
Regardless of reputation, the system worked: basketball potential rarely goes unnoticed in the United States, and that’s evident every four years with the Olympic Games.
“Right now, we’re selecting players as young as 10 years old,” former USA Basketball director Jerry Colangelo told The Washington Post . “It’s a pretty sophisticated system. We have a lot of people on the street corners, we have a lot of people in the gyms, we have big summer leagues, so we have a ton of players. And they just keep coming.”
As Colangelo points out, the U.S. has a natural advantage: Its player pool is much deeper than that of European or South American nations, and its speed and athleticism tend to dominate international competition.
It’s a recipe for dominance, but Boeheim believes it’s only truly threatened by an emerging underdog team.
“We’ve done the best we can in terms of player development. We have the best players,” Boeheim said. “Athletic and physical, I would say Africa is the next frontier. It’s already happening. I think something big is going to happen there. The NBA has academies there. In some of these countries, the kids don’t even have sneakers yet. But they’re getting sneakers. And I think that’s going to make a difference. It’s probably going to take 20 years, but I think it’s going to happen.”
