Elite Development Growth Environment
"We have just expanded your chances by making learning basketball easier and better."
To create a college and professional level environment, focused on teaching and learning higher level individual basketball skills, mainly shooting, in the off-seasons rather than "JUST PLAYING" the entire summer to win a tournament. Work collaboratively on skill development, and hold players accountable for results. The idea of improving basketball skills by developing advanced level learning communities is currently in vogue. People use this term to describe every imaginable combination of individual off-season training with an interest in educating basketball players. It includes junior high school or middle school coaches and athletic directors, high school coaches, an entire school district, a state athletic department, the NCAA and NBA, and so on. In fact, the program has been used so ubiquitously that it is in danger of losing all meaning. This program is achieved through providing small group and individual development sessions for male and female athletics to promote qualified athletes to the higher levels. It will also provide teaching and learning opportunities.
The impact of winning has left its mark on many young people in the United States .
The learning community model for learning basketball has now reached a critical juncture, one well known by those who have witnessed the fate of other well-intentioned learning efforts. In this all-too-familiar, year round cycle, called the more you play-the better you get, enthusiasm gives way to confusion about the fundamental development concepts driving the initiative, followed by inevitable implementation problems. The conclusion is that the reform has failed to bring about the desired results, abandonment of the reform, and the launch of a new search for higher level skill development programs. "Children who are caught in this cycle don't know the value and purity that learning fundamentals bring to the game. One of the most striking findings in our recent survey was among female athletes who played basketball on a team from the age of 10 years old through high school and ended-up quitting because they were burnt out from the pressures of winning and playing so many games. It didn't matter if they were the best and got offered college scholarships or not, they quit. There are thousands of these kids who never get an opportunity to take that break (between seasons) and develop the proper skills."
On May 22nd, 2002 , the NBA did an article on scouting worldwide for talent. It surprised a lot of people but not people like Coach John Ercia of Tampa Florida, "We are not teaching our kids how to play the game we're teaching them how to win playing position." In this article the assistant GM for the Denver Nuggets said, "Europeans know how to play basketball better than most Americans. Fundamentals are stressed from an earlier age," Fredman said. In the U.S. , especially in the AAU programs, young kids work on dunking. Over there, you have to know how to shoot it. You have to know how to handle the ball. You have to understand the team game or you don't get to play." It doesn't matter whether you're a 7-footer or 5-foot-5," Benetton Treviso ( Italy ) coach Mike D' Antoni said. "You're going to do the same drills. From the ages of 8, 9, 10, players work on fundamentals. Coaches start from the outside and work their way in... Shooting is the staple of European basketball. The emphasis on junior coaches isn't to win. Instead, they are judged on how they develop players they've been entrusted with."
In an article written Mike Celixic, MSNBC on August 21,2004 about shooting with the U.S. Men's Basketball Team he writes, "It's becoming clear that the reason NBA shooting percentages run around 40 percent and scores are continually declining isn't because of the defense teams play but because nobody can shoot the ball." During the bronze metal game, Mike Breen and Doug Collins, NBA commentators stated, "We have got to do a better job of training our athletes from the ground-up. Our AAU system has not produced shooters and it is obvious by what happened in this years Olympic Games."
In Orlando , Florida alone, there are six different basketball organizations set up for kids to "play basketball' year round. However, where does a kid go to get better at the game or actually learn the game, a more reasonable question is, when? Individual skill development has become an essential tool for professional athletes in every sport. Yet, all the amateur development programs in the State of Florida have turned into "pay-to-play" and are all about winning for the team." The new movements to develop instructional development programs can avoid this cycle, but only if coaches and parents reflect critically on the concept's merits.
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