Sunday Hoops Reflections: The "AAU Mentality" Of LeBron James & Ben Howland
by Nestor on May 16, 2010 10:10 AM PDT
in Basketball
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PrintSunday is usually the day for me around spring and summer time to check in with all the MLB standings and statistics the old fashioned way via the hard copy of the local paper. It is the only time of the week I usually check out the Washington Post's sports section. Anyway, I was glancing through the sports section this morning and got locked into a Michael Wilbon column about the "drama" around LeBron James.
The following grafs really stood out to me given the recent post here on BN concerning Kareem's thoughts on NBA entry age and the culture around today's kids coming into the League (emphasis added):
The big issue is whether LeBron is going to make a basketball decision or one geared toward marketing, exposure and his personal life. After talking to several veteran NBA players and several club executives over the past 48 hours, it was somewhat surprising to hear that few people believe LeBron will make primarily a basketball decision. Nobody I talked to believes LeBron was humiliated by the loss to Boston. None of the players I talked to believes LeBron is motivated by winning in the same obsessive way Magic, Bird and Jordan were, or Kobe is. They believe that LeBron thinks he has years to win, and isn't particularly pressed at the moment to do so.
A former league executive, a former coach and a current general manager all told me LeBron is one of the most spoiled and coddled players of this generation and as a result isn't particularly accountable, as evidenced by his refusal to shake hands with the Orlando players after they whipped him in last year's Eastern Conference finals. It's a particularly disappointing thing to hear repeatedly because, if true, it suggests LeBron has this AAU mentality that values individual accomplishment over winning. I could live with hearing this about, say, O.J. Mayo, but LeBron James?
Now rest of the column goes on to break down the chances of LeBron's potential suitors (Bulls, Nets, Knicks, Clippers, Heat and Cavs) and conclude that LeBron will probably be seduced by his "pal" Jay-Z (a co-owner of the Jersey Nets) and "the irresistible charms of owner Mikhail Prokhorov" who will launch a full court press via "parties, the girls, the trips on his yacht (once he locates it), the lure of good times piled upon good times" to ink the "MVP." Whatever, I could care less where he ends up.
What I wanted to get back at though and focus on those two grafs and discuss them a little in terms of Ben Howland and UCLA basketball.
I think Wilbon really touched upon something when he mentioned about how LeBron was not humiliated by the loss to Boston and that LeBron's next's destination is going to be more geared towards marketing and personal life rather than a pure basketball decision aimed for championships. I think that is really the phenomenon that handcuffed Coach Ben Howland in his last two years. The class of 2008 was essentially the classic posterchild of the LeBron generation more consumed with instantly gaining material wealth rather than positioning themselves from taking advantage of incredible education in game of basketball and life at one of the greatest schools in the country.
Yes, when I read those grafs it was the picture of Jrue Holiday (and Drew Gordon and Jerime Anderson) that immediately came to mind. I thought of kids who at least during these past two years never seemed concerned about humiliating losses rather than their own interests . We can go back into archives to look up Jrue Holiday's quotes following the humiliating loss against Washington State in which he repeatedly got torched by Klay Thompson. Holiday refused to take any kind of responsibility for his "defense". Similarly Anderson and Gordon never cared about following Howland's axiom on man to man defense and instead were delusional of starting their own run and gun version of offense in Westwood.
Those guys - especially Holiday and Gordon - personified the coddled high school athlete who never cared about taking responsibility as a student athlete in Howland's program. Now Howland is of course not without fault in all of it. He made his share of his mistakes by failing to effectively communication his vision and philosophy with that class and he didn't get much help from his assistants who were in place. Yet on balance, I think I lean more towards Howland's side as I think over last two years he was struggling to get his foundation of a basketball program based around defense, fundamentals and hard work with total dedication to those four letters back in place.
Perhaps Jerime Anderson has learned his lessons and will be different in his remaining two seasons. Despite my previous criticisms of Malcolm Lee (and his ill advised tweet and belief that he was more suited to play pg rather than 2 G), I think Lee has a chance to emerge as a good player who is dedicated to winning as a team and redeeming the last two lost seasons in Westwood. Similarly Tyler Honeycutt, Brendan Lane and Reeves Nelson seem to be cut out with a different mindset. So that gives me some modicum of hope.
Ultimately though going forward Ben Howland will have to zero in his recruiting efforts in a way that needs to put heavy emphasis on character along with skillsets. I don't believe that he needs to stay way from all "one and done" types. There are good kids as exemplified by KL, who did put team first over his personal stats and embraced Howland's way in Westwood. But in balance I think UCLA under Howland will be better off if it focuses on getting players with "Tom Izzo mindset" than getting guys who dream of themselves being part of "Calipari/LeBron James" schools of basketball.
I think during these past two years (especially with the class of 2008) Howland lost his way by trying to get some kids to play Izzo ball (the Midwest version of BenBall") with some kids who envisioned themselves of being part of a program playing Calipari/LeBron James brand of hoops.
Hope we can get back to what made Ben Ball so special in Westwood within next couple of years under Ben Howland.
GO BRUINS.
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NBA's worldwide popularity & its mega$$$$ contracts
unfortunately perpetuated the Lebron mentality among today’s youths more than anything else.
As an American sport primarily, basketball has caught on in the rest of the world over the last two decades. Whereas soccer, as we speak, still reigns as the premier game of the world, basketball is a close second behind, no more than a mere nose distance if this were horse racing.
Marquee players are actually NBA’s gravy train, generating untold millions of profits in sports merchandizes and related accessories on top of the huge TV revenues the games pocketed. To date, the Lebron phenomenon might have even eclipsed that of Michael Jordan’s some years ago, but the latter still sets the standard for lasting commercial successes, his athletic prowess and NBA achievements notwithstanding.
Thebyproducts to all these eye popping developments are, as the article succinctly mentioned, individual success, commercial values, accomplishments etc. In other words, winning for the joy of it, team sports and even championships, for all their glories, all fell victim to the impossibly blinding glare of $$$$$$. The competition is not even close.
This is, sadly enough, anti thesis to what Joe Naismith had in mind when he created basketball in Springfield, Missouri. It is also particularly galling, by the same token, to see some youngsters nowadays, possessing admittedly some talents, to already have such mindsets even before they ever started a game in college.
I asked a rhetorical question the other day. If people pay attention to NBA the way they pay attention to North America Soccer League, would all these have happened before our eyes ?
Going back to 2007-2008
I was always so proud of watching our team play. Not just because we won most of our games, and certainly not because we were running up the scoreboard. It was because I could take pride in knowing we played the game the right way. We played tough, team defense, and team offense, where we wouldn’t just call an iso play for one player every time down or jack up early shots. I could take all of the criticism from the MSM that we didn’t play fast enough, or that Calimari’s Memphis team was more exciting. I could take it because I knew deep down that we were playing the right way. I got so much satisfaction watching our team of tough players play tough team basketball.
I had forgotten about that feeling (funny how just a couple of seasons can do that) until reading this post. Here’s to CBH getting our program back to that style.
We're havin' too much fun today. We ain't thinkin' 'bout tomorrow.
I agree that the NBA is getting more unbearable...
I was at a Cavs-Wizards game during the 08-09 season at the Verizon Center. I hardly watch the NBA anymore and watching Lebron on the court reinforced why I turned it off about 5 years ago. I think that Lebron’s first five offensive plans when he has the ball at the top of the key begin and end with him. What really drove me nuts was the spoiled brat look on his face when his 1 on 5 drives to the hoop did not end in a bucket or a foul. Not surprisingly, the Cleveland Lebrons lost to the a woefully bad Wizards team that night.
I really hope that UCLA does not get to that point. The NBA is full of man-children, and I wasn’t surprised to see Jrue go to the NBA after one season. Coach Howland has to make his coaching philosophy clear to his guys and let them know that their excuses won’t be put up with. Hopefully the primadonnas get weeded out or learn to be team players. I want to see my guys get embarrassed when they denigrate the proud 4 letters on their jersey by losing to USC by 20pts.
Who got next?
I think the discussion of modern NBA attitudes (valuing individual accomplishment more than winning) may go hand-in-hand to a degree with the “county players vs city players” discussion. Both questions come down in part to how much time a player spends in the “win-or-sit” environment. In my hometown, every decent ballplayer played at one location. Beyond that, once we gathered at that location, we disregarded the other three available courts and played all games on one court. As a result, a losing team would have to sit and wait, sometimes as long as five games before they got to play again. I think everyone who’s ever played pick up basketball knows this process.
My question is, how much time do today’s young “superstars” spend in this type of situation? I know from years of reading articles and watching interviews/documentaries that most NBA stars of decades past developed their game by playing in “win-or-sit” situations against older competition in their own neighborhoods. Today, the kids that show great promise at a young age are playing AAU ball year round. These structured events are a fine platform for developing talent but I question their potential for fostering competitive drive. The same can be said for any kid who spends his youth playing in structured games vs. the dog-eat-dog environment of the playground.
It all boils down to . . .
This is all really an issue of character, which begins at home. An exceptional coach — like Wooden — can develop it.
Excellent post, Nestor. I appreciate your knowledge of, and zeal for, UCLA.
Not to paint everything with a broad brush, but in so many ways,
our players, or at least most of them, really are themselves victims of the game’s phenomenal successes over the last two decades. The cultural environment within which material wealths, media publicity etc work to alter the nature of sports games, and the extent to which it impacts today’s youths are beyond belief.
Imagine what George Mikan ( spelling error, maybe ), NBA’s first legitimate big man and the starting center for the Minneapolis Lakers, would think if he ever knew centers of his caliber nowadays would get so coddled and pampered both financially and professionally.
Just look at the buildup to the NBA draft and its month long predraft hypes regarding various teams’ possible pick, the frenetic talks of player trades among teams to
upgrade their respective draft status, you get the idea how the situation is really going out of hand.
When Portland Trailblazers, by virtue of its overall win / loss stats then, announced its intention of making UCLA’s Bill Walton the #1 draft choice of that year, no TV camera from any major network, nor throngs of press reporters jostled each other outside the team office for the occasion. Now, was it because Bill Walton, one of the most high profile NCAA athletes in a generation, wouldn’t worth as much publicity as some of the one and dones these days being picked only fourth or fifth overall ?
Also, not to denigrate the morality or personal ethics of some of these players here. If you follow sports over the years, for as long as some of us did, you may be hard pressed to find any players in the past that ever thought to take pictures of themselves in the locker room, then posted them in the cyberspace as Sports Illustrated reported, was merely an innocent, fun thing these millionaires athletes are entitled to do for their swooning female fans.
By the way, my wife’s friend’s husband works in the Staples Center. From time to time, he had NBA game tickets, some at the arena level even. I said thanks and no thanks.
We need to live in the real world.
It will be virtually impossible to win without a core of blue chip players. Blue chip players have been playing basketball nearly year round since they were 7 or8 years old. They have as their goal, playing in the NBA. When they project to being a high round draft pick, they will leave school and opt in to the draft. If you think that is not true, ask yourself where our program would have been without JF, AA and KL. The answer is no final fours. I think Nestor’s post really demonstrates how hard CBH’s job is. He has to get enough players who are good enough to lead the team to a final four, but they have to stay long enough to help the team. Fortunately, although KL was one and done, RW developed, and DC, LRMAM (and AA2 and JS) weren’t quite good enough to go pro. The addition of JH helped keep it going, but the next class wasn’t good enough and the whole thing imploded. You have to recruit well every year to keep at the top. Character is important, and we need to get players who are more like AA and less like DG.
But if AA had been projected to go as high as JF did in that same year, he would have been a two year player, notwithstanding having character of the highest order. I can’t imagine anyone proposing that we pass up AA for a lunchbucket player.
Maybe teams can be comprised of purely lunch bucket /blue collar players, but UCLA has not done that. The blue chippers have been at the core of the final fours, and I don’t think we can do without them. We also have to expect that if they excell, they will be noticed, and may be here for only one or two years.
Absolutely 75NatChamps
I was simply venting about things we cannot do anything about, really. That’s just a sign of the changing times, perspectives and the cultural values of our society.
Howland’s job is impossibly difficult because he is expected to become Pauley’s legend in waiting. And who can be that person honestly ?!? However, this much is true. Some of the past season’s missteps ARE SELF-INFLICTED. Since we ruminated, debated ad nauseum about it already, I am just going to say it will be a new season this fall at Pauley.
We agree.
CBH is not perfect. Drago remains a major mystery. Keeping morale high, in the sense that players understand their roles, want to come here, and players leave touting the program, remains a challenge. There are many others things that could be better. Nevertheless, I am a looking forward to a new season, some good new players and a solid nucleus. The funny thing is that most of us agree on the basics, and argue the tiny nuances. We all want the program to succeed, loved the way the team played with the right players, with some minor variations, and hope we can get back there.
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