Over the last decade, AAU basketball has ruined the sport creating an unfair pay-to-play system that excludes players who can’t afford to participate. There was a time when people could escape poverty with their hoop dreams with prominent figures like Kawai Leonard, Demar Derozan, and LeBron James exemplifying this.
Everyone can sympathize when hearing the stories of LeBron living with his coach while his mom bounced between jobs, or Kawai losing his dad in 11th grade due to gun violence. DeRozan didn’t have it easy either, losing two brothers to gun violence and another is serving life in prison.
These stories show how hard these players had to work to make it out of struggle and to the top. Present day we are seeing less and less of these success stories and AAU is to blame. It’s no surprise that travel ball participation is at an all-time high with Circuit Hoops reporting, “77.1% of current American-born NBA players who graduated after 2010 having played travel ball.” This is alarming because, combined with rising AAU costs, this is pricing out many kids with hoop dreams from ever competing on a national level.
With the current system, the average family spends $1002 per year on travel basketball. This price makes it even more difficult for underprivileged kids to make it to the next level of basketball. This can be seen in Josh Dubrow’s report “Hoop Inequalities” finding, “among African Americans, those raised in a lower class family are 37% less likely to go pro compared to a wealthy family, and for White children, they’re 75% less likely compared to their wealthy counterparts.” This has led to the NBA being coined the “daddy’s money league” by many critics, and they are not wrong.
The current system is set up for people with more money to have an easier time navigating it. This has led to a trend of NBA player’s sons taking over the league with 35 out of 560 current NBA players being sons of NBA players that’s 6.25% almost quadruple what it was 20 years ago. These Nepo babies have all the right connections, and opportunities many other kids don’t have. An example of this is Bronny James playing on the Lakers with his father LeBron.
Since birth, Bronny has had access to private training and playing with the best travel ball teams in the country. His dad was able to send him to Sierra Canyon, one of the best private basketball schools in the country. This coupled with the natural athleticism from his dad is an easy path to the NBA where he is currently having one of the most disappointing NBA debuts in a long time. His spot could have been given to someone else who needed it and more importantly, was better at basketball. Because, at the end of the day, that’s all it is about – the best competition playing at the highest level and everyone should have an equal chance. But, this is sadly not the case and the system needs to be changed.
One way the system could be rehauled is finding a way to lower the price of youth organized sports. It needs to be about bettering the kids vs. being about profit. This could be accomplished by building more public courts that teams can use free of charge. Teams could also lower costs by getting sponsorships to help waive uniform fees and tournament fees.
While it still wouldn’t be free for kids to play basketball $150 a season would be less of a burden on struggling families than $1000. With a little effort and a lot of change, we can make the NBA great again and close the wealth gap found in current-day basketball. Helping the best have a chance to make the childhood dream of playing basketball on an NBA court a reality.
