USA Today on high school athletic departments making cuts within the department. One of my solutions would be to eliminate freshmen sports. I know people will disagree but I really don’t see any need for it. If a kid is good enough, move them up to junior varsity. Freshmen should use their first year in high school to get acclimated to their new environment. Work on their academics, social life and in their spare time, work on their skills in their particular sport. (Upon further review, I spoke with a friend who is a HS Athletic Director and he informed me that it wouldn’t do any good eliminating Freshmen sports)
I have been in a discussion with some friends about young athletes in the news; mainly articles written about their potential/greatness. I am very close to the basketball scene and study all areas and usually see these articles written on 12, 13 and 14 year old players. I understand the media has a job to do and all but are we putting too big of an expectation on such a young child? Say for instance we read about an 8th grader who is said to be the next…’Magic Johnson’. Well basketball season rolls around and the fans attend the phenom’s game and the young man doesn’t live up to the article written about him. Soon enough the fans go home and get on their favorite message board and bash the kid. Then it gets out of control and soon enough the kid hears about it and before you know, the kid fails.
It’s similar to the International basketball player that everyone raves about. Whether it’s Ricky Rubio or Darko Milicic. People here in America put these guys on pedestals punching their ticket for Springfield as teenagers. I laughed when people compared Rubio to the late Pete Maravich. Whenever I watched Rubio last summer during the Olympics I never once saw the resemblance to the NCAA’s all-time leading scorer. Against Team USA in the Gold Medal game he played 29 minutes, on 1 of 3 shooting with 3 assists and 2 turnovers.
After reading many articles about Rubio over the past few months, one thing that intrigued the audience was when he would throw no-look behind the back passes in transition. My thought at the time was, how come when an American player throws a behind the back pass they are looked at as a hot dog or too fancy?
Twenty-one International players were taken in the 2003 NBA Draft (Darko’s draft)-guess how many are now all-stars in the league? Seven American players taken in that draft are now all-stars from that same draft. I think people in America take U.S. players for granted. We see them every night on ESPN and tend to magnify their mistakes. We see a few highlights of guys like Rubio and get all excited (A lot of defense being played in those highlights too…LOL)
Everyone talks about American players lacking fundamentals. Then in the same breath they talk about International players being more skilled than the Americans because they spend so many hours and so many practices working on their game. Here in the States they say American athletes play too much in the summer with their AAU team that they should be playing multiple sports throughout the year or they should establish balance in their lives and oh yeah, let’s not forget that in college here in America, if you play for a school team you practice time is limited (as is at the high school level).
As for being fundamentally sound, give me Steph Curry, Tyler Hansbrough, Deron Williams, Chris Paul, Blake Griffin, Carmelo Anthony, D-Wade, Johnny Flynn and Lebron James any day of the week!
By the way, the answer to the question above on how many International players drafted in 2003 are NBA all-stars is zero.
-Coach Finamore
Hoops135@hotmail.com
PLAY THE RIGHT WAY!
Tags: 2003 NBA Draft, basketball, College Basketball, Darko Milicic, ESPN, High School Sports, Media, Pete Maravich, Practice, Ricky Rubio, Skill development, Sports, USA Today
