duncan228
06-11-2010, 02:00 PM
Current, former NBA players aiming to improve AAU (http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slug=ap-remakingaau)
By Jaime Aron
Jason Terry has all sorts of fond memories from his AAU basketball days, like finishing fourth in the national tournament as an eighth grader and taking his first plane ride to get to other games.
So when his oldest daughter was ready to play organized basketball, he wanted her to have a great experience, too.
He just wasn’t sure AAU could provide it.
The Amateur Athletic Union was founded in 1888 to establish standards and uniformity in amateur sports. Once the driving force in U.S. Olympic efforts, its primary focus today is on youth sports and it claims more than 500,000 participants and 50,000 volunteers.
Its most high-profile efforts are in boys’ basketball, sanctioning teams, tournaments and camps that give top players a chance to show off their skills outside of their school programs—and, according to critics, also provide a fertile feeding ground for shadowy middle men to steer top young players to a particular agent, college program or athletic equipment company.
AAU basketball has changed since Terry’s days in the early 1990s. With NBA salaries skyrocketing from around $1 million then to more than $5 million, the organization is much more of a juicy target for people who want to latch onto kids in hopes of getting a piece of the action.
Terry knew about those problems and more—players jumping squads during a tournament, kids lying about their age, parents who encourage such things— because besides playing for the Dallas Mavericks, he helped train four players who recently came through the AAU system. So of course he was leery about signing up his daughter.
Then he had another idea. Why not start his own AAU program?
Terry is now among dozens, perhaps hundreds, of current and former NBA players with their own clubs, guys like LeBron James, Lamar Odom, Devin Harris and Mike Bibby.
Their motivation is simple: Giving back to the program that helped turn them into multimillionaires, while trying to improve things for the next generation— which, for guys like Terry and Bibby, includes their own children.
“We don’t want the kids to be exploited at such a young age,” Harris said. “We want … to do it the right way.”
Keep Reading... (http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slug=ap-remakingaau)
By Jaime Aron
Jason Terry has all sorts of fond memories from his AAU basketball days, like finishing fourth in the national tournament as an eighth grader and taking his first plane ride to get to other games.
So when his oldest daughter was ready to play organized basketball, he wanted her to have a great experience, too.
He just wasn’t sure AAU could provide it.
The Amateur Athletic Union was founded in 1888 to establish standards and uniformity in amateur sports. Once the driving force in U.S. Olympic efforts, its primary focus today is on youth sports and it claims more than 500,000 participants and 50,000 volunteers.
Its most high-profile efforts are in boys’ basketball, sanctioning teams, tournaments and camps that give top players a chance to show off their skills outside of their school programs—and, according to critics, also provide a fertile feeding ground for shadowy middle men to steer top young players to a particular agent, college program or athletic equipment company.
AAU basketball has changed since Terry’s days in the early 1990s. With NBA salaries skyrocketing from around $1 million then to more than $5 million, the organization is much more of a juicy target for people who want to latch onto kids in hopes of getting a piece of the action.
Terry knew about those problems and more—players jumping squads during a tournament, kids lying about their age, parents who encourage such things— because besides playing for the Dallas Mavericks, he helped train four players who recently came through the AAU system. So of course he was leery about signing up his daughter.
Then he had another idea. Why not start his own AAU program?
Terry is now among dozens, perhaps hundreds, of current and former NBA players with their own clubs, guys like LeBron James, Lamar Odom, Devin Harris and Mike Bibby.
Their motivation is simple: Giving back to the program that helped turn them into multimillionaires, while trying to improve things for the next generation— which, for guys like Terry and Bibby, includes their own children.
“We don’t want the kids to be exploited at such a young age,” Harris said. “We want … to do it the right way.”
Keep Reading... (http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slug=ap-remakingaau)