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Par Guillaume Kagni | Journaliste sportif
American basketball is no longer as dominant as it once was, with the NBA dominated by foreigners and national teams moving closer to Team USA. Draymond Green thinks he knows the problem with his sport.Agreeing with LeBron, Draymond Green gets angry: “Basketball is a sport for the rich.”
In the United States, almost every specialist is trying to explain the decline of American basketball and its gradual fall from grace in the face of Europe. While Team USA still came away with two gold medals from the last Olympic Games, they were won after much tougher-than-usual finals against the French team. Concerns are mounting about 2028.
One explanation is that the training system is a veritable washing machine. The best prospects play dozens of games a week on the AAU circuit, and travel all over the country from an early age, which creates mental wear and tear, and above all prevents the development of fundamentals. This is the exact opposite of the philosophy that prevails on the Old Continent.
Draymond Green’s complaint against the US team
And then, according to LeBron James in his podcast, you also have to look at training methods. Where youngsters used to get their hands dirty on the street, against older players, they now use personal trainers and spend their lives in a gym. In the same vein, Draymond Green believes that basketball is now a rich man’s sport:
I didn’t learn how to do a personalized workout until I got to Michigan State. When I was younger, I just wanted to play basketball. I’d look for the court closest to my house, where it played, and spend the day there. You learn the nuances of the sport in a much different way than when a personal trainer tells you to stand in such-and-such a spot and do such-and-such a move. Where’s the creativity?
How can you find out what your playing style is? Now, it takes resources to bring in these coaches. Basketball used to be a sport for poor people. We played because we had nothing and it was our way out. Now it’s a sport for the rich. Soon, we won’t be seeing any LeBron James in the NBA, a guy from the neighborhoods of Akron, with a single mom.
According to Draymond Green’s analysis, if American basketball is in bad shape, it’s largely because of this shift in talent development. In his day, everyone discovered themselves on the street, asserting their personalities in endless encounters. Today, personal coaches all teach the same thing, which stifles creativity and creates standardized players.
