The way the game of basketball has evolved, players, right from a very young age, are training harder and focusing on specific things. Getting to the gym and just blindly putting up shots seems like a thing of the past, abandoned by years of sports science research. The strenuous workouts are now also more accessible, for better and for worse.
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If you go to a local AAU circuit, it’s likely that over half of the players there work with a private trainer. Kids are now regularly required to treat basketball as a full-time job from a young age. Playing because you love the game is now longer enough. It is truly a new era.
LeBron James is understandably caught in the past in this regard. He recently spoke about the differences between his own experience learning the sport, contrasting it with that of his sons, Bryce and Bronny, on Mind the Game with Luka Dončić and Steve Nash.
While his two boys have had personal trainers ever since they showed an interest in basketball, and have had the warm and sunny surroundings of Florida and LA to play in, James grew up in cold and rainy Akron, Ohio without any guidance outside of team practices for his highschool team. Whereas there are now eight year olds with personal trainers, James didn’t have one until year three in the league.
“I didn’t have a basketball trainer until second, third, maybe fourth year in the NBA,” started James, “like my basketball training was just being on the court, like let’s just go hoop. Five on five or two on two or three on three, a game that we played growing up was called 33 or 21.”
Many children across the US, from elementary school all the way through college, have played that exact pickup game. It’s every man for himself, three pointers count for two, twos count as one. After a made shot, you get a free throw, and another one if they make the first. If both free throws are made, you get the ball back at the top of the key, and the cycle continues.
It’s a game that has little to no bearing on actual in-game skills. You are never going to be guarded by six or seven people at once, nor will you be forced to take the ball out to the three-point line if you get a rebound in a real game. But just being forced to learn how to find open spots on the court was vital for James and many others.
Most importantly, it’s fun, and it seems like personal trainers have divorced the idea that basketball should be fun from their workouts. It promotes creativity to the point of absurdity. You try things you would never try in games because there is next to no consequence to failure.
“That’s how a lot of creation started with me,” said James, “being able to dribble around three or for guys, going behind the back, being able to shoot, getting physical with your friends. So, it definitely helped me out a lot.”
Steve Nash continued James’ points by posing a question, “What is more joyful? We learn a lot faster through trial and error [in 21] or coach saying, ‘here’s the cones, I want you to cross over, spin’ like that’s gone for our kids in a way. We don’t get the time to just try things and play.”
As younger and younger kids devote themselves to becoming the best players they can, there are more and more resources for them to use to act borderline professional. Unfortunately, this one-size-fits-all approach has stripped a generation of kids of the thing that made basketball a pastime for kids in the first place: fun.
It seems like James and Nash, as well, are arguing that sports have gone too far in one direction. It’s time to bring joy back to practice.
