Antonio Brown once said, “You can always get better. The day you stop getting better is the day you shouldn’t be living. Gotta constantly improve and continue to grow within yourself.” Allen Iverson broke it down like this, “When you are not practicing, someone else is getting better.” Then Tiger Woods put it where the goats could get it when he spit, “Winning is not always the barometer of getting better.”
Well playas…practice is the only way you’re going to get better at whatever it is that you strive to get better at. That’s the ENTIRE purpose of AAU basketball. Why is it that 95 percent of parents that sign their darn kids up to play don’t understand that? It isn’t about winning and losing games. It’s about your child getting better at playing the game. It’s about your kid getting to play against kids from all over the country to gauge just how good or bad they really are.
So why is it that when I show up at these tournaments all I see is parents acting a darn fool (and that’s the edited version) over every call and possession up and down the floor? If this is simply practice for your kid to get better why do you care if the ref misses a call or whether the kid’s team wins or loses a stupid game at 8am on Saturday when they’re going to be playing 5 more games during the course of the weekend? WHO CARES!!! They’ll play 10 more before the week is out.
I was at the Eric Gordon 10 Tournament over the weekend and duns got to fighting all out on the court. Granted, the refs in this game were horrible and they allowed the game to get out of control by not handling the jawing on the floor all night. They couldn’t see the elephant crossing the street in the middle of rush hour so the game started to get a bit chippy.
However, some of these parents were already doing way too much. They were acting a fool just because. All of a sudden two kids got to talking $100 worth of noise to each other near the sideline where the stands were and a kid pushed the other away from him. The kid that got pushed older grown sister comes out of the stands and pushes the other kid. What did she do that for?
All of a sudden like an avalanche everybody’s Big Momma and O.G. Daddy Due Wop came out of the stands looking for a fight and it popped off like a cannon right out in the middle of the floor.
Again, NONE OF THIS MEANS A THING!!!!! Parents are getting emotional about a game that means NOTHING!!!! Let the kids play. You should be thinking about going to your freakin’ job on Monday instead of fighting over a stupid AAU game.
There was actually a college coach in the building who shall remain nameless, looking at a kid. He and I were already standing in the back talking about how crazy these parents are for being in there hollering and going off at the refs and their kids about this game that is simply practice.
Then all of a sudden this cannon goes off and he looks at me and says, “I’m outta here bruh. This is foolishness!” So whoever was getting a look that eye has now been closed because somebody’s family didn’t know how to act. The kid did enough to draw some interest now it’s back to square one because Big Momma and Uncle LeRoy that didn’t go to college just blew it for him because they’re looking for a fight.
I even saw a mother run out on the floor and curse a coach out because her son fell and got hurt. She went off on him like he ran over the kid. I can’t make this foolishness up.
Ole boy (the college coach) was just telling me that so many of his coaching friends are out of work now because they took a chance on a kid that couldn’t make good decisions either on or off of the court. If the momma’s and daddy’s are darn fools it’s probably going to effect the child’s recruiting especially if he’s not an elite player. If you can ball out of control who cares if your family are some fools. However, if you’re the kid that is just okay and your momma is the one up in the stands cursing everybody out you’re probably not going to get the looks you think you should get. That’s just real talk.
So the moral of the story is, parents need to understand that AAU is just practice in game-type situations. I’ve been covering the NBA for the past 9 seasons. Either your kid has the DNA or not to play this game at a high level. A parent sitting there going off and acting a fool isn’t going to change their kid’s DNA. It doesn’t matter how much money you spend to get him on the best team you can afford. His DNA WILL NOT change. There are only 450 NBA jobs in the world. AAU didn’t make it happen for the cats playing in that league. It was DNA.
Let me tell you what I’ve learned about the NBA after covering it closely for almost a decade. DNA gets you to the league and work ethic keeps you in the league. The same goes for playing big time college basketball. Either you’ve got the DNA or you don’t. Your momma sitting at an AAU Tournament cursing and threatening to fight everybody in the building because you didn’t get a stupid foul called your way is only going to hurt your chances of getting the scholarship that she says she wants for you. So either tell her to chill or stay at home. Stop me when I start lyin’!
Playas Thesaurus:
1) Dun: noun – the person in question, dude, guy, etc. It’s whoever I’m talkin’ about and its non-gender specific.
