Adam Silver stoked the smoldering hot take fire of poor basketball development in the United States, while college coaches such as Rick Pitino and Penny Hardaway added to the litany of coaches complaining players do not care about winning.
The real issue is not fundamentals, practice time, or winning, but individualization. And, we cannot discuss the game’s individualization outside the context of the society in which the game occurs: “Player development frameworks in sport cannot be operationalized without careful consideration of the complex ecosystem in which they reside” (O’Sullivan et al., 2024). We cannot address the individualization of the game without acknowledging basketball in the United States is played in an increasing individualistic, antagonistic society.
Author Ayn Rand said in Objectively Speaking: Ayn Rand Interviewed, “European societies have never understood the importance of the individual and individual rights. Individualism is an American concept.” The United States has stood for individual liberty since its founding. The society celebrating entrepreneurism, fortune-building, and lifting oneself up by the bootstraps is the same one posting highlights, player rankings/debates, and more. America loves superstars and promotes (and tears down) individuals. The different social contexts influence the way players develop and play in a team game.
This difference is evident even in warmups. My players never warmed up by themselves during my early seasons in Europe. The first player grabbed a ball and dribbled or did form shooting until a second player was ready. Then, they shot together, shooting, rebounding their own shot, and passing to the other. The next player added to the same drill, usually with a second ball. The third player peeled off to shoot with the fourth player when she was ready.
Players in the United States warmed up separately. I never noticed, as shooting, rebounding, and dribbling out to shoot again was normal. Players had their own balls. They shot, chased their rebound, and dribbled out to the next shot. Multiple players could warm up on the same court for 10 minutes and hardly interact. These players may be teammates, but they warmed up like individuals.
This simple example illustrates the overarching point: European players tend to grow up in a more collective environment, whereas U.S. players grow up in an individualistic society. European countries, especially where I have lived and coached, are less outwardly patriotic than the United States — fewer flags flying in front yards, no national anthems before games — but they believe more strongly in the state, as their taxes pay for education, health care, and more. They tend to believe in these institutions, and each other, whereas people in the United States wave flags while complaining about their taxes paying for anything that may benefit others without direct benefit to themselves. European countries traditionally embrace belonging; Americans embrace outlier individualists.
How does individualism affect fundamentals, practice, and winning?
The problem is not quintessential fundamentals, and the answer certainly is not more individual practice. Players do not lack skills, at least in terms of our colloquial understandings. Shooting, finishing, and dribbling skills are beyond anything imaginable 25 years ago.
Pop, Rivers, and Silver see a lack of collective basketball, of understanding the team game, of making the right play, and they see these qualities in the European players, despite the outsized usage rates of Luka Dončić (35.8%) and Giannis Antetokounmpo (32.8%). Meanwhile, college coaches see the same individual basketball as players caring more about their own game (future) than the team and question their desire to win.
Changing the overall individuality of basketball in the United States, if that is desired, is difficult without changing the culture in which these players develop. Players in the U.S. develop with no real responsibility for their club or school; they show up to practices and games, maybe pay a fee or possibly participate in a fundraiser like selling candy bars. There are people who take care of everything else, whether janitors to clean the court and the locker rooms, buses to get to games, managers to fill up water bottles, assistant coaches to set up practices and get out the balls, and more. We make it easy for players to show up, practice/play, and leave again.
Many European clubs function differently. I imagine the biggest-budgeted, top, elite clubs operate similarly, but many clubs require players to do more than play. Senior players often coach youth teams. Older youth players (U16-U18) referee the younger (U12) games. Players work the scorer’s table for other games. My best player in Denmark drove the team van to games and cleaned the jerseys after games. Members of the club help the club in a variety of ways; they do not show up at game time and play. This distinction often differentiates the American players who thrive in Europe and those who struggle, as many are unaccustomed to expectations outside being present for practice and games. There is a sense of being a part of the club, not just playing for a team.
Players do not care less about winning than previous generations. Players trash talk at practices based on a scrimmage and compete in tag games like they are qualifying for a national tournament. It is hard to reconcile these behaviors in fairly meaningless practice or clinic activities with the perception that winning is unimportant.
Instead, the differences are more aesthetic, on the court and off, changes that started at least 20 years ago. Players develop more and more with skill trainers than coaches. Individual training begets individual players; players’ skills such as shooting and dribbling have improved, but skills such as cutting and using screens are less developed. Coaches simplify offenses to lean into the well-learned skills — quickness, strength, dribbling, finishing, stand-still shooting — and ignore the less-developed skills — cutting, screening, post play.
Of course, the older generation identifies cutting, screening, post play, ball movement, and more as good basketball, and de-emphasizing these as the deterioration of fundamentals. However, good is subjective, whereas efficient is fairly objective, and offensive basketball is as efficient as ever. Ultimately, efficient basketball wins games, not good basketball.
Players finish games and immediately go on their phones. They post their own highlights on social media. This does not mean they do not care about winning. It is a generational shift. People consume highlights. People are on their phones constantly. Coaches are constantly on their phones too, and nobody suggests they do not care about winning.
Older ex-players and coaches also chafe at the willingness of opposing players to interact immediately after games. Social media was displeased last week because Bam Adebayo was friendly with Jayson Tatum. Older fans cannot tolerate this fraternizing with the enemy. The world is smaller. Players know each other from earlier ages and have numerous ways to stay in touch easily.
Of course, these same older fans, ex-players, and coaches forget Magic Johnson and Isiah Thomas kissed before a playoff game. The older generation wants to remember the NBA as a never-ending loop of Bill Laimbeer fouls against Jordan, but those fouls and rivalries were few and far between. The more removed we are from those seasons, the more we remember the biggest, most emotional games and occurrences, and we ignore everything else, including the most common occurrences and behaviors.
Players may be friendlier with opponents, but that is true of European players too. I was flabbergasted when my team went out with players from the opposing team after a tough road loss in Ireland. It went against my deeply-held competitiveness. In my next European job a few years later, I grabbed an espresso with the opposing coach before a semifinal playoff game. I did not lose my competitiveness; I matured and learned there was more to life than the result of a single game.
The game and the players are different. Generations behave differently and value different things, as reflected by changes in society. Statistics may inflate the skills of today’s players, and the aesthetics certainly differ from 20 years ago, but fundamentals have not disappeared; they have changed, as today’s game emphasizes individual moves and three-point shooting over screening and post play.
We can bemoan these changes and criticize today’s players, but without addressing society and the culture surrounding the game and players’ development, returning to the halcyon days of yore will be difficult, if not impossible. The NBA and youth coaches have little affect on the larger society, but may be able to make smaller changes influencing subtle shifts, starting with things such as more responsibility for teams/clubs (cleaning, setting up, working with younger players, scorekeeping, etc.), changing to more collective warmup exercises, and emphasizing interactions, not just isolated skills, in practices and training.
O’Sullivan, M., Vaughan, J., Woods, C.T., & Davids, K. (2024). There is no copy and paste, but there is resonation and inhabitation: Integrating a contemporary player development framework in football from a complexity sciences perspective. Journal of Sports Sciences, 1-10.
This is spot on. Our program is trying to instill team first but constantly fight the parents. I needed this have had to interactions that was individualism to a tee. Thank you I will continue on focus on growing the group.
I feel like today basketball in the United States is in somewhat the same position as soccer was in South America in the 1950s-1960s. As countries in parts of Europe started playing a much more team oriented style, it slowly left the more individualistic “jogo bonito” South American style behind.
It’s not a perfect comparison by any means, but if you look at how the rest of the world’s national basketball teams have been provided stiffer competition since the Dream Team, I think there’s at least an argument to be made.