Solving developmental problems with free play

The easy solution to rising costs, poor fundamentals, and de-motivated players.

Basketball development in the United States is not as good as it could be, which is the reason I wrote Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development. It has nothing to do with Nikola Jokić or Victor Wembanyama or the 2023 FIBA World Championships. Youth sport is a multi-billion dollar industry; NBA teams are worth several billion dollars; NBA players are signing contracts worth a quarter of a billion dollars; NBA, WNBA, and NCAA are signing record-setting television contracts; NBA and NCAA men’s basketball coaches are making $10 million per year; and NCAA players are millionaires.

Money is abundant, yet children are priced out of youth sports, playgrounds are dilapidated, gyms are expensive and/or hard to find, tournaments are outrageously expensive, and coaches are primarily volunteers with little to no required training and experience. The system is great for a few — NBA owners, coaches, and players; high-major NCAA coaches and players — but disregards almost everyone else.

Social media and AAU are blamed most frequently for the problems plaguing potential players. They are not without blame, but prior to blaming social media, people blamed video games; before video games was cable television. Many blamed pickup games or the park for poor fundamentals before turning their ire toward the And1 Mixtape Tour and then AAU. Before has always been better.

The Problems with AAU

The biggest complaint at a macro level is the cost. Playing basketball is not expensive; rather, the expense is playing in certain places for certain teams, coaches, and trainers because they have been marketed as important or even vital to progression and success. We have been told competition and exposure, even for the youngest players, is required. Of course, these beliefs have been shaped largely by the people who benefit financially from them.

The biggest complaints at the micro level are de-motivated players, lack of fundamentals, and players not understanding how to play. How do we determine players’ motivation? For every coach complaining about players unwilling to work hard, another brags about his or her players grinding, putting in the hours, and getting them reps. Who’s right? How do we measure hard work, effort, and motivation? How much should players train each day, week, month and year anyway? Do players need to specialize? At what age? Do players need their own individual skills trainer? Is attending prom or taking a vacation really a sign players do not care enough?

For every coach denigrating this generation’s fundamentals, another argues players are more skilled than ever. Who’s right? Has there ever been a shooter like Stephen Curry? Has anyone handled like Kyrie Irving? Are these skill demonstrations evidence of increased skill levels or greater freedom afforded to players today? How do we determine and measure skill? Television analysts decry the lack of fundamentals after every missed free throw, but the NBA’s league-wide free-throw percentage is at an all-time high; what does that say about previous eras when the era of poor fundamentals leads in a basic fundamental?

For every coach arguing players do not know how to play, another will show defenses veer switching, triple switching, and pre-switching on a single possession. This is not their father’s shell-drill defense. Do players not understand how to play or have systems simplified in some ways because defenses are more complex and individual skills much improved, meaning a simpler, player-centered system is more effective than the old complicated, coach-centered systems?

Regardless of one’s answers, there are simple solutions to fix the perceived problems, but few dare to follow a different path. The answer is unstructured play. Not forever, but certainly as the ignition, to use Dan Coyle’s phrase, before seeking structured sports, specialized training, and more. Play is free, ignites passion and motivation, develops skill fluency, and generalizes skill development.

Nobody markets free play because nobody profits from a group of children playing together with no coach or trainer. Parents prefer structured activities initially for safety reasons, if nothing else, and many seek teams or trainers to secure gym time rather than playing on asphalt or concrete outdoors.

Why can’t we open public school gyms on weekends for free play? The primary reasons are safety, cost to pay a janitor to clean, and our litigious society with potential lawsuits for injuries. We are so scared of each other, our manners, and our morals we cannot open gyms for children (and adults) to play because we do not trust each other. Instead, we complain about costs, but the costs are high because of our lack of trust, which requires events to rent facilities, hire security, pay people to clean up after each other, and secure expensive insurance policies. We are the problem. We are the reason the costs are so high.

My favorite memory of coaching in Estonia was the younger players hanging around the gym all weekend. Their access was part of their fee to play for the team. Whenever a court or a basket was free, they played. During pro games, they sat along the baseline, watching the game. As soon as the buzzer sounded for halftime, dozens of children from 6 to 14 sprinted up the walkway to the other gym to play games, lower the hoops and dunk, shoot, and more.

On weekends, the U13s and U14s wandered around the gyms all day, maybe working a game as a referee or scorekeeper, maybe watching the U16s and U18s, and playing whenever a court opened up, usually in the late afternoons. When they had no court or game to work, they walked across the street to the store for some food. They were always around the gym, looking for opportunities to play, shoot, dunk, and more. Nobody yelled at them to leave or get off the court unless a team had a practice or game.

Why is that not possible here? Why not allow high school students access to the basketball court? Many colleges give their players 24-hour access to their practice facilities. Unfortunately, we do not trust high-school students. We imagine everything that could go wrong, so it is easier to lock the gyms or charge astronomical fees to rent them. We have more gyms per capita, but less access, despite the majority being funded, one way or another, with public money and taxes. This is a societal and governance problem, not just a youth basketball problem.

Play, however, does not require a gym. Generations grew up playing on concrete and asphalt. Maybe today’s players are more athletic because they have less wear and tear from avoiding hours on concrete courts. Who knows? But, these courts are widely available for children and parents to use for free to ignite the children’s interest. Children should not have to sign up for a team and take lessons before playing. Everyone’s introduction should be through playing, whether at recess, in a front yard with a parent, or at a park with other parents and children. Unstructured activities should come before structured participation.

Too often, basketball development focuses toward the end of the developmental spectrum as high-school players matriculate to college or youth players move to adult and professional basketball. We ignore the most important stage, the initial exposures to the game. Before players pursue structured teams, private training, and more, players must develop an interest in playing. They must have their passion ignited. Standing in lines and being told you did something incorrectly does not ignite anyone’s passion. Players need play. For me, it was my front yard and elementary-school recess; for others, it is shooting during breaks while their mom or dad plays pickup games or runs a high-school or college practice; for others, it is playing with older siblings in the front yard or the park.

Before I ever had a coach, I imagined I was Byron Scott shooting jump shots off a pass from Magic. I played games in my head, using my imagination. I watched games. I watched an older family friend. We played at recess, often with older boys because of the limited space during morning recess. We tried things and explored.

Once we joined a team, we had good coaches who emphasized fundamentals and taught us the correct way to perform skills and play the game, but our initial and formative learning was on our own, on the playground. We fell in love with the game before a coach could ever steal our joy. We put up with the correct way, stifling our creativity with organized lines and patterned offenses because we already loved the game and wanted to be on the court. We wanted to improve and adults said this was the way, so we listened. We came to the game motivated to play and this love sustained us through the boring, monotonous, and hard parts.

This initial play developed our fluency. We did not overthink our skills. We did not know specifics. We did not put our foot here, and our elbow there. We were not following specific instructions. We mimicked players on television and older players we played against. We developed implicitly before we heard explicit instructions. We did not necessarily throw perfect two-hand, thumbs down chest passes, but we could throw the ball from one end to the other to someone cherry-picking for a layup or off the dribble to a teammate when opponents tried to double us. These were not taught or learned skills. We just did them because they made sense. We interacted with the opposition and our teammates.

Learning Theory

When we joined teams or attended camps, coaches refined our skills, attempting to improve our accuracy. We learned the two-hand, thumbs down chest pass. We learned we were supposed to have our elbow in when we shot. We learned the step-slide defense that was supposed to improve our defense. Some instructions improved our skills; some did not. Some we ignored; some we practiced so much, they were hard to ignore or forget, even when they limited our progress. Often, during games, we fell back on our fluency. We practiced the Flex five-vs-zero for so much of our practices, then rarely ran the offense more than a handful of times in games.

No coach ever taught me a floater. Never. I developed a floater by playing against varsity players on Sunday nights as a 7th grader. I was much, much smaller and weaker than the other players. We played half-court three-vs-three on a small court — no corner three-pointers because the baseline ran into a wall at around 18 feet. The court was crowded even with six players. There were no open layups. I could not finish at the rim over these bigger, more athletic guys, so I stopped short and shot over them, using variations of running hooks, floaters, and runners. I practiced these in my front yard, imagining the taller guys trying to block my shots.

Everyone wants to handle the ball in pickup games. Nobody voluntarily plays the post, outlets rebounds, runs to the rim, and stands and waits. Nobody wants to be the screener. Children want the ball. We played every role on the playground. We rebounded and took off with the dribble. We played a modern-day five-out. We shot three-pointers.

When we joined a team, we had positions and learned position-specific skills. We passed to the point guard, ran our lanes, and performed specific skills. The coaches refined and limited our roles.

Free play generalizes skill development. One day, I was the best player on the court, isolating and shooting contested shots; the next day, I was the smallest and weakest player, primarily spotting up and shooting uncontested three-pointers. One day, I was the biggest on the court and took smaller players into the post. Another day, I played older, quicker players and had to tighten my handle not to have the ball stolen. Play provided these varied opportunities to explore different positions and skills.

When we played with our teams, our roles were specialized. My first two years, I primarily ran the right lane, caught and shot wide-open shots or passed into our post player. My third year, they switched me to point guard because they wanted the older point guard to play shooting guard and shoot more. I was not a point guard because of the practice drills and my previous role; I was a point guard because I played as a point guard every day on the playground. I had the ball most because I rarely shot. I wanted to be like Magic. I passed ahead to guys sprinting for layups or drove into the paint and threw around-the-back passes. I moved seamlessly to the point guard position on my team because I developed the fluency on the playground. Without this free play experience, I would have been specialized to a stand-still shooter/passer role from my previous years, and likely never would have moved to point guard. Nobody would have seen the traits or abilities.

The current system has flaws, but much of the angst is directed toward the end. As players get better and better, they need more specialized practice to improve their limitations. Players hoping to play in college need exposure to college coaches. Some of these flaws cannot be changed easily.

The younger ages, however, can be changed. We can organize more locations for free play. We can encourage children to play before joining teams or seeking out trainers. Play is available to everyone, not just the wealthy. Play provides the ignition and the initial learning experiences.

There are a myriad of possible activities within basketball. Unfortunately, we emphasize only two: Structured practice and organized competition. Children miss out on free play, child-initiated practice (playing in one’s front yard), pickup games, and more. The more diverse the experiences, the more well-rounded the learning, and the broader the foundation on which to develop in the later years as players move toward varsity, college and professional basketball.