Wednesday, April 17, 2019

THE AAU Conundrum...

I've said it a million times-street basketball is dead, and the AAU circuit has effectively killed it. There is no longer room for cats like the recently departed Rodney Parker (of "Heaven is a Playground" fame) to roam the parks of NYC in the summertime, looking for that diamond-in-the-rough kid who, with a bit of polishing and some creative accounting with the high school transcript, can get a scholarship to a junior college in the middle of nowhere and hopefully get some semblance of an education before inevitably failing out and coming back home more of a loser than when he left. 

As it is now, the AAU circuit has undermined the street hustlers and flesh peddlers that thrived in the shadows. That whole world has been replaced by shoe company reps, over-eager parents, and AAU coaches who control access to the kids they wish to make their fame on. The money is huge, and the pressure to get a piece of that cake is an immense incentive to cheat. The fiasco at Louisville and ex-coach Rick Pitino was just one example of the sordidness that accompanies the pressure to secure that one program-changing basketball prodigy. 

The flip side of the Rick Pitino scandal-ridden coin is the despicable Lavar Ball, who has shamelessly pimped his two younger children out of any chance of making the NBA. "I Will Speak It Into Existence" is not a business model in a sport where even one wrong move by the most freakishly talented athletes can relegate them to has-been status faster than you can say Sebastian Telfair. Y'all remember him, don't you? He was the next coming of whomever, and now he is out of the league (having last played in 2015 after getting cut by the OKC Thunder) and is facing MAJOR prison time for being pulled over in Brooklyn by the cops with a carload of what is pictured below, a veritable caché of weapons and ammo. The corner of Atlantic and Classon is NOT where you want to be, especially when you have a carload of THIS-

Full Metal Jackass...



What this guy was thinking of doing with all this hardware I have no idea. Was he planning a school massacre? Was he looking to take on Negan and the Saviors from "The Waling Dead"? It's certainly clear that he and his younger cousin who was busted alongside him were riding hard on the Dylan Klebold tip. Recently his no-talent younger brother Ethan held a press conference that no one attended and announced that he ws forgoing his senior season at Bison Testicles State College to go to the NBA. He then retracted his statement when he realized there was NO interest.

Funny enough, Stephon Marbury has a brother who posted some youtube videos of his training sessions. He's another special-ed jackass thinking he has a shot at the league. He had the audacity to claim that he's better than Steph. After peeping the videos, it's fair to say that you don't have to be a talent scout to realize this guy needs to take a Boar's Head course in deli management and catering, because making sandwiches at some dusty bodega in Coney Island is going to be the height of his career trajectory.

Which begs the question-what the fuck is wrong with these retards? I remember Lincoln High Schools' then-athletic director Renan Ebeid telling the cameras for the reality show "City Hardwood", in reference to Sebastian's younger brother Ethan, that "it's tough being a Telfair, you know, when you come from money..." Money has nothing to do with how these particular people behave. The Telfairs and the Marburys come from a long line of underachieving on the basketball court and overachieving in self-destructive and typical ghetto-ass behavior. The money just made their collective dysfunction that much more glaring.

Here is the problem. The AAU circus has made flesh peddlers and pimps out of motherfuckers that should be coaching basketball at their respective levels. But because of the obscene amounts of money involved, these jackals forcibly become father figures and advisers to players who are easy prey if they come from broken homes where the father is nowhere to be found. They do this with one goal in mind-to get that money from sponsors by recruiting as many blue-chip prospects as possible to their AAU squads and selling them to whatever D-I school will have them.  The competition is fierce, and this shit has trickled down to fucking middle school.

If you've seen some AAU tournaments on youtube, you'll see teams with names like "Future Phenoms" and "New World All-Stars". These teams have travel expenses and tournament fees paid by their sponsors, with the proviso that the spigot will be turned off if they don't win and if they don't feature top D-I potential talent. The games themselves are boring and pathetic, with the top players on each teasm hogging the limelight while everyone else watches. The coaches don't call plays, they just spend the whole game yelling at the refs and cursing at the players, and if the players aren't trying to dunk they are indiscriminately chucking three-pointers.

The players are bombarded with the type of attention usually reserved for professional athletes. It is not uncommon to see pro players in the stands checking out the latest gonna-be all-time great. And with the pros come the paparazzi and the hoochies. If a top-ranked player doesn't have a ready for youtube "mix tape", which consists of humiliating crossover dribbles where their opponent winds up on the floor, dunks, or any other type of flashy play, they are already late to the party. Let's watch former pro player Jason "White Chocolate" Williams' 10 year old son in a game with other kids his age while grown adults record the antics on their cellphones and ask for his autograph after the game. Real healthy for the kids' self-esteem.

People have a way of ruining EVERYTHING, and if this year's NCAA tournament is any indication, is that beneath all the flash of the AAU circuit, the product coming out the other end is absolute garbage. And young black males are getting fucked over. What happens when you don't make it and have to go out into the real world and find meaningful employment? They cannot go back for help from the assholes who exploited them, because they don't want to be associated with cats who didn't make it. They only find out their degrees (if they manage to graduate) are worth nothing when they are asked to fill out an employment application and the only thing they can put down that they did was play basketball.

Young black males are getting screwed over by a system where everyone gets paid except for the athletes. No one ever went to a basketball game to watch the coach, though I would say there was an exception made for Bobby Knight. He was definitely box office, but for all the wrong reasons.




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