The late Kobe Bryant was by no means somebody who was unafraid to talk actually when addressing the media, irrespective of how essential what he needed to say might have been.
Bryant was additionally not shy to confront each his teammates and opponents and hand them actuality checks if he felt they ever wanted them.
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Simply ask Dwight Howard, who was on the tip of a vicious posterizing dunk from one of many Los Angeles Lakers’ most interesting stars in 2011 throughout his rookie season with the Orlando Magic.
However again in 2016, with the Lakers icon halfway by way of his farewell tour after 20 seasons with the storied NBA franchise, Bryant spoke out about his ideas concerning Newbie Athletic Union (AAU) basketball.
What’s AAU Basketball?
AAU basketball is a non-profit, volunteer-based group that basically provides youngsters and teenagers who’re a part of non-school groups – or membership basketball – the chance to compete towards one another, with leagues and groups that start from kindergarten age by way of to their late teenagers.
An outspoken critic of AAU basketball for a few years, a then 37-year-old Bryant reiterated his beliefs that the union doesn’t educate younger and rising American expertise the ‘fundamentals’ of the sport.
“I’ve not been fairly essential, I’m extraordinarily essential – I hate it – as a result of it doesn’t educate our gamers easy methods to play the suitable means,” Bryant mentioned to the media after his ultimate recreation on the street in Portland, Oregon. “You know the way to consider the sport, easy methods to play in mixtures of threes.
“I feel every little thing is a reward system. I feel coaches who’re instructing the sport, they’re being rewarded in a single vogue or one other. It’s only a showcase and it’s completely horrible for the sport.”
Bryant was additionally requested about whether or not he felt that the upcoming, and fashionable, basketball stars had been missing extra of the basics than his technology, and gamers who got here earlier than him maybe understood extra.
“I feel that was simply by luck within the technology that I grew up in as a result of my technology is when AAU basketball actually began changing into s***, and I received fortunate as a result of I grew up in Europe. All the things there was nonetheless elementary so I discovered all of the fundamentals and I feel you’re [the AAU] doing an incredible disservice to our younger basketball gamers proper now in order that’s one thing that positively must be fastened.”
Bryant was one of many faces of the NBA between 1996 and 2016, bursting onto the scene straight out of highschool and donning the Purple and Gold within the Metropolis of Angels as LA had been ushering within the stars of their subsequent technology following that of the ‘Showtime Lakers’ led by Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
Becoming a member of the Lakers the identical summer season because the 1992 NBA Draft’s first general Shaquille O’Neal did, little did anybody know simply how dominant the Shaq x Kobe period would change into, with the 2 main the Lakers to a three-peat between 2000-2002.
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After O’Neal departed for pastures new, Bryant later shaped a formidable partnership with Spaniard Pau Gasol, that helped the Lakers attain the NBA Finals in three successive years from 2008-2010, profitable two championships, and bringing the Black Mamba’s ring tally to 5.
Having performed with Gasol, although, might have partly been attributed to shaping Bryant’s opinions on the disparities between AAU basketball and the teaching and improvement that European gamers obtain.
However it’s much more possible largely partly resulting from the truth that he himself grew up in Italy having moved there when he was six years outdated, when his father Joe ‘Jellybean’ Bryant was enjoying professionally abroad.
Having skilled studying the sport each abroad and in the US, after the Bryant household moved to Philadelphia when his father retired in 1991, Bryant’s feedback in 2016 echoed related ca 12 months earlier, the place he criticised teaching and financial greed as causes to why he hated it a lot.
“I simply suppose European gamers are simply far more skillful. They’re simply taught the sport the suitable means at an early age. … They’re extra skillful,” Bryant mentioned by way of ESPN. “It’s one thing we actually have to repair. We actually have to deal with that. We have now to show our children to play the suitable means.”
“AAU basketball, horrible, horrible AAU basketball. It’s silly. It doesn’t educate our children easy methods to play the sport in any respect so that you wind up having gamers which might be large they usually carry it up they usually do all this fancy c**p they usually don’t know easy methods to publish. They don’t know the basics of the sport. It’s silly.”
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“When you’ve gotten limitations and also you perceive your limitations and also you keep inside your self, you will be nice,” Bryant continued. “You realize what you are able to do and what you’ll be able to’t do. In America, it is a large drawback for us as a result of we’re not instructing gamers easy methods to play all-around basketball. That is why you’ve gotten Pau and Marc [Gasol], and that is the rationale why 90 % of the [San Antonio] Spurs’ roster is European gamers, as a result of they’ve extra ability.”
The 18-time All-Star reportedly smiled when he was requested about what sort of participant he would have been if he had by no means moved and developed his craft in Europe.
“I most likely would not be capable of dribble with my left and shoot with my left and have good footwork,” Bryant mentioned. “I used to be form of lucky as a result of once I was rising up in Italy, the Crimson Auerbachs and the Tex Winters and all these nice coaches had been doing clinics and camps in Europe.
“They had been instructing all of the membership coaches, and the membership coaches had been following their recommendation and their fundamentals just like the bible, they usually had been instructing all of us youngsters that sort of stuff,” Bryant continued. “Me, Manu [Ginobili] and all these guys that grew up round that very same time, we’re a product of that. It is a large distinction.”
Ginobili was a part of a San Antonio Spurs dynasty that is roster was stuffed with worldwide gamers together with Tiago Splitter, Patty Mills and Boris Diaw that received 4 titles in 11 years between 2003-2014, with the Argentine an integral scorer, utilizing his signature ‘Euro Step’, to go coach Gregg Popovich off the bench.
As for Kobe, throughout his prolonged two-decade profession enjoying on the prime stage, the 15-time All-NBA guard made 1,346 profession common season appearances, wherein he averaged 25.0 factors capturing at a 44.7 % clip, 4.7 rebounds, 5.2 assists and 1.4 steals per recreation.
When later requested about how the AAU might repair their issues, Bryant provided his personal resolution and it was a easy one.
“Train gamers the sport at an early age and cease treating them like money cows for everybody to revenue off of,” Bryant added. “That’s the way you do this. You need to educate them the sport. Give them instruction.”
“That’s a deep properly as a result of then you definitely begin reducing into folks’s pockets. Folks get actually upset once you begin reducing into their pockets as a result of all they do is attempt to revenue off these poor youngsters. There’s no fast reply.”
NBA viewership is at an all-time low
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Bryant’s feedback about AAU basketball at the moment are over decade outdated. But, his sentiments are nonetheless ringing true as we speak, with NBA viewing numbers having been ‘traditionally low’.
In line with Yahoo! Sports activities, Recreation 7 of the 2025 NBA Finals between the eventual champions Oklahoma Metropolis Thunder and Indiana Pacers peaked at 19.3 million viewers and averaged 16.35 million, making it the most-watched NBA Finals recreation in six years.
For context, the notorious Recreation 7 of the 2016 Finals between the LeBron James-led Cleveland Cavaliers and 73-9 Golden State Warriors, when the Cavs overcame a 3-1 deficit, had viewing numbers estimated to have been round 31 million viewers, per Sports activities Enterprise Journal.
Nonetheless, the sequence as an entire averaged 10.2 million viewers per contest, which is down 9 % from the 2024 finals, and was the least-watched NBA Finals since 2007, when Ginobili and the Spurs cruised to a 4-0 sweep over James and the Cavaliers.
Within the fashionable period of the NBA, a number of the league’s largest names are gamers who developed within the European circuit, together with Victor Wembanyama, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Luka Doncic, and three-time league MVP, Nikola Jokic.
It’s no coincidence that these three gamers are additionally a number of the most expert within the recreation, with ‘The Joker’ possessing the passing potential of a point-guard regardless of being a 6-foot-11 heart, and generational 7-foot-1 expertise Wembanyama having guard-like handles, whereas additionally with the ability to knock down long-range three-pointers with ease and consistency.
Lakers point-guard Doncic, who was enjoying professionally in Europe on the age of 15 – is thought for his distinctive footwork, scoring versatility and elite ball dealing with and playmaking, which he makes use of to his benefit to take advantage of mismatches towards the opposition, particularly in pick-and-roll conditions.
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These are gamers who’re consultants on the ‘fundamentals’ of the sport that Bryant preached about all these years in the past, whereas a number of the NBA’s up and coming stars are extra recognized for his or her flashy handles and creating viral spotlight performs, with gamers additional down the event tree, akin to these in school putting emphasis on Identify, Picture and Likeness (NIL) offers with manufacturers versus giving every little thing they’d of their physique to win basketball video games.
When Bryant was enjoying within the NBA, it was his ‘Mamba Mentality’ which shone the brightest all through his profession, whereby he would depart completely every little thing on the court docket, particularly when it got here to competing for NBA championships.
Maybe his most notorious instance was when he tore his Achilles tendon in 2013, and walked to the free-throw line – draining each photographs – and strolling off the court docket of his personal accord, one thing Tyrese Haliburton was unable to do when he suffered the identical damage in Recreation 7 of the 2025 NBA Finals.
At present’s gamers’ starvation to win doesn’t appear as excessive – and Bryant was one among one when it got here to that kind of factor.
Nonetheless, the Lakers legend aimed to go away his mark by aiming to alter the route of AAU basketball from inside with the launch of the Mamba Sports activities Academy, now renamed because the Mamba & Mambacity Sports activities Basis, in 2018.
In line with the web site, by way of ESPN, the mission of the Mamba Sports activities Academy was to have “a full-circle facility designed to replace the best way males, ladies and youth method human efficiency, by making a multi-platform atmosphere that prompts, educates and supplies a possibility for people to unlock their full potential.”
Bryant, alongside together with his 12-year-old daughter Gianna, had been amongst 9 folks on their option to the academy for a recreation who handed away in a devastating helicopter accident in January 2020.
Though he by no means received to see his mission by way of personally, he left an indelible mark on the game he beloved – and adjusted – placing the foundations in movement in an try and restructure novice basketball and to offer American athletes with the assets to have the ability to attain the height of their potential, and, in flip, start to slender the hole to that of worldwide improvement pathways in basketball.
Because the age-old saying goes: ‘Heroes get remembered however legends by no means die’. That epitomizes the legacy that Bryant left behind him to perfection.
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