SVG Sounds Off on the U.S. System of Development

From Ian Thomsen of SI.com:

“If you look around the league, it becomes pretty evident that the Europeans are quite a bit ahead of us in terms of skill development for players; especially [if you look] at the bigger players — Dirk Nowitzki, Hedo Turkoglu, Peja Stojakovic,” said Van Gundy, listing a trio of European shooters all 6-10 or taller. “We tend to take our big guys and stick them all around the basket. From a very young age our coaches say, ‘Get it to a guard’ — they get upset if our [big] guys even try to dribble the ball.

“The way we develop our players from a young age is just inferior to what they do there. They spend a lot more time on skill development; we want all our young kids here to play as many games as possible, to play in AAU tournaments from the time they’re eight. You’ll run into people who will tell you their son’s team won the 8-and-under state AAU tournament — like, who cares? But we’re really into that for our kids, we want our kids to get recognition for being the best at a young age.

“In Europe I think it’s so much different. Their club teams practice a couple of times a day. One of those practices, I think, is just skills development. And then I think the other thing that helps them is, from a young age, when they’re good, they move up.”

By this, Van Gundy means that phenoms like Ricky Rubio grow up from their mid-teens playing against grown men in the European professional leagues. Instead of dominating their age groups at the AAU or high school level as American players do, the best European teenagers are striving to play to a much higher level among professionals.

“So they’re always having to work and get better,” says Van Gundy. “What we want to do is take our young (American) kids and put them on the covers of magazines and tell them how great they are and fill them up with adulation, instead of them having to work and get better.”

Click here to read the full article, which includes some interesting quotes from Coby Karl, who played with Ricky Rubio this year and got a glimpse at Europe’s development system.