re: Larry Johnson Says American Players Lack Fundamentals

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The top 0.0001 percent of US basketball players is still better than the rest of the world combined

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Well they aren’t combined.

But again, for a much more “skilled” continent, who is the best Euro under 6’7”?

Fundamentally speaking, i think a lot of American players lack the ability to play as a team.

I played the sport long enough to see lots of more athletic teams get ran out of gyms by smaller, less athletic teams that understood how the game is supposed to be played.

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Larry Johnson Says American Players Lack Fundamentals

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Stacey Augmon

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LJ is absolutely right on this. The international kids spend more time in the gym working on fundamentals and playing less games, while the American kids spend most of their time playing games and not working on fundamentals. All of these AAU circuits in America dilute the fundamentals of the game. And the majority of the circuit is simply a money grab.

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1000% correct.

Watch an AAU event. It is a lot of highly athletic kids playing awful basketball with minimal effort. The "coaches" are barely coaches. They are "grassroots" grifters seeking to profit off of talented kids.

The players are showing up to college and NBA not really knowing how to play. Particularly on defense. Thus, the college and NBA coaches are having to develop the foundations that should have been started in HS.