How big is a youth basketball

NBA, USA Basketball announce age-appropriate rules and standards for youth basketball competitions

• Youth Basketball Guidelines

What height should the basket be set at for a game being played by eight-year-old boys or girls? What size ball should they be using? Should there be a 3-point line? Should they play man-to-man or zone defense? Should there be a shot clock?

These are all questions posed by parents, coaches and youth basketball organizations throughout the country. But there have never been universal answers to those questions as different organizations often played by different rules. A child could play on a nine-foot rim with a smaller ball in one league, then have to play on a 10-foot rim with a larger ball in another.

That lack of uniformity in youth basketball development led the National Basketball Association and USA Basketball to come together to establish guidelines to promote health and wellness, skill development and enjoyment of the game for boys and girls of all different age ranges.

“Our sport has lacked governance at the youth level so we came together really to establish what we think are a series of best practices for how to play the game at the youth level,” said David Krichavsky, Vice President of Youth Basketball Development at the NBA.

After announcing the Health and Wellness guidelines in Oct. 2016, the two organizations are ready to implement next step in their quest to improve the state of youth basketball in this country. That step is today’s announcement of a set of age-appropriate rules and standards for youth basketball competitions, which includes recommendations surrounding equipment, court specifications, game structure, playing tactics and rules of the game.

“What we tried to do is address questions that we would get all the time, whether it be from individual parents or the commissioners or coaches,” said Krichavsky. “We can answer all of those questions on a one-off basis, but now we have a set of standards that we can point everyone to and a set of standards that was developed by experts in our game and experts on youth development. So it will create a level of consistency that never existed before.”

The goal of these new guidelines is to establish the proper setting to help young players learn the fundamentals of the game, build their skills, achieve early success and provide long-term development opportunities. By using the Youth Basketball Player Segmentation Model, the rules and standards are specific to four age groups: ages 7-8, ages 9-1, ages 12-4 and grades 9-12. As players grow in their development, the guidelines adjust with them to keep them on track for success, growth and enjoyment.

“We’re excited to get these out and think it’s well overdue here in this country,” said Jim Tooley, the Chief Executive Officer of USA Basketball. “We’re the only country really that plays by multiple sets of rules compared to other parts of the world where everyone is pretty much playing FIBA standard rules across the board.”

Highlights from the new rules and standards include the recommended use of:

• Smaller basketballs for ages 7-8 (size 5, 27.5” circumference) and ages 9-11 (size 6, 28.5” circumference). 
Using a smaller ball that is more proportional to the size of children’s hands allows for better ball control, leading to enhanced skill development.
• An eight-foot basket for ages 7-8 and a nine-foot basket for ages 9-11, when possible. Lowering the basket height for younger players assists with developing proper shooting form and increases the opportunity for shooting success.

• No zone defenses for ages 7-8 and ages 9-11.
 Removing zone defenses from play among younger age segments encourages movement and physical activity, and promotes the development of individual defensive skills related to guarding a player both on and off the ball.
• Equal playing time throughout the game for ages 7-8 and throughout the first three periods for ages 9-11 (coach’s discretion after the third period).
 Equal playing time ensures young children have an opportunity to experience the game. While equal and fair playing time is encouraged throughout all levels of play, it should only be required throughout the entire game for the youngest age segments.
• No 3-point field goal scoring for ages 7-8 and ages 9-11. 
Eliminating 3-point field goals for the younger age segments encourages players to shoot from within a developmentally-appropriate distance.
• A 24-second shot clock for ninth-12th grade and a 30-second shot clock for ages 12-14, when possible.
 The 30-second shot clock for the 12-14 age segment, along with the 24-second shot clock for the ninth-12th grade segment, allows for more possessions for each team, better game flow and additional decision-making opportunities for players.

The complete guidelines can be found at: https://youthguidelines.nba.com/

“As the chairman of both USA Basketball and the Jr. NBA Leadership Council, as well as a parent whose kids grew up playing and loving the game of basketball, I’m proud that the NBA and USA Basketball are working together to develop and share these important guidelines, “ said Martin E. Dempsey, USA Basketball Chairman and Jr. NBA Leadership Council Chairman, Retired General. “The new guidelines include age-specific rules and standards that will ensure a balanced and positive basketball experience for youth of all ages. ”

In terms of equal playing time, the key is helping coaches find the right balance between participation and competition.

“A key point here is that you never know whether a young boy or young girl is going to evolve into being a great player,” said Tooley. “This is designed for all kids; a lot of these kids won’t make their high school team let alone go to college on a D-I scholarship and end up in the NBA or WNBA. This is designed for them to have success on their own pathway and to have success you have to be a part of it, you have to participate, you have to play.”

When it comes to the 3-point shot, Tooley recalls conversations he’s had with a friend who coaches a group of nine-year-olds that are all eager to imitate Stephen Curry by launching 3-pointers from 25-plus feet from the basket. Krichavsky has seen it plenty of times as well.

“I think we’ve all seen those examples of kids moving beyond the arc and shooting from their hips and really shooting with technique that is really not the appropriate technique,” Krichavsky said. “So if we take that line away and teach kids proper form and reinforce that. Certainly we can bring that line back – and in our guidelines we do that – but it gives the opportunity to learn proper shooting form and reinforce that from appropriate ranges and then continue to have them step back. But keep that proper shooting form as they do so.”

Perhaps the most difficult practices to adopt will be the ones involving new equipment. Not many youth organizations currently have shot clocks. Not everyone has baskets that are adjustable to different heights to accommodate different age groups. While it may take time for all of these guidelines to be implemented across the board, both the NBA and USA Basketball have upcoming events that will highlight these new rules and standards.

“Our working group was pretty diverse; we had folks from the NCAA, high schools and AAU involved [in establishing these guidelines] so we’re hopeful that will help spread these rules and standards,” said Tooley. “And both the NBA through their Jr. NBA World Championship and USA Basketball with our U.S. Open Basketball Championships, we have our universe and touch points with a lot of youth basketball organizations that is much bigger than its ever been. So we’re going to be adopting these rules and standards along the way and we just hope it becomes adopted over time.”

With the guidelines available for everyone to learn and implement as well as seeing examples of those guidelines in action at the Jr. NBA World Championship and U.S. Open Basketball Championships this spring and summer, what are the next steps for the NBA and USA Basketball in their continued quest to improve youth basketball?

“We’re going to watch and listen, get feedback and see what we’re hearing out there and respond accordingly,” said Tooley. “But we feel pretty bullish that these are really solid principles to go by and both of our respective tournaments that we’ll be having will yield a lot of influence in this space as well. And I know both the Jr. NBA and USA Basketball are excited to get those up and running this summer.”

ESPN Study: NBA in Trouble as Young Players Come to the League with Disabilities - Metta Physics - Blogs

Editor's Note: You're on the Metta Physics User Blog. Only the deepest texts from leading American basketball experts are translated here on any topic - about the history of the NBA, statistics, transitions. Today is the first part of ESPN's massive study of player injuries and youth sports. Subscribe, leave pluses and comments - and there will be even more such blogs on Sports.ru.

Original - Baxter Holmes, ESPN.

The Staples Center has become quiet and motionless, like a graveyard, a crowd of fans looking at a newcomer lying in a ring surrounded by medical staff. His eyes are wet with tears. His head coach asks him to brace himself. It was October 28, 2014, the Lakers' season opener and NBA debut for Julius Randle, the big forward and the Lakers' only first-round pick in seven years, the foundation of their future after Kobe Bryant.

In the middle of the fourth quarter, a 19-year-old player was walking towards the basket, jumped... and collapsed. Now the seconds stretch into eternity before his right leg is stabilized by a splint and his teammates put him on a stretcher and they disappear into the tunnel. Randle broke his leg. His first season ended 14 minutes after it started.

On the evening in October that Randle was taken to the hospital, Lakers strength and conditioning coach Tim DiFrancesco is sitting at a table in the players' lounge adjoining the Lakers locker room, studying the footage on a large flat-screen TV. DiFrancesco notices that Randle's jump and landing seem normal, that there is nothing between them, he has not collided with anyone in the air. There is no clear culprit. There is no explanation.

Randle's leg just broke.

Before joining the Lakers, DiFrancesco worked at a physical therapy clinic near Boston. There, he saw a lot of young athletes with serious injuries - back, knee, hip - that you would expect more from those who have worked in heavy production for decades. Later, on NBA pre-draft combines and individual workouts, he assessed high-level collegiate players who often failed to perform basic actions like squats, lunges, or balancing on one leg. Some of the players he assessed moved so badly that he knew for sure that they were bound to get injured in the future. In each case, DiFrancesco thought about time: would he have enough time before the first game of the season to fix the problems he saw? He calculated the potential hours in the gym and hoped that they were enough to build a training program to prevent injury.

X-ray later discovered that Randle had suffered a "stress reaction", a precursor to a stress fracture. Repeated exposure to this bone caused it to break, and a team spokesperson later said that the stress reaction was the "probable cause of the fracture."

Back in the break room, DiFrancesco watched the replay over and over again, stopping the tape, rewinding it, and starting over.

These kids, he thought, are like ticking time bombs.

“I understand that I shouldn't be criticizing the whole AAU system because parts of it work just fine. But some of them are broken, and this is due to injuries in the NBA. What we see is a lot of injuries among young players.”

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver stands behind the stands before Game 1 of the 2017 NBA Finals between the Warriors and the Cavaliers. He keeps up the tradition of the commissioner answering the league's toughest questions before the start of the final series. The seventh question sounds rather cliche at first, focusing on the newly formed G-League and whether Silver thinks it could be an opportunity for those hoping to get into the NBA without going to college. Silver replies that this is a problem the league is looking into. But then he takes a detour and starts talking about something else—teenager basketball and injuries—as if he wants to unburden himself. " Our podiatrists are noticing wear and tear issues in younger players that they've only seen in older players before. "

What Silver couldn't have known was how badly injuries - especially injuries to young players - would affect the NBA next season. In the 2017-18 season, the number of games missed due to injury and illness in the NBA passed the 5,000 mark for the first time, according to certified athletic coach Jeff Stotts, who has cataloged the careers of more than 1,100 players and is considered the most authoritative resource for tracking NBA player injuries. Last season (2018/19) the league again passed the 5,000 injury mark.

In 2017/18, players who were named to various national teams at the end of the season missed an average of 14.63 matches due to injury, the second most recorded by Stotts. Last season, that figure jumped to 17.02.

According to the Stotts database, the most games missed by young players during their first two seasons have been in the last four seasons. Players selected in the first round of the 2014 draft missed 838 games due to injury during their first two seasons, the highest number Stotts had ever recorded; in 2015 - 637 missed games, third in the list; 548 games were missed in 2016 and 751 games missed in 2017, the second highest figure.

The question is why.

Through dozens of interviews over the past two years with NBA team and league front office representatives, current and former players, AAU coaches, parents, young players, researchers, medical and coaching staff, and those closely associated with youth basketball, one possible answer has repeatedly surfaced: they say 90,031 players are physically broken by the time they enter the NBA.

"It's very serious," said an NBA general manager who says his team's decades-long database of injury records for drafted players leaves "no doubt" that young players in recent years more orthopedic problems. “It’s very sad when a guy has a pro body, NBA-level talent, even a pro mentality, but his body can’t withstand the rigors of training and real games, he doesn’t even have the opportunity to stay in the league. It is very difficult".

Silver, in an interview with ESPN, called the issue "a top priority for the league - and I think both in terms of the health and well-being of NBA players, and in terms of the broader category of millions of players, boys and girls, not only in the US, but also worldwide".

"It's an epidemic," says Leo Papile, who founded and coached the Boston Amateur Basketball Club for four decades in Nike's elite youth basketball league, perhaps the most prestigious grassroots tournament ever.

“I know a lot of kids who are going to play in college next year,” says Dr. Neeru Jayanti, director of sports medicine research and education at Emory Healthcare in Atlanta and a leading youth sports researcher, “and all this year was just an attempt for them to recover so they could be freshmen and really be able to play."

Jayanti says, "Children are already broken by the time they enter college."

The simplest explanation is as flippant as it is popular: players today are not as badass as their NBA ancestors. They are soft. Chip Schaefer, director of wellness activities at the Bulls, metaphorically calls it "the millennial beating" - a phrase from a man who coached during the Bulls' heyday of 1990-98, when their leader was the standard of sportsmanship in the NBA - Michael Jordan .

Throughout his career, Jordan has fought the Pistons' Bad Boys and played with ease from just about any injury. In Jordan's time, the gold standard for durability was simple: starting all 82 regular season games, a feat he achieved in eight of his 13 seasons with Chicago.

But that's not to say that Jordan was a ruthless basketball player all year round.

“When the season ended, Michael went out to play golf and didn't pick up a basketball until September, just before the start of training camp ,” says Wally Blaze, Bulls coach from 1993 to 2000. “He may have played ball with friends, but he didn’t work in the gym with some shooting coach for eight hours a day” (and, contrary to the myth that has grown around Jordan, he, as Blaze notes, did not consider every practice as Game 7 of the Finals: "There were days when Michael would show up, tie ice packs to his knees, light a cigar, and then go play 18 holes").

Jordan was not unique in this respect. Former Lakers coach Harry Witty, who spent 32 years on the team, says the Lakers' Showtime "hardly played basketball" at the end of the season: "Once the season ended, everyone spent at least two, two, three weeks quietly letting your body rest, letting it heal, and then slowly moving on to light running, cycling and strength training.”

As strength and conditioning coach for the Orlando Magic in 2006-12, Joe Rogowski saw young players struggle with simple exercises. To help them, he asked them to play various sports during the summer, such as boxing, swimming, and beach volleyball. It took the edge off the monotony, especially after years of overfocusing on basketball.

Rogowski tried to counter specialization, the growing trend of parents and children concentrating on one sport all year round to the exclusion of all others.

In a series of studies conducted in 2017 and 2018 by a team of researchers led by David Bell of the University of Wisconsin, Professor of the Sports Training Program in the Department of Kinesiology and Director of the Wisconsin Sports Injury Laboratory, it was found that while most young athletes today believe that specialization increases their performance and chances of making the college team, most of those who made the varsity Division I teams were not classified as "highly specialized" at the school level. Jayanti and his team of fellow researchers came to a similar conclusion in 2013 (the “highly specialized” classification was given to athletes who answered “yes” to the following three questions: Can you identify your main sport? Do you play or train in this sport? more than eight months of the year?Have you given up any sport to focus on your main sport?)

But although the advantages of specialization are not clear, there is little doubt about the disadvantages.

Players keep getting injured - that's what Jayanti knew for sure. This happened at four prestigious national tournaments for elite tennis players aged 12-18. On it, players who played more than four matches - often at least one a day for four consecutive days - were twice as likely to finish the tournament for medical reasons before their fifth match than those who did not advance that far.

Soon after, they surveyed about 530 tennis players in the Midwest, ages 12 to 18. One of the first results was that most of these athletes, about 70%, specialized in tennis, and the average age when they started doing this was 10 years old. They also found that those who began specializing in tennis at an early age were 1.5 times more likely to be injured than those who did not specialize. A year later, they launched what would become the largest clinical trial of its kind, involving 1,200 young athletes - the average age was 13.5 - across all sports in Chicago over three years. Approximately two-thirds of this group attended local sports medicine clinics due to injuries; the other third were not injured and attended primary care clinics for annual check-ups. Purpose: to compare the injured and the healthy over three years and see the results.

Their finding: Those who were highly specialized in one sport (excluding other sports) and practiced it all year round were at significantly higher risk of serious injury due to such abuse, particularly bone, cartilage and ligament injuries . How much higher is the risk? About 125%.

This figure will establish one of the first direct and independent links between injuries and sports specialization. This topic will light up the headlines. And this issue will be one of the highest priorities for the two leading sports medicine organizations - the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine, which held an exploratory summit on this topic; and the American Orthopedic Society for Sports Medicine.

In the meantime, key institutions in the sports science community will begin to see the effect. This has been noted in Santa Barbara, California, where teens are now visiting the P3 Applied Sports Science Lab, a training center specializing in in-depth athlete assessment, and P3 workers are alarmed by what they are seeing. P3 founder Dr. Marcus Elliott calls basketball "the toughest sport for the human body, where problems - biomechanical problems - show up in injuries, show up in shorter professional careers, more than any other sport we work with." It's hard that when discussing today's youth basketball culture, Elliott refers to the players who have gone through it as "survivors. " He adds, “They keep their bodies incredibly tight. It's too extreme." This has been noted in Los Angeles, where teenagers make up the majority of those injured who apply to the Movement Effectiveness Institute, a sports science lab that focuses on injury prevention and recovery.

"They're just marching back and forth - knee pain, ankle pain, headache, back pain," says Dr. Chris Powers, a professor at the University of South Carolina and director of the biokinesiology program. “We see kids aged 10-11 all the time with really bad injuries and tendonitis. I've seen torn cruciate ligaments in 11-year-olds."

This fact was also seen in the Atlanta office of Dr. Mike Clark, who founded a program widely used in the NBA that focuses on movement efficiency and injury recovery/prevention: Fusionetics. But, as with P3, Fusionetics employees are working more with high school athletes to help them solve the problems Clark has seen over his 14 seasons as the Phoenix Suns team physio. "Things get a lot worse," Clarke says, "because kids specialize too young and they don't get it right."

And yet, despite all the collective efforts, the NBA continues to accept players who are already broken by the time they enter the league.

In 1984, at the age of 21, Jordan joined the Bulls after 3 years of college, which was typical for players of that time. Ten years later, in 1995, Kevin Garnett hit the league straight out of high school at the age of 19, starting what would become a wave of high schoolers going straight to the NBA. In 2005, Andrew Bynam did it at the age of 17.

While this age gap—from 17 or 19 to, say, 21—may not sound like much, Bulls Director of Wellness Activities Chip Schaefer calls it critical to the development of 's musculoskeletal and accessory systems, which help young players withstand the workloads of the NBA. And that transition to the pros is steep and steep: in his first season in the NBA, a rookie can play as many as 100 games, including exhibition games, regular season games, and playoffs, playing a third of that number in college or high school. “You also have to add travel and other things related to it, these are big demands on your body, which at the age of 20 needs to grow up,” says Schaefer.

Taken together, these factors are cited by experts when they describe the so-called "Shift" - and some say they started noticing it in the early 2000s.

At this point, high school students were drafting en masse, and the NBA's appeal of wealth and fame fueled an increase in specialization as players (and their parents) began to focus on one sport in search of a lucrative career. This, in turn, contributed to the growth of club basketball; teenagers needed more "rehearsals" to get into the NBA, and more "shows" to get the attention of NBA scouts, they needed more places to have these "shows" - "rehearsals". They need more opportunities to prove themselves, to get into the pros younger and as early as possible, with no time to rest, so as not to be left behind.

"It's a vicious circle," Vitti says.

Basketball is currently the most popular youth team sport in America. More than 10 million boys and girls aged 6 to 17 play the sport in 2017, according to the latest figures from the Sports Fitness Industry Association. There is a seemingly endless number of organized youth leagues, though many usually only refer to one of them: the AAU. Today, the AAU is a catch-all term for all amateur leagues as well as the largest multi-sport organization in the country with over 700,000 members. Basketball is the most massive sport in the AAU, with thousands of leagues, tournaments and exhibition matches.

And just as a new basketball culture emerged, so did a new type of basketball player. Ask Clark to describe this player in terms of biomechanics, and he will offer this analogy: Imagine a car with a powerful engine that has been carefully designed and maintained for years. But despite the power of this engine, the brakes and suspension of the car are equally bad. Thus, the car cannot handle the load that its engine imposes on it - all this is like if you placed the engine from a Formula 1 Ferrari car, but did not make changes to the frame of the car.

Simply put: today's players are faster, stronger and more athletic , the product of years of weight training, speed training, vertical jump training, skill training.

But the brakes, the suspension—their ankles, hips, and core muscles—although often neglected, still have to support body strength. “We joked that half of these athletes are so good that their jump can practically surpass their ability to land,” says Blaze, who is currently Fusionetics' director of professional and student teams. Clarke says that "specialization helps a player become more skillful, stronger and more athletic, but at the same time they don't work on things that prevent injury and help them recover."

Clark calls this the "performance paradox".

“Think of this as the tip of the iceberg. What you see on the surface of the water are really skillful, very athletic children, especially now, even at school. You have a 10th grader who can do a 360-degree dunk that was unimaginable 20 years ago. You see a good result in the form of improved skills, improved athleticism. But the quality of their movements suffers, many of these children move just terribly. You might say, "How can a child jump 38 inches and still not be able to stand on one leg?"

Adam Silver is quick to point out that what podiatrists and other medical professionals have told him about injuries and youth basketball remains largely anecdotal.

But even this unconfirmed information is so alarming that the NBA and the US basketball team in October 2016, for the first time in the world, released their guidelines for youth basketball, which, among other things, recommend:

years or older;

• high-density play schedule restriction based on age-appropriate guidelines in high school;

• and providing a break from basketball for at least one day a week and for an extended period of time each year.

For example: Primary school children can only play once a week (duration: 20-28 minutes), one training session per week (30-60 minutes) and no more than three hours per week of organized basketball. For high school students, 2-3 games per week are recommended; 90-120 minutes of training; and three to four practices a week. These guidelines were influenced by a group led by Dr. John DiFiori, sports primary care leader and attending physician at the New York City Hospital for Special Surgery. The NBA brought in DiFiori in 2015 as director of sports medicine; he has studied youth sports and overtraining injuries for over 25 years and was the lead author of the working group that published "On Injuries and Burnout in Youth Sports: A Position Statement from the American Society for Sports Medicine."

According to DiFiori, problems have become more common in the age of specialization. In basketball, as in volleyball (both sports are dominated by jumping), excessive training can lead to chronic ankle injuries, joint and cartilage problems, even spinal problems . "I don't think people realize how common back problems are among NBA athletes," he says. "This accumulation of injuries, or the development of asymmetries, dysfunction of muscle tendons and other things - it can certainly shorten the length of a career. "

However, one problem remains: Even the most well-meaning NBA leadership lacks the means to enforce it. According to David Krichavsky, NBA Vice President of Youth Basketball Development, the lack of a national governing body for youth basketball makes a unified rule system almost impossible: “Because the youth basketball roster is so fragmented, new actors are constantly coming in and consuming all the existing space. A lot of them are profit driven, and you end up with an ecosystem where kids play basketball too much, too early.”

Speaking for the AAU, Rod Seaford, AAU Coach and Boys Basketball Executive Committee Member, AAU Board Member, says, “The NCAA and NBA love to blame youth sports, or the AAU, for their troubles. This is a pretty common thing. We have approached the NCAA and NBA with various proposals, only to receive verbal informal responses. There was no serious conversation. I have no doubt that this concern is not unfounded. But it’s easy to shift the blame for all the shortcomings onto the shoulders of the junior coach. ”

Silver says the NBA and NCAA should work together to ensure everyone follows the guidelines outlined by DiFiori so that "young athletes, their parents and coaches don't think we're putting them at a disadvantage by requiring them to adhere to proper health principles." It remains to be seen how and when these guidelines can be applied. While the Little League (the organization that unites the junior baseball and softball leagues) maintains innings tally, the AAU does not.

“We understand that we can't change the culture of youth basketball overnight,” says Silver, but adds: “We're cautiously optimistic.”

Seaford, who notes that millions of boys and girls play youth basketball in non-AAU leagues, warns that decisions are not always easy: “I don't think the NBA has the power and the right to announce which organization may hold basketball competitions, or when they hold them. This is impossible. No one controls the US team. There is no control over AAU. I don't know what to do in this situation. "

At the same time, what can Silver say to a parent who believes less is more—that less basketball and more other sports might limit their child's chances of making it to the NBA or WNBA?

“I would say we understand your concerns,” says Silver, “because you are essentially reacting to the system as it was… but you are jeopardizing your long-term career by not sticking to these recommendations."

One of the NBA general managers directly expressed his opinion on the same question:

“The chance is great, but at what cost? Do you really want your child to limp for the rest of his life? »

Dr. Darin Padua, Chair of the Department of Physical Education and Sports at the University of North Carolina, has over 15 years of experience in the study of sports injuries and sports biomechanics. And he, too, uses the car metaphor to describe today's young NBA players, referring to mileage. “When they get into the NBA they are 18 or 19 years old,” says Padua, “but they start their career much earlier, playing 90 games per year. They have more miles at a young age, and when they get into the NBA, they are less physically mature. Even if they look like giants, they simply cannot carry such a load.”

It's hard to calculate how many basketball hours today's athlete winds up before entering the NBA. But be aware that a parent can enroll their child in an organized youth basketball team at the age of 7 – all the way through high school. Can you count the number of games? Representatives of one of the most prestigious teams in the tournament, Nike EYBL, considered that someone who played full-time between the ages of 7 and 19years old - within 13 years - could easily beat the mark of 1000 games (not including team training, exhibition matches and individual work with coaches).

Or in other words: the number of games, approximately equal to 12 seasons in the NBA.

Undoubtedly, this is the highest figure in history.

Now consider Kobe Bryant.

Think of Bryant and you probably imagine someone who devoted countless hours to honing his game from an early age, a living paragon of specialization, who succeeded.

In truth, it wasn't until Bryant was 15 or 16 years old - a few years after his family moved back to the US from Italy where his father played - that's when the Lakers icon, he says , started playing AAU. Bryant estimates that he only played in five tournaments, plus a handful of all-star games in high school. “That's it,” he says.

And if Bryant's path had been more typical, more conventional, with a summer full of basketball, would he have been able to play 20 seasons in the NBA, the most for a guard? "Hmm... I'm not sure," he says.

Now at 40, Bryant ponders these questions with his children: How much is too much? At what age are you still too young?

Take his second daughter, Gianna, who is now 13 years old and plays basketball all the time: “Only by your personal example do you see the depth of the problem. They can play organized basketball literally every weekend at the age of 10. Why? I have only one answer in my head: “Hmm, we don’t need this. ”

Bryant looks back on his childhood and what he did at the same age. "It's not like I play 10 games a week or anything like that," he says. “I didn't play at all. You drop a little every day, and then when you're 15 or something like that, you start pushing harder, training harder. But first, it's just a skill development, from the category - Can you dribble with your left hand? Can you throw correctly?"

“Keep in mind,” adds Kobe, “I grew up playing hardly any basketball. We just played every two weeks before I came back to the US."

Throughout his career, Bryant has railed against American youth basketball for failing to develop players, often noting that overseas players have much better fundamental skills. But because he advocates skill development, Bryant preaches patience.

"You're trying to overload your kids and make them be the best in one year," says Bryant. - This is ridiculous".

To be continued...

Thank you for your attention!

Photo: aauboysbasketball. org; REUTERS/USA Today Sports; globallookpress.com/ imago sportfotodienst, Javier Rojas/Pi, William Luther; Gettyimages.ru/Patrick Smith, Stephen Dunn, Jonathan Daniel, Donald Miralle; instagram.com/aaubasketball; instagram.com/kobebryant

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