• 11-year NBA veteran Will Barton has criticized young hoopers nowadays
• He claims they don’t play outside anymore, only in closed gyms or in AAU games
• Barton is the latest NBA player to criticize the younger generation of hoopers
Will Barton recently appeared on a podcast and questioned the love for basketball that today’s prospects have. He criticized them for not playing outside and focusing all their attention on either working out or playing AAU games.
“It’s weird. To me, it’s like they don’t love to hoop as much as we did, it’s more workouts now. I didn’t work on my game until my sophomore year of college, I just hooped. It’s more workouts now… They don’t really hoop outside no more. If it’s not a high-profile AAU event or camp, they don’t hoop.”
"It's weird. To me it's like they don't love to hoop as much as we did coming up. It's more workouts now. They don't really hoop outside no more. If it's not a high profile AAU event or camp they not playing"
– Will Barton on todays culture of basketball at the grassroots level pic.twitter.com/PHvXTJGnBo
— Ball Don't Stop (@balldontstop) August 16, 2023
Barton carved out a solid 11-year career for himself, so his advice definitely holds value. His argument lost weight when revealed that he didn’t work on his game until his sophomore year of college. He averaged 11.2 points, 4.1 rebounds, and 2.7 assists per game as a role player for most of his career.
The NBA is not streetball and if young players want to reach that level, they will optimize their training accordingly, as Stephen Curry did with shooting drills instead of shooting in open park runs.
Are Young Players Not Motivated Enough?
Not working on your game until you’re of NBA-playing age is not a good thing. Even though Barton got his reps on the court, his lack of dedicated workouts explains why he fell from being a top-10 recruit in high school to the 40th pick in the NBA Draft in 2012. He’s also already out of the league, as his skills stopped translating on the court as he aged.
Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce also criticized the financial incentives young players have, which inhibits them from loving the game and getting better at it. With NIL deals for high school athletes, it seems to be permeating into the youth ranks as well. Even Bones Hyland of the Clippers has echoed this sentiment before.
When I interviewed Bones Hyland prior to the 2021 NBA Draft, he told me the same thing.
He used to get mad at his college teammates because nobody wanted to play pick-up. Here's what he said: pic.twitter.com/4bWmarImLl
— Alex Kennedy (@AlexKennedyNBA) August 17, 2023
Not everyone loves basketball but can be good enough to play the game. There should be a healthy balance of playing in open runs and working out, as doing only one or the other will never lead to a successful NBA career.
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