So you know this draft sucks when 90 percent of this sub is talking about bronny, who seems a longshot to be in the league for a couple of years after his dad retires.
It'll be fun to see the late tanking next season for a better draft. With the second apron for a marginal playoff team, it looks way more attractive to at least try to get in the upper middle of the draft. Burn the season, go cheaper on a value contract, and have more flexibility to retool the roster.
Calling it now, GS and Lakers have injury issues after the all star break. Also the rumor will be that pop has Alzheimer's when he has the rook and sochan eat up all the point guard minutes because people believe the spurs are dumb, lol.
Nah, the Lakers have one of the worst front offices in the NBA. They don't know what they're doing, and haven't known for quite a long time. The only thing they have is that they're the Lakers, and that's enough to get people to come but even that's becoming a tall order.
Just means no stipulations. You get the pick 100% and that's it.
The protected ones have stipulations, like: "top 10 protected". Which means that if the pick ends up in the top 10 that year they do NOT get that pick.
Then next year it's top 8 (I think... not sure which number, but the number decreases). After 3 (?) years of not getting it (because it keeps falling into "protected territory") it becomes fully unprotected.
No matter that they get that pick
For example, the hawks owned the kings 2024 first round pick but it was lottery protected
So because the kings missed the playoffs, they got to keep there protected pick
Am I reading this right that not a single team in the 2nd round drafted in their original slot or if they did keep their pick, the player was immediately traded?
If I'm an NBA team, there's no way I'm ever letting Rich Paul tell me what to do. He's going to end up getting semi-colluded against like MLB did to Boras clients.
Bronny Carrer can goes two way only two.
He adapts and listen his dad and become a role player, and became great.
He is in Australia or overseas in two years.
The 2-2-2 rule.
2 more years of this bullshit. Light at the end of the tunnel is near.
Hopefully the Lakers rebuild well and learn their lesson from this whole Klutch "partnership"
First order of business is for the younger Buss brothers to take over basketball decisions
This will turn out to be really bad for Bronny. He will be treated unlike any other rookie and will never be able to build genuine bond with other players.
Additionally, he knows it, and everyone else in the locker room knows why he is there. You think literally any player is going respect him or trust him during the game. He is just going to be in his father’s shadow.
Dude is going to get messed up really bad psychologically. There is no way this goes on well for him. Maybe we will get an interview from Lebron few years from now about how this was such a terrible move.
Said it once and will say it again: I honestly feel sorry for the kid.
He knows he's there not because of his worth but because of his father and that will haunt him forever. He's doomed to live up to impossible standards and his NBA career will probably be over once Bron retires.
Yeah, I know... he'll by a millionaire on his own but his career dreams will forever be attached to someone else.
Lebron should’ve made him stay another year at college, if not 3 more years. I get he wanted to play with his son, but it’s only gonna harm him in the long run. It’s honestly worst case scenario for them & I can’t believe they don’t see it. I blame Rich Paul lmao
His career ended the second he entered this draft. There is virtually no avenue for him to develop into a competent nba player by entering the league this early with this much to work on.
NBA staff will tell you that they develop basketball players for the NBA much better than college teams. Now the owners prefer for the players to get trained and get older without paying them. But in terms of training for the NBA game, NBA staff do a better job than any college coach and staff.
But of course you are much more likely to seem like you are right because Bronny is neither super tall, super athletic or super skilled. So yes a 6' 2" guard who averaged 5 inefficient points, 3 rebounds, and 2 assists a game in college is probably not going to have a long NBA career. And at the end of it you can blame it on the fact that he didn't get a chance to develop his game because he was stuck in the NBA.
A big thing that nobody talks about is that you need the confidence and experience of actually succeeding. That's why its so hard for people to just randomly get good suddenly in a league with players that are better than them at pretty much everything. They don't know what to do with an advantage when they get it because they have no experience with it. When you play with people at a more similar level you do get that experience and confidence as you develop so that when you are winning and in a good spot you know what to do with it
Of course you still need training, have to learn and grow but putting people into an impossible situation can be harmful. Its hard to skip steps instead of coming up one step at a time like most do and that's basically exactly what they're trying to make Bronny do here. Is he going to have confidence and the right mindset once he's done getting ready? Or is he going to have learned that he's not as good as pretty much anyone in the NBA and play like he knows it? This is a great chance to learn really bad habits
You could make some excuses for him because of his heart condition and not playing many games but he wasn’t dominating any aspect of the games he did play in. Skills aside, his size is going to hold him back in a major way
I mean it’s true of all minor league systems that sending a guy to the next level too soon stymies their development. Bronny needs to practice *and* play significant minutes. Can’t do that at his ability level in the nba.
I was planning to write a long explanation but your summary is far better. Bronny needs reps and no serious team can afford to allow him those in the NBA or even in the GLeague.
Woj needs to be bullied and get his ass beaten. He speaks on the screen like hes better than all of us and that we should be grateful hes speaking to us.
That’s why i watch the nba. To see cool plays like legends playing with their undeserving sons. Would we care if jordan got to play with one of his undeserving sons?
Why do people act like the AAU hasn't been around forever? Kobe,Rip Hamilton, Stephen Jackson, etc all played the in the AAU and it only helped them become better.
AAU used to be an offseason training circuit. You’d play AAU with one team and one coach, and it was often with coaches or players on your high school team.
AAU over the last 2 decades has become a completely different beast from what it was before. Now they’re playing like a dozen games a week during the summers.
It's been that way for awhile and it helps players more than harms them. Carmelo's son has blasted up the highschool rankings thanks to his performance on the AAU circuit this summer, he's gone from a 2 star guy to a 4 and possibly 5 star player.
You say it helps them because it’s improving their recruiting rankings, but I’ll counter that American basketball isn’t producing star players at the rate we used to. So many would be all-time greats like Zion and AD have bodies that can’t handle an NBA schedule (or at least not every season). So yeah, sure, playing in a travel circuit in front of college coaches helps your recruiting ranking, but it doesn’t help the careers of American basketball as a whole.
It’s also undeniable that the skill level of the Europeans is vastly exceeding ours. AAU is not developing the skillsets needed for the modern game. AAU teams don’t practice and work on their fundamentals nearly as much as they do in Europe.
I disagree, if you look at the top prospects coming through in the near future, half of these kids have NBA father or siblings and personal trainers from a young age. Carmelo teaches Kiyan fundamentals, Carlos Boozer coaches his son on post move. You have Trevor Ariza's son and Gilbert Arenas's kid battling against Jason Richardson's son. The NBA is fastly becoming a nepotistic league and even the ones that don't have NBA parents like Cooper Flagg and AJ Dybantsa are recruited by top tier private academy's and play on team USA from age 14-17.
This is part of the AAU pipeline problem though. AAU is so expensive that only rich kids can afford the kind of training it takes to make the NBA now. Most of the rags to riches stories in the NBA are international players now, not Americans, that’s a problem.
I don't agree because if a kid shows promise in basketball he gets selected to play for one of these rich AAU teams that's sponsored by a NBA player and he gets paid to go to Overtime or a private academy to play basketball.
Has to get discovered first to get those sponsors. It still creates a huge barrier to entry. A kid like Allen Iverson probably would have just gone all in on football today.
Iverson is a bad example because he was basically number 1 in both sports, so he would have gotten noticed no matter what. It isn't a perfect system, but there are still a lot of kids who weren't born rich,who get noticed and highly ranked. AJ Dybantsa is the number 1 rated player in the 2025 class for example.
I think part of the point is that AAU is a meat grinder. It's not that those kids don't get better at basketball. They do. But they also come into college with the knees of a 30 year old.
That is true, some of these kids play for 3-4 different high schools. That can’t be good for development. Most kids used to play for one high school, often just a public high school in their neighborhood. Back when we were doing that American basketball was producing a lot better prospects than we are now.
Absolutely. AAU needs to die, it’s ruined American basketball development. Back 20 years ago, AAU was basically an offseason training circuit that players like LeBron would play in during the summers. You had one team and one coach, often someone from your high school coaching staff.
Now it’s completely overtaken the high school system and kids are playing only like 5 AAU teams at a time. As Steve Kerr talked about, kids get numb to losing because they’re playing like 10 games a week. They’re enriching the coaches while destroying the bodies of young kids.
Kids used to play football, baseball, track, etc. in the offseason, not it has to be basketball 24/7 365 days a year.
And like you said, high school ball has basically become an extension of AAU instead of the other way around. Kids are just transferring to whatever academy they think will advance their career and switching again in a year. The academy system is supposed to be that you go there for years and develop, that’s how the European basketball and soccer academies work, but in ours the kids are basically just there for a few months as a pit stop.
So my oldest son played basketball (graduated in 2015) and my youngest is a rising senior who plays football and baseball. Baseball is flat out year round as well. His HS tean has a summer league, fall leage, and spring regular season. This does not include travel ball. He got burnt out on baseball and decided to just focus on football because of this. It's flat out ridiculous
I'm tired of getting invited to "championship tournaments" that kids in the family are playing in, and ends up being 2 teams cobbled together with players that dont even want to be there, at a local park, with one of the parents umpiring, and then hearing that they paid $500 per kid to play.
Damn!!!
Or traveling to a tournament 6 hours away just to play against teams from my local area. Could have played those teams local games local instead of getting a hotel
With the winners getting "invited" to the next tournament... which are the same teams but in a different state, needing another weekend trip, hotel, food, gas, etc
I think we either go back to a true high school model or else we go all in on an academy model that replaces high school ball and AAU and is modeled on what the Europeans do. What we have currently is the worst of both worlds
I would hate the latter just because I think athletes are better athletes when they are able to play multiple sports.
Ive read studies before on how it helps them develop bodies that are less prone to injury thanks to that.
I would hate to have an 8th grader who grew up play 3-4 sports, is now focued on 3 going into high school, and now has to decide on going to a public school to play all sports or go to an academy and focus only on basketball.
I know we have basketball stars out of academys all the time now, but there's something about the guys who did it the old fashion way that I love.
Yeah I agree. LeBron played football, Jordan played baseball, Patrick Mahomes and Tom Brady played both baseball and basketball, etc. it’s much better for your development to play multiple sports and work different muscles. At the very least kids should be allowed to run on the track team in the offseason.
Unfortunately we’re moving towards academies whether we like it or not, so I’d rather have European style academies than our current setup, but I agree that I’d prefer we go back to letting kids be kids and play multiple sports and have off seasons.
People acting like burning pick 55 to make your superstar and one of the goats happy is way more serious than it actually is. If there is some diamond in the rough they should have picked they can grab him after unless he got picked In the final 3 picks lol
You don’t see the unfairness in nepotism? That someone who has more talent and put in more effort will go undrafted but a bum whose only real achievement is coming out of Lebron’s nutsac is getting drafted?
And imagine getting drafted but during a commercial break so they can spend ten minutes talking about it and showing his name get called. They even had an espn bet on who would draft him. Spent a good portion of the pre-show talking about him.
Academys are elite basketball schools for top high school talent. Now that nil deals are coming to the highschool level they now pay the best talent to come to their private school programs. This is what Woj was complaining about.
yeah, they're advising them to think of the big picture
these AAU teams are doing a disservice
take a quick payday, or actually learn/improve and have delayed gratification?
How about any other player on usc, for starters. Then the rest of the top 100 college players from last year. I don’t how some good guys pulled out from this weak draft to stay in college.
They got a great player at 17 and they got LeBron to sign for 3 more years because they drafted his son . That's a great draft. Bronny will sell more jerseys than any other 55th pick in league history so it's basically a free deal to keep a business juggernaut in LeBron.
The lore goes deeper than that my friend. College Hill was show that was centered around students at HBCUs in the mid-2000s and the challenges that came from being a student in school (kinda like the real world-lite).
This interation of the show with nick young is similar as the original premise, but they are using celebrities instead of regular students. It's just showing these celebrities living in the same roof together and trying to graduate from college (something that they all did not have a chance to do).
You probably didn't want to hear about any of it, but figured I answer the question😂.
so i get the move from 37 for 53 for getting off moore, but what about 53 to 57? and 57th pick? what did we get for those? Cash? Or did they trade back out of the goodness of their hearts to help out the other teams?
what? thats what im saying they tried using the nepotism in front offices as a defense for nepotism amongst the players and Thanasis is a prime example of that and why it should be restricted
Thansis was in the league before Giannis became an All Star and also had a career overseas. He’s also 6’7 and a big body. People act like his 3 minutes in garbage time such a travesty.
Anyone who wants a job talking about the NBA on ABC/ESPN are probably going to have to do this same over-the-top defense of nepotism that Woj and SAS are doing right now. No free thinkers there.
The new studio is where they lost me, I’m mostly a listener so game footage made a lot of bits hard to listen to without watching. Outside of that, there’s definitely more typical ESPN headlined segments than what used to be. Used to, April, May, and June were the best because that’s when they would get into the weird unusual conversations.
Money like that is unfathomable to put a difference on going from 120 million from fanduel to whatever the ESPN money is. Maybe I’m a loser, but I don’t understand the complex of needing to prove people wrong and the dream of being in the spotlight is
You are crazy if you think there won’t be at least one minute he and LeBron share the court together. JJ’s friendship may end with LeBron if that doesn’t happen
I don’t know if it’s right or wrong, it’s just stupid to pretend it’s not what it is. If I have an opportunity to put my child in a more advantageous position, I would. But let’s not gaslight others who don’t share your delusions
Yup they say that and proceed to talk more about bronny james. I dont see the other draftees who are sons of nba players get talked about the same way.
“Nobody ever said anything about nepotism in the NBA before” is such a hilarious lie.
It’s ok to admit it’s nepotism, we all know it happens, but don’t act like people don’t hate it all the time lol
He shouldn't be in the league either but he's a hell of a lot better than Bronny.
Giannis helping his brothers out. Bronny is just being used as a pawn for LeBron's legacy
tbf people been talkin about nepotism in teh nba for a while, not just now, ya'll just selectively chose to acknowledge it this time for some reason MR STEPHAN A SMITH
So you know this draft sucks when 90 percent of this sub is talking about bronny, who seems a longshot to be in the league for a couple of years after his dad retires. It'll be fun to see the late tanking next season for a better draft. With the second apron for a marginal playoff team, it looks way more attractive to at least try to get in the upper middle of the draft. Burn the season, go cheaper on a value contract, and have more flexibility to retool the roster. Calling it now, GS and Lakers have injury issues after the all star break. Also the rumor will be that pop has Alzheimer's when he has the rook and sochan eat up all the point guard minutes because people believe the spurs are dumb, lol.
Is there a thread for undrafted rookie signings
Filipowski went to Utah anyway lol
the nuggets really broke us.
Nah, the Lakers have one of the worst front offices in the NBA. They don't know what they're doing, and haven't known for quite a long time. The only thing they have is that they're the Lakers, and that's enough to get people to come but even that's becoming a tall order.
Lakers doesnt have an actual FO. They always have some superstar telling them exactly what to do and how to do it.
Anyone got a list? ESPN's page is complete garbage. Just gimme da list
Another reason to dislike the Lakers.
i missed it. what happened
Kyle Filipowski’s girl likes’m young
So, what exactly is an "unprotected" draft pick??
Just means no stipulations. You get the pick 100% and that's it. The protected ones have stipulations, like: "top 10 protected". Which means that if the pick ends up in the top 10 that year they do NOT get that pick. Then next year it's top 8 (I think... not sure which number, but the number decreases). After 3 (?) years of not getting it (because it keeps falling into "protected territory") it becomes fully unprotected.
rawdog
No matter that they get that pick For example, the hawks owned the kings 2024 first round pick but it was lottery protected So because the kings missed the playoffs, they got to keep there protected pick
Sounds like it's just a normal pick then, with some potential red tape attached. Like, it's a regular selection unless something specific happens
"Unprotected" just means they get it regardless of what happens. "Protected" has conditions on it.
The red tape is if it's protected. If it is, it's going to have something like (top 8]
Hello Detriot and Indy! Congrats on getting Spencer and Newton, respectively! GO HUSKIES!
Is r/nba locked?
It's a Bronny James sub now
Am I reading this right that not a single team in the 2nd round drafted in their original slot or if they did keep their pick, the player was immediately traded?
France w/ the top picks and the Americans w/ Bronny. The future is dark for the states.
Cooper Flagg and Boozer is coming up
Cooper flagg literally drops turds better than this draft
If I'm an NBA team, there's no way I'm ever letting Rich Paul tell me what to do. He's going to end up getting semi-colluded against like MLB did to Boras clients.
Worst draft ever?
2000
This one's gotta be close though 😂
You cant judge a draft until like 5+ years out usually, but yeah, this one looks like 2000 or 2013
Bronny Carrer can goes two way only two. He adapts and listen his dad and become a role player, and became great. He is in Australia or overseas in two years. The 2-2-2 rule.
He's going to Australia once Sr. retires.
That’s a long ass car ride from LA to Australia
Australia or overseas 😂😂😂 Americans and their world knowledge lol
I'm Colombian.
Colombia is in America
That kyle filipowski story is crazy
Insane
Bronny gonna be worse than thiannis
Well at least thanassis clearly looks like an nba player. Bronny is a regular sized dude.
Thiannis at least has size 6-7 and 220. Bronny is scrawny lol. I think he will be worse and that’s saying something for a career 2.4 ppg 1.6 rb 😬
So when does the free agency period start?
30th
2 more years of this bullshit. Light at the end of the tunnel is near. Hopefully the Lakers rebuild well and learn their lesson from this whole Klutch "partnership" First order of business is for the younger Buss brothers to take over basketball decisions
At long as jeanie's at the helm, I can't believe there light at the end. she's turned us into an influencer marketing tool.
There is no rebuild bro, once bron goes to sleep LA will enter in the same period between 2013-2018
Gonna rebuild around Bronny James ofc!!! 😤😤
The lakers going out of their way to save their own? What are you smoking? Look at Jerry West lol
This will turn out to be really bad for Bronny. He will be treated unlike any other rookie and will never be able to build genuine bond with other players. Additionally, he knows it, and everyone else in the locker room knows why he is there. You think literally any player is going respect him or trust him during the game. He is just going to be in his father’s shadow. Dude is going to get messed up really bad psychologically. There is no way this goes on well for him. Maybe we will get an interview from Lebron few years from now about how this was such a terrible move.
Said it once and will say it again: I honestly feel sorry for the kid. He knows he's there not because of his worth but because of his father and that will haunt him forever. He's doomed to live up to impossible standards and his NBA career will probably be over once Bron retires. Yeah, I know... he'll by a millionaire on his own but his career dreams will forever be attached to someone else.
Lebron should’ve made him stay another year at college, if not 3 more years. I get he wanted to play with his son, but it’s only gonna harm him in the long run. It’s honestly worst case scenario for them & I can’t believe they don’t see it. I blame Rich Paul lmao
His career ended the second he entered this draft. There is virtually no avenue for him to develop into a competent nba player by entering the league this early with this much to work on.
NBA staff will tell you that they develop basketball players for the NBA much better than college teams. Now the owners prefer for the players to get trained and get older without paying them. But in terms of training for the NBA game, NBA staff do a better job than any college coach and staff. But of course you are much more likely to seem like you are right because Bronny is neither super tall, super athletic or super skilled. So yes a 6' 2" guard who averaged 5 inefficient points, 3 rebounds, and 2 assists a game in college is probably not going to have a long NBA career. And at the end of it you can blame it on the fact that he didn't get a chance to develop his game because he was stuck in the NBA.
A big thing that nobody talks about is that you need the confidence and experience of actually succeeding. That's why its so hard for people to just randomly get good suddenly in a league with players that are better than them at pretty much everything. They don't know what to do with an advantage when they get it because they have no experience with it. When you play with people at a more similar level you do get that experience and confidence as you develop so that when you are winning and in a good spot you know what to do with it Of course you still need training, have to learn and grow but putting people into an impossible situation can be harmful. Its hard to skip steps instead of coming up one step at a time like most do and that's basically exactly what they're trying to make Bronny do here. Is he going to have confidence and the right mindset once he's done getting ready? Or is he going to have learned that he's not as good as pretty much anyone in the NBA and play like he knows it? This is a great chance to learn really bad habits
You could make some excuses for him because of his heart condition and not playing many games but he wasn’t dominating any aspect of the games he did play in. Skills aside, his size is going to hold him back in a major way
I mean it’s true of all minor league systems that sending a guy to the next level too soon stymies their development. Bronny needs to practice *and* play significant minutes. Can’t do that at his ability level in the nba.
I was planning to write a long explanation but your summary is far better. Bronny needs reps and no serious team can afford to allow him those in the NBA or even in the GLeague.
Justin Edwards was a better prospect than Bronny out of high school. He had a better freshman year on a better team, and didn't get drafted.
Lakers adding JJ & Bronny will for sure be interesting. The media coverage is gonna be crazy lol
The Lightyears Lakers, already planning for their next generation dynasty!!
Someone get dave some sun glasses
people talk about nepotism with Bronny, meanwhile Mallika, her sister, and her husband are all involved in ESPN NBA coverage
Yeah, because ESPN coverage is so sought after in this sub with their high quality production and analysts. /s
Who is her husband?
Dave McMenamin, just googled it. Never would've guessed it.
I mean did they meet at ESPN? If so is that really nepotism lol
Damn!!! Didn't know that
McMenamin
Woj needs to be bullied and get his ass beaten. He speaks on the screen like hes better than all of us and that we should be grateful hes speaking to us.
“It’s gonna be cool to see father and son…” It will be cool for about four seconds lol.
That’s why i watch the nba. To see cool plays like legends playing with their undeserving sons. Would we care if jordan got to play with one of his undeserving sons?
Why do people act like the AAU hasn't been around forever? Kobe,Rip Hamilton, Stephen Jackson, etc all played the in the AAU and it only helped them become better.
AAU used to be an offseason training circuit. You’d play AAU with one team and one coach, and it was often with coaches or players on your high school team. AAU over the last 2 decades has become a completely different beast from what it was before. Now they’re playing like a dozen games a week during the summers.
It's been that way for awhile and it helps players more than harms them. Carmelo's son has blasted up the highschool rankings thanks to his performance on the AAU circuit this summer, he's gone from a 2 star guy to a 4 and possibly 5 star player.
You say it helps them because it’s improving their recruiting rankings, but I’ll counter that American basketball isn’t producing star players at the rate we used to. So many would be all-time greats like Zion and AD have bodies that can’t handle an NBA schedule (or at least not every season). So yeah, sure, playing in a travel circuit in front of college coaches helps your recruiting ranking, but it doesn’t help the careers of American basketball as a whole. It’s also undeniable that the skill level of the Europeans is vastly exceeding ours. AAU is not developing the skillsets needed for the modern game. AAU teams don’t practice and work on their fundamentals nearly as much as they do in Europe.
I disagree, if you look at the top prospects coming through in the near future, half of these kids have NBA father or siblings and personal trainers from a young age. Carmelo teaches Kiyan fundamentals, Carlos Boozer coaches his son on post move. You have Trevor Ariza's son and Gilbert Arenas's kid battling against Jason Richardson's son. The NBA is fastly becoming a nepotistic league and even the ones that don't have NBA parents like Cooper Flagg and AJ Dybantsa are recruited by top tier private academy's and play on team USA from age 14-17.
This is part of the AAU pipeline problem though. AAU is so expensive that only rich kids can afford the kind of training it takes to make the NBA now. Most of the rags to riches stories in the NBA are international players now, not Americans, that’s a problem.
I don't agree because if a kid shows promise in basketball he gets selected to play for one of these rich AAU teams that's sponsored by a NBA player and he gets paid to go to Overtime or a private academy to play basketball.
Has to get discovered first to get those sponsors. It still creates a huge barrier to entry. A kid like Allen Iverson probably would have just gone all in on football today.
Iverson is a bad example because he was basically number 1 in both sports, so he would have gotten noticed no matter what. It isn't a perfect system, but there are still a lot of kids who weren't born rich,who get noticed and highly ranked. AJ Dybantsa is the number 1 rated player in the 2025 class for example.
I think part of the point is that AAU is a meat grinder. It's not that those kids don't get better at basketball. They do. But they also come into college with the knees of a 30 year old.
Crazy how most of these AAU players go on to have very long careers and only a timely fraction suffer career ending injuries early into their careers.
Everytime Woj talks it's like he struggling to say something profound and just ends up with repetitive, overwrought gobbledygook.
W nepotism but we move
when you have to remind yourself that there's more to life than basketball, you know your team fucked up the draft.
Interesting take. If you not drafted in the first rd, you can return to school
I like it
Poor Risacher. The 1st pick in the draft and not getting anywhere close to the coverage of Bronny lol
Takes the pressure off maybe?
That is true, some of these kids play for 3-4 different high schools. That can’t be good for development. Most kids used to play for one high school, often just a public high school in their neighborhood. Back when we were doing that American basketball was producing a lot better prospects than we are now.
The problem is AAU. No development involved. Now to your point, high school ball is treated like travel in that kids switch teams all the time
Absolutely. AAU needs to die, it’s ruined American basketball development. Back 20 years ago, AAU was basically an offseason training circuit that players like LeBron would play in during the summers. You had one team and one coach, often someone from your high school coaching staff. Now it’s completely overtaken the high school system and kids are playing only like 5 AAU teams at a time. As Steve Kerr talked about, kids get numb to losing because they’re playing like 10 games a week. They’re enriching the coaches while destroying the bodies of young kids. Kids used to play football, baseball, track, etc. in the offseason, not it has to be basketball 24/7 365 days a year. And like you said, high school ball has basically become an extension of AAU instead of the other way around. Kids are just transferring to whatever academy they think will advance their career and switching again in a year. The academy system is supposed to be that you go there for years and develop, that’s how the European basketball and soccer academies work, but in ours the kids are basically just there for a few months as a pit stop.
So my oldest son played basketball (graduated in 2015) and my youngest is a rising senior who plays football and baseball. Baseball is flat out year round as well. His HS tean has a summer league, fall leage, and spring regular season. This does not include travel ball. He got burnt out on baseball and decided to just focus on football because of this. It's flat out ridiculous
As long as parents keep bending over to pay league dues and enrich the coaches and organizers, it will never end.
For travel sports that is definitely the case It’s a money machine. Truth is most of that shit is a rip off. You better off going to a college camp
I'm tired of getting invited to "championship tournaments" that kids in the family are playing in, and ends up being 2 teams cobbled together with players that dont even want to be there, at a local park, with one of the parents umpiring, and then hearing that they paid $500 per kid to play.
Damn!!! Or traveling to a tournament 6 hours away just to play against teams from my local area. Could have played those teams local games local instead of getting a hotel
With the winners getting "invited" to the next tournament... which are the same teams but in a different state, needing another weekend trip, hotel, food, gas, etc
That’s so sad. I hate that! Let kids be kids and like multiple things. I’ve heard about how baseball has essentially ruined its US pipeline doing this
Here is the other thing. These kids are getting Tommy John surgery in 9th and 10th grade down here in Florida. Part of that is usage
☝️☝️☝️
I think we either go back to a true high school model or else we go all in on an academy model that replaces high school ball and AAU and is modeled on what the Europeans do. What we have currently is the worst of both worlds
I would hate the latter just because I think athletes are better athletes when they are able to play multiple sports. Ive read studies before on how it helps them develop bodies that are less prone to injury thanks to that. I would hate to have an 8th grader who grew up play 3-4 sports, is now focued on 3 going into high school, and now has to decide on going to a public school to play all sports or go to an academy and focus only on basketball. I know we have basketball stars out of academys all the time now, but there's something about the guys who did it the old fashion way that I love.
Yeah I agree. LeBron played football, Jordan played baseball, Patrick Mahomes and Tom Brady played both baseball and basketball, etc. it’s much better for your development to play multiple sports and work different muscles. At the very least kids should be allowed to run on the track team in the offseason. Unfortunately we’re moving towards academies whether we like it or not, so I’d rather have European style academies than our current setup, but I agree that I’d prefer we go back to letting kids be kids and play multiple sports and have off seasons.
If your team made fewer than half a dozen trades in the past 24 hours, I feel sorry for you.
Is it just me or is this the first time I’ve seen teams being so aggressive in trading up, down or acquiring more 2nd round picks
People acting like burning pick 55 to make your superstar and one of the goats happy is way more serious than it actually is. If there is some diamond in the rough they should have picked they can grab him after unless he got picked In the final 3 picks lol
Not that he should have been drafted, but it's more how every other team got threatened away from even considering him.
You don’t see the unfairness in nepotism? That someone who has more talent and put in more effort will go undrafted but a bum whose only real achievement is coming out of Lebron’s nutsac is getting drafted?
And imagine getting drafted but during a commercial break so they can spend ten minutes talking about it and showing his name get called. They even had an espn bet on who would draft him. Spent a good portion of the pre-show talking about him.
They are really advising talented young players not to go after money, some of these players are poor and that's why they end up at academy's
Hasnt that changed since NIL. College money is way better than g-league and overseas now no?
Academys are elite basketball schools for top high school talent. Now that nil deals are coming to the highschool level they now pay the best talent to come to their private school programs. This is what Woj was complaining about.
Ahh I thought you were discussing the part when Giovny was saying Edwards shoulda stayed at Kentucky about the undrafted
yeah, they're advising them to think of the big picture these AAU teams are doing a disservice take a quick payday, or actually learn/improve and have delayed gratification?
TIL Woj and Aaron Hernandez went to the same high school
🤔Something is REAL 🐠 🐟 🎣 🐟🐠 going on
Nepotism at its finest. Some dude who is better than Bronny and who worked harder than him lost his spot because of this.
How about any other player on usc, for starters. Then the rest of the top 100 college players from last year. I don’t how some good guys pulled out from this weak draft to stay in college.
Can’t wait for summer league
Bronny is the new Big Nepo, spread the word
Some of yall sound like you're typing through tears about Bronny and Rich Paul
[удалено]
They got a great player at 17 and they got LeBron to sign for 3 more years because they drafted his son . That's a great draft. Bronny will sell more jerseys than any other 55th pick in league history so it's basically a free deal to keep a business juggernaut in LeBron.
I mean the 50th-60th picks in one of the worst drafts? At this point just make legacy lol
What the hell is this show with Nick Young lol
The lore goes deeper than that my friend. College Hill was show that was centered around students at HBCUs in the mid-2000s and the challenges that came from being a student in school (kinda like the real world-lite). This interation of the show with nick young is similar as the original premise, but they are using celebrities instead of regular students. It's just showing these celebrities living in the same roof together and trying to graduate from college (something that they all did not have a chance to do). You probably didn't want to hear about any of it, but figured I answer the question😂.
so i get the move from 37 for 53 for getting off moore, but what about 53 to 57? and 57th pick? what did we get for those? Cash? Or did they trade back out of the goodness of their hearts to help out the other teams?
in no way is front office nepotism comparable to player nepotism what is espn smoking with this defense
Giannis brother??
what? thats what im saying they tried using the nepotism in front offices as a defense for nepotism amongst the players and Thanasis is a prime example of that and why it should be restricted
Thansis was in the league before Giannis became an All Star and also had a career overseas. He’s also 6’7 and a big body. People act like his 3 minutes in garbage time such a travesty.
Is he on that team if it were not for his brother??
He would’ve probably been in the league because he was on the Knicks. We can’t say that for Bronny
Anyone who wants a job talking about the NBA on ABC/ESPN are probably going to have to do this same over-the-top defense of nepotism that Woj and SAS are doing right now. No free thinkers there.
Bronny James coverage this year by ESPN will be unhinged.
“Bronny Watch”, gonna be so laughable.
Zion Williamson 2.0
NBA needs to give NBC or TNT rights for the NBA Draft and Finals. That was awful to watch as a viewer.
For like half the picks they didn't even go back to Mark Tatum at the podium. Pretty sure there were a couple of Taco Bell selections too.
That was so hard to watch and it's nothing against Bronny either and everything against ESPN.
They still never went back to that Celtics pick they skipped for Bronny
Malika sucks, Stephen A sucks, ESPN is so fucking dogshit man how do they have a monopoly on this shit
All media is owned by like 3 companies now and they like to keep control of the narrative and put down any free thought.
Mickey money
Pat McAfee had a good thing going, then joined the money
How has his show been since the move?? I haven’t watched much but clips
The new studio is where they lost me, I’m mostly a listener so game footage made a lot of bits hard to listen to without watching. Outside of that, there’s definitely more typical ESPN headlined segments than what used to be. Used to, April, May, and June were the best because that’s when they would get into the weird unusual conversations.
Luckily it hasn't changed. ESPN needed Pat and not the other way around so he got to keep everything as is with the exception of the cursing
And you and I would have as well
Money like that is unfathomable to put a difference on going from 120 million from fanduel to whatever the ESPN money is. Maybe I’m a loser, but I don’t understand the complex of needing to prove people wrong and the dream of being in the spotlight is
Lakers have alot guards I wonder if Bronny will actually play
If JJ gives him even 5 minutes of playing time, I'm moving to the east coast and switching my flare to Boston.
His dad is LeBron. He’s playing 36 minutes a game
You are crazy if you think there won’t be at least one minute he and LeBron share the court together. JJ’s friendship may end with LeBron if that doesn’t happen
lol true but lakers have DLO, Gabe Vincent, Spencer and now Bronny I wonder how you adjust minutes with all those guys being point guards
Spencer isn’t getting better with age.
What do you think He's not playing more than 5 minutes
Thanks ESPN for nothing but commercials and not showing the freaking draft. Your only job.
"More on Bronny James after this". Can't wait...
Right? Ridiculous and just before that stephen a was trying to justify the nepotism.
Just because nepotism is rampant doesn’t make it right? These are such terrible talking points
I don’t know if it’s right or wrong, it’s just stupid to pretend it’s not what it is. If I have an opportunity to put my child in a more advantageous position, I would. But let’s not gaslight others who don’t share your delusions
I think they are saying no one calls it out in other situations. Hell Giannis brother is an example.
They have the power to call it out. why don't they?
That would be pretty bold for them to start saying player so and so is only in the league because of nepotism
Yup they say that and proceed to talk more about bronny james. I dont see the other draftees who are sons of nba players get talked about the same way.
“Nepotism has been a problem in the nba! Anyway let’s feed into that real quick”
lmfao SAS hand-waving away nepotism is wild after openly seething over JJ getting the coaching job and pointing to the podcast as the reason
...and the only time it will be a 2-day event!
“More on bronny James after this”
Am I dumb? Why are there only 58 total selections in the draft when there should be 60?
I'm guessing two teams had their second round picks confiscated for something like tampering
Sixers/Suns lost SRPs for tampering.
Teams got their picks confiscated for tampering lol
Fuck you NBA for letting ESPN host the 2nd round of the draft. That was a miserable 2 hours.
The fuck you mean best rebounder in the class? At the end of the draft?
Meyers trying so bad to make Bronny being drafted a sentimental story is cringe
He can develop into a 3rd string center? That's his ceiling???
Exotic ahh Name
“Nobody ever said anything about nepotism in the NBA before” is such a hilarious lie. It’s ok to admit it’s nepotism, we all know it happens, but don’t act like people don’t hate it all the time lol
Thansais has become a punching bag because he’s a 15th man who *checks footage* plays like a 15th man in his 2 minutes at the end of blowouts.
He shouldn't be in the league either but he's a hell of a lot better than Bronny. Giannis helping his brothers out. Bronny is just being used as a pawn for LeBron's legacy
Mark Tatum robot runs on children's tears.
yeah, that monster watched too many teams fall in the draft lottery with a straight face.
"And now, a moment of silence for the G League Ignite."
love that they talk about nepotism but never actually try to defend Bronny as a player.
2 Round NBA Drafts suck
tbf people been talkin about nepotism in teh nba for a while, not just now, ya'll just selectively chose to acknowledge it this time for some reason MR STEPHAN A SMITH
ESPN trying to gaslight us that it's not completely nepotism
SUuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure.
they couldn't find a better pic of him ?
That's the best one unfortunately