A pair of efforts to reform talent identification and development systems in major sports garnered national media attention in recent days.
USA Today interviewed former Duke and U.S. men’s national team coach Mike Krzyzewski about his work leading an NBA initiative to improve the elite youth basketball ecosystem.
The Athletic profiled U.S. Soccer Sporting Director Matt Crocker and the new “U.S. Way” vision (must-read article) for the youth levels.
Both pieces go in-depth on the challenges facing each sport, potential changes, and acknowledge aspirations to adopt strategies used in Europe and elsewhere.
A few quick things:
1) Both pieces — especially The Athletic’s — did a good job of level-setting about how many competing motives exist in the youth sports world and how decentralized talent ID and development is.
Crocker said 95% of player development occurs outside of U.S. Soccer’s purview. Coach K mentioned the need to improve “non-scholastic” competition — read: AAU — and find ways to better educate coaches in that world.
Ideas for improvement are great, but you have to be able to effectively implement them. And get stakeholders to adopt strategies that may run counter to their interests.
2) I don’t know if the NBA has a conflict of interest, but I do think it is walking a fine line here.
Coach K’s group is focused on improving American youth basketball … but it is named the Global Basketball Committee.
The NBA wants to strengthen the U.S. national team pipeline … but it also does business worldwide and is trying to launch a professional league in Europe, which means even more resources for the countries nipping at the Dream Team’s heels.
It’s a challenge every major sports league will face if it gets involved in similar endeavors.
3) Do not discount the physical size of the country as a complicating factor.
We have softball teams driving longer to get to a weekend tournament than it takes to drive from one side of England to the other.
That makes it easier to have unified governance and structure and for development visions to be enacted.
James Kratch can be reached at [email protected]