Kobe Bryant: Europeans Are ‘Way More Skilful' Than Americans, US Basketball Lacks Fundamentals
Leave it to Kobe Bryant to stir the pot even against his compatriots. The Los Angeles Lakers star guard recently declared that Europeans have “way more skills than Americans” inside the basketball court warranting varied reaction from his peers in the National Basketball Association (NBA) and basketball fans in both sides of the continent.
Kobe’s contention is simple; that European basketball players are taught better fundamentals at a young age that eventually they grow up as better players when they land in the professional level.
"I just think European players are just way more skillful," Bryant said via ESPN.com on Friday. ”They are just taught the game the right way at an early age. ... They're more skillful. It's something we really have to fix. We really have to address that. We have to teach our kids to play the right way.”
Bryant did not stop there stating that AAU (Amateur Athletic Union) basketball in the United States is “horrible” and “terrible”. The 18-year-NBA veteran even called US’s amateur basketball as “stupid” for not knowing or learning the basics of the game.
"Horrible, terrible AAU basketball. It's stupid. It doesn't teach our kids how to play the game at all so you wind up having players that are big and they bring it up and they do all this fancy crap and they don't know how to post. They don't know the fundamentals of the game. It's stupid,” Bryant said in the same article.
This is not the first time in his career that Bryant, who moved to Italy, a European country, when he was six years old, has criticised Americans for their lack of knowledge and fundamentals of the sport. However, Bryant wasn’t just criticising Americans for the sake of criticising; the Lakers star offered solutions on what he perceived as a problem turning the criticism into a constructive one.
"Teach players the game at an early age and stop treating them like cash cows for everyone to profit off of," he said. "That's how you do that. You have to teach them the game. Give them instruction,” Bryant shared admitting that the desired transformation won’t come overnight and that the culture at the amateur level should be changed first.
