Presenter: Connor Williamson
Co-Presenters: Gregory Bothun, Joshua Gordon, Daniel Rosenberg
Faculty Mentor: Josh Gordon, Greg Bothun
Presentation Type: Oral
Primary Research Area: Social Science
Major: Business Administration
Though the United States has maintained an impressive performance record in international athletic competition, its amateur sport infrastructure has become less efficient than that in many other countries. For late-development sports like basketball, in which early athletic training should be varied and specialized late, training these inefficiencies have led to a lower skill level among players in the highest league, the NBA. Basketball-specific factors, like the preps- to-pros era coinciding with the post-Jordan generation, have severely affected the training methods in American basketball. The NBA has taken note of this change, as the San Antonio Spurs make headlines with a roster of imports, the percentage of foreign players in the NBA has never been higher. As rule changes in the NBA have made for a faster game predicated on skill and savvy, the American pipeline of players has never been less prepared.
This thesis will define problems with the current system in areas of physical, athletic, and mental athlete development and examining player development models through a holistic lens which digs into the underlying causes of skill deficiencies in the NBA player pool. After doing this, it will attempt to solve some of the major issues facing American basketball player development, like transitioning players into the NBA. Systems like Canada’s Long Term Athlete Development and the youth academy system in German club football provide an extensive list of alternatives to assess. By taking the best aspects of each and adjusting them to the American environment, a better system can be designed. The results of this research point to unstructured nature of youth basketball, which is the root cause of issues like lack of coaching educational standards, as well as many other pervading the NBA player development pipeline.