Coach K And Adam Gold See A Problem, And They’re Going To Fix It

We’ve talked recent about how Mike Krzyzewski changed the perception of USA Basketball in international competition: in the early part of the century, the US had lost respect and a lot of teams thought they’d have a shot against the formerly invincible Americans.

When Coach K took over the national team, he focused on the athleticism and the ability to win with defense and transition basketball.

Since his first Olympics, in 2008, it’s been very difficult to beat Team USA. The aura is back.

However, nothing lasts forever and as Krzyzewski points out here, the rest of the world does a better job of teaching the game to young kids than we do.

So he’s joining forces with the NBA to do something about that.

It’s going to be a major job. Aside from everything else, the US is huge and getting everyone on the same page is going to be very, very challenging. The basic federalist principles we have trickle down in many ways and certainly sports is decentralized, which, like the big model, is both good and bad.

As Coach K says, “[t]he game in our country is undertaught and probably overplayed,” which is a great analysis of the state of the game here. To put this in a different frame: if Anthony Edwards grew up with the same skill set that Luka Doncic did, who would have the advantage?

We don’t know how he plans to go about this. However, years of observation have taught us that he thinks differently and systematically. We’re sure he has a plan and, given his accomplishments to date, we’re sure it’s probably well thought out. If we can teach team concepts to kids at a young age, not like the Europeans do, but in a uniquely American way, there’s a pretty good chance that the US can put the game almost completely out of reach.