Team Basketball in a TikTok world

About a year ago I retired from professional basketball. For the last decade, I’ve been mostly isolated from youth basketball. Having returned home, I have since rejoined my old junior club as a semi-professional player. Our team is split between older guys like me who are hanging on with full-time careers and much more to juggle. The remainder are young kids with not much else on their minds but basketball. 

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In the last 12 months, I have also begun coaching youth basketball and recently joined Crimson as an athletic strategist. Pretty quickly, I’ve had to jump back into the headspace of the student, a world removed from that of the seasoned professional. 

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I see many young kids whose impression of basketball is now just highlights. To the uninitiated, one’s “bag” in basketball terms refers to the amount of tricks or moves one has, and how they might look on TikTok in a slow-mo breakdown video of a breakdown video. 

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As such, many of my students and clients are now solely concerned about what moves they can do, or how I might help them add more to their arsenal. These kids' individual training is heavily influenced by videos they see on YouTube of their favourite players, or of Instagram coaches demonstrating a 7-step dribble combination involving 1 of the 10 players on the court. 

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Whilst I wholeheartedly agree, basketball skill has improved in leaps and bounds in the past decades, with some of the tallest people on earth moving like the most agile basketball players of years gone by… I wonder where this “bag” culture may lead us. 

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Last night at training, one of the younger players, a skills coach himself, couldn’t run a play we had practised for 2 weeks. 3 consecutive plays he couldn’t remember the play - an action finishing with a basic cross-pick. We are talking elementary stuff here. But if you gave him the ball on his own, one-on-one, with the rest of the players on the court occupying the least amount of his space possible, he’s one of our league's hardest players to stop. 

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I’m happy to write this off as an immature and nervous rookie trying to survive in a more senior environment, but I can’t help but see the parallels to a more global trend in basketball. 

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The week before I jumped in a scrimmage with some of the 'older' young hoopers in Melbourne, I was amazed at the lack of passing and basic structure. A glance over to the other court with the 30-and-over crowd shows players moving in sync. One space is opened, and another fills it. Advantage is gained with teamwork, rather than by the individual.

I guess you could say maybe they don’t have young knees or fast hands to play modern basketball. I don’t know.

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The day basketball becomes about me and not us, I’m out.

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Matt McCarthy 

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