Kobe Bryant: European players are more skilled because of ‘horrible AAU’

Kobe Bryant would like to see the United States take a page out of Europe’s book when it comes to coaching young basketball players.

After the Los Angeles Lakers lost to the Memphis Grizzlies on Friday night, Kobe went on a rant about how much more polished European players are than American players.

“I just think European players are just way more skillful,” Bryant said, per ESPNLosAngeles.com’s Arash Markazi. “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.”

The problem, Kobe says, is AAU basketball.

“AAU basketball — horrible, terrible AAU basketball,” he said. “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.”

When Kobe was 6 years old, his father moved his family to Italy so he could continue his playing career. Kobe stayed in Europe until he was about 13, when his father retired and his family moved back to the US. Bryant insists that if he grew up playing AAU he probably wouldn’t be able to dribble with his left hand or have quality footwork.

“When you have limitations and you understand your limitations and you stay within yourself, you can be great,” he explained. “You know what you can do and what you can’t do. In America, it’s a big problem for us because we’re not teaching players how to play all-around basketball. That’s why you have Pau and Marc [Gasol], and that’s the reason why 90 percent of the Spurs’ roster is European players, because they have more skill.”

Kobe is certainly more qualified to speak on this topic than any of us, and he has a point about the Spurs. They’ve been dominating the Western Conference for years with players like Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker.

But did playing in Europe teach Kobe to do things like this? There’s some stuff you’re just born with.