What does it take?- high school basketball
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Anonymous
Typically at Whitman there are 5 or 6 players that get all the game minutes and 7 or 8 players that ride the bench. But it's a year long commitment for everyone - daily practices that go well into the evening, weekend games and tournaments, and off season AAU. I think there was a player perhaps six years ago that managed to get recruited to a no name D3 school. But generally, no one from Whitman is getting recruited. High school basketball in the DMV - which is a very competitive area with national powerhouses - is an enormous time suck for 95 percent of all participants. The opportunity costs for those wanting to go to competitive colleges are enormous. A varsity basketball player at schools like Whitman really has no time to pursue other interests or even load up on more advanced classes. The days of student athletes changing sports with the seasons and having enough time to pursue other ECs and maintain a high GPA are long gone. Choices have to be made. Our 6'3 DS played JV freshman year and decided the time commitment wasn't worth it. Played rec instead for the fun of it and pursued his other interests. It was the right call for him. |
Anonymous
Nonsense. Lacrosse and football, yes. Basketball, no way. |
Anonymous
| Basketball is the hardest team to make almost everywhere. |
Anonymous
Yeah, it wasn’t a great decision by the coach. He learned a ton and was really proud to be on varsity when he was a 9th grader, so didn’t ask to move down. In 10th grade he thought he’d play more…until he realized he wouldn’t. By that time he’d played too many games/minutes (forget the rule) in varsity so he couldn’t move to JV. It’s all good now - he’s going to play baseball in college. He’s always liked baseball more…hence the not practicing enough for basketball. |
Anonymous
| No one is commenting on what it takes. How much practice? Travel teams, private coaching etc. |
Anonymous
| IME, basketball is the one sport that is 'easiest' to start late. All 3 of my kids played/play in high school. |
Anonymous
That is just because it is a numbers game. |
Anonymous
Coaches like to see travel team history but if a player is really skilled and effective, the lack of it doesn't really matter. Private coaching can help with things like shooting. |
Anonymous
That said, they played from elementary on up and could read the game well. They were not especially tall. But I did/do see kids who have started in middle and still made the team and played well because they are athletic and/or aggressive and/or tall and/or and/or picked up the mental game. Basketball is also a position sport even if it doesn't seem like it so a coach has to make decisions on that too. |
Anonymous
| If they’ve played other sports that involve passing, spatial awareness, and maneuvering an object through a crowd into a container, some of those skills can transfer over, but to play varsity at the average high school, they’ll need basketball-specific skills and the ability to perform those skills under pressure (ie, game experience, not just shooting around in a gym or driveway). |
Anonymous
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Sliding scale based on size/athleticism/target school.
Generally speaking, 6-2 and under want to start as early as possible and want to be very devoted to both individual and team skills. At their respective cores, football is a team sport and baseball is an individual sport. Basketball blends the two with equal focus need on individual skills and team concepts. If your kid is bound to be bigger, there is more forgiveness when it comes to individual skill set, but the kid still needs to be athletic. Basketball is a game of very brief momentary advantages that must be recognized and addressed extremely quickly on the fly moving at full speed. Ultimately, it is a game of pattern recognition and the more reps your child gets the better they will be at spotting the patterns. To the uninitiated it may appear like random movement on the court, but it is actually very technical. To get a feel for the intricacies of basketball, in 2018, England’s surprising run in the Men’s SOCCER World Cup was materially helped by … NBA Basketball. The things that basketball teams had been doing for 50+ years were foreign concepts and extremely useful in soccer. https://www.wsj.com/articles/englands-soccer-team-needed-help-so-they-stole-from-the-nba-1530523802?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=2 B+ to the “technical sport” troll. |
Anonymous
This depends entirely on the school. Where do your boys play? Or put another way, who paid for your boys’ shoes, uniforms, and team travel? If the answer isn’t “Nike”, then your experience isn’t relevant at my kid’s high school. |
Anonymous
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I think many posters have asked which HS for the OP. It 1000% makes all the difference in the world.
It is surprising to me that so many posters don't understand how competitive basketball is in the DMV. It doesn't matter how athletic you may be, if you go to any of 10 schools in the DMV ranked in the top 30 in the country...they are recruiting outstanding talent to their teams. Many are D1 recruits and some are already identified as NBA draft picks. So, sorry...if you are a decent casual, athletic player and your kids goes to PVI...they aren't playing. If your kid goes to St. Anselms...then sure, play your heart out. |
Anonymous
This is true. Also, I think there is a huge range of what people are using here to be "starting late". A very tall, very athletic kid who played travel soccer in elementary, but then starts AAU basketball in 6th grade is "starting late", but could absolutely make many high school teams in the area. (not PVI, but many). But even a tall athletic kid who hasn't played basketball before high school at all will not be able to make most high school teams in the area. So how late you start matters too. |
Anonymous
Its very difficult to make even the JV teams at the local large public high schools, even if their teams aren't "nationally ranked". There's just so much competition at tryouts. |