Bear with me for just a moment, but I am going to write about my son’s basketball team. I promise to keep it brief, but there is a larger point about what we’re seeing in both college ball and the NBA that I think can best be explained by watching youth basketball.
Andrew is nine years old. He has been playing basketball since he figured out how to bounce a ball. He’s good – scrappy, feisty, hustles, coachable, everything you hope for. He is one of the smaller kids on the team, but he is the only one trusted to play all five positions, even center. His coach calls him the team’s Swiss Army knife.
It wasn’t like that the first week or so.
When he initially joined this club team, we knew it would be a bump in competition and difficulty. He was dominant during his last couple seasons of rec league play – any first- or second-grader who can make a layup and dribble with both hands ends up looking like Darius Garland in rec league – but this club league had kids a little bit taller, a little bit faster, 10-foot rims, the whole deal. We kept telling him it would be an adjustment. Don’t get frustrated – just keep playing ball.
He admits to us now that he was a bit nervous those first couple weeks. He was still feisty, still coachable, but a little antsy. He was moving at a different pace than the practices – not faster or slower, just at an odd rhythm. The other kids didn’t know him yet. They rarely passed him the ball. They hadn’t seen him play.
But once Andrew got into the swing of things, he started to shine. The coach had no choice but to find room for him in the starting lineup. He made friends. The team started finding him when he would cut to the basket. Andrew is now a very important part of his team – crucial, I’d say, even if my take might be biased.
All that’s to say one extremely crucial point that often gets missed in today’s 24/7 basketball take cycle: Chemistry takes time.
It is tempting to form a hard and fast opinion of every basketball team early in the season. Everyone is healthy(ish). Everyone is motivated. Nobody (well, almost) has started to pack it in with an eye toward next season.
But most teams exist in a state of constant flux. Players/coaches change teams constantly. More than half of basketball analysis seems to be centered around why so-and-so-star is angry and where so-and-so-star might try to go. Continuity and chemistry are often neglected in favor of the quick fix or splashy move.
That’s not to say that teams shouldn’t try to shake things up if the situation is stale. Given the rapid nature of change, those who refuse to improve are often left in the dust. But chemistry is delicate. One wrong element – one wrong proton or electron – and the whole thing could blow up in an instant.
This impacts the NBA, obviously, but it seems even more volatile in today’s college environment. The transfer portal has ushered in a new era of constant flux. It is gasoline poured on the fire that was already set by early declarations and/or trips overseas to play professionally. Almost no “elite” college basketball team resembles itself on a year-to-year basis.
Top 25 teams are constantly “upset” by “inferior” competition in the first couple months of the season. I’m here to tell you these are not upsets, and this competition is not inferior. Most name-brand college programs feature rosters with players that just met each other. They have no idea how to play as a cohesive unit. They all come from high school programs where they were the star and from AAU circuit squads that barely resemble functional basketball. College coaches need at least the first two months of a season to figure out what lineups make sense and who knows how to play team-oriented basketball.
The teams you see in November/December will not resemble the teams you see in February/March. Anyone who positions themselves as an “expert” and bases their opinions/takes on those first 10-15 games to project how a team will perform in the NCAA Tournament is doing you a disservice.
Chemistry takes time. Nobody knows how long, and nobody can conjure it out of thin air. Chemistry moves at its own pace, with its own rules. But with patience and persistence, that chemistry can grow into something special.
Andrew starts his second season with his club team on Saturday. Whatever happens, he’s earned his spot. Watching him on this journey has made me rethink the way I approach talking about college ball and the NBA. I often fall victim to of-the-moment overreaction, but I’m trying to be more patient.
And 1’s:
• I’m about 2/3 of the way through “There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension” by Hanif Abdurraqib. I’ll save my full thoughts on this book for when I finish reading it, but I can already say with confidence that this is one of the best books – not basketball books, not sports books, not memoirs, but books period – that I have ever read.
• We’re done calling Cooper Flagg overrated, right?
• Auburn is still kicking butt despite the Johni Broome injury, but how long do we think that can last? Broome has played like a potential Player of the Year, helping catapult Auburn to the top of the polls, but the Tigers have found ways to patch together his scoring and (especially) his rebounding output with him tending to a sprained ankle. Shout out to Chaney Johnson, who looked very Broome-y in the spot start against Mississippi State. But Broome is such a mistake-eraser on the defensive end of the floor. The Tigers might be able to hold the fort during conference play, but if they hope to cut down the nets in April, they will need Broome’s menacing roaming defensive presence.
