Jarrett Allen amazed by the training of young basketball players outside the United States

Two years after a first failed attempt, Jarrett Allen was finally able to participate in the “Basketball Without Borders” camp this summer. Two years ago, in the summer of 2020, the pivot, then at the Nets, had indeed positioned himself to take part in the camp co-organized by the NBA and by FIBA. But the Covid-19 health crisis had been there.

With a now much more favorable health context, Jarrett Allen therefore headed to Canberra, Australia, earlier this month for the Asia region’s “Basketball Without Borders” camp, which was held from August 7 to 10. . He officiated there as a coach for all the young participants, alongside four other NBAers including: Josh Green, Cam Johnson and Coby White.

Among the reasons that motivated the former Texas college student for two years to participate in the camp, there was a desire to understand the enthusiasm around basketball outside the United States, particularly among young people.

” Two things: first of all being able to travel, I’m not going to lie. It’s still a free trip to another continent!” he first said with humor. ” But above all, what interested me was to understand how important basketball is in other countries, how much it is a sport that is growing among young people. In the United States, you can only see a tiny part of the international scene, so I wanted to see for myself what it was like elsewhere in the world.“

More in-depth training than in the United States?

Pure product of the American circuit, since he has chained the “classic” stages which lead to the NBA, namely high school and the AAU circuit, then the NCAA and the Draft, Jarrett Allen was thus pleasantly surprised by the precocity of young people international players he has observed. Perhaps less athletic than their young American counterparts, but possibly better prepared, at a younger age, for the professional world.

” What jumped out at me was how ready all of these kids were to play basketball at the pro level. In the United States, young people dominate mainly by relying on their athletic qualities he observed. ” All 15-year-olds can place a ‘windmill’ today… But these young people impressed me with their reading, especially in defence, they already mastered concepts that took me several months to grasp after my arrival in NBA.“

The pivot of Cleveland highlights an observation that is not new: young Americans, products of a “High School” circuit which sometimes falls with caricature into the “star system”, tend to zap the technical aspect of the basketball, while young international players can better integrate training centers or hopeful teams of professional clubs.

In the NBA, it is therefore no coincidence that the last two MVPs are European players, and if Team USA, on the international scene, has for several years tended to lose the margin against its rivals.

” The young people understood everything immediately, we didn’t need to explain the concepts to them, they already understood them. […] We felt that they had an appetite for basketball, and an overflowing energy to always learn he concluded.