Europe vs United States :Basketball Development

What are the differences between the U.S. and European basketball developmental systems I as a European after spending almost 4 years at the United States I am able to compare these two systems and share my thoughts with all the people that follow this blog.

The main difference between these two systems is based on the competitiveness. In Europe kids are forced to play only for the clubs because the basketball

high-school is not developing that much. Usually

these kids are making their first basketball steps at age of 8 and starting to compete at age of 10 playing under the same rules as European professional players. This rule is the actual re

ason why in the last 10 years on the big competitions like Olympics and World

Basketball Championship Europe won more medals comparing to the U.S.. In the U.S. high-school players don't even use the shoot-clock where they are forced to play the slow basketball that doesn't have any similarity with the college or NBA basketball.

The other big thing is basketball camps. Every single European put big emphasis on their work with young talents who get a chance to travel around the Europe and get familiar lots of different basketball approaches and techniques. The only con about working with young kids is that most of them are obligated to sign per contracts at very young age and that doesn't allow them to have some other options like American kids have going to school and playing their sports with still chance to someday become professional players.

The only thing that make me confident that the U.S. is still the center of the basketball is the NBA, the strongest league in the world where even Europeans come to play and what is more important basketball is still a huge part of the American culture

Statistics are on the European side, but my whole point of analyzing these two systems was no to prove which system works better then to give advices for the both sides and try to make them learning from their mistakes and them by coming each other. Another thing is that I didn't mention and it can be very important is population and the size between these two continents. North America is almost three times bigger than Europe with two times more registered basketball players what automatically makes huge advantage for the American over European basketball system.

At the end both sides have lots of open spaces for improvement and what is more important they both are still rising the basketball standards all around the world and doing great job in promoting this sport, but if both of these two sides would work on the problems that I just mentioned they would be one step closer to perfection, one step because being perfect is impossible because no matter what you can always do better.