Words by Lee Hubbard

High school club basketball, often referred to as AAU basketball, has attracted a negative reputation over the course of the past couple years. The NCAA, along with various media members, have been quick to point the blame on the AAU game and its so-called problems, ranging from the lack of teaching fundamentals and the corrupt culture that some believe exist.

All, however, is not as bad as it seems.

Strangely enough, this development has occurred at the same time as AAU basketball has seen an explosion in reach and influence. Responding to the bad rap, top club team coaches from all over the country joined together in 2007 to form Grassroots Basketball of America (GBOA), a national organization created to give a foundation and structure to club basketball.

One of the main people behind the GBOA formation is current president Gary Charles, the founder of the New York Panthers and one of the veteran pillars of the club basketball circuit. “I had been having these ideas for a while, to clean up the game and to create a unified voice when it comes to grassroots basketball,” Charles said.

“So after Team USA lost in the 2004 Olympics, and the NBA and college basketball coaches started making a lot of noise about AAU basketball and the decline of American basketball, I decided to call a few guys in the grassroots basketball community to explore the possibility of unifying ourselves,” he added.

Various long-time prominent coaches from across the nation were contacted in order to start setting up a long-term structure for AAU basketball. Thus, GBOA was formed, with various organizations _ such as the Atlanta Celtics, Arkansas Hawks, Texas Blue Chips, Belmont Shore, DC Assault, Boo Williams, SYF Players, EBO, Illinois Warriors and Albany City Rocks _ as the founding members.

“The idea was to clean up the game,” said Charles. “We want to start stressing the teaching of fundamentals and to disassociate ourselves from the negative reputation that the AAU game had come to represent. All of us were lumped together into AAU basketball, when in fact most of us simply play club basketball.”

While Charles said that AAU basketball is very strong when it comes to youth basketball, pre-high school, he wanted people to know that AAU basketball is different. “My idea was that we had to get guys from all of the various shoe companies as well as independent teams involved,” he said Charles.

NCAA Division I college coaches such as Kansas’ Bill Self, Georgia Tech’s Paul Hewitt, Villanova’s Jay Wright and Virginia’s Dave Leito serve as advisory board members. Two years into its formation, the GBOA has had some major successes as a grassroots basketball organization.

In 2007, GBOA created regional tournaments, similar to the NCAA tournament with various club teams from their regions playing in the West, East, South and Midwest areas of the country. 

The organization held a national GBOA Challenge of Champions in Las Vegas just prior to the three major national summer tourneys in Nevada. D-I Greyhounds beat Southeast Elite for the title.

High-profile players that completed in the tournament include: Brandon Jennings, Kenny Boynton, Renaldo Woolridge, Jordan Hamilton, Tristan Thompson, Sylvan Landesburg, William Buford, Courtney Fortson, Brandon Knight, Mike Rosario, Terrence Jennings and Quincy Acy.

Former NBA star Scottie Pippen was on hand to conduct a skills work-out for all the participating players present. Washington-bound Clarence Trent, now a YouTube sensation, captured the slam-dunk contest crown while Pippen and Memphis Grizzlies guard OJ Majo judged the competition.

Besides hooping it up on the court, GBOA’s Education Director, Dr. James Dye, has also constructed the framework of a player educational program that is expected to be fully implemented in 2009.

This year, Charles wants to continue the concept of having teams play in regional GBOA tournaments with a 32 team tournament taking place just before the start of the major July tournaments in Las Vegas. “We also want to establish an annual national banquet in the near future to give out awards to previous GBOA players and top teams,” Charles said.

Additionally, Charles wants to implement basketball coaches education into the GBOA apparatus and make sure that all coaches who coach club team basketball are certified to do so in accordance with criteria that the NCAA would approve. “We want to organize clinics with college coaches to certify as well as educate these grassroots coaches,” Charles said.

Other areas of concern he wants addressed include protecting the rights of players, stopping the team-to-team jumping by players, and most importantly, having the GBOA grow further.  “I always felt it could be done, but there is so much more that still needs to be done,” Charles said.