**Austin Rivers**: *”Nowsdays kids only watch highlights, they don’t watch actual basketball games, the purity of the game. Making a hockey pass, diving on the floor, talking on defence, playing defence at all, shooting good shots, making the game easy, scoring of 1 or 2 dribbles instead of 15 dribbles, this whole thing has been forgotten about in basketball.”*
Link to video: https://twitter.com/ballislife/status/1615016039628038144?s=46&t=wwaFNU82KU9E-oDqwi1PeQ
by ParisLake2
34 Comments
Austin Rivers had a HoF worthy HS mixtape
if scouts and GMs don’t adjust, that’s on them
>Nowsdays kids only watch highlights, they don’t watch actual basketball games
Hey, low blow.
And here comes Austin Rivers
If you played sports growing up or been around youth sports you’d know how crazy some of these parents are. They make it more about them than their own kid
Nowadays, kids only watch highlights because it’s available. That’s why mixtape was popular. Kids before didn’t even watch highlights. So many families cannot afford cable for the kid to sit down and watch a full NBA game. How many could afford $100/mo cable? It’s rarely available OTA.
Also, his criticism applies to like 1% of active NBA players.
AAU has been hurting youth development, a lot do young nba prospects don’t engage defensively, can’t shoot free throws , the style of AAU doesn’t translate to playing winning basketball and some kids are taught how to play real ball because of athleticism or size
I disagree, guys are covered more intensely now. I don’t even follow high-school ball like that and I know Cooper Flagg and The Boozer twins, and so many other names. You used to would only know one or two guys and they’d appear like demi gods thinks to those mixtapes. Now we know that Mikey Williams is a great athlete, but doesn’t play a lick of defense, etc.
Ballislife used to never miss with those hs mixtapes. Rivers, Zion, AD, John Wall, DeMar, D Rose, and so many other NBA players had INSANE hs mixtapes. Also used to love watching the likes of dudes that never made it to the league like Aquille Carr, Marcus Lovett jr, Shaq Johnson, etc. they were all so entertaining to watch
As an older person, it’s fascinating to hear this take from Austin Rivers because you could just as well paste that quote into the year 1996, when critics were up in arms about the SportsCenterfication of the game.
Every day it seems more apparent that a number of narratives are graciously passed down from generation from generation.
Edit: I’m referring to this quote, not the one in the thread title.
>”Nowsdays kids only watch highlights, they don’t watch actual basketball games, the purity of the game. Making a hockey pass, diving on the floor, talking on defence, playing defence at all, shooting good shots, making the game easy, scoring of 1 or 2 dribbles instead of 15 dribbles, this whole thing has been forgotten about in basketball.”
He ain’t lying. His mixtape top 10 lmao
In my day…same old stories generation after generation.
He isnt lying about highlight culture. Any casual nba fan does not actually watch games
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I don’t think any of this is new, each generation views the next this way, but I will say on my nephews’ young travel team there isn’t a kid who can hit a left hand layup but all of them willingly throw up step backs. At that age just executing simple passes & shots is a cheat code.
games gone innit
Watching tons of full games has never been normal. People used to legit just read the box score of the game in the newspaper the next day, and watch or listen to a game every once in a while.
Basketball has always been a sport most people “keep up with” more so than than watching every game. Its closer to baseball in that regard than it is to the NFL
I agree to an extent. Yeah everyone got a mixtape now but I don’t blame parents paying for it because those mixtapes get kids scholarships. Highlight culture definitely has had a lot of influence on players but it’s kinda always been like this. Globetrotters influenced players of the 60s-90s, AND1 influenced players of the 2000s, and now mixtape culture influences this generation but I do think majority of all NBA players are basketball junkies.
The good thing is that in the end, talent and ability to lead your team to victory will win out. Sports is a meritocracy. No coach is going to care about a mixtape. NBA talent has never been better, none of this stuff matters to the quality of play at the highest level. And if some kids are goofing off more in high school play, who is it that cares exactly?
Austin Rivers adjusted his game some, but he was also a star recruit who liked to score and averaged only 2.1 assists at Duke. If the culture is broken now it was back then too.
“it worked out well for me but fuck all these other kids”
Man I am old as hell if Austin Rivers is doing the back in my day bit now.
Bit ironic that ballislife posted the interview lol
Are people expecting nuance from a guy who is literally 50% Doc Rivers?
>highlight culture has absolutely killed the game of basketball
Also rocketed it to be one of the most popular sports internationally. Highlight culture helps contracts be as big as they are, helps young players make a name for themselves, helps future stars market themselves.
I feel like this has Curry 2015 energy, like when people said “Steph ruined basketball because young kids just want to chuck 3s”. Sure, there will be kids that chuck 3s, They won’t make it to the league.
Well kinda makes sense honestly. Nowadays an influencer on social media can give you the views that you could only obtain back then with major sports networks. Highly doubt that scouts are only looking at mixtapes though lol
He’s not wrong about highlight culture in general, but I was a kid when Austin was a kid, and people were complaining about highlights being the focus back then. It’s not really kids “nowadays,” it’s more the post SportsCenter landscape.
RIP basketball
Stop playing super star favorites and not everything is a foul. There, I saved the game. It’s too simple. The nba is essentially selling highlights to 14 year olds until the playoffs and then wonders why it’s ratings are in the toilet. Why do you think 11 million people are turning into every march madness game, basketball isn’t dead.
Explains why 4 of the top 5-6 players in the league are foreign.
He’s not wrong. It’s the ESPN-ification of sports. It’s all based on highlight stuff. ESPN will show you some 360 dunk and the guy hangs on the rim, then you check the box score and see that guy shot 3 for 13, and committed 5 turnovers.
Same reason why TikTok has kids thinking Lamelo Ball is the best player in the NBA. No knock on him, but it’s indicative of the highlight culture in sports the last handful of years.
Who knew Austin Rivers would be the one to say it out loud?
This is true that for the general landscape of the sport highlight culture is kinda bad, but the good teams, good coaches and most importantly smart players will still understand what’s important and translates well going into higher levels. This isn’t really going to impact higher levels of talent tbh, just going to make more pretenders famous that’s all.