Rick Pitino believes parents are the problem with American basketball players

As the European development model is compared to AAU, Rick Pitino believes parents are the biggest detriment to American basketball players.

Pitino joined Colin Cowherd’s Fox Sports Radio and FS1 show this week. And during the interview, Cowherd noted how many European players are on Pitino’s roster, asking the St. John’s head coach to measure the domestic basketball product with international development.

“The easiest thing to do is blame the AAU system, and I’m not one of those people that do that,” Pitino answered. “I would rather blame parents than AAU. I think parents today, are way too involved in their children’s careers as far as growing up. The parents need to just sit in the stands, enjoy the game and let the kids develop. And develop a love for the game. 20 years ago, I never dealt with parents.

“I’m very lucky, I’ve got parents that are disciplinarians, they get after their kids,” Pitino noted. “But the ones that aren’t, hurt much more than AAU. They want, ‘Okay, let’s go to a different school next year because you can get $300,000 more.’ No, let’s grind it out where you’re at and play for Tom Izzo and play for this person…because he’s gonna make you a terrific basketball player with discipline and character.”

In recent years, the international game has been credited for developing basketball players through fundamentals, while the United States is often criticized for prioritizing athleticism.

Last month, Kevin Durant weighed in on the discussion, alleging there was an aspect of racism behind the growing sentiment that the European style of developing basketball players is better than what AAU is doing in the U.S. But according to Pitino, it’s not a racism problem, it’s not an AAU problem, it’s not even that Europe is better at developing youth basketball players than the United States, it’s a parent problem.