SHAW

Basketball has unofficially become an upper middle class & rich persons sport. It cost anywhere between $30-100 per hour to get a kid basketball training & to play on AAU teams can cost anywhere from $300-600 and that’s without travel, hotels, food, gas, new shoes, etc. Today if a kid isn’t getting trained year round they almost have no chance of making the NBA and the average American parent doesn’t have the funds or time to invest into development. Historically, players that came from low income backgrounds is what made the NBA because they play with a flair, passion & hunger that typically comes from not having much (LeBron, Magic, Kareem, Wilt, Iverson, Isiah Thomas, Shaq, KD, D Wade, D Rose, KG, Westbrook, Harden, etc). Today’s NBA is filled with mostly players that come from upper middle class, well to do families or foreigners and that’s why it seems so uncompetitive and passionless which is why the ratings are way down. It’s so much money in youth basketball today so it’ll never go back to how it once was & them doubling down on prioritizing foreign players doesn’t help with the average American interest. I believe within 15 years the NBA will be completely irrelevant in America.