Bao Renjun: Are there really 25 million basketball players in the United States?

The number of standing athletes registered by the Chinese Basketball Association is about 13,000, Japan's is 750,000, and the United States is 25 million.

It is said that this is what Chairman Yao said, and it has been quoted by many people to illustrate the shortage of reserve talents in mainland basketball.

Are there really 25 million basketball players in the United States of 300 million people?

Today I will talk about this topic, and at the same time, I can understand from this perspective how basketball talents in the United States are cultivated.

First of all, there is no basketball association in the United States, and the closest basketball association we understand should be USAB (USA Basketball). The agency, certified by FIBA and the U.S. Olympic Committee, is a civic organization that nominally regulates U.S. basketball. The organization was founded in 1974 with the main task of organizing the United States National Team competitions. In non-Olympic years, the revenue is about $20 million, and their charters, tax information and so on can be found online. In name, because the major basketball institutions in the United States, such as the NBA, NCAA, etc., are only members in name, and the USAB does not have any operational command over these organizations.

Since there is no national basketball association, basketball talent in the United States should be accumulated from all levels. Then we will from the level of career, college, high school, youth and youth, we focus on the men's basketball team, and occasionally mention the women's basketball team, if there is no special marking, the numbers that appear in the text refer to men.

Professional leagues in the United States, in addition to the familiar NBA, WNBA, etc., have long existed some semi-professional leagues, and even now, there are still about 10 professional leagues in operation, such as ABA, NABL, etc. These semi-professional leagues often work for a few years and turn yellow, and the replacement is relatively fast. In addition to the traditional leagues, there have been new leagues in recent years, the somewhat famous is 3-on-3, and Maddie also played a 1-on-1.

These professional leagues, only the NBA, WNBA, G League is considered a high-level league, other professional leagues, most athletes have other identities, such as playing college, or have a short NBA experience. Since the NBA now has a lot of international players, the basketball talent in the United States is about a few hundred, which is negligible compared to the tens of millions of talent reserves we are talking about.

The real basketball talent pool in the United States should be at the university level.

The American university league, in addition to the NCAA we are familiar with, there are many leagues such as NAIA and NJCAA. There are nearly 4,000 colleges in the United States, and about 1,400 four-year colleges have basketball programs. Many local universities, although not well known, offer scholarships for basketball programs. In addition to four-year colleges, some community colleges and other basketball programs also have basketball programs, and Netflix has a film Last Chance U (Last Hope), which is based on a community college basketball player in Los Angeles.

According to a 2020 NCAA statistic, there are about 25,000 college basketball players in the United States, and these people are considered basketball talents. Of those 25,000 players, about 5,500 play in NCAA Division 1. These 5,500 players can be regarded as basketball elites. As an analogy, it's probably the base of our CBA youth team.

Such a huge college basketball relies on the input of even larger high school basketball talents.

There are about 27,000 high schools in the United States, including 24,000 public high schools and 3,000 private high schools. There are about 17,000 high schools in the United States with basketball teams, and a total of 550,000 high school students participate in basketball games. On average, there are about 30 students per high school, which seems counterintuitive. This is because many high school basketball teams are divided into two teams, one for the official game and one for the reserve. Others participate in multiple sports at the same time or drop out.

There are 15 million high school students in the United States, about 7.5 million boys, and 550,000 is about 7% of the total. The percentage of female high school basketball players is 400,000, which is slightly lower.

Such a large high school basketball crowd is a stable talent pool in the United States. Each state has its own tournament, which is divided into different echelons depending on the size of the school. Each state has its own champion, but there is no national champion, and many media say that the first high school in the United States is selected by the media.

If we add up all the above numbers, it is less than 1 million people, which is far from 25 million, so where does all this difference come from?

That's a much bigger group, youth basketball.

The so-called youth basketball generally refers to below high school, including junior high school and elementary school. Every school in the United States, whether elementary or junior high, even if it is very small, with only 100 students, will have a sports program. According to the geographical location of the school, different projects are generally divided into different seasons, and basketball is basically a winter sport, staggered with football, rugby, etc.

These elementary and junior high school competitions do not have any threshold. Even if you've never touched a ball or received a day of basketball training, you can play in many places. Most of these competitions are supported by schools and organized by parents as volunteers. The coaches of the team, who are basically parents, use their spare time to organize children's competitions. Generally speaking, it is a weekly competition, some parents arrange one practice per week, some arrange 2 exercises, there is no unified way.

These youth basketballs, more like community basketball, although they are attached to the school, but from the participants to the organizational form, it is more about community mutual aid. In other places, competitions are simply organized by community centers, and schools have become auxiliaries.

In the teenage years, players whose level stands out and are significantly higher than their peers tend to participate in AAU games, which focus on digging grassroots basketball, although they have excavated many stars, but they are also criticized by many people and are considered to develop children too early.

According to statistics, the number of American teenagers older than 6 who play basketball at least once a year is 27 million, playing more than 13 times a year, similar to participating in school or community-organized games, the number of people is about 9 million.

These school-based, community-organized games support the huge basketball reserve force in the United States. They are not basketball talents in our traditional sense, most of them ended their "basketball career" in junior high school, but these games are the gold rush machine of American basketball talents, is a huge screener, only you have a little basketball talent, you have the opportunity to stand out in the game, plus a certain opportunity and effort, maybe you can play the first echelon of the NCAA, or even the NBA.

The 25 million basketball players in the United States, the largest group is these teenagers, I can't find the mainland's youth basketball talent base, but I think both the total number and the proportion, should be much smaller than this number.

If we want the national team to achieve results, in addition to demanding coaches and players, there is still a long way to go in the cultivation of reserve talents.