Early Specialization in Basketball
by: Brian McCormick, author of Cross Over

Because we concentrate on sport-specific skills, more coaches encourage early specialization – when an athlete plays one sport year-round to the exclusion of other sports before puberty. Athletic development is a process, and early specialization attempts to speed the process.

However, is the goal to dominate as a 10-year-old? Early specialization leads to early peaks. Players improve their sport-specific skills more rapidly than those who participate in a wide range of activities. However, those who develop deeper and broader athletic skills have a better foundation. While those who specialize early hit a plateau, the others improve as they dedicate more time to enhancing their sport-specific skill.

If a 10-year-old specializes in basketball, he improves his dribbling, shooting and understanding of the game more rapidly than his peers who play multiple sports, while his peers develop many other athletic skills. If his peers play soccer, they improve their vision, agility, footwork and more; if they play football, they improve acceleration and power. When these athletes specialize in basketball at 15-years-old, they have broader athletic skills and an advantage against the player who specialized early and hits a plateau in his skill development.

“The growth of sports has led to parents a lot of times having their kids specializing at a young age [in order to] get a college scholarship,” Dr. Brenner says. “There is nothing to show that starting this young is going to get them there.”

The truth, however, is that the players who receive the scholarships are the better athletes. The irony of early specialization is that players specialize to “gain a competitive advantage” or “to get ahead,” but the better athlete has the advantage. Before one can be great at any sport, he must be an athlete, and early specialization impedes overall athletic development.

Because we misunderstand the athletic development process and place a higher priority on sport-specific skills like shooting and dribbling, we miss the athletic skills that underlie every sport-specific technique and underestimate the importance of general athletic skills in sports performance. When we see a player catch, shoot and make a jump shot, we notice his shooting technique. However, we miss the athletic skills like deceleration, hand-eye coordination, visual acuity, fine motor control, depth perception, balance, strength, power and coordination. Without these general athletic skills, the player would not exhibit the perfect technique.

Many basketball coaches prefer their players to play basketball year-round rather than playing soccer or volleyball. Coaches feel like the court time that the players miss is far more valuable than the time wasted playing another sport.

When we learn that LeBron James played high school football or Steve Nash played soccer and did not play basketball until around 12-years-old or that 2009 NBA 2nd Round pick Chase Budinger was a high school All-American in volleyball, we figure that these players could play multiple sports because they are great athletes. However, we never credit their late specialization and multi-lateral development as the reason why they are great athletes.

More children choose to specialize in one sport at earlier and earlier ages to improve their competitive opportunities despite the arguments against early specialization:

The more a player develops his general athletic skills, the higher his ceiling in his chosen sport. Early specialization leads to early sport-specific development and immediate performance gains. However, early peaks accompany the early development, and over the course of one’s athletic career, the early specialization has a detrimental effect. In the Swedish study, “what was most significant was that many players who had been superior to the eventual elite while in the 12-14 age group had dropped out-been burned out-of the sport,” (Launder).

Considering that less than 3% of high school basketball players play competitive college basketball, what do children gain through specialization? What do children lose when they specialize early?

Four Arguments Against Early Specialization

1. Multilateral Development
2. Periodization
3. Overuse Injuries
4. Fun
1. Multilateral Development

Playing multiple sports increases an athlete’s multilateral development and develops bio-motor qualities like Strength, Speed, Endurance, Flexibility and Coordination. A strong, balanced foundation enhances sports performance. Athletes who only play basketball develop with a more shallow foundation.

“Between the ages of 6 – 14, athletes should be focused primarily on developing fundamental proficiency in as many athletic skills as possible. Running, jumping, throwing, lateral movement, spatial orientation. The fundamental components of ANY sport are based on movement ability…” (Grasso).


2. Periodization

Playing multiple sports creates a natural periodization. Periodization is the process of planning one’s training to peak for important games or competitions. For young athletes, playing multiple sports breaks the year into different seasons which keep the young athlete mentally, physically and psychologically fresh.

In the year-round basketball environment, there is no periodization, as players play year-round without any off-season or down time to rest, recover mentally and physically or train one’s weaknesses. Consequently, there is a precipitous drop in play during the final week of the summer evaluation period. As a Division I Assistant Coach told me, “I think burnout is a problem because the kids play too many summer games. Also, injuries occur because a lot of teams do not take breaks during the summer recruiting period.”

3. Overuse Injuries

The year-round basketball and repetitive movements lead to muscle imbalances and tightness, which decrease flexibility and performance. Consequently, the incidence of overuse injuries has increased dramatically in the past 10 years as more athletes specialize. The American Academy of Pediatrics, advises that “youngsters should be discouraged from specializing in a single sport before adolescence to avoid physical and psychological damage. The risks range from ‘overuse’ injuries such as stress fractures to delayed menstruation, eating disorders, emotional stress and burnout.”

Athletes undergo tremendous repetitive stress on muscles, joints and ligaments unprepared for the year-round training. Without a gradual progression from general to specific and a complimentary conditioning program to balance bio-motor training, athletes’ bodies break down and the breakdown manifests as an overuse injury.

The New York Times wrote about the increasing frequency of hip injuries, and while no long term studies have explained the new frequency of injuries, some blame the early start to youth sports:

Dr. Bryan T. Kelly, a surgeon at the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan…said he did not believe it was a coincidence that “I get 40 hockey players in a six-week period at the end of the season all coming into my office with the same-looking bone structure in their hips, all saying that they have been skating since they were 3 years old.”

Kelly added, “I believe we are seeing some consequences from having our kids over the past few decades playing sports more at younger ages.”

4. Fun

Finally, and most importantly, playing different sports is fun. Young athletes engage in different activities with new teammates, coaches and social environments.

With little to gain through early specialization, why are parents, coaches and young athletes in a hurry to rush the developmental process? Presently, 70% of athletes quit sports by age 13 and most athletes never play competitively in college. If the goal is to dominate other 10-year-olds, specialize. However, if the goal is to nurture healthy children and give them an opportunity to participate in high school and/or college athletics, playing multiple sports offers a child more developmentally than does early specialization.

At its most basic level, youth sports provide a foundation for athletic participation throughout one’s life. A multilateral approach to training prepares young athletes for athletic participation in a variety of activities throughout their lifetime.

Early Specialization

Is it still difficult to understand how a player can burn out at 18-years-old? Adults fail to understand because, to an adult, basketball is playing – it is recreation and fun. However, fun vanished when around age nine, as a player trained to excel 50 weeks per year for years.

In today’s culture, we expect single-minded dedication from our teenage heroes. We treat players like mini-professionals with their personal trainers, private facilities and 100-game per year schedule.

It was onces said: “I’d rather be a face for happiness and doing things that you have a passion for, rather than faking it and pretending like I’m this face of basketball when I can’t stand the sport at all.”

We easily dismiss a young athlete’s fatigue and callously assume that this generation is soft. However, physical, psychological and physiological burnout happens more often than we believe. Placing young kids in a pre-professional environment adversely affects young athletes and these effects are not fully understood because previous generations developed differently.

In basketball, there is no need to peak at 16 years of age because an elite player has 15-20 more years to play. However, the window for basketball does not even start until players are 18 and playing college basketball. Therefore, it fails to justify the early specialization and overtraining of a young basketball player, unless the goal is to dominate the high school level and retire.

I have seen many players suffer from burnout. Young players should play for fun. Parents want to provide their kids with the best opportunity for success, so they play for a more competitive teams with a more demanding coach. Parents see the competition and decide to use a trainer to enhance their child’s opportunities. The kid follows directions and goes where they are told. Toward the end of high school, they looks around and compare their existence to their peer’s and wonders what it is like to be normal. As her college decision approaches, they have second thoughts as they imagine another four years without control of her own life. In most cases, the commit and play college basketball because it is the only way that they can afford to go to college. However, I have worked with players who turned their backs on scholarships and preferred to work and be a normal student.

It is not shocking. In this environment, players lose their sense of self. People overlook their adolescence because of their advanced basketball skill set.

“How could [you] get to be the best if you don’t have some passion for it?” Auriemma asks. “It would’ve come out a long time before. A lot of kids probably don’t like playing piano, but I don’t know that you become the best if you don’t like it at all. At some point, you would screw it up on purpose, wouldn’t you?”

The point isn’t that kids lacked a passion for the game. Instead, their schedule dampened their passion. They played because they liked the team camaraderie, competition and other aspects of playing high school basketball. They lost their enthusiasm because they were pushed to be too competitive and too good at too young of an age. At nine, they trained to be a basketball player rather than playing, and the accumulation of training, expectations, and competition eventually led to emotional and physical burnout.

Buy Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development as a paperback or as an e-book. 207-page book divided into four major age groupings and four major skill categories (Athletic, Psychological, Tactical and Technical).

“Brian McCormick hits a home run with his book on youth basketball…This is one of the few sources that is a quality book that hits the mark for players and coaches. I recommend it highly.” – Jerry Krause, Nat’l. Assoc. of Basketball Coaches Research Chairman