Player Expectations

Cool.  Spring AAU season's here. Kevin, tell the people, how you feeling about Rise as One, the Basketball Factory plans, expectations. I know that leans a little bit into the topic we're going to talk about. Introduce the audience to who you are and what has you excited for the spring?

What I think just to piggyback on what you said about the spring obviously we do a year round program. Like most programs that come back in the spring. We go year round. Also, we've been prepping for this the whole year knowing that actually, Kev, before even getting into that, why don't you just introduce yourself first?

I'm trippin Introduce yourself. Who are you for the people who are just listening out of the blue?  Yeah, for the new people that don't know me at all,  Kevin Houston played  10 years of professional basketball. The original one absolutely played at university of Miami. Even further than that, played at Seward County community college, transferred into the university of Miami, then transferred again to St.

Bonaventure. Brooklyn kid went to John Jay high school in Brooklyn. Same, but a whole bunch of more famous guys than me that went to John Jay high school. I've come from a a great high school.  Great basketball background with a lot of my family members playing ball. Yeah, that's me in a nutshell I could sit here there and bless you all my awards But you know that would take a long time I want to just say people to trouble I was a great, you know I was a great player that I was a fortunate to be on great teams with great teammates.

So  Yeah, that's I think  That's pretty much who I am.  All right. Now I'll get into it. Spring AAU, you're the director of RISE as one AAU club. Introduce RISE, talk about the Basketball Factory and let's get into it.  Yeah. AAU wise, like we've been going year round, so we, I have a program that we do AAU, but it's not your typical AAU, whether you meet once a year or twice a year, you I have kids that play, you go around from, fall to right now to, to the spring, summer winter.

This is our Superbowl, we lead up, we try to prepare ourself as much as possible leading into the spring season and we don't have that much turnover. Although this year was an unusual year with.  having a ton of kids. I don't know where these kids came from but I'm glad that the program is growing to give you an indication piece of how many kids that came this spring or our AU program on a typical year on the probably let's go by my best year, but my best year my best year was, Back when I had two courts and the most I've ever had was 74. 

So this year coming into this year I was expecting just to retain the kids that has always came to my program, but then we had an explosion, especially middle school of 97 middle schoolers, not your typical 74. So I think from that standpoint shows me we're on the right path of doing things because I'm pretty sure these kids wouldn't have came unless, and I don't do that much advertising.

Okay. You don't mean I'm not a social media guy. I'm not on social media a lot. I send out, email campaigns to just my parents. So to have that many kids is really impressive, but I'm really happy because I feel like the kids that have been in my program the longest, I think they are getting new teammates that, you've seen it.

They're more talented. They're more talented kids that are in the program and I'm excited to have them there and I'm excited to coach them and develop them over the next couple of years.  Definitely worth congratulating. Just seeing progression. Not only have I been a player, but not only helping you coach and train these kids, it's always nice to see your standard as for local basketball in the area to just exceed your expectations.

But really just leaning into expectations. We wanted to hop on this podcast and talk about player expectations. Before we even dive into player expectations, do you have any expectations out of the spring leading into the summer, any goals, things you're looking forward to?  I have goals.

I have expectations like anything. Just, I had a parent's meeting last week and we talked about a lot of this stuff. Last week, and I think  especially for me being in that area, because being in different areas, you should have different expectations, right? If you're in an area that is producing year after year, division one players, I can't have that same expectations on my kids that these other areas have on theirs because we frankly are not a basketball area.

We've become a basketball area. Because the atmosphere we've created at Rises 1 but we're not necessarily per se, everyone thinks of, okay, Northern Jersey has as a hotbed for basketball, but I think we've created something. And so my, my, my expectations, especially with the kids with the coaches, with anything is let's have a standard, let's stand for something.

And what that is, If you come to our program, you're going to work hard. You know that you're going to do a certain amount of work  to get you ready and prepared.  So for us, me, it's about setting a standard and holding the kids to the standard. And I think everyone who comes to my program realizes that, Hey he's going to, we're going to practice hard.

We're going to practice the right way. We're going to practice like a college atmosphere where I have you on schedule and we're doing stuff as if we were a college now we're not. Okay. But my thing, my thinking is if we can get on a schedule of a college program, then we're setting these kids up for success.

Okay. Also, a lot of my background is European. So a lot of my drills that I do is a lot of European stuff in which you're sharing a ball, you're moving the ball, balls, not sticky. So for my expectation this year really is just to develop the new kids, continue developing the kids that have been in my program and the parents have been in my program for, for the last three years.

And basically get some of the newer kids on the same schedule as the kids who are in my program. And in doing this, I think you create a continuity that, it might pay off this year, but I think in the next few years, I think if you can get them on the same schedule, I think it will pay off. And in the long run, I think a lot of  AU stuff is short term.

This it's like a microwave success. Okay, they come over to, they're supposed to win right away. They're supposed to do all this stuff right away. And then when it doesn't happen,  whether it be the director or the kid okay, I'm done. I'm going to go somewhere else and try it again, but it doesn't work that way.

Especially for areas like ours, like I'm such a developer that I tell the parents like, Hey, especially the new players are coming in this year that it's going to take a while. It may take the whole season. It may take two, two more seasons.  It's no different than learning at school. It takes a while for the kids to understand what you want, what the expectation is, because a lot of these kids are coming from programs.

That they have no expectations. Like no  cash or cash out cash in cash out, but here you have expectations because you cannot let your teammate down. I'm a big team guy and playing for one another. I, we got our hands full, but we got to this group. And I told you this when I put it together, this group of kids.

They feel different. They're different than the last group. And I feel like they're more engaged in basketball. They're more eager than ever. We also have younger age groups. So I think that's gonna, that helps because we're having younger age groups comes at excitement for practice, come for that hunger for learning.

Yeah, I'm very excited. I'm very excited. Having a lot of these new kids and seeing what they can do. And. And I'm a developer. So anytime I can sit there and develop talented kids, that's what I want to do.  Something I think that goes unnoticed, so to speak, and not just your club, or basketball and other sports is How set, how unique setting standard is relevant to how society portrays it and really what effects it has in long term success for these kids.

The reality is what's the percentage one, two, 3 percent people actually get to play at the collegiate level, let alone division one or two. Instilling, these disciplines and behaviors and structures for these kids in these kinds of communal environments and sports right within your gym  is useful and necessary, right.

To help introduce them to the real world, teamwork in the working environment when you get to the university level.  And again, player to coach in regards to my relationship with you in this professional realm. It's definitely something I've seen useful for myself and my peers, right? And other individuals that went on to play college basketball and seeing some of the kids we've coached, right?

To see how it translates and how well prepared they are and seeing their outcomes. But yeah, shout out to you in that regard. But really, to get into it, man, player expectations. I know you briefly mentioned your expectations or goals, as you recall,  into what you're looking for this spring and this summer. 

But I think something that needs to be vocalized or shared or discussed is player expectations. A lot of players have expectations, in different realms, right? We could talk about  skill expectations, right? They think they have a certain skill set and then when they go to these games and they're essentially failing, they think they've set such a high bar of expectation, how good they are, that they get disappointed due to the lack of influence from, rental input or, coaches that have, don't have their  well being and first thought, what are your thoughts on just that, that particular segment of player expectation, kids and their skill sets. 

Yeah it's a different day and age. We've had numerous conversations about this where  kids expectations don't meet their work habits.  And I think that's the biggest thing. When you look at, again, my background's from Europe. So you'll hear me talk about Europe compared to the United States.

So in Europe, and I believe Luca Dots has talked about this. There, there's a, there's an interview about him saying this. That they,  in Europe, they practice more than they play, right? And because they do that, they're high skill guys. So look at all this, I'm talking about skill guys, I'm not talking about who's the best, I'm talking about plain skill.

If you talk about the plain skill, who's the highest, whether you're talking about the girls games or the guys game, it's gotta be your European,  right? Because they're in academies that are just drilling them about skill. We're in the United States. I feel like they're more like gameplay.

Okay. What about the games Kevin? What do you know game? Where's our game? but where's our games and they're playing games more than they practice on the skill and Because of that they have an expectation that oh,  I should be here right because they're playing all these games And sometimes, especially as a young age, this is what I find is  as opposed to do, like someone has expectation while they're young and someone has expectation while they're older.

When you're younger and you say you're at the middle school age where you have expectation, you don't know.  So you think you belong, right? You think Hey, I'm the best player in my area. I should be X, Y, Z. I I'm, I should be here. But you don't realize like the amount of people in the United States that are striving for the same thing that you are striving for until you go and you play  different teams.

Now you start realizing like, Oh, I'm not as good as what I thought, right? You need to have that honest conversation with yourself saying, maybe I'm not, or you could fool yourself by saying. Oh, I'm not at that level because of so and I'm not at that level because of the team I'm playing for. I'm not at that level because of whatever.

Where as an older person, I believe in high school, I think by the time you get to 10th or 11th you realize where you are in the pecking order. Okay? Because  If you, if it's not you that, that don't realize it, the college coaches do, and they tell you by  whether or not they're contacting you, whether or not they're offering you, whether, so you get you'll get constant feedback where you are.

And you'd be surprised. A lot of people think that they are division one players. And then by the end of it they're sometimes not even a division three player where they don't even go on to college. So I think player expectations. You got to be real with yourself and you got to, the most important thing about that, because I went through the process is you got to have people around you telling you the truth.

If you don't have a good support support camp that is basically helping you through the whole process. And that person who's helping you or people that are helping you are not telling you the truth.  They're basically doing you a disservice because at the end, you're You know, everyone's going to, the college coaches are going to be telling you. 

And I think a testament to that practice in regards to the European style. Look at, just in regards to the NBA, man, Europe is taking over, right? The Luka Dances of the world, the Yokushas of the world, right? Even this upcoming NBA draft, I think under the projected top 20 picks, I think 70 percent of them are coming over from Europe, right?

And it's slowly been increasing for the past couple years. Yeah, I think you touched on a lot of good stuff. One thing I think segues really well into this next topic is, How this lack of realistic expectation  translates to, college coaches, right? Which is essentially the end goal for a lot of these players wanting to compete at the next level.

Can you speak a little bit on the expectations or I guess I don't want to be cold and say unrealistic expectations, or I guess we could lean on just the lack of awareness in terms of expectations from a player or parent when it comes to the opportunity to play in college and the correlation of their already existing skill sets and how it compares to other kids. 

Yeah, I think you're right on that. I think you, you have to say,  you don't want to put kids down and say, Hey, your dream, you're never going to accomplish that, right? You never want to crush their dreams because look, I didn't even know I was going to do the things that I did in my career until I start setting goals and stuff like that. 

I think being realistic is probably the most important thing that kids, Nowadays, I just don't think they have I think they do set unrealistic goals because when you look at the numbers of things of making a division one team or division eight, let's take the visual out of the equation. Okay.

Because most of my kids in my area are D2 players and they turn into division one players based off of their work habits.  It's hard to make D1, D2, and even D3, people don't understand the difference between all three levels. And I get asked this quite a bit size, yeah, and it's always size.  You can find a great guard at the division three level that can poop against a division one guard, right?

It's the size of the guard though, because now sometimes at the division three level, he's six foot, but then you're dealing with a guard that's six, four at the division one level. So it's mainly, and it's not so much the guards. It's so much the bigs. The bigs are truly bigs. I remember I was playing in Miami and I can't, my background was great.

I came from the number one junior college conference in the country where they were producing at least 20 to 30 division one athletes out of that conference every single year. And it was known, the J Hawk conference, it was known in Kansas that it was the number one, if you wanted to do anything in Juco basketball and go to the next level to the video one, you had to go to the J Hawk conference.

So when I, and we had guys, we had, in fact, we had three NBA guys, my year that I played, we had a guy got, it was like seven, three, okay. That ended up getting dropped. I forget his name.  He was seven, three  piece.  I've never seen a guy at Chicago level that tall before, right?

But I only seen him once a year.  I only seen him once a year. Just so you're talking about, you're talking about the division one level when I got to Miami. Now I'm seeing guys on an everyday basis. Not only my teammates, right? The inside players are tall. The guards, we had a guy named Johnny Hemsley.

Like he 6'6 dynamite, absolutely electric with the ball, right? I'm going against him in practice. John Sammons, who, was another NBA guy played at least 10 years in the NBA. I'm playing alongside him. So for me, it's that is the biggest difference when you're talking about division one, division two, division three, because I think young kids, they get in their mind that all division three is bad.

No it's actually quite good. If you go to a game. It's actually pretty good basketball, man. You got good, you got great coaches at that level. That's going to coach you up, but it's just on a smaller scale. So I think having a realistic expectation  of saying, all right now, my level is division two. 

I just don't think people are humble enough to tell themself that it's too easy and it rolls off the tongue too easy saying, I'm a division one player.  It's 1 percent man.  And I talked about is 1 percent that makes it to that level. And I'm talking about all around the country, all around the world, but now you got Europeans that are jumping in there, right?

You got us guys coming in here. So it's. It's not easy and the way people talk about it nowadays Oh, she's also a Division 1 player, she's also a Division 1 player. Oil and sport. Please, I wasn't a Division 1 player. I did not make Division 1 right out of high school. Okay. I made junior college.

I think just, I guess really just to fine tune the language. I think when we speak of being realistic with players, I like to lean a little bit on being more realistic on just the environment and the ecosystem. Once you're able to really see the ecosystem wow, like numerically, it's extremely difficult to compete at certain levels.

I think, like you said, it starts to humble players and parents towards, okay let's look at basketball or AAU or school team in a different light. Rather than, oh, we need the division one thing or we deserve it. It's more so what, life skills or what disciplines can we pull from these experiences while still being in shape and having potentially the opportunity to compete.

at that level.  But as I said earlier, a huge part of expectations relies on parents. The kids go home, parents have opinions, whether they play professionally or even play basketball or not there's definitely an influence on children's behavior, how they look at the game, how they play the game, right?

Can you speak a little bit on, parental level? 

Yeah, I've been fortunate enough to have been around a lot of parents, especially my parents, who are realistic. So I don't really deal with that a lot. Okay. There are parents that come to me that are unrealistic, but as and everyone knows who knows me I'm going to tell the truth. So I really am very honest with kids because again, I'm in an area that, Really, these kids are coming, the better kids are always coming to me every year, right?

I have a program in which all the better kids are coming to my program. For me, I don't need to lie to them like other programs need to do to retain them. I don't need to say and neither would I do it, say Hey, you're a Division 1 player. And I don't handle those type of compliments.

With some of the parents though because some of the parents talk to each other and I think they get information from each other I think that's where I find the disconnect because they talk to one another and they exchange information But that information is wrong.  The information is wrong that they're getting and they're and that's where you know the disconnect between some programs and parents lie is when you have a director and That, buys into whatever the parents are saying, because they want to retain that kid.

So for me, the expectations from the parent has to be  humbling. You have to humble your kid. You can not be saying to your kids like, Hey, you're a division one athlete. No, I don't remember even me saying I'm a division one athlete in my  senior year. And I was all, I was an all city kid. I was second team, all city.

If you're a second, if you're either first, second, or third team mall City,  you're really good. In New York City, it's a hotbed, right? So if you're either first, second, or third, you're the guy, right? I don't, I didn't even think like that, I didn't think I was a visual one player.

I was like, oh I think I was still thinking like I got holes in my game. Where nowadays I think the talk that I hear from the kids, it rolls off the tongue too easy. Hey, I'm a division one player,  . I laugh at it because it's.  The more and more I do this job of a you, the more I hear it.

And the more I say, you have no idea what you're facing. And we know what we're facing. Cause we've been on the circuit before we see the kids that they're going to have to go against. We see the lack of skills that they have compared to what the college coaches want, because every college coach has a. 

Have a skill set that they like for their team and you must fit that skill set. And if you don't fit that skill set they're not going to get you. I always say you have to have one exceptional skill. Either you have to have one exceptional skill that trumps everything else. Then they want you for that one exceptional skill, or you've got to be good across the board between all the skills, but it's got to show.

But if you don't have a skill to hang your hat on, okay, whether it be defense, shooting dribbling organizing your team. Being a hustler, okay, being a defender, if you don't have one skill set that sticks out, that is better than everyone else. Yeah, you're going to have a hard time. Think about it, how are you going to stick out? 

Yeah, you're going to have a hard time and I think something you, you briefly touched on is really just the expectation from parents of, Forgetting again, leaning back into the having realistic awareness of the situation. Like a lot of these AUs, man, like it's a business. So they're like any other business.

They're willing to almost sell you, the river essentially, right? Saying, Oh, I know this guy, I can get you a scholarship. Again,  the numbers tell you these colleges, man, these coaches, they get paid to perform, March Madness is here. Like people are going to lose their jobs, man.

And. The whole, I know this person, you're like, no, you got to earn it, man. And leaning back to the original part of the conversation there has to be an element of, realism in terms of the environment you're in, who you are as a player and what you want out of the game. Because, it's clearly easily easy to get duped in this industry.

But how would you.  How'd you advise kids to manage expectations when it comes to the skill sets, when it comes to really just dealing with the outside world? I think the manage expectations, I think you don't listen to the noise. I say that a lot. I said I was fortunate to have, three to four division one players in my program.

And I said the same thing to the parents, same thing to the kids. You have to block out the noise. There is going to be so many people that come at you that say, Hey, I can do this for you. Hey, you should be here. Hey. And if you're not a realistic parent and you are so focused on.  Saying, Hey, my daughter's here or my son's here. 

Then you've already caught up in the game because it's a business. If you don't think it's a business, you have no idea what's going on. Directors, AAU programs, college coaches, like it's all a business. It's a big business in which, college coach, I don't think parents need to understand. They get paid to do a job.

And if they don't get, if they don't do their job, they get fired. They get fired right away for not doing their job. So for me if parents can really block out the noise and I say run your own race, don't look at someone else saying, Hey, this is how he did it, this is how she did it. I need to be on that same path.

No, there's no particular, if anyone tells you they have it down to a science where you know, I can get them to here. No, it's not an exact science. Because when you look at certain people, why they get scholarships, there's really no exact size other than  particular teams, particular colleges have a certain set of skill set that they're looking for, right?

So I just think run your own race, understand that if you're running your own race, their skills will dictate where they go. The higher the skill level, you don't have to worry about it. The lower the skill level of not having these skills. It's not, it's not going to end out well for you because you don't have a certain set of skillset to make it to the next level  and really just closing it off as well.

It's worth noting, AAU or any sport you play is really meant to be an opportunity for kids and parents, man, essentially learn, grow, get these, life skills, these disciplines that do project into other avenues of your life, post high school. And, sometimes we talk about it, it's a shame to see these kids not really. 

Take what they should get out of AAU or playing on these teams, right? And then it ruins their, not only ruins their experience, but then they end up having a bad taste in their mouth when it comes to, sports or team sports or working with teams and things like that. Just worth noting that, it's meant of course for fun, but of course known to grow and develop.

And I like that.  You touched it. That's a great point piece. And I think the parents have to focus on them being, especially you're coming from middle school, let's focus on them being a good high school player.  That should be the focus. Let's not focus on. What's going to happen. What five years down the line, let's focus on I'm more anything I do in life.

It's more or less short term goals. I have long term goals, but I really focus on the things that I can control in a short term, because if you add up all these small short term goals, it ends up being your long term right. But if you're so far ahead and you're thinking so far ahead,  It's never good because as things change, okay.

Things change. Your role has changed. Nowadays with AAU people,  they say they'd love this AAU one point, then the following year, they're with another team, they say they love that team. Then the following year, they're on another team. So it's this AAU game. It's not going to get it down to a science.

I've been doing it 13 years and I've seen everything in the business that I could shake my head at. And I said, that's not the way to do things. But.  I would hope that parents, and I say this to you a lot, there's a roadmap  on how things are done. If parents are looking.  There's a way in which if someone makes it or someone doesn't make it that is your level of skill set, there's someone out there that you can look at and say,  you know what?

Look how they made it, right? They made it this way. Maybe I'm gonna do it a different way, for me, I'm looking at, she has the same skillset, same, it's a roadmap or  she went over here. She didn't pan out. There's a roadmap. So if the parents do their background check of checking on.

Who was who and who did what they will know right away, whether or not their player or their daughter or son is a division one player. Like I knew, and I always take it in my, my, my instance, I knew after my sophomore year, heading into my sophomore year, I was a division one player because I had the  skillset because I looked at certain players that had the same skill set at me.

And I looked at them and I said, I'm at that level. And I was realistic with my level. You hit it on the nose. I think this is a good way to end it. Until the next one.  Peace.