Why Social Media Might Be the Secret Weapon Your Athlete’s Missing

What follows is part 3 of our interview with top PGC Basketball Camp Director, Dustin Aubert…

If you missed part 1 (3 Biggest Mistakes Basketball Parents Make) or part 2 (6 Intangibles Elite Athletes Need to Stand Out) I highly recommend going back to check them out after reading part 3 below.

Okay, enough said, let’s get into it…

Mano Watsa: So let’s talk about social media. It’s always there. It’s addictive. We know that young kids are going to be on it for multiple hours a day. I know every summer at every camp we have kids raise their hands and we just ask, how many hours do you spend on social media? The average is probably three to five. Maybe it’s more now.

Dustin Aubert: Yeah, probably

Mano Watsa: We’ll see. So how should serious players be using social media to get better?

Dustin Aubert: Yeah, it is a great question. It’s now something that’s so relevant, prevalent. I’d say don’t look at social media as good or bad. Look at it as an empty thing that you ascribe meaning to. So what I mean by that is if you use social media to your advantage, the algorithm will give you things that are good. So I do a lot of stuff for our social media team. My algorithm sends me basketball videos all the time, and it actually helps me because it spurs ideas that I really like. There’s a player that I work with in Portugal named Trey, and he really wanted to improve his vertical. So he found people online who are good in the social media space, and he gets stuff all the time sent for hip mobility, how to train your vertical squats to make you a little bit more strong and can withstand contact.

So he has curated his algorithm to send him things that he wants. I think the algorithm, yeah, the algorithm also sends you stuff to keep you there longer. I understand that, but it’s also a mirror of things that you want. And so instead of just watching things that are going to keep your attention for a very long time and have you doom scrolling for hours, have it be a mirror of what you want in the basketball world, and it’s hard to do, but the other part of it is if you do need to be on social media, allocate time. Okay, I’ll be on social media for 12 minutes and when my buzzer goes off, I’m done. Because there’s nothing worse than you’re scrolling, you’re sitting there doing nothing, everyone else is on their phone, and then you go back again and you just saw the same thing for the third time.

It’s like there’s a lot of time being wasted there. This is the last thing, actually, I really enjoyed this, but a guy that I like, he said it as a life quote, but I’m going to say it as a basketball quote. The quote is, every basketball player has two lives, and the second one begins when they realise they have just one meaning that there’s so much time we waste on this device where you could be getting extra reps in, you could work on ball handling. And the moment you realise there’s only one career, like, oh my gosh, you’ll put everything you have into that thing.

Mano Watsa: Yeah, no doubt. I mean, we are all living in this environment where people are constantly fighting for our attention. We’ve entered the attention age, and so it’s all about entertainment, which means you have to protect yourself and your time.

Okay, switching gears slightly… what would you say is the current state of youth basketball?

Dustin Aubert: I mean, I remember when I played youth basketball, it’s just like the introduction of the games. Everyone loves playing and it’s just getting acquainted with basketball. But then now, especially in the states from a very young age, it’s so much about glorifying. Coaches will post on social media winning a third grade AAU championship and a picture with a trophy that’s bigger than the players. And so they’re so invested in how to glorify themselves, and I understand we all want to win, but the thing we’ve lost, I think, is the development stage of young basketball, and that’s what it is. It’s to get them to fall in love with the game. And then number two is how to make them a better fifth grader and fifth grade basketball is how to make you a better eighth grader.

Eighth grade basketball is how to make you a great high school player. Nowadays, so many coaches will play zone defense. That stunts development of reading and understanding group cognition, which is so needed in basketball. Group cognition is like, you drive to the right, what do I do? You know what I’m saying? You get stopped on a post-up, how do I help you? Whereas if everyone just stands in the zone and no one can shoot at that age, now we’re just chucking up bad shots and one person shoots the ball, everyone else watches the kid who developed earlier than everyone else, he or she gets the ball every possession. Everyone else just kind of stands there and does nothing.

Mano Watsa: Yeah, and that’s so crucial to developing the decision making, the playmaking abilities that are really going to separate you at the next level. So if you’re not getting that from a young age, if you’re playing in an environment where that is the case you were just referencing, what should I do as a parent? How can I help my kid?

Dustin Aubert: What I would do first is watch your kid play. And the quickest way to get better at basketball, the best players make the most decisions, and that’s decisions with the ball or without the ball. But that means they’re in the action all the time. And so if I play a game and I am driving to my left, I kick, I read space, I catch, I drive, I kick again, they shoot. I just made eight decisions. And that’s how we get the synapsis to connect because we’ll fail in our decisions. We’ll understand, we’ll learn, we’ll grow. It’s deliberate practice. But if you are the best player and I just stand in the corner the whole time, I might as well be watching on tv. But I think the best way to get better at a young age is… find a group that is all about development and development can be playing a lot of five on five at practice.

It can be playing a lot of three on three at practice, but find somewhere where the coach enjoys the game because I think joy radiates to everybody. And then number two is they’re educating, they’re teaching principles of the game that these players need. I think that’s what Serbia does so well. Canada does so well. Smaller countries that dominate. France now does really well. They create these clubs from young ages that are all about basketball education, not as much about winning, but educating kids how to play and the principles that they need to be successful. I just did a clinic with PGC in Dubai. I was blown away how good they are from young ages at teaching principles of play, and they’ve just qualified for the Euro League at the highest level, so they’re doing something right there.

Mano Watsa: Wow, that’s pretty cool. So are you saying I should move my family to Canada or Europe?

Dustin Aubert: UAE? No, I just think that we have so many people here that it’s so competitive, and a lot of times we see scenarios like the Ball family. A dad took three kids and got two of them to the NBA, and we think like, okay, what did he do that was so successful? Well, a lot of them see the kids in high school, and it’s like they put together a really good AU team, and they won a lot of games, but what he did really well when they were young was like he deliberately taught them basketball and had them working like crazy. So anyway, that’s kinda the way it goes.

To be continued…

In the meantime, view summer basketball camp dates & locations here.

Committed to your child’s success,

Mano