What If There Isn't a Better Environment Near You?
I say it all the time. If your kid isn’t getting better, look at the environment. Find a better one.
I need to be honest, because I say that like it’s simple and it isn’t. For a lot of families there is no better one. Not within a reasonable drive. Not without money you don’t have or time you can’t spare. You look around at what’s near you and it’s all the same average version of the same thing.
I know that feeling because I lived it.
Where I grew up, there was nothing close. No great gym around the corner. No program that knew what it was doing. Whatever was good was happening somewhere else, to somebody else. I could feel that something was missing — I just couldn’t have told you what it was, or that it even existed.
But it went deeper than that, and this is the part I don’t say enough. I thought being good was genetic. Something in your blood, or your luck, or whatever else. Either you were born one of them or you weren’t, and that was that. So I wasn’t chasing anything — you can’t chase what you think was already decided the day you were born. I didn’t know I could be good, because I didn’t think good was something you became. I thought it was something you were.
That belief costs more than any gym ever could. A gym being far away is one problem. Believing the whole thing is out of your hands before you start — that’s the quiet one, and it’s the one that ends kids before they ever begin. I wasn’t frustrated that I couldn’t get somewhere. I didn’t know there was a somewhere, and I didn’t think I was built for it anyway. That’s the part that still gets me.
So if you’ve looked and driven and paid and come up empty — I’m not going to tell you you aren’t trying hard enough. And if it’s worse than that, if your kid doesn’t even know yet that they could be good, that they’re allowed to want this — I really get it. That was me.
Here’s why I do any of this.
I couldn’t do much about it as a kid. I can do something about it now. Almost everything I’ve built, I built for the version of me who didn’t have it — and for your kid, who might not either. Not charity. It’s not a handout. It’s an opportunity. A handout asks nothing of you. An opportunity asks everything of you and just makes sure the door is actually open. And sometimes the door being open just means someone finally told you the door was there. That’s the first thing I’m trying to give anybody. Not a ride through it. Just the knowledge that it exists, that it’s real, that you could be good, and that you’re allowed to go after it.
Because that’s what an environment actually is. Not a building. Not a logo. Not a travel schedule with an important-sounding name. Not a follower count. Somewhere along the way we taught families that “good” is a place with a lot of followers, and it made everybody who couldn’t get to one feel stuck. An environment is a few people who agree on what good looks like and refuse to let the standard slip. Reps. Honest feedback. A standard that doesn’t move. And under all of it, the belief that the kid in front of you could actually get there. That’s the whole thing.
And the quiet truth I wish someone had told me back then is that it’s smaller than you think. You don’t need the perfect situation an hour away you can’t reach. You need one honest one. A hoop. A couple of families who care about the same thing. One adult willing to tell the truth instead of just filling time — and willing to say out loud to a kid, you could be good at this. That’s more than most of the programs near you actually offer, and you can make it where you are.
And I’m not telling you this from the far side of it, like I’ve got the finished version and you’re the one who’s behind. Our own environment isn’t perfect. It’s small. It’s not everything we want it to be yet. But it’s what we have right now, and we make the most of it. And we don’t sit still with it. We work every day. We don’t take vacations. We struggle. We scratch and fight and claw to provide an even better environment for our athletes. That’s not a lesser version of the work. That is the work.
I won’t pretend it matches the ideal you’re picturing. It doesn’t, and don’t lie to yourself about that. But it’s real, it’s yours, and it beats another season waiting on something that isn’t coming. I waited on that. It doesn’t come. At some point somebody builds the door — and it turns out you’re allowed to be that person.
The standard matters more than the zip code. I’ve watched kids in great cities get worse because the environment was busy but soft. I’ve watched kids from nowhere get good because one person refused to let “there’s nothing around here” be the end of the sentence, and told them they could. Proximity to greatness isn’t what develops a player. The standard you keep is. And knowing it’s possible at all — that comes first.
So no, I don’t think you’re making excuses. I think you looked and didn’t find it, and that’s a hard place to stand. I’ve stood in it. I just don’t want the lack of a perfect option — or the fact that nobody ever told you this was chaseable — to be where your kid’s story ends.
Your kid doesn’t need the best environment in the country. They need one honest environment, an open door, and someone to tell them they could be good. If I can hand you that, I will. If I can’t reach you, build it yourself. It’s allowed. It might be the most important thing you ever do for them.
Aram runs Hoops College, a basketball training program in Charlotte. The program is the offer that follows from the argument. → hoopscollege.com