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(EDIT July 30, 2010- If you’re looking for where you can play basketball, see my post: Pickup Basketball in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam)

One of things I’d like to do is start a basketball/streetball discussion and matchup community for Vietnam. It’s kind of what I do on a larger level at work already, and something I tried to pitch once to And1 a few of years ago. (It’s something they still haven’t done, which has disappointed me greatly- I feel like they’re just throwing away money)

Internationally, Streetball.com has in some ways become the community that And1.com should be. In Vietnam, as far as I know, there aren’t any large online basketball communities here, just discussion groups in other forums like TTVNOL. I could probably use Ning like Streetball.com did and buy my own domain for it and create that Vietnamese basketball community site, but my Vietnamese isn’t good enough where I could be a leader of a community.

Basketball is definitely growing in popularity here, and the skill is growing. The Internet has been a big part of this, and you can see that people have been watching And1 mixtapes because you can see it in how they play. Access to NBA games is much less compared to highlights and streetball footage on sites like YouTube, and this has created a more loose style of play, not so physical in terms of boxing out, but a lot of slap fouls and palming/carrying. It’s very one and one, not so much about defense and passing- at least not the fundamental setting up of plays(more And1 no look than John Stockton pick and roll).

As for learning the basics of the game through pure instructional videos, most are hard (forget about purchasing legal or illegal copies) to find online, and most people don’t have the luxury of their own courts or space to work on the basics.

Recently on sites like Streetball.com (below), though, I’ve seen videos showing people how to do moves, not just videos of people doing them. Even Nike has gotten in the fun with their Signature Moves section on NikeBasketball.com, which I show above.

Personally, I love this kind of stuff. I’ve seen my share of instructional stuff, and stuff like thus is very accessible and can help even non-English speakers learn more about the game.

Aside from those, I personally recommend the Better Basketball DVD series and Bobbito Garcia’s Basics to Boogie. The Better Basketball series is heavily advertised in Slam Magazine, and I own the Shooting DVD but have watched parts of some of the others. The hard part with the Better Basketball series is that it requires a lot of work (surprise!) and dedication to really understand and be able to execute on the lessons. The series is also quite expensive at $30 a DVD, and is not easy to find pirated (they’ve done an amazing job stopping people from doing so). It’s not so non-English speaker friendly either.

Basics to Boogie, on the other hand, is more accessible to a Vietnamese player. It’s focused mostly on dribbling, but they show things anyone can work on- just mastering the first 15 minutes of drills is going to take a long time (years). In fact, since I don’t have a court to practice on and shoot around on nearby, I just go through dribbling drills once or twice a week. Sometimes, the Better Basketball stuff requires too much extra stuff, like other people or cones, but Basics to Boogie is a good lone man practice tape.

I even used the Basics to Boogie stuff when I coached women’s basketball at Dai Hoc Hanoi (Hanoi University) a couple of years ago.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 21st, 2009 at 10:16 am and is filed under Basketball, Vietnam. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.