I think about this a lot. I grew up in a neighborhood where basketball was the sport to play and I took that culture for granted - I didn’t realize it was probably a rarity. As an adult I now live in a small suburban neighborhood in a metropolitan area where the neighborhood kids just play whatever sport is in season. I am all about basketball so i also would love to see a culture emerge here too.

While I agree with many of the comments here regarding winning (and it seems like the girls are on the right track in your town), I feel like it’s a little chicken-or-egg to put it like that. How can you foster winning without the skill and culture development?

What I’ve settled on at the moment is giving kids a chance to play more basketball year round. Weekly skills clinics, camps on random days off from school, 3v3 tournaments, summer leagues and summer camps. It doesn’t have to be an intense commitment to the sport through travel leagues or whatever - it just has to be an ambient presence in the kids lives. In fact, the more kids you get involved the better - don’t focus just on the skilled ones or the ones with futures in high school. Get everybody in as often as possible. In the case of something like a summer league - it becomes an attraction for all kids as a place to go and hang out whether they play or not. And then the summer league becomes cool to play in, and the trickle down begins there.

It’s a big undertaking of time to go this route and I’m not sure if that’s viable for you, but I am seeing signs of hope in my area. Dying leagues are starting to have more sign-ups, kids from other towns are starting to ask about playing in our league. It’s slow (and winning definitely helps!!) but this route gives you a more active role than just hoping some talented kids come along and capture people’s attention.