Our Vision

Play the Game Better / Enjoy the Game More  

Founding Visions from Joe Crispin:

My vision is to help create a happier basketball world.

During my lengthy playing career, I came to realize that what I really longed for was joy. Fun. Basketball happiness. Not only for myself, but for the communities I represented on the court. Winning and success were a part of that, of course, but they weren’t everything (and they were also often found by the teams that had most fun!). I always had this sense that there was a soul to the game that, when tapped into, brought a special sort of inspiration to the communities I and my teammates played for. Underneath all the work and the effort I put into the game, there was this deep desire to spread joy.  

Our vision with Crispin Basketball is to spread basketball happiness by helping players of all ages and abilities play the game better and enjoy the game more. It may sound simple, but simple is never easy. Indeed, it often goes agains the grain. Our current athletic culture (at every level) rarely considers the importance of sheer delight in the game. In our unending focus on improvement, we often miss the most important ingredient:  joy. We neglect this at our own peril. Or worse, at the peril of our children.  

Playing the game better and enjoying the game more must be two sides of the same coin in the process of development. Enjoyment in the game must be the fuel for our play (and later on…our work), but it also must be the end we pursue. It should be fun to improve. And our improvement should increase our fun. And the fun of everyone who has the opportunity to see us play.   

I have a great deal of personal experience with the improvement. But I must admit that one of the primary reasons I emphasize the fun is because I so easily lost it during my youth. In my pursuit to be great, I neglected joy and missed out on the delight of the process. And though I reached great heights in maximizing my individual potential, I strongly believe that I could have done more if I possessed the resounding note of joy in the game that I started with and, fortunately, did find again later in my career.   

It is very possible for you or your child to improve (and help others improve) without the fun, without the joy. But there is a limit to how high you can go or how long you can last. And there is always a steep cost. If you really want to break through the ceiling and to spread the joy that flows from maximizing personal and team potential, you need to find the fun. You need to fuel the joy. This is not a peripheral matter. It is a foundational ingredient to long-term basketball greatness and joy.  

This is everything we are about. Sure, we want to help every young player improve, but not as an end in and of itself. Our vision is to help players of all ages and abilities to improve with a view towards greater basketball joy. There is a way to improve without succumbing to the “rat race” that is so prevalent in today’s youth sports. You can take a step outside, do it differently, and find the fun. We are committed to stepping outside, being different, and finding the fun of a natural learning process that does lead to long-term success. By doing things different, we can create a happier basketball world where players of all ages and abilities play the game better and enjoy the game more.  

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