“The Lakers’ Kobe Bryant #24 reacts after fouling the Grizzlies’ Mike Conley #11 late in the 4th quarter during their NBA game at the Staples Center Friday, January 2, 2015. The Grizzlies beat the Lakers 109-106. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht/Los Angeles Daily News)”

Kobe Bryant became upset about something.

The Lakers lost 109-106 on Friday to the Memphis Grizzlies. His turnaround three-point field goal with .6 seconds left hit off the front iron. Ed Davis missed a free throw that could have tied the game. On Byron Scott’s instruction, the Lakers waited for 10 seconds before fouling a Memphis player in hopes of preserving timeouts.

But the Lakers’ star also expressed his displeasure on something else.

“AAU basketball,” Bryant said. “Horrible, terrible AAU basketball. It’s stupid. It doesn’t teach our kids how to play the game at all so you wind up having players that are big and they bring it up and they do all this fancy crap and they don’t know how to post. They don’t know the fundamentals of the game. It’s stupid.”

So stupid that Bryant argues that has put American players at a disadvantage compared to European players.

“I just think European players are just way more skillful,” Bryant said. “They are just taught the game the right way at an early age. … They’re more skillful. It’s something we really have to fix. We really have to address that. We have to teach our kids to play the right way.”

Bryant was born in Philadelphia. But he spent most of his childhood in Italy, while his father, Joe, played professionally over there. During that time, Bryant has gushed about learning fundamentals in his game, including post skills, footwork, dribbling with both hands and proper spacing.

“When you have limitations and you understand your limitations and you stay within yourself, you can be great,” Kobe Bryant said. “You know what you can do and what you can’t do. In America, it’s a big problem for us because we’re not teaching players how to play all-around basketball. That’s why you have Pau and Marc [Gasol], and that’s the reason why 90 percent of the Spurs’ roster is European players, because they have more skill.”

Bryant suggested that coaches should “teach the game at an early age and stop treating them like cash cows.” That partly explains why Bryant has spent his summer camps in Santa Barbara teaching boys and girls ages 8 to 18 learn various offenses (Flex, Princeton, Triangle).

Yet, Bryant downplayed whether he will play an active role in fighting against this tide when he presumably ends a 20-year NBA career following the 2015-16 season.

“That’s a deep well because then you start cutting into people’s pockets,” Bryant said. “People get really upset when you start cutting into their pockets because all they do is try to profit off these poor kids. There’s no quick answer.”

Still, Bryant provided a quick answer on how his game would have become different had he not spent his childhood in Italy.

“I probably wouldn’t be able to dribble with my left and shoot with my left and have good footwork,” Bryant said. “I was kind of fortunate because when I was growing up in Italy, the Red Auerbachs and the Tex Winters and all those great coaches were doing clinics and camps in Europe. They were teaching all the club coaches, and the club coaches were following their advice and their fundamentals like the bible, and they were teaching all of us kids that type of stuff. Me, Manu [Ginobili] and all these guys that grew up around that same time, we’re a product of that. It’s a big difference.”

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Follow L.A. Daily News Lakers beat writer Mark Medina on Twitter and on Facebook. E-mail him at mark.medina@langnews.com