Today I want to share with you some of the things that I do when I scout games. Since this is before the college season I try to watch as many NBA Pre Season games as possible to evaluate team personnel to enter into my database. The Pre Season is tough to evaluate star players because their minutes are usually cut to anywhere from 20-28 minutes a game.
Teams cut their minutes for fear of injury or to bring players along slowly. It is a great opportunity to evaluate rookies, second year players, and players that wont make a roster or wont play many minutes during the regular season. As I wrote in yesterday’s post I try to update my player database with as many player reports as possible.
In my reports I try to evaluate the player in the environment in which they play. Meaning that I understand it is pre season and it will be dramatically different as far as how the game will be played a few months from now. I try to take something from every game and update’s a player’s rating the best I can. The Pre – Season is a good way to watch a young player that played limited minutes last year.
You can get a better feel for the game in the Pre Season than you can in NBA Summer League. In Summer League teams are thrown together in a weeks notice. Teams have very little practice time together making it hard for any flow in games. The teams are comprised mostly of players that were recently drafted, second year players, and free agent hopefuls.
Reports can be as long or short as you want. For me, I want to know what their NBA skill is. NBA skill is the one(or more) skill that they posses that can get them in a game at the NBA level. If there is anything glaring as far as strengths and weaknesses they will be in the report also. I like short 4-6 sentence reports it is something that I am comfortable with and think it gets right to the point.
During the Pre-Season I like to look at potential log jams for teams and players that they will potentially trade or release. It’s always good to know a players value if they are worth acquiring and what you would give up to acquire them. I also want to look at recently drafted players and their potential value to an NBA team.
All reports are saved in my database to go back to when evaluating players. At any level a player’s value can fluctuate from month to month. A player may be riding the bench one day and get to play because of an injury or freak occurrence and get their opportunity. I like keeping on top of the NBA because its always changing. I think especially for a young coach that watching as many games of your opponents is so important. Knowing your league inside and out can only help.
Here is a copy of a game report that I did on the Utah Jazz-Oklahoma City Thunder game. Enjoy and good luck!!!!
