I felt like now was a good time to put pen to paper and formally document my philosophy (or methodology) when scouting / evaluating NBA draft prospects. 

Here goes…

Film vs Stats

I think some of the debates on Draft Twitter about film vs stats are pretty silly. It really shouldn’t be an either/or thing. 

You absolutely need both. Ignoring either of them (or even just not factoring in either of them enough) is poor scouting process, in my opinion. 

I think that there’s three kinds of people who follow, discuss and analyze the draft:

• Pro film people
• Pro stats people
• People who believe in using a good amount of both, when evaluating 

I’m definitely in the third group. 

The folks in the first group, I think they have a comfort level with watching game film, taking notes, analyzing the film. And they are resistant to learning and adapting to what stats to incorporate into their evaluations and how to best incorporate them.

They have a simple process: Watch film, analyze it, and then evaluate the players and rank them accordingly. Having to analyze lots of data adds complexity to their process. And they probably don’t even know what a lot of these statistical categories even mean or how to use them. So it scares them and they say film is the way to go. 

As for the second group, these are usually younger people who are very tech savvy. Metrics, statistical queries and algorithms are like second nature to them – they’re not scary at all. They enjoy crunching numbers and seeing if they can come up with a new formula or metric that can predict which prospects will perform better than which at the NBA level. 

Plus, since these folks are typically the younger generation, they also have short attention spans and less patience. They don’t want to sit there in front of the TV/laptop all day watching a bunch of 2 hour long games in order to evaluate the film for a prospect – and have to do that for 200+ other prospects. Who has that kind of time? 

It’s way faster to just plug some numbers into a formula or spreadsheet, right? 

Again, I’m in the third group. I’m young enough to be pretty tech savvy and able to easily crunch numbers and plug them into Google Sheets. Plus, I’ve worked in the tech/software industry for many years now which also helps. 

But at the same time, I’ve done enough of this draft research over the years to realize that while the stats and metrics are super helpful (and necessary) they don’t tell the whole story. 

In order to truly understand what a prospect plays like, how strong they are, how quick (and fluid) they move during a game, how hard they play, what their shooting mechanics are like, etc. you must watch them on film. 

The 11 Pillars 

Now that we’ve addressed the film vs stats debate, the next thing I want to point out is that there’s actually 11 pillars, or things that I factor in when evaluating draft prospects. 

Film and stats are merely two of them, but there’s 10 others. 

Okay, I know what you’re thinking. 

You think I’m crazy, don’t you?

Here are the 11 pillars, listed not necessarily in order of importance but roughly in the order I go through when evaluating a prospect:

1. Stats
2. Film 
3. Age
4. Physical profile 
5. Archetype / role projection
6. Competition level 
7. NBA trends 
8. Intangibles 
9. Ceiling
10. Floor
11. Median

Next, let’s unpack each of them. 

Stats

First thing I do is take a quick look at the prospect’s stats to get a general idea of what type of player they are and how good they are. 

Some of the key stats I look at are BPM, TS%, PPG, points per 40 minutes, FTr, usage %, 3PA per 40 minutes, TRB%, assist %, 3 FG%, blocks %. I will also manually calculate Unassisted FG at rim per 40 minutes and unassisted 3PM per 40 minutes. 

I’ll also look at a player’s stat lines from their past 4-6 games or so, to get an idea of how they have been playing lately and whether they are trending up or down. 

Also, larger sample sizes of data should be weighed more heavily than smaller sample sizes of data. With just a one and done freshman prospect (especially if their freshman season isn’t over, like if they’ve only played like 20 games) the stats mean less. 

If it’s an upperclassmen prospect – like they’re 21+ years old, we have a greater level of certainty about what type of player they are and how good they are – the stats at that point mean more. But it’s also important for older prospects who have played 2-4 college seasons to factor all of those college seasons in. Don’t just look at the stats from their most recent season. Factor all the seasons in, but the more recent the season – the more heavily those stats should weigh. 

For one and done prospects or 18-19 year old overseas prospects, because it’s such a small sample size of data, I will often try to expand the sample size by including other games. Examples include ANGT games for European players or any FIBA competitions they played in, as well as all-star games such as Nike Hoop Summit, Jordan Brand Classic, McDonald’s All-American game, etc. I’ll even look up box scores for any exhibition/preseason games they played. I’ll even sometimes watch their college’s intra-squad scrimmage and keep track on a sheet of paper of how many 3PA they had, how many they made, etc. I’ll also look up some of their high school stats on Cerebro. 

This exercise also helps to get a more full picture of what type of player they are and how good they are by looking at the stats (and film) of the prospect in different contexts. 

However, if the sample sizes are small (like if they only played one season of college ball or only one season of pro ball overseas) I often will weigh the stats a little bit less in my evaluation for that prospect – and weigh the other pillars a bit more. 

Film 

I try to watch as many games and as much film as possible. It’s a balance. I don’t do this stuff full time – it’s just a hobby on the side. So one of the more challenging things is finding time to watch enough film, along with analyzing the prospects based on the other pillars (including crunching numbers) and doing all of that for 200+ prospects. 

It’s not easy. But it’s fun! 

Because it is challenging though, I try to watch more film of the highly rated prospects, or at least the prospects who I have ranked highly on my board. In general, the higher a prospect is on my board, the more I try to watch them (and study them, by also factoring in the other pillars too). 

At the same time, as we get later in the draft cycle (like in March or perhaps later on in February) by that time I’ve probably watched so much film of the top 20 or so prospects on my board that it’s kind of overkill. At that point, I know who those prospects are, I know what they can do, what they can’t do, etc. So often times between April – June I will start focusing more on the prospects who are in like the 25-65 range on my board, while also looking further down my board and making sure I’m not missing out on any hidden gems who I had ranked outside of the top 65 but might actually end up being really good. 

You never know, I might start watching more of a player and move them way up. 

With the film, I look for pretty basic things. How do they shoot? How do they rebound? How active are they on defense? Do they overhelp on defense? Are they too jumpy on defense? Do they seem confident out there? Poised? Or do they often seem rattled? 

How does their handle look? How crafty are they? Like are we seeing advanced stuff like manipulating a defense with ball fakes, looking one way to fake a defender out and then quickly zipping a pass cross court in the other direction? 

Do they play fast? If so, do they play too fast that they get out of control? Or do they play under control – if so, do they play too slow? 

Can they put the ball on the floor, are they a legit threat off the bounce to attack the basket? Do they see passing windows well? 

Can they finish above the rim? How much aggressiveness do they play with? Do they play aggressive, without being so aggressive that they foul a lot or gamble on defense for steals/blocks but those gambles backfire, resulting in easy baskets for the opposition? 

There are more things to look for on film than that, but this is just some to give a general idea of what I look for. 

Age

Pretty self explanatory, but if everything else is equal, the younger the prospect is, the better they are. This is common knowledge. 

However, I do think that sometimes folks weigh age too heavily. Let’s keep in mind, Josh Jackson, Killian Hayes, Usman Garuba and Josh Primo were all much younger prospects than Derrick White, Austin Reaves, Alex Caruso and Jimmy Butler. But guess what? The older prospects I just named all ended up being way better NBA players than the younger ones. 

Bottom line, age is absolutely a factor. But it’s not the end all, be all. Let’s not weigh it too heavily. Or you’ll make the mistake of picking a prospect too high just because he’s young and he turns out to be a bust. Or you’ll miss out on a stud like Cam Johnson, Jalen Williams or Desmond Bane, just because you passed on them for being older. 

With that being said, prospects who are age 22.0 or older on draft night typically don’t end up being stars. There’s some exceptions. But for the most part, prospects who are that age often become good NBA players – but good role players such as Payton Pritchard, Sam Hauser, Dorian Finney-Smith and Alex Caruso. 

That’s why if I’m drafting in the top 5 or 10 picks, it’s typically best to go for a younger prospect who’s age 18-20…possibly a 21 year old player if he’s really good – like Jalen Williams and Jalen Brunson should’ve both gone in the top 10.

Also, the deeper you get into the draft (especially in the 2nd round – and later in the 2nd round) it’s often a wise decision to not swing on a young but raw upside flier project type of pick. If he’s young but raw and a project and still on the board at pick 43, he’s probably just not that good. It might not be worth the investment to pay him a salary and spend your team’s resources developing him. 

There are exceptions. But in general, (when looking at the 2016-2021 drafts at least), it seems like it’s usually the smarter decision to go for older, more polished prospecs later in the draft. But those older guys later in the draft don’t always pan out, as we’ve seen with guys like Isaiah Mobley, Tyrese Martin, Joe Wieskamp, etc. 

The hit rate on prospects in like the 38-60 range in general has been really low over the past 10 or so years. So it’s best at that point in the draft to pick whichever player you think has a chance to stick around and contribute. Maybe it’s a younger player if you think they have upside and you’re pretty confident your staff can develop them enough. 

I’d also note that with freshman prospects, I think some folks often make the mistake of weighing age too heavily. I’ll often see people say things like “Oh, he’s an old freshman so I’ll rank him lower” or “he’s a really young freshman so I’ll rank him higher”. 

I think people need to be careful with that stuff. Jared McCain was an old freshman and he was running away with the Rookie of the Year award before he got injured. McCain has been much better in the NBA than a young freshman like Cam Whitmore. Chet Holmgren was an old freshman – he’s been much better in the NBA than a guy like Jalen Duren who was a very young freshman. Brandon Miller was a very old freshman, yet he’s been much better in the NBA than younger freshmen like Kendall Brown, Trevor Keels and Josh Primo. 

Does that mean that older freshmen are always better than younger freshmen? No. But it also doesn’t mean that younger freshmen are always better than older freshmen. It depends. There’s a lot of factors. In general, younger prospects are better than older ones – but not always. I think the rule of thumb is to factor age in, but not too heavily. 

Physical profile 

Pretty self explanatory. But there’s a few things I look for here. One of the key buckets under physical profile is size/measurements. I’m looking at height, weight, wingspan. Standing reach. 

The NBA draft combine, G league Elite Camp, Portsmouth Invitational Tournament (and other events such as Nike Hoop Summit and Basketball Without Borders) are all events where these measurements are typically released for public consumption. As I find them, I’ll update my draft board so I have updated measurements for those prospects. 

Some of these events also have athletic testing, such as vertical leap, ¾ court sprint, shuttle drill, etc. These are also helpful to see how fast and how athletic the prospects are. 

This is also where film comes in, too. While the athletic testing numbers are helpful, they can sometimes be misleading and don’t always tell the whole story about how fast/athletic a prospect is. You also need to watch the prospects on film to get a deeper understanding of that stuff. 

In the film, I’m looking for stuff like coordination/fluidity, how fast can they get up and down the floor. How fast can they move laterally when playing half court defense. How smoothly and quickly can they change directions. Are they falling down a lot? How strong do they appear to be? 

Archetype / role projection

What’s their archetype? What type of role do I think they could realistically play at the NBA level? 

For bigs, the main archetypes are:

• Rim runner, rim protector (Neemias Queta, Robert Williams, Rudy Gobert, etc.)
• Highly skilled on offense but possibly limited defensively (Sabonis, Sengun, Jokic, etc.)
• Skilled offensively but can also anchor a defense (Holmgren, Wembanyama, Mobley, etc.) 
• Switchable defenders who are may have some offensive limitations (Tillman, Achiuwa, Isaiah Stewart, etc)

If you’re a big who doesn’t fit in any of these, I’ll probably rank you a bit lower. 

For point guards (or guys who sometimes play PG, these are the archetypes:

• Defensive grinders who may have some offensive limitations (Jrue Holiday, Marcus Smart, Jalen Suggs, etc.)
• Offensive engine who may be limited on defense. Within this archetype there’s guys whose offense is based more on shooting (Steph, Lamelo, Haliburton) and others whose offense is based more on their dribble drive game (Morant, Fox, McConnell, etc) 

For wings, there’s:

• Shooters who may be limited in other areas of the game (Hauser, McDermott, Kennard)
• Stars who can pretty much do it all (Tatum, Durant, Lebron, Kawhi)
• Pure scorers who may be limited in other areas (Jaylen Brown, Derozan, Lavine, etc.)
• Defenders who may be limited on offense (Herb Jones, Haywood Highsmith, Eason)

You get the idea. 

Note – there are some archetypes I didn’t list here. And there’s some players who fall into more than 1 archetype. But if a prospect doesn’t really fit any of them, I have a hard time figuring out what their role would be at the NBA level – I’ll probably rank them lower. 

This helps me to contextualize what type of player I am evaluating. I try to figure out which archetype they’re in, how valuable that archetype is, how closely do they fit that archetype and how good are they likely to be at the NBA level, compared to other players of the same archetype?

Competition Level 

This factors in a bit. A prospect who is putting up big numbers and looks good on film – I’m less impressed (and may rank them lower) if they’re doing it in a small conference or at a lower level like Division II/III college basketball, junior college, etc. 

Even if it’s a prospect who plays at a high major college, I will weigh their performance in games vs top 50 ranked teams more highly than their performance in games vs teams ranked outside of the top 100. All games matter, but games vs teams outside of the top 200 mean almost nothing. Meanwhile, games vs teams ranked in the top 15 mean a ton. 

For overseas players, it needs to be factored in that they are typically facing competition that is higher than NCAA. 

Here’s a rough outline of how I rank the different levels of competition, with the colors being tiers and leagues within same tier being somewhat interchangeable:

NBA trends 

Where is the league headed? Are teams using (and having success with) more double big lineups? Or are teams using more (and having more success with) single big lineups? 

Obviously teams are shooting more 3’s than ever. But will that continue or will the 3PA volume come back down a bit? What types of players are succeeding in the NBA who aren’t shooters? 

What types of players do teams have who make deep playoff runs – who win championships? 

Most of the film I watch is of draft prospects but I also make sure to watch a decent amount of NBA film as well to see how NBA teams play, where the league is headed, what types of rookies/2nd year players are playing well vs not playing well, etc. 

Intangibles 

This is definitely an important one, and a pillar that I think many scouts either miss out on entirely or don’t factor it in as much as they probably should. 

Even if we factored in and analyzed prospects based on all of the other pillars, a lot of our evaluations would miss the mark if we didn’t also factor in intangibles, in my opinion. 

These are the primary intangibles I look for:

• Work ethic (hunger, desire, determination) 
• Toughness (physical, mental. Body language can fit in this bucket too) 
• Confidence / self belief (body language is also a clue to look for here as well) 

Work ethic is a big one. You look at a guy like Jayson Tatum. He was a good prospect in college. But not a great one. Back when he was at Duke, most people did not expect he would end up being this good in the NBA. How has he done it? 

Work ethic. 

Tatum has been working out with Drew Hanlen (a pro skills trainer, who has trained many NBA players over the years, including Joel Embiid) since he was just 13 years old. 

If we know where to look and if we look hard enough, we can find clues to indicate which players have “it” when it comes to a really high level of work ethic. 

If you google search “Ian Jackson Chris Brickley” you’ll find 5+ pages of search results, including lots of workout vids. Jackson has been working out with Brickley (pro skills trainer who has trained players like Russell Westbrook, Carmelo Anthony, James Harden, Donovan Mitchell). 

Here, Illinois head coach Brad Underwood says that Kasparas Jakucionis was in the gym at midnight the night they lost to the #1 team in the country & stayed until 2am, working on his game. And that he took 4,200 shots in a week during finals week at school. Yet still got a 4.0 GPA:

https://twitter.com/glenn_kinley/status/1870947671802036598

Confidence / self belief is a big one, too. You watch some of these guys play and you see them do interviews. With some of them, the level of confidence and self belief they have is very obvious. Like with guys like Steph Curry (that dude is VERY confident), Jayson Tatum, Lamelo Ball, Anthony Edwards, Jaylen Brown, Luka Doncic, Nikola Jokic, Giannis. These are very confident dudes. 

https://twitter.com/LegionHoops/status/1858011423776923809

Even with role players, Payton Pritchard is very confident. Sam Hauser has this quiet confidence about him. You can tell by his body language when he plays and when watching him interviews – Hauser knows he can play and he knows he’s an elite shooter. 

I don’t see that same level of confidence from guys like Patrick Williams, Lonnie Walker or Jaden Springer. 

Speaking of Pritchard, I like this video:

It talks about Pritchard’s grit, determination, confidence and work ethic. 

It says he makes 700 shots a day x 6 days a week = 4,200 shots a week – woah! No wonder he’s so good. 

I especially love the quote at the end by Pritchard that really shows how competitive he is and how confident he is in his ability that he could beat all the best players on the block with just him and the worst players on his team. 

Finding different videos and articles like these can clue us in to how much of these intangibles the draft prospects we’re evaluating possess. 

Ceiling, Floor and Median Outcomes 

I’m not going to add much here. Pretty self explanatory. Ceiling = how high I realistically think a prospect could be in the NBA. Floor = how bad of an outcome could they realistically have? 

For many prospects, the floor is getting waived within the first year or 2 after being drafted and never making it back to the league. That is a real thing that happens for many prospects. I try to be realistic and not pretend like every player who gets drafted or gets signed to an undrafted free agent contract will magically become an all-star. 

That’s not reality. 

It’s really hard to make it in the NBA. The population continues to grow and grow. The amount of kids playing competitive basketball during their teenage years continues to grow and grow. But the amount of NBA teams has stayed the same for 21 years now. 

Median outcome of course is roughly halfway between the ceiling and the floor. 

Wrapping it Up

That’s about it. A couple other things I want to address are intel and bias. 

First, intel. What I mean is reading an article, seeing a tweet or a video about a prospect where there’s “intel” from some scout, agent or NBA exec talking about a prospect – talking about how good/bad they are, comparing them to current/past NBA players, etc. 

I take most of this intel with a grain of salt. I don’t really factor it in much at all. I feel like a lot of this stuff is fueled by people who have an agenda. A lot of this intel is agents trying to promote their players to get their players drafted higher. So they’ll say good things to the media about the players who signed with their agency. Or they’ll leak negative info about players who aren’t signed with their agency, so that their players look better and possibly get drafted higher. 

Or, if it’s an exec/scout for an NBA team. If they really want to draft a particular player, it wouldn’t be smart of them to leak info to the media that is saying how great that prospect is. Because then what if it gets out there, goes viral and then the team that picks right before them drafts that player instead? 

If anything, that NBA scout/exec would probably leak bad “intel” about players they want and leak good intel about players they don’t want to draft. 

Lastly, regarding bias. I pride myself on being as objective as possible when evaluating. 

If I share my opinion on a prospect on this site, on Twitter or elsewhere, it’s my honest opinion – my objective evaluation. I’m not pushing any agenda and I try as hard as I can to not let any type of bias influence my evaluations. 

These are some of the types of bias that exist in draft discourse:

• Recency bias 
• Consensus bias 
• Aesthetic bias 
• Anchoring bias

I try to avoid them using all of them. 

Recency bias is pretty obvious. It’s weighing recent performances too heavily. Like if a prospect has one or two bad games in the NCAA tournament and you move them way down your board as a result. Or if they were awesome all season but looked bad in the draft combine scrimmages so you take them off your draft board. 

Consensus bias means you let consensus rankings (especially mainstream mock drafts / big boards like the ones put out by ESPN, Bleacher Report, Tankathon, Yahoo, CBS and USA Today) influence your evaluations. 

I really try to make my own evaluations and honestly don’t really care what the mainstream sites say – I barely even look at them. 

Aesthetic bias is when you base too much of your evaluations on what a player looks like on film – in particular on their highlight videos, mixtapes or 10 second clips that get posted on Twitter.

Sometimes people will say things like, “Player X looks like a star”, “Player Y looks like Kevin Durant”, “Player Z moves like Michael Jordan” or “he looks like an NBA player”. When people say things like this, they’re typically being influenced by aesthetic bias. 

This kind of stuff should not be factored in very little – or not at all. Yet it seems like sometimes people will rank a prospect much higher – even top 3 on their big board, just because someone “looks like Tracy McGrady” , a player who was likely drafted before the person making that statement was even born 🙂 

Then there’s anchoring bias, which is when you base your evaluation too heavily on your initial impression/ranking of that prospect. An example of this is a few years ago with Jaden Hardy. He was a consensus top 3 pick in the preseason. A few analysts even had him ranked no. 1, over Paolo Banchero and Chet Holmgren. 

As the season went on, most folks moved Hardy down their draft board. But there were some folks who refused to. Some folks kept him in the top 10 – or even in the top 5, even though the stats, the film and pretty much everything else was telling us that Hardy was not a lottery prospect. On draft night, he got picked in the 2nd round. 

But I think the folks who kept him top 5 for all (or most of) the season, it may have been an ego thing. Like, they didn’t want to admit they were wrong with their initial evaluation that had him in the top 3. 

Or maybe they wanted to keep him in the top 5, so 2 or 3 years later, if Hardy actually did end up being a stud in the NBA, those scouts could run victory laps on social media and say, “See – I was right!”. 

Or, perhaps scouts who are guilty of anchoring bias – it might be because they have some sport of emotional/personal investment in that player. Maybe they know that player personally or that is their favorite player or something. 

It can be a tricky balance between anchoring bias vs being patient with a prospect if they are just having some struggles early in the season. But I think a good rule of thumb is, once we get to at least 10 or 15 games into the season, it should be fair game to move that prospect up (or down) based on the current season and how they are currently performing, rather than being anchored to our preseason evaluation of them. 

Big boards and mock drafts that are so early in the season that a prospect hasn’t even played in 10 games really don’t mean a whole lot anyways.

That’s it. That’s my process, my philosophy, my methodology. Whatever you want to call it. 

That’s how I scout draft prospects. At least right now. Things could change down the road if I feel like I should change it a bit to become a better evaluator. 

Thanks for reading!