This is sort of a follow-up to my recent article that breaks down my draft scouting philosophy. That article was me saying, “Hey, this is how I evaluate prospects. This is what I look for, how I scout players.”
However, I recently realized something.
Who the hell am I?
I don’t work for an NBA team. Never have.
I’m nobody – especially compared to the scouts and front-office execs who work for NBA teams.
It kind of reminds me of this clip from Seinfeld:
I’m joking to some extent – just like they’re joking on Seinfeld.
But my point is that no matter what you’re doing in life, it’s important to have some humility. To admit that you don’t know everything, that you don’t have all the answers.
About 150 or so (maybe more) people currently work for an NBA team as scouts or front-office executives.
Those people have decades and decades of combined experience in the field. I have none.
So, it would be naive of me to try to reinvent the wheel or think that I know more about draft scouting than all of those people.
As a “nobody” amateur scout, I think the best mindset for me is twofold:
- Acknowledging that I don’t know everything, I don’t have all the answers; there are 150 or so people who have much more experience at this stuff than I do, who have worked hard over many years to get where they are. Therefore, I should be like a sponge, soaking up as much knowledge, wisdom, insight, and expertise from those people as possible, whether it’s from talking to them directly, talking to folks in the media who know how they think, reading books, articles, watching videos, listening to podcasts, etc.
- An acknowledgment that even the scouts and front office execs who work for NBA teams miss on prospects – a lot. NBA teams were too low on Jimmy Butler, Nikola Jokic, Steph Curry, Tyrese Haliburton, Alperen Sengun, Derrick White, Austin Reaves, and many others. They were too high on James Wiseman, Romeo Langford, Johnny Davis, Mario Hezonja, Georgios Papagiannis, and James Bouknight. Not only do the NBA guys miss pretty often, but there have been quite a few folks who used to be random people on Draft Twitter who went on to get hired by NBA teams. So, there should also be a belief that I can bring some fresh ideas to this space. I shouldn’t be afraid to put out rankings or a big board that differs from the consensus.
I think a healthy balance between both of them is the right mindset to have.
That said, I wanted to learn and pick the brains of a few scouts/reporters who are connected to NBA teams.
Here’s who I talked with:
- Bobby Marks, ESPN
- Kevin O’Connor, Yahoo! Sports
- Keith Smith, Spotrac
- Rafael Barlowe, NBA Big Board
- Maxwell Baumbach, No Ceilings
I didn’t want to burden them too much, so I asked them a simple question:
If you were to guess, based on conversations you have had and what you’ve observed..roughly how much weight do you think NBA front offices/scouts put on the following things when evaluating draft prospects: film, stats, intangibles (coachability, desire, being a good teammate, personality, attitude, etc.), other (age, measurables, etc.)
The rest of this article will cover what they told me (using blind quotes) and my takeaways from their comments.
Two of the reporters answered my question with specific percentages. Here’s what they said:
One of the other reporters said, “Hard to say. Every team is different. I’d say it’s probably mostly film and intangibles. Then other. Then stats. But again, every team is different. For some teams, stats may be second. But film/stats often connect, you know?”
So, this third reporter here didn’t put specific percentages, but it seems like all three of them are pretty much in agreement: mostly film and intangibles, then others, with stats being the least important factor.
One of the reporters added, “There are teams who care a lot more about age than others. Some care a lot more about the measurables than others, too. The one thing that very few teams focus on much is stats. So many of them are situation-dependent that they aren’t really factored in as much as you might think.”
I found these responses interesting since there are a fairly large number of folks on Draft Twitter who seem to base pretty much all of their rankings, evaluations, and analyses on stats.
One of the other reporters said, “This could just be based on the people I interact with, but I’m not personally aware of any front office who is as fully committed to stats as the super stat-oriented accounts in here (Draft Twitter). It’s a small sample, I could be wrong – but I don’t think there’s an organization as a whole that is out on film. There are teams where “traditional” scouts have to fight harder to make their voices heard, but I don’t think a team is going, “This is what our model said, so we’re doing that.”
I also found this quote interesting by Rockets GM Rafael Stone:
The other reporter/scout I talked to said, “Hard to say. Some scouts have no social skills, and they just sit behind a computer and crunch numbers. Some scouts are out in gyms, seeing players in person and gathering intel.”
Another reporter agreed with the importance of scouting the players in person: “No team drafts a player without seeing them in person several times, at least in some respect.”
It’s not always the case, but in-person workouts can hold quite a bit of weight. Former Lakers GM Jerry West saw Kobe Bryant work out and knew he’d be a star:
Meanwhile, reports indicated that Markelle Fultz struggled in his pre-draft workout with the Sixers.
One of the reporters said, “I would say it heavily skews toward film, stats, and measurements, with only, like, disqualifying-level bad intel truly mattering. Different teams will weigh those differently, with measurements probably having the greatest variables between teams. Some really care about positional size; others don’t. Good intel helps break ties, probably. But I don’t think it’s a huge needle mover in most cases.”
He went on to say, “There’s way more variance behind the scenes than people realize, I think. There’s sort of a “public consensus” that exists, but then you’ll talk to someone who thinks a guy ranked top five totally sucks and they’ll have someone you’d never expect in their top twenty. Or they’re just swayed by a different consensus/circle that we don’t have access to. There’s still definitely a degree of groupthink.”
Another reporter I spoke with also expanded on his answer, “Medical is also right up there. If a player has a sketchy or bad medical, it will push them down a board or, for many teams, remove them entirely. Some teams consider that to be the biggest red flag there is.”
This makes sense. In recent years, prospects who had medical red flags leading up to the draft have slid quite a bit (Bronny James, Keyontae Johnson, Jared Butler, etc.).
One of the reporters I spoke with expanded on his answer, saying that a prospect’s mental makeup is an important factor:
“Anyone can look at film and pull stats,” he said. “The key is the right intel and predicting how a teenager or early 20’s prospect handles new money, disappointment, fame, their work ethic and the impact of their inner circle.”
He added, “Think about Rob Dillingham and Reed Sheppard. Lottery picks who’ve been stars their whole lives were just told they’re not good enough to play. Their careers will be shaped by how they respond to this challenge. If Rob loses his confidence, then he’s cooked. His confidence is a huge part of his game. If he starts playing to not make mistakes instead of playing free, then he’s not the same Rob Dillingham that made him a top pick.”
So confidence is a key trait in prospects who “make it.” But just as important is resilience – or their ability to maintain that confidence, even when faced with adversity when they get to the NBA.
“I personally know a guy who was a lotto pick, and he told me he lost his confidence early in his career and never recovered,” the scout continued. “Then he was just playing or trying to do enough to keep a roster spot. Lost the confidence to think he was a starter or top 8 rotation player.”
He also mentioned another player who flopped in the league because he lost his confidence, while another player wasn’t ready for money, power, and the NBA lifestyle.”
That’s where the pre-draft interviews come in. I’m sure that NBA teams take those very seriously. They probably grill the prospects with questions to try and gauge their maturity level, how ready they are for NBA life off the court, and what they’re going to do with all that money they’ll be making now.
I’m sure teams also talk to the prospect’s coaches, teammates, sometimes even parents, and opposing coaches. The higher the draft, the more due diligence is needed.
Plus, NBA teams are having prospects do different tests to understand their IQ levels. This article discusses the AIQ (Athletic Intelligence Quotient), which NBA teams have been using for over 10 years to measure a prospect’s basketball IQ and cognitive abilities.
Besides the AIQ, some NBA teams might use other cognitive assessments or “IQ tests” during interviews or evaluations. These assessments could involve timed exercises focusing on shapes, numbers, memory, and matching.
The folks I spoke with for this article are reporters/scouts who don’t work for NBA teams. Partly because I don’t have direct access to NBA scouts/front office execs. But I did find this video interesting where Celtics President of Basketball Operations, Brad Stevens (who at the time in 2015 was the team’s Head Coach) talks about how one thing he looks for in a player is how they impact the energy level of those around them:
Also, I don’t have the clip, but Ashley Battle (a Celtics scout) was interviewed during a Celtics game. She said a pretty big part of their evaluation criteria is what kind of person they are and whether they would fit the team’s culture.
“We can’t just bring anybody into *this* locker room,” Battle said on the broadcast.
82 games is a long season. With a long season, guys on the team can get on each other’s nerves. There could be issues with team chemistry. The players could just decide to pack it in and not really even try anymore.
Those issues are more likely to happen if you have a lot of selfish players on the team—if you have players who lower the energy level of those around you, as Brad Stevens talks about in that video.
But if you’ve got players who raise the energy level of those around them, who have high character and good leadership, keep their nose clean off the court, and are all about putting the team first, if you’ve got more players like that, you’re less likely to have those issues and more likely to over-perform relative to the talent level of the roster.
The soft skills and intangibles matter—it’s not all about who can put the ball in the basket, jump the highest, or have an STL% over 2.5.
Wrapping It Up
This was a pretty eye-opening experience to really dig in and research how much NBA teams value different things when drafting, what they look for in a prospect, what types of tests they have prospects do, etc.
It’s complex stuff. People’s jobs are often on the line based on how well they are able to draft. It’s not something that is taken lightly. Because of that, it’s a lot more involved than just watching some highlights or looking at the stat sheet.
It’s a group of 5-10 or so employees of an NBA team working together. They dissect prospects, whiteboard, break down hours of game film, and conduct rigorous interviews and tests. They also go to games in person and talk to people in the player’s “circle” to find out what makes that player tick and what opposing coaches/players think about them.
It’s a lot more than you can fit into a 140-character tweet. And a lot of it (private workouts, in-person scouting, interviews, tests, etc.) are things that most (if not all) of the folks on Draft Twitter don’t have access to.
This exercise has helped me realize that stats are helpful in the draft scouting process, but relying on them too much is likely not a good idea.
Lastly, this exercise has given me more respect for the people working for NBA teams, doing this for a living, who have worked hard to get where they are. But at the same time, realizing that even those people make mistakes sometimes. OKC has built a great team, and Sam Presti won Executive of the Year, but they’ve had quite a few misses recently (Ousmane Dieng, Aleksej Pokusevski, Theo Maldeon, etc.).
All NBA teams have draft misses. But sometimes, it’s because of something beyond their control, like injuries. Or it was a good prospect, but they just weren’t a good fit for that particular team at that specific time.
I’d end by saying that all of us on Draft Twitter should strive to be humble. We should realize that while NBA teams do miss on draft picks sometimes, they have likely been doing this a lot longer than us, are a lot better at it than us, and have access to a lot more of the workouts, intel, interviews, in-person games, etc. than we do.
None of us knows for sure how a 19-year-old college prospect will turn out as an NBA player five or more years from now. So, we should be humble. We shouldn’t act like we know everything or try to prove other people wrong.
We should be open to different perspectives and seek to learn from those around us—especially those who have climbed the ladder and achieved more than we have in this industry.
I believe that’s the best way to improve at something—by engaging with and learning from those who have achieved more at it.
The Center Hub 
Leave a comment