The life of an NBA scout is unglamorous to say the least. While coaches and players reap most of the glory, scouts work tirelessly to uncover as much information as possible about the opponent’s strengths and weaknesses. Long flights and early wakeup times are the norm. Benjamin Hochman of The Denver Post takes us behind the scenes:
The Dallas series ended late last Tuesday night, after which Murphy returned to his hotel in San Antonio and began writing his “thesis paper,” as Iske calls it — the scouting report for Dallas. It was finished in 36 hours, during which Murphy slept about six hours.
The report, more than an inch thick, features a write-up of each player’s tendencies. (Nowitzki favors shooting from the top of the key, and, for goodness’ sake, don’t let Jason Terry shoot a 3-ball from the corner.) Then there are the play names, four pages of more than 100 possible Dallas play calls (such as V-series, V-down, V-twist, Zipper and Fist-up), and there are extensive computerized diagrams of each Mavericks play, a modern-day chalkboard.
Also in the report are statistics, a blizzard of black-and-white digits. Box scores of prior games. Pages and pages of quantifiable trends, player shooting charts and conclusions drawn by Dean Oliver, the Nuggets’ director of quantitative analysis, such as “team ranking in half-court defense, not including defense immediately after allowing an offensive board,” in which, as you probably already knew, Denver ranked eighth in the
NBA.The dungeon door opened, revealing an inside looking much like a sports bar, with different-sized televisions plastered on the wall and young adults hanging out, talking sports. It’s the Nuggets’ video room, where Murphy and Iske collaborate with video coordinators Nate Anderson and Jesse Mermuys to bring scouting to the big screen.
The video room features seven DVD players, seven VCRs and has satellites so the boys can record everything from NBA games to the Arizona Wildcats. Each Nuggets coach has a MacBook, and the video guys tailor-make DVDs so coaches can easily access the insight gained from Iske and Murphy’s scouting reports, then show the players on computers exactly what Dallas is up to.
Click here to read the rest of Hochman’s column.
