Stealing from Scouting Trends in Other Sports
Basketball is a unique beast, but trends and areas that other sports use can be helpful for NBA teams in how they scout
Buzzwords are fascinating to me. They start with a small group utilizing a word to describe something they all have normalized. External parties get wind of the idea and start to adopt it into their own, and then it spreads, oftentimes to corners of culture far beyond the narrow scope it originated in. In education (my day job), a few buzzwords are incredibly pervasive: competencies, equity and inclusion, and student-centered are common these days.
During the later parts of the 2022 NBA Draft cycle, I started to see the word “bend” used on Twitter and in smaller conversations to describe prospects and their movement patterns. Someone who plays with ‘bend’ is someone who doesn’t just move in very square ways, who can be athletic in tight spaces and avoid contact when space is minimal. It’s a fascinating term, one that clearly draws parallels to functionality, and can be identified without much change to the eye test.
When I asked around and, from much of what I can gather, it seems that the term is commonly used in football scouting to describe players in their sphere. Despite being a different sport, different movement patterns, different sets of skills needed to succeed, the terms for identifiable traits hold merit in another.
I’m a big multi-sport proponent. Overuse injuries are common in young players, and they can become much better athlete by tapping into different muscles and actions on a regular basis. Also: I firmly believe every athlete should learn to dance and do yoga regularly. If we are to advocate for young players to participate in multiple sports, then why can’t we as scouts learn lessons from other sports to apply to our trade?
In that spirit, we tried to do a rather surface-level dive into some other sports to see how they identify, develop, and monitor talent and how adopting those procedures could help within basketball scouting departments.
Drafting/ Constructing a Roster for Your Confines in the MLB
Unlike most sports, home-field advantage in baseball is less about the fans and more about the dimensions of the park itself. No other sports have the unique ability to change the literal playing field or environment in which games are contested. However, what we’ve seen for years is that teams (wisely) draft and target players who will have most success within their home park, where they play 81 games a year.
Teams with shorter distances to left field or right field will attract power hitters who send most of their fly balls to those territories. Those with deep and vast center field areas need speedier center fielders.
Perhaps my favorite quirk comes from the Colorado Rockies, though, who adjust not just to their ballpark but the elevation in Denver. Coors Field is known for the thin air, and thus the long ball is more prevalent. They’ve prioritized power hitters, as well as pitches who only throw pitches that are effective in that climate; breaking ball pitches lose some steam in Coors Field and are statistically less effective.
So how can we apply this to basketball?
In some regard, an up-tempo approach for a team like the Denver Nuggets could be beneficial thanks to their elevation. But that’s a very rare and specified approach. Instead, let’s look at something every team can adjust to: roster construction around your best players.
I’ve long advocated for what I call the “Three Pillars” approach to building a team: the first goal is to find the three primary players around whom an identity on-court can be forged. Once they are found, the priority shifts to surrounding them with the guys who allow the pillars to play at their best — or, to keep the metaphor going, to hold up the weight on their shoulders.
Once you identify those pillars, try to find ways to draft specifically for players who tie the units together — be it positionally or skill-wise. While I’m a big believer in drafting “best player available”, the notion of being the “best” for a certain team depends greatly on how that team can use a guy and what role he fills.
I thought the shift of the Philadelphia 76ers to prioritizing finding 3-point shooters for their roster last year was incredibly impactful. They led the NBA in 3-point percentage and were 4th in overall offensive rating, which buoyed them to their most wins since 2000-01 when the franchise made the NBA Finals. Once they identified Joel Embiid and James Harden as their two key cogs, the rest of the mission was simple in filling in around the margins: find and prioritize floor-spacers who can hold their own on defense.
In essence, the best players on a roster (a team’s pillars) provide the confines in which the game of basketball is played for their team, a role reserved for the ballpark in the MLB. It’s only wise to continually evaluate talent based on what fits best within those confines and specifically target players who check those boxes.
NFL Draft Strategy: Take QBs Early or Push Until Later
There are some truths that even a somewhat casual NFL fan like me can grasp around the league: quarterbacks are the most important position for team success. Getting an elite signal-caller can raise the floor and the ceiling for a franchise; those guys are the anchors of the organization on-field.
Each draft class is different with how many top-tier talents are at the position, and that’s reflected in the draft order every year. This year, three of the first four picks were quarterbacks, and then we didn’t see one taken until the second round. In 2022, only one (Kenny Pickett at 20) was taken in the first round at all, with the next off the board (Desmond Ridder) going in the 3rd round at 74th overall. Teams will trade their way up or down boards to get those elite quarterbacks at the top, making them the most sought-after assets available.
The strategy from NFL teams seems fairly clear: if there’s an elite prospect, he needs to go in the top because of how transformative that can be for the franchise, but if there isn’t one available, he’s probably not worth a first-round selection.
NBA teams might be able to take something from this when it comes to the scarcity of a few positions that don’t have a ton of flexibility, aren’t scarce, but are still incredibly important. I think of both point guards (guys who are smaller but talented) and rim-bound big men as checking these boxes. Their presence on a roster or in a rotation can anchor a team to a specific style of play on either end. If a team is going to take them, they should be damn certain the player is worth it.
The strategy for NBA teams would be as follows: If you get an elite one (a guy who can be like a Joel Embiid, Kyrie Irving, or Trae Young who is the exception to the rule), go get him in the top of the lottery. Otherwise, you’re better off going with positional trends and searching for the best players at other positions. You can find a solid replacement-level big man in the late 1st/ early 2nd round who can turn into a rotation player or starter — and you can certainly find an undersized point guard there with talent.
Many NBA teams already kind of subscribe to this theory, though it isn’t as exaggerated or set in stone as what we see in the NFL. But it does impact how we as scouts should evaluate. The bar and litmus test for undersized guards and non-fluid big men should be so much higher to clear than it has in the past, at least if they want to receive a top-ten grade.
Multi-Sport Models Work
According to 24/7 recruiting services, 100 of the 259 players selected in the 2023 NFL Draft (38.6%) played high school basketball. The skills gained in basketball have helped NFL prospects increase hand-eye coordination, mobility and movement patterns, footwork, and other traits that prepared them to stand out once they reached college.
I’m a longstanding believer in the multi-sport model. While year-round basketball is the trend nowadays with AAU seasons reaching from March to August, there’s a ton of upside for guys who aren’t fully in that mold to unlock their potential at a higher rate once they get to college and begin to specialize in one sport. One such player: Connecticut guard Cam Spencer, who was a lacrosse player in high school and has outperformed his expectations and moved up level after level since arriving as a college athlete.
Multi-sport athletes avoid overuse injuries at a better rate because they activate different muscles by engaging in various activities. They bring different skills and coordinations to the table, and many of them find success in relating to different types of teammates, which brings important locker room value. Winning experience in different sports is also sacrosanct.
I’m not sure what sport is the right one for basketball teams to be searching for. Perhaps a skill position in football (or a tight end for big guys) could have value. I played soccer in high school and felt like my footwork drastically improved as a result. Track & field athletes often have major overlaps with basketball players in terms of functional athletic traits.
The point is this: there’s more grassroots competition than ever, and it feels almost like a requirement for top prospects to go all-in on committing to participate at increasingly younger ages. When everyone is zigging, there could be value in zagging: having balance in high school, only playing your main sport once you get to college, and showing rapid improvement from there.
After all, it seems to work for the NFL..