Behind the Baseline | The Top 5 Traits of Basketball Scouts
Since you can't find "basketball scout" on the job search websites and what traits and skills the potential employer is looking for in a scout, this article might answer the questions for you.
When I decided to start with basketball scouting in 2019, there were not many articles, videos or guides about basketball scouting. I could find an article here or there with some valuable nuggets but overall, I was left on my own on the old “learn form your mistakes” road.
Of course, at the end of the day that is the path that everyone needs to go through but it would be very helpful for me to get some advice much earlier on “how and where to start”, “what is the scouting process”, “how to evaluate prospects” and many more other questions that I had on my mind.
I believe that in the last years with the rise of more scouting sites/profiles on X (ex Twitter) the situation has improved. There are more articles and podcasts available where you can learn about the scouting craft.
Just to mention and suggest some of the smart minds that were or still are sharing, not just their knowledge and expertise about players, but also about their scouting process and their way of thinking/evaluating:
Rafael Barlowe on his NBA Big Board
The whole No Ceilings crew
Adam Spinella on his The Box and One
Thank you in the name of all people that are interested and passioned about this topic! I definitely took away something from your writings and became a better scout because of that - at least I believe so, time will tell if it is true. :)
I am a curious person in general and I love to read and go deep into the topic that I am interested in. I am well aware that I am not the smartest and that I can learn from anyone, no matter their experience and title.
As Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist and one of my favorite authors, put it: “A key to lifelong learning is to see everyone you meet as a potential teacher.”
Side note: I just finished reading Adam Grant’s book Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things. I would definitely recommend the book to anyone, not just for basketball people.
In one of the chapters of the book, the author talks about the tutor effect; that the best way to learn something is to teach it. I learned some lessons on my journey and I think I can give some advice or teach the new, younger, generation about the process and how I am approaching it.
To make it clear, I am not an expert but that might also be a good thing for those without any experience and willing to learn. In the mentioned book, Adam explains that for a newbie, it is better to learn from a non-expert - a person that has the knowledge on the topic but is not an expert in his field. It is called the curse of knowledge: the more you know, the harder it is for you to fathom what it’s like to not know.
With this blog I have the freedom to write about anything and sharing the lessons I’ve learned so far will be a part of it too. There will be different topics on scouting related things and I will title the series “Behind the Baseline.” The sidelines of the basketball court are reserved for the coaches and team personnel, the baselines are opened for a different point of view - for the view of a scout.
In the first edition of the series, I will focus on the traits that make a good basketball scout. These are not the only traits and characteristics but, in my opinion, the main ones. There is no “one size fits all” and every scout is different; someone is better in one area while someone else in another.
Player/Talent Evaluation
This skill is probably obvious. As a scout you need to be good at talent evaluation. If this is the most important skill in this craft is debatable, some will maybe say that “the next skill on my list” (no spoilers! ;)) is more important but I am a believer that player/talent evaluation is the most important one.
It depends what is your role and what is your goal when scouting a specific player. As a NBA scout, you need to look for different characteristics in players than if you are scouting for a youth academy in Europe or a school/college. If you are working as a scout for a professional team and looking for pro players, your main focus should be on some other things.
Sometimes the goal is to look for the upside of a player and what the player can become in a span of more years, sometimes the goal is to search for a player that can fill the need of your team/organization. As a scout you need to distinguish between the different needs and look for the right solution.
The main goal is to have as much information on a specific player as possible and limit the possibility of a wrong decision. More often than not, the scouts are not the main decision makers but they play an important role in the first few steps of the decision-making process - identification, gathering information and having options.
It is necessary for a scout to have the knowledge of what to look for in a player. A scout needs to know how to assess and evaluate player’s skills, strengths, weaknesses.. What is his “upside”, how can he help the team/organization, what can be his role in the team, is he ready for a new challenge, is the player a good fit for our team.. and many other things. The scout needs to find the answers on these questions even though he might not take the final decision of drafting or signing the player.
In general, a scout needs to have a keen eye for details. His observation skills need to be very good and he needs to spot the small details that a regular fan that is watching the game cannot.
It is not just the basketball skills that the scouts are looking at when watching a player. Looking at their behavior, energy, sportsmanship, character, work ethic and many other things are also very important in painting the whole picture about the player.
That is not easy to do if you are not present around the player all the time and watch him on practices or outside the gym in public. Usually you need some help in these things and that leads us to the next trait that a scout needs to have..
Interpersonal Skills
With “interpersonal skills” I mean that a scout needs to have the social skills, social intelligence, he needs to know how to build relationships and how to network.
As I touched it a little in the previous trait already, when you are gathering intelligence (shortened as intel) and information about players, you need to rely on other people. That is the reason why network is so important in this business and you always need some help of other people.
Some would even argue that this is the most important trait of a scout since with a great network of people, you could get all the evaluations and you would not need to do the job of player/talent evaluation.
Scouts need to establish and maintain relationships with coaches, players, agents, managers, directors, journalists,… with all people that have information and insights on the players. There is no limit and as the saying goes “your network is your networth.” That is very true in scouting and the more people you know and the better relationships you have with them, the better job you can do as a scout.
I would say that this trait is probably my main weakness so far but I promise you that I am working on it every day. I have not been a professional player or worked in basketball before I decided to start scouting so my network of basketball people was really small in the beginning. Being an introvert also have not helped me much in the process of growing my network.
But with showing up at many different tournaments/events, meeting new people in person or on social media and being real and honest with them, my network started to grow exponentially.
For me it was never about the quantity but I look more for the quality of my network. I do not approach networking as “collecting contacts” but more as “making friends.”
My network might be smaller but I have made so many friends on my journey so far that I can rely on when I need them and that is more important to me. Some of them will be reading this article and find themselves in these lines and here is a message for them: “Thank you, I appreciate you.”
Organizational & Time Management Skills
This trait is also very important for a scout. It has nothing to do with basketball but without this skill, you will burnout very quickly.
There are so many games available and the talent is spread everywhere around the globe. If you are not organized and if you don’t know what you are doing, you will waste so much time with doing the stuff that is not worth doing.
I found myself in this situation many times. Often when I watched a game where I could see in the first quarter that there is no player in this match that has the qualities/talent that I am looking for but I still continued to watch the game for the next three quarters. “Maybe am I missing something and someone will show up..”
Well, later I figured out that as a scout you can’t see everything and that you will miss some things. It is impossible to see all the matches and possessions of a player and if you spot immediately that the quality of the match is bad and that there is no player worth watching, it is better to skip and move on.
As a scout, you are not a fan and you don’t care about the result or who won the match. You are looking for the players and if there is no player worth your time, look at a different place. This is a friendly advice for people who are doing “video scouting” from your home, looking for “under the radar players/prospects”.
Another thing where you need to be organized is when you are on the road. NBA scouts are on the road most of the time, always traveling from venue to venue, from one gym to another. More or less they are switching between these three venues - gym, hotel and airport.
You need to be very organized in your traveling schedules, you need to be time efficient and know when to go to watch a player. It happens sometimes that the player you came to watch is sitting out and you just wasted a day or two of travelling to see him play. And to connect the dots with the trait #1 on my list; you also need to know what you are looking for so you don’t waste your time on the wrong players.
You also need to be organized with your note taking process. Every scout has a different approach and you need to find one that suits you best. I was experimenting a lot with this in last years and I think now I’ve created a process with databases that works well for me. I will explain how I take notes and create databases in more details in an article later.
Organizational & time management skills are very important traits of scouts even though some might not be aware of that!
Work Ethic & Love for the Game
I really believe this one should be on this list too. Scouting is a grind. It is not as glamorous as it sounds and to be a good scout, you need to make a lot of sacrifices. It is a time demanding job especially for the scouts that are on the road and travelling all the time.
They are away from their families most of the time and when the season is on, they don’t have a lot of free time. Most people don’t think about those things when they are thinking about a scouting job but that is in the job description too.
It is very hard to do scouting for a longer period of time if you don’t like basketball and are fully commited to it. You need to watch a lot of basketball matches and if you don’t like doing that, then scouting for sure is not for you.
Watching just the best parts of the game, the condensed games or the highlights is just not enough if you want to be a serious scout. Also listening to talk shows and podcasts or reading blogs and scouting reports on players is not enough in my opinion. You need to watch the games/players, in good and in bad, and you need to do that multiple times.
You need to be passioned about basketball and fully commited to it. Motivation is not enough, it will fade away over time when things will get hard. Then discipline needs to kick in so that you persevere through the hard times. And I doubt that this is possible if you don’t have the work ethic and the love for the game of basketball.
Forward Thinking / Predicting the Future
This trait goes hand in hand with talent evaluation but it is a little different. A good scout in my opinion needs to see in the future. He needs to have a feeling what is going on and he needs to follow the trends in basketball. He must know how to identify the playing styles of the team/league and if the scouted player’s skills can translate to next level.
If a scout stays behind and is not following the modern trends in which direction the basketball is going, his evaluations might be completely wrong - not to say useless. Basketball is a dynamic sport, the playing styles are changing and different leagues require different styles and profiles of players for different position.
I would go even one step further and say that the scout needs to think innovately and stay ahead of trends. He needs to anticipate what will happen in a few years and be prepared for that. A scout should have an open mind and look at different ideas and principles.
Predicting the future is even more important when you are scouting younger players. Scouts don’t really care about the stats of a prospect in U14 leagues but they need to imagine him how he can look in pro leagues. This is not an easy task when you are looking at younger players and it requires a really sharp and trained eye.
A player might be dominant on U14 level, great on U16s, solid on U18s but can’t play on professional level. There are countless examples of that and scouts should look for the skills that translate to next level(s) not just at pure numbers and stats.
This is it for the first “behind the baseline” article. I believe that this five traits are the most important for a scout and that a great scout has all of them on an above average level.
I would also like to invite you readers to help me out with this segment and if you have any questions for me about scouting or a prospect, let me know and I will be more than happy to answer or write an article about a particular topic/player.