Scouting or CNP-AOL, by Tim Shea

After having played and coached in Europe since 1972 I began working for the NY Knicks as their European scout in the 1994-1995 basketball season…

And although I had been a relatively successful professional Head Coach in Spain and its ACB league and with selecting impact American players like the, at that time, arguably best foreign Point Guard to ever play in Spain in Andre Turner and his COREN Ourense teammate, the phenomenal Chandler Thompson, I soon realized that for the NBA business I still had a lot to learn. 

As a Coach and to evaluate possible players to recruit for my teams I had used a personal, very simple formula which was; 

T.A.I.A. which represented Talent, Athleticism, Intelligence, Ambition.  

I quickly found out that scouting NBA-level basketball prospects involved more than my simple formula. It involved a much wider range of physical, mental, technical, and intangible characteristics. An NBA scout was required to look for not only current performance but also their potential for development on what the NBA experts called “the next level”.  

It was now scouting for and searching for, PROSPECTS and every piece of information that could be found was like finding another gold nugget. 

I must add here that, at that time in 1995, there still existed a very strong prejudice in relation to “non-American” players. It translated into their being considered, “too soft” for the NBA game also known as “not tough enough“. I disagreed. And in the many, many, many staff meetings that were held prior to Draft Day (which I still consider “Overkill”) I would on occasion fervently voice my disagreement. In one meeting I was lectured by an “old school” NBA veteran expert and told, “I should never “fall in love” with prospects and needed to think of them more as “Stocks or Bonds” that I should be colder and calculating.  

In my mind that NBA prejudice converted to misled, faulty logic.  

To be clear. A total of 6 foreign players picked (of 60) in 1995.  

Since then that number has grown exponentially to 27 drafted in 2016.  

So much for soft! 

To get into the specifics here is a comprehensive breakdown of what is involved in scouting an NBA prospect whether in the US or anywhere else in the world. These categories are “Musts” measurements and values used nowadays by all NBA scouts. 

  

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 

  1. Height & Length
  1. Athleticism
  1. Strength
  1. Endurance & Conditioning
  1. Durability / Injury History

  

MENTAL and INTANGIBLE CHARACTERISTICS 

  1. Basketball IQ
  1. Work Ethic

 

  1. Competitiveness
  1. Coachability
  1. Mental Toughness
  1. Focus & Consistency
  1. Leadership & Team Dynamics

  

TECHNICAL SKILLS 

  1. Shooting
  1. Ball Handling
  1. Passing & Vision
  1. Defense
  1. Rebounding
  1. Versatility

  

SCOUTING FOR THE POTENTIAL 

For all these young players, scouts project: 

  

For the more advanced readers these below are the metrics driven prospect/player aspects that have become the bread and butter of the present day NBA clubs. They involve data based formulas that are carefully measured, followed and are constantly updated.  

  

EVALUATIVE METRICS & DATA-DRIVEN SCOUTING 

Scouts also incorporate analytics and advanced stats: 

 

That season, back in 1994, I was FedExing video cassettes from Spain to the New York, USA just as I did later for the Phoenix Suns.  

How times, like the game itself, have changed. 

And to this point I add a final anecdote. 

  

*A Hall of Fame member and elderly, wonderful man and a ex-NBA player named Dick McGuire (RIP) was a decades long veteran of the NYK coaching and scouting staff.  

It became known in the club that when he returned from scouting trips his reports would have the name of the player scouted, the school where he played and below those, where the actual report was expected, there would often be only large bold letters. 

Those letters were: 

CNP” and nothing more. 

Asked to explain what these letters stood for he said: 

CNP was Can Not Play. 

The NYK President Ernie Grunfeld, surprised and shocked, asked that in future reports he could be more elaborate, explanatory and specific. 

Dick agreed and after returning from his next trip he handed in his report, and it had the letters: 

CNP-AOL 

He was asked to explain this, and he said that the prospect, 

“Can Not Play – At Our Level” 

He was one of a kind! 

End of story. 

  

Below please find our NYK 1995 (now primitive) Scouting Form