A SCOUT'S PERSPECTIVE - OBSERVATIONS & RUMINATIONS

Scouted for 11 years in the NBA and have seen a lot of great talent at all levels of basketball in my life.  I'm the son of a legendary college coach who coached basketball for 47 years of his life. I was raised in and around gymnasiums. Great talent/players stand out like a sore thumb. Not hard for anybody to recognize a great talent. The challenge in evaluating great talent for the professional level is evaluating the psychological side of the individual and their ability to lead, grow and evolve as a person and a player. Evaluating a 9th grader is fraught with it's own challenges and land mines. So much can happen in terms of physical, mental and psychological development between the 9th and 12th grades; and obviously, the same holds true in terms of the development of technical and tactical skills in the athlete. In reviewing George Dohrmann's "Play Their Hearts Out, " I expressed a concern with our propensity to expose children to too much too soon...

On December 30, 1995 I attended a game between Georgia Tech and Santa Clara at the Cable Car Classic in San Jose, CA. Santa Clara won the game 71-66 and it was the first time I had ever seen Stephon Marbury and Steve Nash play with their college teams. I had seen Nash play in the summer of 1995 at the L.A. Summer League with the Canadian National team. It was early in the scouting year, so I was just trying to get a feel for the talent on the floor.  I knew that I would see the key players later in the year. Georgia Tech had two other players on their team who would eventually play in the NBA, Drew Barry and Matt Harpring.  I saw Marbury two more times that year and by the end of the season I was in love with him. I thought he was on par with Allen Iverson and had more point guard instincts than AI. Based on his performance on the floor, I liked him better than AI. Steve Nash did very well at the Desert Classic and solidified his status as a solid point guard prospect. By d...