Hey,
I am french and I was lucky to see Wembanyama playing when he was still in France (Mets92). I obviously felt in love with him and i therefore decided to follow NBA Spurs this year - the struggle is i love watching a sport once I understand better the standard strategies and standard roles players need to adopt. I am not interested at all (yet) in learning NBA history, legendary feuds or best teams/players. I just want to learn how to watch a game using my brain.
Do you have a book or a series of youtube video to introduce me to this ? Ideally, after consuming this i have a basic understanding of basketball offence/defense strategy and I can understand the role/position of a player when watching a game.
I tried exploring NBA/Basketball for Beginners but could not find wat i was looking for : Either it was talking about a particular season or about a list of stats and details about particular players.
I’m biased of course, but the “explain one play” by dub nation HQ is pretty great for breaking down plays and explaining a bit of the process behind them.
Thinking Basketball on YouTube is probably your best option. His breakdowns of players have a ton of explanations about how plays work and how the games develop. Beyond that he has a stats series that explains how to put stats into context, another video for the Pick and Roll, probably the most common play, etc
Also, this one https://youtu.be/6IPXSqOhykg?feature=shared
Hoopvision68 is probably the best channel for understanding fundamental philosophies.
Much of his analysis has college basketball as the starting point, but that should hinder noone from understanding every level of basketball better by watching the channel. The whole series of videos called Deep X’s and O’s Dives is excellent. Also this video, which isn’t a part of the series, is a good starting point as well.
Half court hoops is good as well, although nowadays he doesn’t post as much content as he used to.
At any rate OP, it takes A LOT of film time to start noticing this things in real time. I don’t think any of us casual fans are able to do that.
Thank you very much. It looks promising.
Sam Vacine is a great resource. He has YouTube video breakdowns to help acclimate you
When you’re watching, try to avoid focusing on the ball, and aim to watch the whole tableau (?) at once. Basketball happens in a very small space; the whole court would fit into a football (soccer) penalty area. Look for off-ball movement and screens being set.
This is definitely the first major step. I think that doing this while also trying to acquaint oneself with increasingly sophisticated basketball terminology will enable more thoughtful viewing (as well as discussion).
Drives, screens, hand-offs, cuts, and other movement options are good examples of need-to-recognize terms. There are also of course unique types of passes, dribble moves, shots, and the ilk that make up the building blocks of basketball from which plays are formed and possessions therefore are defined; and if you only watch the ball, most of these things will be invisible!
I also find that it’s sometimes enjoyable to watch a particular player if I feel like they are more valuable than their role would suggest statistically, such as a catch and shoot player having an outsized impact on winning. You’ll often find that these players, away from the ball, are very clever in finding space on the perimeter or utilizing the threat of cuts/shooting to stretch defensive attention thin. But now I’m just gushing about basketball; it’s a beautiful game.
Honestly 2k is a pretty decent way to get started. It’s a bad game full of predatory microtransactions but it will at least get you started on the idea of good vs. bad possessions.
Ben Falk (creator of Cleaning the Glass) made a $100 course designed to teach about the Xs and Os of basketball. I’ve been tempted to take it for years.
Step 1, get off this sub, NOW.
If you want analysis, you will find the opposite here. Nobody here cares about basketball analysis, nobody here cares about discussion, it’s just a giant circlejerk around whoever the sub likes that day and a hate brigade toward whoever’s on the other end of that.
Step 2, watch a ton Thinking Basketball.
Not just the best basketball analysis channel, but unironically the only popular one that isn’t disgustingly biased toward certain players and playstyles. He genuinely wishes to find the ANSWER to his question, and doesn’t care if he doesn’t like it.
Step 3, come back to this sub and laugh at it now that you can see how fucking stupid these people are.
In fact, if you want a little extra fun, every once in a while a verifiably wrong take ends up on top of the sub. Comment on it with the correct interpretation of what the situation is describing, or why the take is wrong, and watch as you’re called an idiot who doesn’t know basketball.
Bottom line, there is no quality basketball discussion online. r/nbadiscussion tries to do this, but it ALWAYS devolves into a circlejerk over older players.
Along with the resources already shared I’d recommend the podcast The Dunker’s Spot. It’s changed the way I watch and what I look for.
try to play