Chasing Perfection: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the High-Stakes Game of Creating an NBA Champion

by Andy Glockner

  Daniels said that he thinks grassroots coaching continues to improve overall, and there have been numerous cases in the past few years of Amateur Athletic Union coaches getting hired for college jobs based on their performances, not solely for which players they can deliver to a college program. That’s a good development, as is the ever-growing variety of tournaments and events that help put the best players on the floor together (and against each other) in more and more situations. Overall, though, the established high school level still isn’t fully prepared to give elite players the refined attention they need to reach their ceilings. Enter USA Basketball, which in the last seven years has become another crucial development outlet for the best high schoolers, and one that is increasingly attuned to analytics as part of its overall mission.

  Sean Ford has been the director of the US men’s national basketball team since 2001. He and assistant director BJ Johnson (who is primarily tasked with overseeing the men’s junior national team programs) are the two most responsible for keeping the USA Basketball talent pipeline full. At any one time, the pair of Villanova alums—Johnson played basketball for the Wildcats—may be managing up to five separate US national teams and their related qualification processes or actual championship competitions.

  While USA Basketball doesn’t use analytics in the same deep, complicated sense as many NBA teams, Ford and his staff still have a significant interest in using numbers to help them both define the style of play US national teams will feature on the court, and also the types of players the program is looking to bring in, from the youngest junior teams up to the Olympic and World Championship squads at the senior level.

  Because USA Basketball doesn’t have teams together for all that long—even including training camp practices along with the actual competitions—there isn’t enough data to compile accurate assessments of individual player performance, but Ford and his staff do like to look at the team-level performances to try to ensure that the style they want to play at each level is being implemented. They also look at trends in terms of where players come from and where they end up matriculating in college, to see if there’s any correlation to success or failure in their programs. There’s still a good amount of eye test involved, too—especially as USA Basketball starts feeding the youngest age groups—because really up until the senior national team itself, physical talent will be ahead of actual basketball skill. In the interim, US athleticism is a sledgehammer.

  “We like long, like everyone else—long and athletic players,” Ford said. “We have the luxury of being able to pick or look at everyone in the United States. But we really like length, and [in the] international game, the style of play that we want to play, length carries a big part of that because the majority of [our kids are] not used to a twenty-four-second shot clock.

  “And we want to play fast because our strength is we’re more athletic than any other team. And the more possessions you have in a game, the more likelihood that the more talented team is going to win. And it’s not very often that we step on the floor and are not the most talented team. It doesn’t mean we will win every game, but talent does prevail . . . and if you play harder than your opponent, and you have more possessions, and you’re more talented, it’s a very strong likelihood that you’ll win.”

  This type of analytic thinking also comes into play in actual roster construction, as witnessed with the final selections for the 2014 World Championships. Ford said the loose goal is to have a player or two who specifically plays the point guard spot, as well as one player who is a dedicated center. The United States may not need a back-to-the-basket player in every game in a tournament, but there are times when it’s very useful to be able to dump the ball into the post and get a bucket or get fouled. Beyond that, USA Basketball is looking to cultivate a group of athletic, wing players who can move anywhere between the shooting guard and power forward positions.

  At the senior team level, 3-point shooting is a significant consideration because of the elite skill level of the shooters. It’s a shot that the United States can exploit. The younger national teams don’t have that wealth or consistency of shooting, so Ford said their style of play focuses more on getting 2-point attempts in the paint and in transition, which also helps their offensive rebounding, and getting to the free throw line.

  Overall, USA Basketball wants its teams to play in the neighborhood of ninety to ninety-five possessions in a forty-minute game, and to score at least one point per possession. The overall philosophy to punish teams closer to the rim also helps loosen up the 3-point arc, which helps the younger teams that may lack the deadeye shooters that the senior team often has in spades. Ford also hypothesized—although they don’t track this statistic yet—that younger players may shoot the three better when their team is leading, which is more reason to attack early and try to establish a lead and/or foul trouble that will benefit the United States later, as their depth wears opponents down.

  Whatever the offensive approach, USA Basketball wants a team that can impart its defensive style on opponents while getting the offense it needs on the other end.

  “Everyone [besides the dedicated ones and fives] has a primary position, but also has a secondary position, which allows us to be very flexible in our offense and defense,” Ford said. “We want to press—or at least press for the ball. We’re not necessarily trying to just turn them over all the time when we press—and we do this primarily with our junior teams—[but] try to prevent them from running their offense too much. We want them to get into their offense with fifteen on the shot clock, sixteen on the shot clock.

  “We can be taken advantage of by a good half-court offense team. That’s where we struggle sometimes,” he added. “And so if we can prevent a team from getting into their offense a second time, that’s a good thing. So if we can use up the beginning of the clock with pressure and they get into their offense later, we don’t have to play half-court defense as long. And the length comes in because it’s deflecting a shot, the deflecting of passes, the angles that prevents good passing angles, but it also, when you do get into your offense, we always like to have the option of having a lineup that can switch on every screen, and that we’re not hurt offensively or defensively.”

  Ford credits FIBA’s decision in 2009 to eliminate its Under-21 World Championship, in part because many of the most promising young players were already with their nations’ senior national teams at that point, and replacing it with an Under-17 World Championship, which included qualifying at the Under-16 level. That gave USA Basketball the opportunity to implement the same type of development strategy as program director Jerry Colangelo and head coach Mike Krzyzewski were putting in place for the senior team: they would build up pools of talent for that age group, hold training and tryout camps, select a twelve-man roster for a specific event, and then repeat the process with the next age-appropriate group while those who were in the program competed to stay in the mix for the next age cutoff and tournament.

  Getting formal access to players as young as entering high school freshmen was a great opportunity for USA Basketball to lengthen the indoctrination process, getting players used to international play at much earlier levels. Because the new process is only seven years old, USA Basketball is just starting to see the yield of players from the very start of the talent development pipeline mature into senior national team players, but that’s coming—and more and more high school standouts who end up as one-and-done college players will end up playing more games for USA Basketball at its various levels than at the collegiate level, further increasing USA Basketball’s reach and impact on future NBA player development, as well as its own.

  “Because of the success of the senior men’s team and the resources developed as a result of Jerry Colangelo’s leadership, especially the money to run good programs, our young programs—boys, girls, men, women—are outstanding,” said Krzyzewski, who leads the US men’s senior national team as well as Duke University. “These youngsters then get indoc
trinated into a high level of play, what it means to play for their country, and develop relationships that then lead—for those who continue and are good enough to make the men’s senior team—they get to know one another. There’s familiarity, and that’s what other countries have used against us: the continuity and familiarity of coaches and players doing things together.”

  Ford noted that entering the 2014–15 college season, expected standouts like Tyus Jones, Justise Winslow, Jahlil Okafor, and Stanley Johnson hadn’t played a collegiate game yet, but had played for four years for USA Basketball and all had three gold medals from various age competitions.

  “Even the guys that won in Spain [at the FIBA Basketball World Cup in 2014], all of those guys—[Mason] Plumlee played on an 18-and-under team, [Steph] Curry played on a 19-and-under team, Klay Thompson played on a 19-and-under team, Kyrie Irving played on an 18-and-under team. Those guys played on our younger teams. Rudy Gay played on a 21-and-under team, [and] he played in a Hoops Summit. [DeMarcus] Cousins played in a Hoops Summit,” Ford said. “A lot of those guys played on our younger teams, but there wasn’t the [Under-]16 and [Under-]17 available, so they didn’t play on multiple teams where you got [situations like] Tyus Jones and Stanley Johnson. They’ve won three gold medals, they’ve played on multiple teams, they took ownership of USA Basketball while they were in high school.

  “And that’s where you’re going to see. We’ve had kids that have played on the national team—our senior team—that have played on our junior team, but Andre Drummond was the only one, the first one, that played in the World Championship that was on a [Under-]16 and a [Under-]17. So now we’re going to see that going forward and that culture, the USA Basketball culture, is not going to be new to them at the senior team because they were part of it at the junior team.”

  USA Basketball’s improved development work isn’t going unnoticed. Top-level college coaches like the enhanced atmosphere for elite recruits because they’re getting better competition and coaching than they’d typically get at the high school and grassroots levels, along with the battle-hardening that comes with tournament competition where US teams are always favored. NBA teams aren’t on the same level yet, as they don’t immediately get their hands on these teenage prospects, but they like that they’re able to see high schoolers more than they used to. Full-time high school scouts also see the difference in the way some of the nation’s most-talented prospects handle themselves and improve their game.

  “For the top tier guys, I think they’re certainly making their mark,” said Daniels, who is part of the junior national team selection committee. “USA Basketball, in my eyes, is the best place to evaluate a prospect. When I’m evaluating a guy, I want to see him in all settings, and with USA Basketball, it’s structure, it’s quality coaching, it’s putting these kids through competitive drills and competitive situations. I’m not sure there’s a higher honor than representing your country in high school basketball, so these kids compete there and they play hard. So it’s certainly turned into the premier event, in my eyes.

  “I think Sean and BJ have done a tremendous job of developing the brand with the younger generation. They’re getting these kids early, and getting them in the program earlier and finding out about them earlier, so they’re helping out with development. When a kid is able to go out to Colorado Springs for two weeks, and then go to Argentina and compete on a world stage, that’s a big-time experience, but they’re getting better in the process.”

  The current youth players won’t make it to the senior level for a while—if they do at all—but Ford is excited that the new process has been in place long enough that some of their initial recruits for the Under-16 and Under-17 programs are now becoming more reasonable candidates for the senior national team.

  Beyond the aforementioned Drummond, the initial youth roster in 2009 included Charlotte Hornets forward and defensive standout Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Washington Wizards shooting guard Bradley Beal (who was in the mix for the 2014 World Cup team before breaking his wrist), Philadelphia 76ers combo guard Tony Wroten, and a handful of other new(ish) NBAers. The 2010 Under-17 roster included Milwaukee Bucks forward Jabari Parker (the No. 2 overall pick in 2014), Aaron Gordon of the Orlando Magic (No. 4 in that draft), along with Okafor, Jones, and Winslow, all lottery picks in 2015. We’re moving closer and closer to the point where the pipeline will be fully connected, and a significant number of players on the senior national team will have started with USA Basketball at the very beginning of the current process.

  “I think we’re now just seeing the results of it, but I think the impact it could have on us is post-[2016],” Ford said. “A lot of the players that will be on the ’16 [team] will still be the guys that were kind of raised through USA Basketball with Coach K, if you will. And then post-’16 and we head into the next [cycle], you’re going to see players that first started to play for USA Basketball in our 16- and 17-and-under teams. That’s where you’ll see the Jabari Parkers, the Jahlil Okafors, even Marcus Smart, those types of guys.”

  Compared to high school, analytics are much more widely available and used at the college level. While longtime Sports Illustrated college basketball writer Luke Winn estimates that maybe a quarter of Division I programs have a staffer who is largely competent in advanced statistics and analysis, basically every program competing at that level has access to some type of analytics.

  For starters, a subscription to Ken Pomeroy’s KenPom.com site costs $19.99 a year and provides a wealth of information, starting with a team’s four factors rankings and moving into more esoteric statistics like a team’s relative height and contributions from its bench. Other web-based services like Basketball State provide even more granular stats and years of historic information, for a similar price point. Both of those service providers also have more expensive products tailored for college coaches to help them analyze their own team and to scout others. There are also independent consultants who work for individual programs, and basically every Division I program subscribes to Synergy, as well.

  If you have extra cash and the ability to hire staff to process all of the data, though, SportVU is becoming a differentiator at the NCAA level, too. And whenever the system actually becomes more mainstream at that level, a few individual schools will already be well ahead of the curve.

  During the 2014–15 season, there were four men’s college basketball programs that used SportVU. Powerhouses Louisville and Duke—which had the highest and third-highest basketball budgets in the country in 2013–14, per data provided to the US Department of Education’s Office of Postsecondary Education—were each on their second season with the system, as was Marquette, a perennial NCAA tournament team under former head coach Buzz Williams that now was under the command of former Duke point guard and assistant coach Steve Wojciechowski.

  The fourth program, though, was a fairly unexpected one, coming not from the remaining pool of college bluebloods or even one of the nation’s big-money conferences. It was from within the less-fancied Mountain West Conference, and even within that league, it wasn’t nouveau power San Diego State or typical league heavyweight New Mexico or even glitzy University of Nevada-Las Vegas. The program that installed SportVU in its arena was Colorado State, located an hour north of Denver in bucolic Fort Collins, with a bigger basketball budget than either the Lobos or Rebels per that Department of Education data. The Rams elected to spend a modest chunk of it to gain an advantage.

  Cutting-edge technology seems a funny fit for an old-school tactician like Colorado State head coach Larry Eustachy, who has won over five hundred games in his career despite coaching mostly at a series of out-of-the-way-and-spotlight locales. But the seeds for the idea were planted by the team’s video coordinator, Willie Glover, who had worked with Eustachy both as a student assistant and assistant coach at Southern Mississippi and had connected with Brian Kopp at the 2014 NBA Summer League. Glover figured the spend would benefit the Rams as a recruiting tool, and also would enabl
e the program to maximize the skills of the players they were able to bring in, as the Rams were much more likely to nab a one-year transfer than a one-and-done blue-chipper.

  Glover got Eustachy to buy in, and he spent the 2014–15 season handling the interpretation and the reporting of the SportVU data for the coaching staff. Glover openly admitted that the first season was a work in progress, both in terms of the actual reports (which were delivered via e-mail, and after every four games to try to smooth out stats variance a bit) and in how messages were received and deliberated by the coaching staff. While a lot of what Glover sent along was fairly rudimentary, there were sometimes pieces of information that he flagged that would allow the team to more closely consider how it was deploying some of its personnel.

  “If we want to look at assists, we can track Daniel [Bejarano] for example, and see on average . . . at home he touches it about eighty-four times a night,” Glover said, showing off the SportVU product on his laptop as he sat in Eustachy’s office. “As you can see, that’s about roughly twenty times more than the next person, so what is he doing with those touches? His assist percentage is quite low considering the number of touches that he has. As compared to a JJ Avila, who touches the ball roughly twenty times less, but has a 3 percent higher assist percentage.”