How To Chart NBA Play-By-Play Events
Plus, a Q&A with a basketball thinker
Howdy folks,
Today’s special Saturday report includes a Q&A with Mike De La Rosa of Thinking Basketball.
Then, for paid subscribers, I have a tutorial on how to recreate the following plot, which shows the location of every liveball turnover in the NBA finals.
Do not be surprised if turnovers, specifically, the liveball kind, are the deciding factor in Game 7. Outside of Game 1, the team that has won the liveball turnover battle has won each game of the Finals.
Notice how many backcourt turnovers OKC has committed compared to Indiana. We can chalk most of that up to Indiana’s fullcourt pressure, which they actually dialed back substantially in Game 6. Nevertheless, it would not shock me if OKC has committed more liveball turnovers in the backcourt than any team in any playoff series ever.
A Refreshing Q&A with Mike De La Rosa, Video Producer for Thinking Basketball
For my money, the Thinking Basketball YouTube page is the single best resource for improving your understanding about the sport. The detailed breakdowns have the magical ability of making me feel like I know nothing about basketball and everything about basketball.
If Ben Taylor is the brains behind the operation then Mike De La Rosa is the eyes. Mike is a video producer for Thinking Basketball and occasional guest on the Thinking Basketball podcast. Mike has a unique ability to identify the small moments in a game that tell a larger story about a player, a team, a coach, or a trend.
I wanted to learn more about what makes a good Thinking Basketball video so I reached out to Mike for a Q&A. We talked about video story-telling, Toumani Camara, and how to watch basketball by not watching the basketball.
This Q&A has been lightly edited for length and clarity
F5: What makes a good Thinking Basketball video?
MDLR: To me, the videos at their core “make fans smarter”. When you understand what you are watching at a deeper level, you tend to enjoy it more. That’s been an underlying philosophy from the beginning of the channel, and a north star to come back to. Another key component is breaking down things in the simplest way possible. We try not to make our videos too jargon-y and don’t want to gatekeep the information by making it too complicated. One thing I always love is getting texts from my Mom that say “I loved this video! I understood it completely!” When we can achieve that, I think we’ve done our job. I think the editing is very key and precise as well. We really try to make the videos flow, and you might not feel it, but we are highly intentional with calling out things in the simplest way possible. When editing is bad, you notice it, but when it’s good, it’s invisible and you are just there for the ride.
Walk me through the process of putting together a Thinking Basketball video. Are there certain beats you guys try to hit each time or is every video a different process?
Each video can have a very different treatment, but there are often commonalities. For one, it depends on the type of video -- is it a game breakdown on a finals or playoff game? Player profile? Team video on their holistic offense or defense? Historical video? League trend? I’d probably separate the videos into two buckets though, game breakdown and longer scout/trend video.
Early in the regular season, we are just trying to watch as much film as possible and canvas the league. This involves monitoring statistical trends and really trying to parse out what’s real and what’s not, because there can be some fake teams early in the season. Then, let’s say we get an interesting 5 or 10 game stretch from a team, we have probably already started gathering footage from some of those games. We want to identify the most interesting clips to start to build the video around.
Next, we dig more into the film and stats and start to have the shape of a rough outline of the video. The trickiest part is threading a through-line of a coherent story. We are asking, what are the most salient and interesting parts of this game, player, or team to pull out for a grander narrative? One key part is to figure out the early part of the video and combine that with the following sections, because you want someone to just seamlessly be along for the ride once you get their foot in the door. Storytelling is more of an art than a science, so trying to consume other content across mediums (Movies, docs, scripted TV even) can be helpful to understand why certain directors or editors choose to make creative decisions. I personally don’t consume much content like ours, instead finding inspiration elsewhere.
YouTube incentivizes you nowadays to really be thinking about the title and thumbnail during the video-making process, but I think you’re seeing some creators buck against the trend of hyper-optimized content in favor of just focusing on telling a really compelling story. That to me is possibly the most fun aspect of any given video, just spitballing ideas with Ben and really being intentional about what we choose to highlight on any given topic.
How does that process change in the playoffs when there is more urgency to respond to recent events before they go stale?
Yeah we certainly feel like we are on the clock for high-stakes games, especially during the finals. If it’s a game we know we are going to make a video on regardless of the result, the whole Thinking Basketball team shares notes throughout the game, and then shortly after it finishes, we look at the clips we want to use and start to formulate the main talking points. The difficult part is figuring out “how can we boil down this game to its essence” while understanding or anticipating other topics we may cover in a series. For example, if we talked about, say, Haliburton a lot in Game 1 of the finals, maybe we don’t need to focus on him as much in the Game 3 video, but still might want to throw in a sub-section on a few key adjustments that Carlisle made.
Same with role players or more micro trends, like Nembhard we did a whole player profile for after Game 2 of the Finals that I’d been working on for almost a week, so no need to do a huge section on the following game breakdown. Going back to the question, there’s an urgency to get the video done quickly by the following afternoon because you can capture a bigger YouTube audience the sooner you release the video, although if the game isn’t sexy enough to the audience, it probably doesn’t matter as much.
Do you guys talk to NBA staffers when you’re working on a video about a specific team? For instance, the video you guys did about the Grizzlies’ offense earlier this season -- are you reaching out to members of their staff for input or are you just going off what you see on the film?
When we can, we talk to staffers, but even then, we go deep in our process first and then pick their brain about where we landed. Unfortunately, a lot of teams are very guarded about their approach in the middle of the season. We also try to read between the lines in press conferences which can be pretty helpful depending on the openness of coaches/players, but generally we are just doing our own research and not relying on sources. My DMs are open though!
Are there any topics that don’t lend themselves well to a Thinking Basketball video?
Yeah, I think we try to be critical but not overly negative. We also tend to focus on what is just happening *on the court*, as opposed to drama off the floor, although sometimes we have to critique some narrative that is pervasive and back it up with evidence. The most annoying times are when we’ve been working on a video and a team just falls off a cliff, or a player gets injured, so usually then the video gets shelved or we put it on hold for a bit. We’ve had many videos that have gone on ice that we may never get to again, but that’s the game! Not every rabbit hole we go down turns into something.
Do you usually know when a video is going to do well when you’re putting it together?
The process tends to be so thorough and the editing so precise that I feel every video we put out is good and fun to watch, but if it’s a video on a more niche topic then I usually don’t expect huge views. One example would be the Knicks offense breakdown on the Villanova guys we did -- Ben worked on that video for weeks, I thought it turned out great, but nobody seemed to care.
Other times, we know the video is a banger. I’d point to the video titled “What former players get completely WRONG about today’s NBA” - that one felt like it really hit because the former player discussion was in the center of the cultural zeitgeist at that moment, and nobody can do a treatment blending historical NBA footage with the current NBA like Ben. All credit to him there. Usually the more macro/trend-like videos I anticipate doing well, because if we find a good way to package the video with a snappy title and thumbnail, there are few channels or media outlets that do such a thorough, clean job at zooming out and contextualizing those trends. I’d also point to the video “Players have invented (insane!) shots to counter NBA defenses”, I knew that video was elite, we just didn’t find the perfect title for it, but it didn’t even matter because the video was so good.
What’s one thing every casual fan can look for when watching a game that would enhance their viewing experience regardless of their ball knowledge?
This is a cliché answer, but watch what is happening away from the ball. That’s what informs what happens on the ball. If you are getting into analyzing basketball more seriously, maybe pause and rewind a play and ask yourself what is the offense trying to achieve, and what is the defense trying to take away. Getting down to the micro level of “why are they choosing to defend the pick and roll in this way?” or “what spots is the offense trying to get to on the floor?” can really help you identify patterns that improve your film viewing process. Obsessing about the pick and roll can be a good starting point because there are so many of those plays happening in any given game, and the whole game can sometimes operate around what is occurring in the pick and roll.
I’d also say watch the coaches/bench facial expressions and reactions, that is an underrated way to understand whether they are achieving what they want on any given play.
Also, ask any friends that understand basketball at a deeper level what they see, or Tweet at someone to cross check your work! It takes years to develop the muscle. Reminds me of the old adage “learning happens slowly, then all at once!” At a certain point, things just start to click.
Can you watch an NBA game without it feeling like work? Or are you always thinking about what you can pull from this game to put into a video?
Definitely I can watch a game without it feeling like work, but if I know we are going to make a video on it then I tend to be pretty locked in and wanting to understand it better. What I will often do for playoff games is watch it semi casually live, pausing and rewinding a bit, maybe jotting down a few notes, and able to catch the key stretches live, then I’ll rewatch it later under a microscope and do a deep dive with more thorough notes that same evening or the following morning.
You always hear coaches and players say “We’ll see what we find on the film” and I find that very true, you need to rewatch or really dive into it to understand the game fully. But I love just watching live and soaking up the emotional component of these big games with electric crowds! The action has been unreal! Such a fun playoff stretch.
What do you look for in a scout? When watching, what makes something interesting about a player or team?
My favorite thing that seems to be a good proxy for a video rabbit hole is when I just cannot stop watching a team. Usually it’s a signal that there is something there. For example, I got really into watching the Trail Blazers this season, their fun defense and stable of young players and just how they were playing so many good teams tightly. One game sticks out to me where Toumani Camara was guarding Haliburton and held him to 0 (!) points. And then in a game around then, Billups tasked Camara with guarding Jokic! I was like, there’s gotta be something there. So I started to just look at my favorite plays from him on defense, and then slowly started to build the video around that. It’s almost like finding the most basketball-porn-level plays, and then going from there. Really happy with the video we made on Camara - “The 52nd pick who guards Jokic AND Dame (!)
Generally though, I tend to be a sucker for any creative X’s and O’s tactics, and up-and-coming teams. Like, when the Thunder started using more guard to guard screens and spacing the floor in creative ways with guards in the dunker spot, or changing the court geometry to give Shai more lanes to drive, that had my antenna up. Or going back to 2022, when the Kings started borrowing concepts from the Nuggets and Warriors with Delay action combined with Split action and just pushing the pace, I was all in on that as well. I get excited at the beginning of every NBA season because there are always unexpected teams or players I get really into.
What’s one thing you cannot live without during the NBA season?
It always comes back to pbpstats.com. I specifically can’t live without the WOWY and WOWY combinations tool. It really helps color in which players tend to be most important to their team, or interactions between a single player and their teammates and what Net Rating they may have when certain guys are on the floor. It also helps a lot for trend-type projects where you are looking at a stretch of games where the team might be playing a lot better or worse.
I’m biased, but early in the season I love the thinkingbasketball.net team board and player cards, really gives a good snapshot of which teams are on a good win pace, or might be boosted by hot shooting, and for the players, understanding their whole statistical profile with their team efficiency is very useful. The player cards also have the information cleaned in a way where you can see the relative true shooting, multi-year shooting, and on/off net ratings in one compact view.
I’d also highlight Taylor Snarr’s website, dunksandthrees.com just because it is beautiful and I love getting the snapshot of EPM throughout the league just to cross-check my references, and it’s helpful for the rolling trends function to see when a player may have started to take an upward or downward trajectory.
How To Chart Play-By-Play Events
In this tutorial we’re going to some events (liveball turnovers) from the play-by-play feed and plot them on a full NBA court.
Let’s begin by loading our packages and setting up a custom theme.