Basketball Coaching: Watching Game Film

From the Coach’s Clipboard Basketball Playbook
"Helping coaches coach better..."
Watching game film is a good way to teach basketball and most good high school (and above) teams incorporate it in their program. This page discusses some of our experience with this technology.

Getting Started - What's Involved

Shooting film, editing and showing film to your team takes a lot of time and it can be tedious. I think it's too much for a single coach to manage. You really need to have a reliable, very dedicated tech person to do it for you.

When I say dedicated, this tech person will have to shoot all the home and away games, so is on the road away from home a lot. You might even want to shoot an occasional practice. After filming, he/she then needs to take it home and edit it for the next practice viewing, and be prepared to actually run the film projector if the coach doesn't know how. Having a working knowledge of a film editing app helps.

We have been very fortunate to have such a dedicated person, who is treated as and considered an important part of our team, and always rides the bus with us, gets team apparel, and is invited to all team dinners, functions, etc.

And you need a budget to purchase all the equipment you need, and an available classroom.

Have a Regular Schedule for your Viewing Sessions

What worked best for us was to watch film the day before the next game, and usually once in-between... so usually three times/week Monday-Wednesday-Thursday (games are on Tuesdays and Fridays). Our sessions are in a classroom just before practice starts, and are usually about 30 minutes, and focused. Once over, we head to the gym for practice.

Sometimes, when we are playing at home, we might watch film of our opponent just before our game, while the JV's are playing.

What are we Watching for?

Next opponent

We will watch either scouting film, or film from our last game with this opponent. We look for their overall tendencies... fast-breaking or slow-down, pressing, man-to-man or zone defense, offensive preferences, best player(s), and how we are going to stop them defensively, and attack them offensively. We will run the video, stop it, back it up, re-run it, etc.

Things we need to fix

We will highlight the things that we need to get better at... defensive rotations for example. It's obvious on the film when someone fails to rotate and is not working hard, and not rebounding.

Another big one is players not sprinting back in transition to defense. It's amazing that they often think they are, until we show them the film. The film does not lie! We can often point out that a player did not immediately sprint back, but stopped and looked for a second or two, and then ran. It's the first two steps that often count.

We sometimes have to point out players taking bad shots, or failing to take an open shot. We'll ask the shooter, "What do think John... was that a good shot?"

Show good stuff too

To bolster their confidence, show some clips of some really good stuff too... taking a charge, great defense, some super offensive action, a great hustle play, etc.

We occasionally have a session where we show highlights of archived previous years' (now graduated) teams who had great success in their tournament runs, and all the fun, excitement, and school pride that created for them and the community.

Players Focus

It's just that, focus - no screwing around during sessions. Players should focus on defense, rotations, hustle, and transition. On offense, look at the spacing and movement, good vs bad shots, etc.

Individual Player Film Sessions

Some coaches will do sessions with individual players to help them with their individual skill and team development. But we never had time for that, except in the off-season.

I hope you find this helpful in organizing your own program. Good luck! ~ Coach Gels

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