Ethan Khoza (YouTube, Apr 6, 2023) explains how to raise basketball IQ by actively studying game footage rather than passively watching. He advises watching player-specific highlight videos twice (first to observe, second to analyze), writing down small details, looking for patterns (change of speed, creating space, manipulating help defenders), and gradually applying observed solutions in live play. He also recommends watching full games for context (matchups and game plan) and notes analytics tools (Synergy, Second Spectrum) as optional resources.
Chapters
The first thing is just go to YouTube and watch highlights of players that you want to learn from. This can be anybody that you're interested in watching. I would say game highlights are great and obviously like the NBA posts a lot of highlights of players and House of Highlights does that too. And again, I'm not saying going on Twitter and watching a 20 second clip of someone dunking like that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about going to YouTube and watching Klay Thompson versus the Milwaukee Bucks and you're watching a five minute video, that's all just Klay Thompson or Damian Lillard versus the Lakers. When you do that, watch it through one time, just observing, right? Not trying to see anything specific, just watching it through and then watch it through a second time and now try to pick up on different things, right? So pick up on, okay, how did he just do that? How did he just create space right there? What did he do that allowed him to create that right there? If he made a pass and it was a nice pass, well, break it down. How did he do that? How did he manipulate that help defender so he could create for his teammate right there? How did he beat his primary defender to be able to get to that look right there and start to notice these things? And I would say even write it down. How does he utilize change of speed, change of height, how does he create shots for himself? I think that whatever you notice, it's important that you write down at first. And this is going to be hard, by the way. Like if you're doing this for the first time, the first couple times, it's going to be hard to really pick things up and you're going to feel like you're kind of banging your head against the wall trying to notice things. But I want you to try and notice every single little detail you can and just write it down. Even if it seems irrelevant, it seems dumb, write it down anyway, right? And what you're going to notice the more that you do this, first of all, the easier it's going to become, right? You're building a habit, you're going to start to see things more easily, but you're going to pick up on patterns, right? You're going to see the same things over and over again and you're going to start to naturally see what's important when you start to do this, right? So again, right off the bat, it might not be important everything that you see, but you'll start to pick up on what is and what isn't. As you do it more and more, and you know, again, as you start to do this, a switch is going to flip for you and you're going to start to notice some of these situations and these opportunities when you play. You're going to start to think yourself like, hey, I might have missed out on doing that, right? And it's all because you've just been watching things, right? You've just been, again, increasing your understanding of what solutions are out there. And you know, eventually as you do this more and more, you're going to start to do things and take advantage of situations in games that you, you haven't practiced before, right? You're just going to start to be able to act and see things and find solutions that you've watched before, that you've studied before. Because again, we talk about those mirror neurons, right? They've been firing as you're watching things. You're watching and you're thinking about, okay, how does this apply to me? That that's your brain at work right there, okay? So you got to put yourself in a position to be able to do that. And it almost will feel like sometimes that you have done it before even though you've just watched it, right? So there's the value of that. If you have access to like, Synergy or Second Spectrum, really, really great tools as well. But all you need for this, YouTube, YouTube, and just a desire to learn. And you're going to be able to take advantage of this fully. And also going with that, watching full games when you can, I think is really important. Obviously, we're in April right now and the national championship just ended. So, you know, you're not watching college basketball, but NBA playoffs starting soon. So just watching games and seeing the context behind what's going on as well, I think is really, really important because now you not only have like the actual skills, okay, what are they doing? Like, how do they do these different things? But you're, you can see in the game, okay, when did they do this? Why do they do this? Are they trying to take advantage of a matchup? Are they trying, like, what are they trying to do? What's the game plan right here? And you can start to get pick up on those things as well, which just again increases that basketball iq. And you're going to start to see that as you do this more and more often, as you study this more, you're. First of all, your basketball Q is going to go up a lot, but you're also going to skyrocket the affordances that you now have, Right? The opportunities that you see when you play, it's going to be night and day for you as you do this over time. So, again, this is why I think it's so important to watch the game, to watch basketball, to not just watch it, but to study it and to really dive in and try and learn as much as you can. There's so much out there for you if you're willing to take advantage of it.
