This Is What You Should Look For When You Study Film (Increase Your Basketball IQ)

I'll go through a couple things right here that you can look at specifically when it comes to actually watching film, because I think that that's where players sometimes are. There's a disconnect too is they don't know what they're actually looking for. What can they actually use to help themselves feel prepared? And so there's a couple different things so we talk about. When you're watching defense, right? Let's say you're watching a team that you're about to play. You're just watching their defense, right? So you can say, okay, what defense are they running? Are they running man? A two, three, a one, three, one. Are they running a press? Is it a man press? Is it a zone press? Do they trap a lot in their presses or in their half court defense? What is their defense, right? What do they want to do? What kind of defense do they play? Answer that question, right? And this one you can literally write down. You can go through yourself and just write this down, right? I'm watching this team, okay? They're playing this defense or they play this defense and this defense. And when they play this defense, they're really aggressive or they're not that aggressive, right? Just some general ideas with that. How do they guard, pick and rolls? How do they guard off ball screens? Do they play over on every pick and roll? Do they play under? Do they hard hedge? Do they blitz? Do they ice ball screens? If they're off ball, do they switch off ball screens? Do they, you know, shoot the gap? Do they trail over on every ball, every off ball screen? Good things to know as well. So you can be prepared in those situations. Especially if you're that guy who has the ball and plays and pick and rolls. It's really helpful to have at least an idea of how a defense might guard you coming off of that pick and roll. Or you might know, hey, they guard side pick and rolls this certain way. They ice every side pick and roll, right? Meaning they don't even let you use the screen. They basically reject you and make you go towards the baseline. But high pick and rolls, they don't, they don't ice. They just play over and drop, right? So if you know the difference between that, now you're going to be prepared for those different situations and you have a leg up on them. And then third thing, how do they guard the other team's best player or best players, right? Do they completely face guard them and deny them? Do they do nothing different? Do they double team them? Do they go box and one, how do they guard the best players in the other team? What shots do they allow? Are they okay with giving up mid range shots? Are they okay with giving up, you know, threes in their zone? Are they okay with, you know, are they, are. Do they give up a lot of transition points so they don't get back very fast? So I mean, to think about what shots do they allow? How do they guard? How do they guard threes? Like, do they run threes off the line? Do they allow for perimeter shots? How do they, how do they guard the perimeter? Is their help defense good right now you'll know, okay, if I catch the ball and I attack this closeout, right, Which I've talked about a lot recently, so go back on my channel, you'll find videos on attacking closeouts as well. Do they allow for, you know, basically finishes at the rim because their health defense is always late or it's not there. So. So I know if I beat my guy, I'm probably going to have nobody to contest me in the rim. Or is their whole defense really good? Meaning now when I attack this guy, I'm probably going to have to look to kick the basketball because I know I'm going to have a teammate open because there's going to be two on me. So something to understand as well, and who are their weak defenders, right? So is number 21 on their team? Is that, is that their weak guy? So I know if that if I somehow get that matchup, they switch on to me, like that's an opportunity I'm going to have to take advantage of or maybe I know, hey, this guy is good in this situation. Like he's good around the rim, but he's also really likely to jump for shot fake. So I know if I catch the ball and he's closing out to me, if I shot fake, he's probably going to jump and I'm probably going to have an opportunity to make a play going downhill. These are really important things to know so that you can feel as prepared as possible going into games. So again, this is, if you can write down, you can literally go through, watch a team you're about to play and just give yourself answers. Just go through a complete list of what am I looking for? What can I take advantage of right here? What am I gonna go into this game expecting? Okay, and then when we talk about offense, right? So what offense do they run? Do they run a four out? Do they run a five out? Do they go some sort of flex or continuity offense, do they do some sort of you know, dribble drive where basically every time they catch the ball, they're just trying to dribble and run these dribble handoffs and overlaps and all this sort of stuff. What, what is their offense look like? What, what's their base? What, like, what do they do? They run a lot of sets, they run a lot of like quick hitters, Are they calling a lot of plays? What actions do they like to go to? Do they like, do they like high picking roles? They like side pick and rolls? Do they like pin downs? Do they like, you know, back screens? They get a lot of high post touches, low post touches, mid post touches, a lot of dribble handoffs. Like, what are the actions that they like to run on offense? Right? What do they do? A lot of okay, and, and then you can also say, okay, what are they hunting with this right here? They like to go pick and roll so that they can get the ball to the rule guy because that's their best player, right? So now you understand where they're trying to go. When they get to a certain action, they're doing all these dribble handoffs to hopefully get a middle drive. So now you understand what they're trying to hunt with those different actions. Okay, so can you pick up on patterns? Right? And this is how you increase your basketball IQ as well, is just going through and asking yourself, yourself this que these questions and piecing it all together, what shots do they look to take most? So do they just want to shoot threes? Do they want to shoot 40 threes a game? Is that their goal? Do they like post ups? Is that their goal? Their goal is to get the ball in the post, in the high post, mid post. They like, you know, trying to hunt mismatches in the post. Like, is that what they want to do? Do they look to just run in transition? That's where they're at their best. They're looking at pressure on defense so they can get out and run. Do they ISO a lot? Do they have a couple players who can, who can ISO really, really well? So they're just going to clear out and give guys opportunities to ISO. What shots do they want to take the most of? Right? And then which defenders do they target? Right, so is there a certain, like, are they going to put defenders in difficult positions? Do they have certain players that have the ultimate green light? They can shoot the ball whenever they want, wherever they want, and they just, if they're open, they're going to shoot it, or if they're not open, they're going to shoot it. Like, do they have players like that as well? Right. So the goal is to determine what the other team and specifically if you know the player you're going to be matched up on, to understand this, to know what they like to do, and take away that first option. That's your ultimate goal as the defender, right? So when you have a goal here, like I want to take that away from them, then you can make the game more difficult for them and hence easier for yourself. Give yourself a leg up right there. Now, the thing is, like, that can obviously change game to game because different players, different teams have different affordances. That team may, may guard that team differently than they'll guard your team because that team has a certain player that your team doesn't have, or you guys have a certain player they don't have. And they might go zone against them, man, against you. But now you at least have an idea of what you could be expecting. And maybe it's different, maybe it's not, but that's a way that you can control the controllables and be as prepared as you possibly can be. And if things are a little bit different, you adjust to that. But you still have that bank of knowledge already, so you still know who their guys are, you still know what actions they'd like to get to. A team is not going to do a complete 180 from game to game, right. Especially at, you know, pretty much, you know what you have. Like, you're not going to have a team that's going to be completely different, especially if you're at like the high school level. Like, teams can't just completely change up everything from game to game, right. You just don't have enough talent to be able to do that. So when you have an idea of what you're looking for, it makes everything easier for you, even if they do give you a little bit of a different look.