http://www.sacbee.com/content/sports/basketball/kings/story/14244008p-15062640c.html
Scout's honor
In the NBA, the lookouts who could make the difference between victory and defeat sacrifice greatly for the sport they love
By Sam Amick -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PDT Sunday, April 16, 2006
Pat Zipfel is in a hotel room.
For once, he's in a Hyatt instead of a Marriott. For once, Zipfel flew on the private plane of billionaire NBA owner Paul Allen instead of trekking through the airport and onto a commercial flight. For once, he gets to actually see the people for whom he works in Portland, those coaches and players for whom he spends so many thousands of hours gathering enemy information.
This, in the life of an NBA advance scout, is a rare treat.
It's almost 4 p.m. Feb. 27, and the Kings-Trail Blazers game is three hours away. Zipfel sits in a gray sweat suit inside his room on L Street. There is a red-and-black Trail Blazers logo on the right side of his jacket, but it would be more fitting on the left. His heart belongs to this team, to this league and, most of all, this sport. It's why he spends so much time scouting, sacrificing, sitting in hotel rooms such as these.
"If you understand and love basketball, this job is unbelievable," Zipfel said. "Even though it's grueling, I mean grueling, it's a total privilege to sit front row every night and do this."
By the time the season is over, Zipfel will spend 125 nights away from his Pennsylvania home, away from his wife of 13 years, Angela, and their 6-year-old daughter, Megan. In the course of a regular season in which each team plays 82 games, Zipfel will have scouted 141 games in person. His is perhaps the most arduous of the many NBA jobs.
Among the many scouting jobs, none can compare to advance work. There are NBA scouts for every conceivable purpose, from international scouts and domestic scouts who assess college and overseas talent for draft day, to scouts specifically hired to focus on potential free agents and individual pro players.
For the team, the advance scout is the enlightener, compiling nightly reports the size of small books and sending the information back to the home base just in time to sneak in a few hours' sleep and move on to the next city.
At minimum, the findings give the coaching staff a pulse on the upcoming opponent, detailed insight as to what plays they're running on offense at what frequency and precisely what to look for. At maximum, the knowledge makes it from the minds of the scout to the coaches all the way to the players, perhaps changing a handful of possessions in a sport in which so many games often are decided by a few points.
For the scout himself, the job can serve as a steppingstone to grander gigs. New Jersey head coach Lawrence Frank and former Denver coach Jeff Bzdelik once served as scouts, as did fast-rising Dallas assistant coach Joe Prunty and Houston assistant Andy Greer, to name a few. In his 12 years in Sacramento, the Kings' Bubba Burrage went from video scout intern to advance scout to his current role as the team's third assistant coach. Former Kings advance scout Dave Twardzik went even further, becoming Orlando's assistant general manager.
The Kings of present day rely on R.J. Adelman and Steve Shuman to be their spies. Adelman is not only the son of coach Rick Adelman but a former shooting guard at Willamette University (Salem, Ore.) turned lawyer who, in the end, turned back toward basketball. Shuman's local ties abound, from his time as an assistant at Jesuit High School and his Sacramento State education to his alter ego as a Monarchs assistant.
If those names don't ring a bell, this one should. Rudy Tomjanovich was a Houston scout long before he went on to win championships with the Rockets in 1994 and 1995, and before he won a gold medal as the coach of the 2000 Olympic team.
Tomjanovich survived the grind when it was even tougher, when there were no cell phones to keep in touch with his wife and kids and no shortage of loneliness.
"I did that for five years, and it wears you down," said Tomjanovich, who now enjoys a lighter schedule as a part-time pro player scout for the Los Angeles Lakers and will head Team USA's scouting for this summer's world championships and the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. "People used to talk about my appearance, say to me, 'Man, you look beat.' And that's just the way it was. You're always going, always have that deadline of getting that stuff in. And it never stops."
The job begins in the early morning hours. After a late night of computer banging and report producing, sleep rarely comes until the sun is threatening to rise. Then comes the too-early wake-up call, followed by the dash to the airport as that night's game is approaching. Zipfel's first week of this season, for example, was the perfect storm of a beginning.
He was on hand for five home openers in seven days, for San Antonio, Golden State, the Los Angeles Clippers, Portland and the Kings, with a game at New York squeezed between that was the Knicks' second at home. Each and every time, he would arrive at the game more than two hours early, finding a seat near the opponent's side to watch different players and their pregame routines.
The X-factor in the equation, though, comes in the X's and O's - the offensive and defensive alignments the teams like to run. At least two scouts can be found sitting somewhere near the respective benches at every NBA game. With pens in hand and pre-printed sheets full of blank half-court sets, they scribble their way through 48 minutes of play, all while eavesdropping on the respective coach of their assignment to hear the specific call for each particular play. With covert intelligence gathered, they head back to the hotel to organize it all when the game is over.
"The real work happens after the game," said Zipfel, whose background as a head coach in the American Basketball Association and college led to his first scouting job with the Los Angeles Clippers. "It's sitting in this bed with a computer, being in a hotel by yourself at 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning."
Adelman, who found time from his own scouting trip to e-mail The Bee, knows the routine well.
"It can be a grind," he wrote. "But at least for me, it's an enjoyable grind. ... No matter how much basketball you might think you know coming into this league, the NBA is a different animal. The more games you see, though, and the more sets you diagram and the more terminology you hear, the easier each game is to digest and analyze."
As reports go, Zipfel's are as thick as any, with one for a particular Western Conference team (not the Kings) 52 pages long. It has virtual chapters, with a "Call Sheet," breakdown of strengths and weaknesses, a "What we need to do to win" category, breakdown of each player and half-court diagrams of more than 100 plays with a timeline of when each play was run.
Once Zipfel turns in his report via e-mail, he files his report to Portland lead assistant Dean Demopoulos, and the implementation begins. The coaching staff pays close attention to the report, framing discussions in practice around concepts and trends and teaching as much as they can with the limited time between NBA games. Before games, players also are given lighter versions of the report, and player profiles of that night's opponent are taped on the wall in the locker room.
"There are certain people in the NBA who don't feel (advance scouting) is important," Demopoulos said. "I think it's extremely important. I know for myself, when we're putting together a game plan, it's much more helpful when we have someone who has done the advance work. In this league, everybody's so familiar with what each other does that maybe six inches is the difference between winning and losing."
The Trail Blazers, however, have won less this season than most of the league, last in the Western Conference. Despite the highly praised hire of coach Nate McMillan and remaking a roster that once made all the wrong sort of headlines, they lack the talent and cohesion to compete. Just as the fault doesn't fall solely in McMillan's lap, no one looks at Zipfel as if he is to blame.
Still, Zipfel's late nights are better when the Trail Blazers have won, with the scout not knowing his true impact but surely staking some small claim in victory. Through the wins and losses, McMillan said the work of scouts such as Zipfel is valuable.
"We depend on what they send us quite a bit, because you can only pick up so much from (game) tape," McMillan said. "It's much easier to read the information, the tendencies, from the last four or five games, to have the numbers and percentages. I've seen scouting reports over my years of playing and coaching, but I haven't seen one as detailed as what Pat brings."
As advance scouts go, Zipfel's load is as heavy as any. By season's end, Zipfel's only days off will have come on Christmas Eve and over the All-Star break.
"I think they are cloning Pat Zipfels up there in Portland and sending them all over the country," Adelman wrote.
In a job that pays a fraction of what most of their colleagues make, the travel can be a curse and a blessing. Zipfel, like so many like him, has free plane tickets aplenty and "a quarter million" Marriott points from so many nights away, meaning offseason vacations come on the cheap - if not free.
According to numerous scouts and NBA executives, an average salary for an advance scout is approximately $70,000 annually, with the low somewhere near $45,000 and the high in the $130,000 range. Which says nothing of the priceless moments.
When Kobe Bryant scored 81 points against Toronto on Jan. 22 in what was the second-highest individual scoring effort in league history, Zipfel put his pen down for good in the third quarter. Having already worked a Clippers game that afternoon, he was no longer a scout but a fan.
"I was front row for what, potentially, could be the single greatest offensive game in the NBA in my lifetime," Zipfel said.
But his life is about more than basketball. And no matter how many historic hoops events Zipfel witnesses, he would rather his family didn't pay such a steep price.
It is a seven-month sacrifice that is almost over, as the Trail Blazers' horrendous season is just three days from ending. During the season, Zipfel's wife and daughter live in suburban Philadelphia. Minutes before the Kings and Trail Blazers tipped off in February, Zipfel roamed the Arco Arena halls on his cell phone, telling Megan a bedtime story before going back to work.
Days later, his wife would celebrate her 40th birthday without her husband.
"It's tough," he said.
And talking about it doesn't make it any easier. But talking can help fight the feeling of solitude on the road. By the time Tomjanovich started living the scout's life, he already was a husband and a father of three, without the instant communication of cell phones or e-mail to help bridge the gap.
"You're working almost every day, and one day bleeds into another," Tomjanovich said. "It's a really lonely job. You have to try to keep in contact with people because all you're doing, basically, is talking to service people, people on the plane, the check-in person, people at hotels. There is no interaction. You try to make contact because you start losing it. You start feeling really isolated."
Until tipoff time, when the work begins and the cycle continues. By the time the Kings and Blazers get started, Zipfel will change from his casual attire, wearing a black suit and red tie and adding a studious pair of spectacles.
cont.
Scout's honor
In the NBA, the lookouts who could make the difference between victory and defeat sacrifice greatly for the sport they love
By Sam Amick -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PDT Sunday, April 16, 2006
Pat Zipfel is in a hotel room.
For once, he's in a Hyatt instead of a Marriott. For once, Zipfel flew on the private plane of billionaire NBA owner Paul Allen instead of trekking through the airport and onto a commercial flight. For once, he gets to actually see the people for whom he works in Portland, those coaches and players for whom he spends so many thousands of hours gathering enemy information.
This, in the life of an NBA advance scout, is a rare treat.
It's almost 4 p.m. Feb. 27, and the Kings-Trail Blazers game is three hours away. Zipfel sits in a gray sweat suit inside his room on L Street. There is a red-and-black Trail Blazers logo on the right side of his jacket, but it would be more fitting on the left. His heart belongs to this team, to this league and, most of all, this sport. It's why he spends so much time scouting, sacrificing, sitting in hotel rooms such as these.
"If you understand and love basketball, this job is unbelievable," Zipfel said. "Even though it's grueling, I mean grueling, it's a total privilege to sit front row every night and do this."
By the time the season is over, Zipfel will spend 125 nights away from his Pennsylvania home, away from his wife of 13 years, Angela, and their 6-year-old daughter, Megan. In the course of a regular season in which each team plays 82 games, Zipfel will have scouted 141 games in person. His is perhaps the most arduous of the many NBA jobs.
Among the many scouting jobs, none can compare to advance work. There are NBA scouts for every conceivable purpose, from international scouts and domestic scouts who assess college and overseas talent for draft day, to scouts specifically hired to focus on potential free agents and individual pro players.
For the team, the advance scout is the enlightener, compiling nightly reports the size of small books and sending the information back to the home base just in time to sneak in a few hours' sleep and move on to the next city.
At minimum, the findings give the coaching staff a pulse on the upcoming opponent, detailed insight as to what plays they're running on offense at what frequency and precisely what to look for. At maximum, the knowledge makes it from the minds of the scout to the coaches all the way to the players, perhaps changing a handful of possessions in a sport in which so many games often are decided by a few points.
For the scout himself, the job can serve as a steppingstone to grander gigs. New Jersey head coach Lawrence Frank and former Denver coach Jeff Bzdelik once served as scouts, as did fast-rising Dallas assistant coach Joe Prunty and Houston assistant Andy Greer, to name a few. In his 12 years in Sacramento, the Kings' Bubba Burrage went from video scout intern to advance scout to his current role as the team's third assistant coach. Former Kings advance scout Dave Twardzik went even further, becoming Orlando's assistant general manager.
The Kings of present day rely on R.J. Adelman and Steve Shuman to be their spies. Adelman is not only the son of coach Rick Adelman but a former shooting guard at Willamette University (Salem, Ore.) turned lawyer who, in the end, turned back toward basketball. Shuman's local ties abound, from his time as an assistant at Jesuit High School and his Sacramento State education to his alter ego as a Monarchs assistant.
If those names don't ring a bell, this one should. Rudy Tomjanovich was a Houston scout long before he went on to win championships with the Rockets in 1994 and 1995, and before he won a gold medal as the coach of the 2000 Olympic team.
Tomjanovich survived the grind when it was even tougher, when there were no cell phones to keep in touch with his wife and kids and no shortage of loneliness.
"I did that for five years, and it wears you down," said Tomjanovich, who now enjoys a lighter schedule as a part-time pro player scout for the Los Angeles Lakers and will head Team USA's scouting for this summer's world championships and the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. "People used to talk about my appearance, say to me, 'Man, you look beat.' And that's just the way it was. You're always going, always have that deadline of getting that stuff in. And it never stops."
The job begins in the early morning hours. After a late night of computer banging and report producing, sleep rarely comes until the sun is threatening to rise. Then comes the too-early wake-up call, followed by the dash to the airport as that night's game is approaching. Zipfel's first week of this season, for example, was the perfect storm of a beginning.
He was on hand for five home openers in seven days, for San Antonio, Golden State, the Los Angeles Clippers, Portland and the Kings, with a game at New York squeezed between that was the Knicks' second at home. Each and every time, he would arrive at the game more than two hours early, finding a seat near the opponent's side to watch different players and their pregame routines.
The X-factor in the equation, though, comes in the X's and O's - the offensive and defensive alignments the teams like to run. At least two scouts can be found sitting somewhere near the respective benches at every NBA game. With pens in hand and pre-printed sheets full of blank half-court sets, they scribble their way through 48 minutes of play, all while eavesdropping on the respective coach of their assignment to hear the specific call for each particular play. With covert intelligence gathered, they head back to the hotel to organize it all when the game is over.
"The real work happens after the game," said Zipfel, whose background as a head coach in the American Basketball Association and college led to his first scouting job with the Los Angeles Clippers. "It's sitting in this bed with a computer, being in a hotel by yourself at 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning."
Adelman, who found time from his own scouting trip to e-mail The Bee, knows the routine well.
"It can be a grind," he wrote. "But at least for me, it's an enjoyable grind. ... No matter how much basketball you might think you know coming into this league, the NBA is a different animal. The more games you see, though, and the more sets you diagram and the more terminology you hear, the easier each game is to digest and analyze."
As reports go, Zipfel's are as thick as any, with one for a particular Western Conference team (not the Kings) 52 pages long. It has virtual chapters, with a "Call Sheet," breakdown of strengths and weaknesses, a "What we need to do to win" category, breakdown of each player and half-court diagrams of more than 100 plays with a timeline of when each play was run.
Once Zipfel turns in his report via e-mail, he files his report to Portland lead assistant Dean Demopoulos, and the implementation begins. The coaching staff pays close attention to the report, framing discussions in practice around concepts and trends and teaching as much as they can with the limited time between NBA games. Before games, players also are given lighter versions of the report, and player profiles of that night's opponent are taped on the wall in the locker room.
"There are certain people in the NBA who don't feel (advance scouting) is important," Demopoulos said. "I think it's extremely important. I know for myself, when we're putting together a game plan, it's much more helpful when we have someone who has done the advance work. In this league, everybody's so familiar with what each other does that maybe six inches is the difference between winning and losing."
The Trail Blazers, however, have won less this season than most of the league, last in the Western Conference. Despite the highly praised hire of coach Nate McMillan and remaking a roster that once made all the wrong sort of headlines, they lack the talent and cohesion to compete. Just as the fault doesn't fall solely in McMillan's lap, no one looks at Zipfel as if he is to blame.
Still, Zipfel's late nights are better when the Trail Blazers have won, with the scout not knowing his true impact but surely staking some small claim in victory. Through the wins and losses, McMillan said the work of scouts such as Zipfel is valuable.
"We depend on what they send us quite a bit, because you can only pick up so much from (game) tape," McMillan said. "It's much easier to read the information, the tendencies, from the last four or five games, to have the numbers and percentages. I've seen scouting reports over my years of playing and coaching, but I haven't seen one as detailed as what Pat brings."
As advance scouts go, Zipfel's load is as heavy as any. By season's end, Zipfel's only days off will have come on Christmas Eve and over the All-Star break.
"I think they are cloning Pat Zipfels up there in Portland and sending them all over the country," Adelman wrote.
In a job that pays a fraction of what most of their colleagues make, the travel can be a curse and a blessing. Zipfel, like so many like him, has free plane tickets aplenty and "a quarter million" Marriott points from so many nights away, meaning offseason vacations come on the cheap - if not free.
According to numerous scouts and NBA executives, an average salary for an advance scout is approximately $70,000 annually, with the low somewhere near $45,000 and the high in the $130,000 range. Which says nothing of the priceless moments.
When Kobe Bryant scored 81 points against Toronto on Jan. 22 in what was the second-highest individual scoring effort in league history, Zipfel put his pen down for good in the third quarter. Having already worked a Clippers game that afternoon, he was no longer a scout but a fan.
"I was front row for what, potentially, could be the single greatest offensive game in the NBA in my lifetime," Zipfel said.
But his life is about more than basketball. And no matter how many historic hoops events Zipfel witnesses, he would rather his family didn't pay such a steep price.
It is a seven-month sacrifice that is almost over, as the Trail Blazers' horrendous season is just three days from ending. During the season, Zipfel's wife and daughter live in suburban Philadelphia. Minutes before the Kings and Trail Blazers tipped off in February, Zipfel roamed the Arco Arena halls on his cell phone, telling Megan a bedtime story before going back to work.
Days later, his wife would celebrate her 40th birthday without her husband.
"It's tough," he said.
And talking about it doesn't make it any easier. But talking can help fight the feeling of solitude on the road. By the time Tomjanovich started living the scout's life, he already was a husband and a father of three, without the instant communication of cell phones or e-mail to help bridge the gap.
"You're working almost every day, and one day bleeds into another," Tomjanovich said. "It's a really lonely job. You have to try to keep in contact with people because all you're doing, basically, is talking to service people, people on the plane, the check-in person, people at hotels. There is no interaction. You try to make contact because you start losing it. You start feeling really isolated."
Until tipoff time, when the work begins and the cycle continues. By the time the Kings and Blazers get started, Zipfel will change from his casual attire, wearing a black suit and red tie and adding a studious pair of spectacles.
cont.
