Scouting at the NBA Level

Celtics scouts Austin Ainge, Ashley Battle and Benas Matkevicius talk about their experiences as NBA scouts in episode 3 of the View From The Rafters podcast. The episode begins with Austin and Ashley sharing travel stories, the value of seeing players in person vs remotely and the importance of intel gathering.

As one of few female scouts, Ashley recaps how her WNBA career ended and her journey back into basketball as a trailblazer in scouting. The group then shifts to the skillsets needed in scouting and how accurate (or inaccurate) Adam Sandler’s movie, Hustle, depicted the life of an NBA scout.

International scout Benas Matkevicius then joins the conversation to share some of his wildest travel stories and how he landed his role years ago.

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00:00 – Intro
1:40 – Travel Stories
7:54 – Value of Being In Person
11:50 – Intel Gathering
16:15 - Ashley’s Journey From The WNBA To Scouting
23:12 - Different Skillsets Needed
29:40 - Hustle – What Did They Get Right?
34:30 - Using Experiences As A Player To Evaluate
39:23 - Introducing Benas
43:16 - Scouting Internationally
52:43 - Triangle of Trust
58:22 - Benas Runs on Coffee
1:03:00 - Hustle’s Similarity To Benas
1:06:00 - Communicating Intel To The Celtics
1:07:27 - Yam Madar and Juhann Begarin Updates