How to get NBA Skills before getting an NBA Job

Getting a job in the NBA

One of the things I always say for those looking to get a job in the NBA is to have a specific skill.

Telling someone that it’s your dream to work in the NBA or that you’ll do anything won’t get your foot door.  Telling them that you have relevant experience with specific skills will.

One of the things that gave me an advantage and got my resume looked at was that I knew how to use Synergy.

Synergy was just a handful of years old at that time.  Fast forward another few years and nearly every NBA team had a Synergy account and it was no longer something that gave you an advantage.  It was something expected / required.  If you’re applying for an NBA video job, it’s expected that you already know how to use Hudl SportsCode and Synergy.

When I worked for the Trail Blazers, my go-to guys at Synergy were Mark Silver and Drew Markowitz.  Mark was recently on the Ryen Rusillo podcast breaking down a bit of his journey with Synergy. 

Synergy is employing nearly 1,000 people now and I know several people in the NBA who first got their start as Synergy loggers.  In addition to Synergy, along the lines of technical spaces, other places where people have gotten real NBA experience and skills are at SIS, Pro Insight, and Cerebro Sports. 

We’ve had the privilege at GITG101 of partnering with Cerebro Sports and one of the things I always tell our students when we have someone come do a training is to become the experts at using that technology.

It’s hard to find an advantage on your resume.  The competition is hard for every internship and entry level position in the NBA.  But getting experience while doing something you enjoy is a huge bonus.

A lot of people will ask me how to get experience breaking down game film.  It’s a great question.  It is usually quite expensive to get access to certain programs.  But this is where experience comes into play again… the experience of working or volunteering for a team can give you access to all the platforms that team has.  If breaking down film or doing analytics or anything along those lines is a passion for you, I’d recommend reaching out to your local NBA, WNBA, GLeague, and college teams and see if you can volunteer using the systems they already have access to. 

Teams love free labor (although there are a lot of rules in the NBA around this).  And for you, it gives you an opportunity to get the needed skills and experience.  But on that note as well, I wouldn’t recommend working for free longer than a year.  Once someone knows you’ll work for free, they might just try to keep you there longer and longer and longer… but that’s for another article.  For now, do your best to get skills and experience to set your resume apart.

Our favorite course of the year is our NBA Draft Course.  It’s available now and we will have both Cerebro Sports and Cleaning the Glass training at the course so that you can better learn how to use those tools in scouting prospects… and hopefully become an expert in that space!   Use Promo Code: NBADRAFT for 10% off