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Scouting Q&A With MaverickBruin

The good people at collegebasketballscouting.eu recently interviewed our site's moderator, MaverickBruin, who is a renowned west coast college basketball scout.  We obtained permission to reprint the interview on our site. 

Maverick, thank you for taking the time to talk to us.  In Europe we are very interested in the American college basketball scene, especially a program as prominent as UCLA's.
Did you get my rider?
Excuse me?
My rider.  I wanted blue M&Ms.
I'm sorry.  I'm not sure --
Whatever.  First question.  If you were on my site you would have been banned by now.  Go ahead.
Maverick, is scouting for college basketball on the west coast difficult?
Oh, you wouldn't believe how difficult.  It's the hardest thing in the world.  I have heard doctors talk about 12-hour surgeries, lawyers about three-month trials, real estate agents about having to wear a funny hat all the time -- nothing compares to what I have to put up with as the premier college basketball scout on the west coast.  My life is a living hell.  Just today I had to spend four hours sitting on a bench watching games.  Then I had to go on a message board and ban people nonstop for hours.  But it's not just the banning.  It's the threatening to ban that takes time.  Deciding what punishment to dole out to which poster, and how many chances to give each one.  But that's why they pay me the big bucks.
Do you make a lot of money scouting?
Let's put it this way -- even more than I make running my website.
Wow.
Exactly.
So what are the difficulties you face in scouting college basketball?
Well, the biggest problem is that players do not progress in a linear way or on the same timetable.  Just last week, Abe Lipschitz, a player that I predicted stardom for in the early 1960s, scored 39 points for his 65-and-over league team.  Abe has arrived, just as I expected.  It just takes a little longer for some players.
You were scouting in the early 1960s?
This interview is close to being over.  Next question. 
Maverick, the UCLA basketball team seems to be starting off quite poorly this season, largely with players you recommended to the staff.  Do you accept any blame for this development?
First of all, your information is erroneous.  I don't even know the staff.  I'm just some ridiculous idiot.  But with regard to my scouting recommendations, I disagree.  My predictions for these players were based on at least a 20-year window of evaluation.  I still expect James Keefe to become a longtime NBA player starting at about age 25 as soon as he loses the weight that Ben Howland forced him to gain as well as the weight that he gained between ages 16 and 20.  I continue to believe that Jerime Anderson will become an All-Pac-10 point guard by the 2014-15 season.
But he is going to graduate in 2012.
He could go on a Mormon mission.
Is he Mormon?
It's not my job to apply some crazy religious litmus test to the players I scout. I find your question offensive.  Where are those M&Ms?
Maverick, I don't mean to offend you.  Let me ask a more general question.  What attributes do you generally look for in a player that you are scouting?
Well, a lot of that is a trade secret, and your question offends me because it assumes you could even begin to understand the concepts even if I explained them to you as if you were a baby.  You couldn't.  It took me years to understand the concepts of upside, big hands and feet, feel for the game, and others that I can't even describe to you because we scouts do not have words to describe them that you would be familiar with.  Let's put it this way -- James Keefe has what it takes; Reeves Nelson doesn't.  Josh Shipp doesn;t make the grade; Jerime Anderson does.  And if you can't understand that, then you should justy go back to eating your nachos because you just are never going to have a clue about scouting.
That's fascinating, Maverick, considerign that most observers would value Nelson and Shipp above Keefe and Anderson in terms of their contributions on the court...
This interview is over.  You're banned.  Like I said, you just don't get it.  I'm through wasting my time.

Interview reprinted courtesy of collegebasketballscouting.eu