The Bobcats’ new database scouting system “has over 50,000 web pages,” and the platform is team GM Rich Cho’s “baby, an Internet-friendly system that took six months and a six-figure cost to develop,” according to Rick Bonnell of the CHARLOTTE OBSERVER. The result, the Bobcats hope, is "quicker access to a buffet of information offers a competitive advantage in player evaluation.” The Bobcats were using “Hawkeye,” one of “several plug-in scouting tools NBA teams can buy and adapt to their needs.” But Cho “thought it wiser to start from scratch, to customize a Bobcats-only system,” and he “enlisted an acquaintance from Microsoft” to build it. In an attempt to “see trends ahead of the pack, Cho remade how Bobcats scouts file their reports.” He came up with “a nine-level system with labels, descriptions and examples, for scouts to use as a guide.” Cho installed a scouting template “for every report,” and that includes “an Internet function that automatically pops pertinent numbers into reports quickly after games end.” Cho said that he “wants scouts writing evaluations, not keyboarding numbers.” Bonnell noted what the Bobcats “got for this investment is a system that drills deeper into player backgrounds, offers consistent evaluations and is dramatically speedier in updating information” (CHARLOTTE OBSERVER, 6/24). Meanwhile, in Indianapolis, Mike Wells noted the Pacers “use a statistics consultant to do analytical work,” and the consultant “looks deeper at complicated stats that give an indication of what kind of NBA player the prospect could be” (INDIANAPOLIS STAR, 6/24).
