Video crew helps Avery Johnson find the right script
SAN ANTONIO – If this were a scene from a spy drama, the camera would cut from a clock dwindling toward zero to a shot of Bill Reis hunched over a laptop, hurriedly tapping at keys.
The computer program goes haywire; Reis must start over. Back to the clock ticking away.
Ten, nine, eight, seven. ... Just when hearts start to race, Reis finishes, yanking a high-tech device from the laptop.
Cut to an intense man in a dark suit striding his way. The man enters the room just as Reis is leaving, and Reis slips him the hardware.
"We almost ran into each other," said Reis, an assistant video coordinator for the Mavericks, of coach Avery Johnson. "That's how close it was."
The Mavericks' video crew isn't trying to the save the world – just the team's chances in its playoff series with the Spurs. But working for a hard-driving coach who values video as much as anyone in the NBA is plenty stressful.
Mavericks guard Darrell Armstrong, a 12-year veteran, said that of all the coaches he's played for, Johnson ranks No. 1 as far as how much video he makes players watch. And, Armstrong said, "he's No. 2, and he's No. 3."
Monte Mathis, the Mavericks' first-year video coordinator, said he's known Johnson to sit in his office and watch video for 10 hours straight.
"I work them really endless hours," Johnson said of his video staff.
The most nerve-wracking part of the job may be preparing the "halftime edit" for Johnson. With about four minutes left in the second quarter, Reis rushes from the locker room to the court, where Mathis hands him an index card listing about a dozen key plays. It might include a set the Mavericks are executing especially well or poorly, or a play the opponent is using that's causing problems.
The game has been digitally recorded in-house feed onto Reis' laptop in the locker room. Now he must race the clock to find and mark each of those key plays, then save the compilation on a lighter-sized flash drive before halftime arrives.
Johnson will plug the flash drive into his computer and watch the clips before addressing the team.
The video crew employs a certain level of paranoia to make sure their operation runs seamlessly. Reis is constantly checking his briefcase to make sure he didn't forget a particular DVD, even though he knows he packed it. On the road, Mathis and Reis will take a cab from the hotel to the arena an hour before the team leaves to make sure they have everything set up for the video session.
Just last season, the Mavericks used VHS tapes for most of their video work. It caused the kinds of problems that spurred the rest of us to switch to DVDs years ago.
If a coach misplaced a two-hour tape, it took two hours to create a new copy. Now Reis can made four DVD copies in 10 minutes.
If a player wanted to see a particular sequence, he had to fast forward the tape, instead of skipping directly to that chapter on the DVD. And he might have to rent a VCR in the hotel to watch in the first place, instead of sticking the DVD into his laptop.
Plus tapes are just plain bulky to carry. It never failed that right after Reis recorded over an old game, a coach would come looking for that particular contest.
"We had to improve our whole system there," Johnson said, "not only bringing in the right people, but equipment and everything."
Mathis' coaching background appealed to Johnson, who called hiring him "one of the best decisions we made this off-season." Mathis spent 11 seasons as a college assistant, most recently at Xavier.
He charts plays on the bench during games. Sometimes Mathis may compile clips of strategies that work well for another team so Johnson can glean ideas from the clips.
Armstrong said the biggest difference between Johnson and his previous coaches is that the Mavericks watch video nearly every day, not just the mornings of games.
On Monday, Armstrong asked Mathis for clips of eight plays from Game 1 in which Jason Terry defended a pick and roll. Armstrong wanted to illustrate for Terry the importance of not stepping back from the ballhandler.
As Armstrong said, "Film don't lie."
"Guys can say they did this, say they did that," he explained. "You can go back and look at it and show them, and they can see what they did wrong and what they need to correct."