Today we are going to talk about the best way to improve your basketball officiating game: hands down.

It’s — VIDEO REVIEW.

Video is the biggest weapon in your development arsenal.

It’s like getting the chance to referee three games for every game you actually work on. Unfortunately, video is incredibly underutilized. While most officials talk about video… most never get to break down any video. They’re like a bunch of anglers talking about which reels work best, which spin baits catch the most bass, and where to find the “big ones”…and then they never go fishing. All talk… no action.

For you, this is really good news.

The fact that it is so valuable and at the same time so underutilized should be a huge motivation for you. In other words, if you’re looking for an edge over the competition, here it is. If you want to disassociate yourself from the field, this is your opportunity.

Reviewing the video of your games will greatly enhance your growth. Personally, I think your development will quadruple annually if you watch at least 50 percent of your games on video…within the first 48 hours of playing the game.

I hope you got that… four times the improvement in one year!

Or, to put it another way, I think you’ll rack up four years of development in each season just by quickly breaking down at least half of your games to video. This is powerful stuff. And the only reason so few do is that they lack the discipline to consistently implement this step to improve their performance.

You can probably come up with a million excuses why you can’t find the time to review your video. I challenge you right now to come up with some excuses to find the time. I can think of two from the start: the money at the top is very good and so is the prestige.

If you could get to the top four times as fast, would it be worth the effort? You tell me.

So… your first step is to get videos of your games – get all the games if you can. Be creative. I can personally name at least 10 ways to get a video game (even a JV game!). You can too if you think about it.

Next, you need to come up with a very disciplined method of reviewing your videos. Most officials only watch their videos to review them for “game calls.” In my system, the play call review comes long after I’ve covered positioning and position adjustments. There are three main categories for video review: Positioning, Game Calls, and Intangibles.

Finally, when reviewing videos, you should always take a step back and look at your development as a whole. Find your weak point… find your strong points… and then choose the areas you are going to focus on. Take those specific areas to your next game, watch them the next night on video, repeat…

The next thing you see now is that you’ve shot past your teammates. And all you did was discipline yourself with video review.

Now you don’t have to go to camp to learn how to do a video review… you can learn the nuts and bolts of professional video review in the comfort of your own home.

Back to the point… and I’ll sum it up in one sentence: Learn to split video!

Until then, keep running the court, blowing the whistle, and having fun!