For 48 action packed minutes, basketball players sprint, jump, shimmy and dunk. The court is a whirlwind of physical and skilful endeavour in which the smallest of moments and finest of details can change games, seasons and even careers.

But in a sport where speed of mind and body is often king, there are times when it’s important to slow things down. Telestration - the use of software to illustrate or manipulate moving or still footage during video analysis sessions - is helping players and teams to analyse their performances in granular detail and win those small moments.

Ameer Bahhur, Head Video Coordinator at NBA side Orlando Magic, says telestration is essential for the modern basketball player. “When guys are on court they’re having to make these split second decisions,” he says. “And so video analysis is important to slow things down and improve decision making. We can say ‘what were you thinking here?’ Or ‘could you have chosen a better option here?’ It’s a big part of our player development.”

The video room is where Video Coordinators get to work editing and analysing clips for coaches and players. At Orlando Magic, a team of six Coordinators form the organisation’s video analysis department, but other NBA teams employ as many as 10 people. “It’s become a really important part of the game,” Bahhur explains. “There’s the scouting side - how are we going to beat this team? And the player development side - giving players the opportunity to watch their performances back and footage of other players to learn from.”

Telestration is also critical to educating the entire Orlando playing squad to function better as a collective. During the early stages of the season extra emphasis is placed on telestration to help new signings or youth players who are being integrated into the first team to learn fundamental plays and terminology so they can quickly tune into the same sporting wavelength as their team-mates. “It’s important that early on we teach players that video analysis isn’t here to just highlight mistakes,” says Bahhur. “It’s a tool to make them better.”

This approach has created a video analysis culture at the organisation. Coordinators are each given a selection of players to edit and analyse footage for and then deliver one-on-one sessions using RT Software’s Tactic tool. “All the players are really receptive to it,” says Bahhur. “They enjoy watching as a team and we also send them film to watch via an app on their smartphone or laptop at home as well.” Asking questions is a key part of telestration sessions. “We use the term ‘read and react’ a lot, where we ask the players ‘why did you do this’ and they’ll say ‘because the defence was aligned like this’. This helps us to understand and change their thought process.”

Ameer has specific Tactic tools that he uses on a regular basis to ensure his points are simple and clear for players to understand, including one that is commonly used in football. He explains: “There is a feature where you can draw a wall on the court - it’s used a lot in football for offsides but we’ve found it has a lot of uses in basketball too. We talk about transition defence a lot and basically when the opposition is bringing the ball up they should see a wall of defenders in front of them - we can illustrate that with this tool.”

Ameer and his Coordinators also use the freeze frame functionality to pause the game and move specific players to other areas of the court to illustrate a run they could’ve made or a different position they could occupy. “That’s a cool one for correcting errors and positioning,” he says. The focus tool is another regular during analysis sessions. “We can circle a player and grey out the rest of the screen - it’s great for focusing on specific moments so players aren’t distracted by anything else they’re seeing in the footage."

In the future, Ameer believes automation is likely to enhance the ability of Coordinators to use telestration to coach their athletes. “In the past it used to take us hours to manually go back through footage and pick out certain moments from games,” he says. “Now the software is developing so rapidly that it can automatically pick out specific moments and plays from a specific game even if it was from eight years ago. That’s saved us a huge amount of time and I think it’ll become more advanced and widespread in the NBA.”