A couple of days ago, I spoke to a good friend of mine who is a General Manager of one of teams in the NBA. He was bemoaning the circumstances surrounding the NBA on these days leading up to the NBA Draft. For as long as I can remember, teams have used the period between the end of the college season and the Draft to help in their evaluation of players that are to be drafted. The way that process has evolved is interesting, but it is pretty involved and is too long to get into right now.
Some things were bothersome to my friend. First was the number of players some teams bring in for workouts and interviews. Some teams are bringing up to 40 and 50 players. Quite frankly, I find that ridiculous and so does he. What have these teams’ scouts been doing if they can’t narrow down their prospects more than that? With the shortened period of time to bring players in, mandated by the NBA, it makes scheduling the players very difficult.
Another thing was the fact at the Orlando pre-draft camp only the top 16 prospects (selected by the NBA) and the players participating in the camp were given physicals at the camp. This means that those teams picking in the teens and below need to bring players in for physicals, along with their interviews and workouts. A real pain for both the teams and the players. As the agents become more and more involved with the players in deciding if they should play in these post season venues, less and less players play. The reason, of course, is that the agents feel the players may hurt themselves if they play poorly and could slip in the draft. What so many of the agents seem to ignore, and I pointed this out countless times during my time in the NBA, what if their player plays well? If playing poorly hurts him, wouldn’t it stand to reason that playing well would help him? Are the agents, and to some extent the players, afraid? Damn right, they’re afraid.
The third thing my GM friend was bemoaning was his coaches and their involvement at this time. It’s not that he doesn’t like or respect his coaches. It’s just that he knows that getting the coaches involved in evaluating the players can be very dangerous. Teams spend enormous amount of money scouting college players during the season. The scouts get the opportunity to follow players through 1,2,3, sometimes 4 years (maybe more if they saw them in high school). The coaches get to see them possibly in a post season tournament, but more likely, only at these team workouts. Teams may throw out years of evaluation because of an impression given by a player upon a coach at these workouts. Can’t blame the coaches. They are only going on what they see. And there are all kinds of reasons why a player may play differently in one of these workouts than when he played with his college team. Maybe the player has lost some conditioning. Or maybe the opposite. Maybe he’s in better shape because he’s been working harder than he did in college. There are endless possibilties that could lead to an erroneous conclusion. Then I found out that the NBA is allowing players to actually play against each other, up to 3 on 3. For years the NBA wouldn’t allow any type of active interplay between the players. Now they can half court scrimmage? This could lead to a lot of misreads. What if player A outplays player B in one of these hour long scrims, but you know that player B is actually much better through years of scouting the two. But the coaches don’t. They have their impression and opinion.
As a GM, you want to include your coaches, you want to get players your coaches are comfortable with. To force a player down the throat of a coach is not good. It usually will not end up well. This quick impression can do that. I know as a coach, after years of being in charge of the draft and understanding the dangers of getting coaches too involved, I would form opinions from these workouts. It’s only human nature. And of course, teams get in the situation where their scouts don’t really have a firm opinion until about 2 years after the draft. So then the coaches have to get even more involved. That was never my problem with the Pacers. My scouts always had opinions, most of the time very strong ones.
I know this may sound a little off track, but I believe two of the biggest reasons for mistakes made in the draft are drafting for need, which we have talked about, and coaches getting the wrong impression and everybody else going along with it.
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