Draft Workout Politics

by Jeff Clark on May 9, 2007 2:20 PM EDT in Boston Celtics News & Links

Today the Celtics published an interview with Chris Wallace. Now before you roll your eyes and make some crack about him being the yahoo that traded for Gin Baker, consider for a moment that all signs point to his hand being forced to make that move by Thanksdad Gaston. Now, I'm not going to make any case for him being the best GM or anything, but I do think that he's helped Danny scout for the draft, and they've done pretty well at that lately. But I digress.

One answer that stuck out to me was the one involving the politics of workouts leading up to the draft.

The rules have changed with the workouts...What's your take on the whole process and where it's heading?
"Well, it's made for a very condensed period. We're allowed to start working them out on June 5, the draft is June 28, and you generally don't work people out that day, so let's just say you went up to June 27, that's 22 days. So you have to be really organized and target who you're going after [for workouts]."
And there's a lot of politics as far as getting guys to work out, who they'll work out against...
"It's not so much politics, but all these guys have agents, and the underclassmen who haven't decided yet whether they're going to remain in the draft past the cut-down date in June, they all talk to somebody, if it's their college coach or whoever is helping to guide them, and so the players who are legitimate draft choices are going to have multiple possibilities to visit teams. You very seldom hear about just one team bringing in a guy for a workout. We're bringing in players who we project to be likely available at the spots where we'll draft. So the players, and their advisors, have a real dilemma, to determine what level in the draft do I have our player visit. He can't go everywhere in those 22 days; he'll get worn out. As it is, he's going to get stretched thin doing workouts five to seven days in a row at some point. Sometimes they have to make some hard calls, and all of a sudden the player slips past their previously projected spots, and now they haven't worked out for the teams beyond the sort of 'Workout Mason-Dixon line'. That can create a problem, because some teams won't draft a guy who they haven't worked out. If they don't have that policy, it's just natural that they'd favor the people who they've seen latest. That can be a real no man's land when a player slides into an area where he hasn't worked out [for those teams].

Later in the week Wallace will also break down some of the top picks and talk international basketball more. If you want to try and get some of your words published on Celtics.com, you might try sending them a note here.

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Since we’ll be drafting Oden (please, Please, PLEASE), the only thing this will affect is who we pick at #32. But for that spot, it really seems like the new rule was insufficiently thought out—kinda like the new ball that got recalled in mid-season.

by Eeyore III on May 9, 2007 4:37 PM EDT reply actions

1. Guys who want to improve their stock have the option of actually playing in Orlando.

2. As I understand the new rule, there is no ban on public workouts arranged by agents prior to the Orlando camp, just on private “behind closed doors” workouts for individual teams.

by Brickowski on May 9, 2007 4:41 PM EDT reply actions

Chris’s math seems to be a bit off. June 5th-June 27th = 23 days…

by dpaps on May 9, 2007 7:50 PM EDT reply actions

“Sometimes they have to make some hard calls, and all of a sudden the player slips past their previously projected spots, and now they haven’t worked out for the teams beyond the sort of ‘Workout Mason-Dixon line’. That can create a problem”

Gerald Green?

by TBreezy on May 9, 2007 8:20 PM EDT reply actions

very interesting about the players slipping..

go Tommy!

by 00dc2 on May 9, 2007 10:32 PM EDT reply actions

I’ve read in the past that some agents guys don’t want their guy to work out with others or are selective about who. The best organizations will continue to make the best decisions, regardless of the rules.

by VT Bill on May 10, 2007 5:16 AM EDT reply actions

Workouts probably provide a comfort zone for team selection but their true value may be exaggerated. In the last analysis teams will select a player based on NEED, prior college-high school-foreign performance on the court. Athleticism, size, handles, shooting accuracy, decision-making, basketball IQ, level of dominance vs quality of competition etc. will all be weighted.

Predraft mock board ranking can’t help but influence team selection, especially when a highly rated player slips and PANIC seizes control….is there some unfavorable information that we don’t know about. Gerald Green was a case in point.

Would Paul Pierce, with all the predraft concern about his being a “tweener”, if pitted against Ron Artest for a predraft workout, have shown his true value as an elite player? Would Ron Artest be rated higher based on his defense? Who would prove to be the better selection? These workouts, while possibly giving important insights, can be misleading to a similar degree. We don’t get to appreciate the INTANGIBLES in a 20 minute workout.

Workouts favor the shooter, althleticism and size. If only player evaluation were that simple. What if you don’t get to workout a player you really like? Will that shift your focus to a player that you do workout? If a player has an off day, is that enough to change your opinion?

If a team really does their homework, predraft workouts just add another layer of opinion.

by moskqq on May 10, 2007 7:31 AM EDT reply actions

Here’s why teams view their individual “secret” workouts as vaulable: each team has its own set of drills that it believes are helpful in evaluating the player’s skills. It also has tapes of dozens of players from prior years’ workouts. So the team can compare this year’s prospective draftee with all the players who worked out before using the same drills.

Personally I like the NFL combine approach, where all teams have equal information (in theory). I would also point out that the NFL approach certainly doesn’t prevent players from slipping, as Brady Quinn discovered.

by Brickowski on May 10, 2007 10:55 AM EDT reply actions