The best prospects stayed away from the NBA Draft combine in Chicago. The next tier of prospects are jockeying for leverage and position while their agents push them to anyone willing to listen, and there are some seniors who go against the grain of one-and-done prospects who deserve a closer look. This has been a strange year in the sense that so many big names pulled out of Chicago’s NBA Draft Combine earlier this week, including Andrew Wiggins, Joel Embiid and
Even during the information age when we have search engines filled with highlights, the NCAA tournament still has a few players for which information is hard to come by. With many mid-majors having taken the NCAA by storm, specifically over the past few years, they again possess some potential NBA gems that will be display over the next few days and maybe weeks. And with the NBA Development League strengthening year after year, expect some of the seniors in this group to
Many fans don’t put much stock in the NBA preseason for some reason, and it’s something that I’ve always found puzzling. Like any good book, the preseason can provide a table of contents for the upcoming season with many interesting details and storylines. For me, it’s always about development and which players are in the right situations at the right time. On top of that, it’s seeing if they know that situation and if they are prepared to own it. I’ve taken
When fans saw the all-world performance of the Spurs’ Danny Green in the first five games of the NBA finals, many wondered to themselves: “How did this guy slip in the draft!” And while countless hours of scouting, physical and mental evaluations, interviews and numbers crunching can go into the draft process, it is an inexact science in so many ways. [Read more…]
I’ve made the voyage to Portsmouth, Virginia on Masters Week four times now. To me, the idea of driving south to one of our country’s most historic Navy Yards is my basketball version of driving up Magnolia Lane in Augusta. [Read more…]
Who are the needles in the haystacks? With NBA training camps opening, nothing excites me more than talking about little-known players and their chances to make their perspective teams. The time to put all other events aside for the next 9 months is about to begin, and I couldn’t be more excited. I have the bug so bad this time of year, I go to local college inter-squad scrimmages. As it relates to the NBA, this is a tremendous time of year
(This entry is another in a series of 30 guest columns that will run in October, when optimism reigns supreme across the NBA. The theme will be “Five Reasons to Feel Positive About … ” We encourage you to follow the authors on Twitter and visit their sites. – CS) I have often been labeled a Knicks optimist because that’s my personality by nature. Plus, it’s a combination of finding myself having to defend them against what I sometimes find to
In the NBA draft, teams often default to selecting the “best player available.” They do that assuming the player will develop as projected and become an asset that allows for flexibility. However, sometimes those “best players” end up languishing behind an established veteran and never live up to expectations. It comes down to a simple truism: Players who land in the right situations often have the best chance to succeed. For example, the New York Knicks needed an explosive athlete who could defend