|
Thursday, May 30
Updated: Monday, June 3, 8:28 AM ET
Good advice always hard to come by
By Andy Katz
ESPN.com
The Chicago pre-draft camp is a week away and the only underclassman to have officially withdrawn from the 2002 NBA draft is Ohio University's Brandon Hunter.
Don't expect too many more.
And it's not because they're getting good advice.
The opposite is true in most cases. Players are either listening to too many people or not enough of those in the know to fully understand if they should stay in the draft.
|  | | Told he'd be a first-round pick, Maurice Evans went undrafted out of Texas last year. |
There was a time when Chicago was used by underclassmen as a barometer to their NBA value. But, the NCAA took away some of the camp's juice when it decided to enforce a rule that says playing in the games, not participating in drills, results in missing as many as three games next season. That could lead to players like Ball State's Theron Smith, Wyoming's Uche Nsonwu-Amadi and Purdue's Willie Deane withdrawing. But it will have no affect on players like Michigan State's Marcus Taylor or Virginia's Roger Mason Jr., who are still determined to stay in the draft regardless of where they're being projected -- in the second round.
They're obviously listening to someone telling them to stay in the draft.
"It is coming from everywhere," Stanford coach Mike Montgomery says of the advice. "The media almost starts to speculate immediately as to where a kid is going in the draft as soon as he gets on campus. The kid has a great game and someone invariably asks him, 'Well are you going into the draft? And the kid says, 'Draft, what are you talking about? I'm a sophomore or a junior.' 'Well you're going to go top 10.' It starts the whole thing rolling. It's all hoop dreams."
Montgomery has reason to be peeved. He wasn't too thrilled that sophomore Jason Collins bolted last season, even though he had been on campus for four seasons (losing two to injuries). Seeing juniors Casey Jacobsen and Curtis Borchardt declare this year didn't make his day, either. But both at least came to him and asked his advice about whether or not to test the process.
"Some are getting it from good sources like their coaches and some are getting it on the street," North Carolina coach Matt Doherty said.
"They're getting advice from agents and runners," said Cincinnati coach Bob Huggins. "I don't think there is any doubt about that."
And it's these "people," who think they're in the know, who are keeping undervalued underclassmen in the draft -- and potentially forcing players to lose millions, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Kansas coach Roy Williams has an all too common story to tell about one of his players recently. A conversation that isn't unique to Williams' office.
"I had a player of mine come in before and say, 'Hey coach, I think I want to apply for the draft.' And I said, 'Why?' And he said, 'I've been told that I could be a late first-round, early second-round pick.' And I said, 'Who told you that? Let's not go by the guy that drives the garbage truck or the insurance guy or the lawyer.'
"The advice can come from anybody."
Few schools or coaches feel that they have been burned worse than Texas was last season. Texas coach Rick Barnes says then-junior Maurice Evans was ill-advised by his agent, Roger Montgomery, who still represents Evans and also represents Seattle's Desmond Mason.
|
“ |
Coach (Montgomery) gave me this one piece of advice. 'The people that you want to talk to are the people who don't have anything to gain from telling you what to do about the draft. ... He said go to somebody who is just going to tell you the straight-up truth." ” |
|
|
— Casey Jacobsen,
Stanford junior guard |
"He was told that he was going to be picked 24th to 27th by that agent and he would be a definite second-round pick," Barnes said.
On the night of the 2001 NBA draft, the name Maurice Evans was never called.
"When somebody promises a young man that he is going to be the 24th or 27th pick in the draft and they promise him that," Barnes said, "then I think they should be held accountable."
Evans and Montgomery didn't want to discuss the subject, but they did say Evans has moved on from this issue. But Evans admitted to ESPN.com that the six NBA teams he worked out for last spring told him he would go between 20th and 28th in the first round.
"It was a decision he made, and once you make it, once you go to the agent, you have to live with it," Barnes said. "I was disappointed that he didn't get drafted because I think he was told things that weren't true."
Evans did reach the NBA via the free-agent route, playing all of 10 games for the Minnesota Timberwolves this past season. Barnes said that -- had Evans listened to his advice and stayed to play with Big 12 freshman of the year point guard T.J. Ford -- he feels Evans would have been a lock for the first round in this year's draft.
Maryland's Terence Morris didn't seek any advice, nor did anyone give it to him that he should declare for the draft after his sophomore season. Yet, Morris was a media creation after he was first team all-ACC after his second year with the Terps. He stayed in school for the next two seasons, getting to the Final Four as a senior but becoming second-team all-ACC as a junior and honorable mention as a senior. He was selected in the second round in the 2001 draft and is still a member of the Rockets, hoping to stick beyond the next two seasons.
"I heard some things after my sophomore year that a couple of my teammates thought I was going to leave," Morris said. "My teammate Terrell Stokes told me it was best for me to leave because I had my best season. But I felt there were a lot of things I needed to work on and I was just getting used to playing."
But Morris listened to himself and didn't budge. It's not clear where he would have gone in the 1999 draft, but he could have been a possible first-round pick after his sophomore season. Sure, he still had a chance to remain a first-round pick after each of the next two seasons, but he never played up to his sophomore level. Morris took no advice and the debate will rage whether or not that was the best thing for him financially.
"It can hurt you and it can help you (to come out early)," Morris said. "Just by somebody saying you can go in the top 10 (isn't best) when in reality it's not true. It can pretty much hurt you for the rest of your life. It's a tough decision whether you go or stay. You have to believe in yourself and do what's best for you."
As Stanford's 2001-02 season was winding down, Jacobsen had to fend off the usual advice from everywhere, including people he didn't know.
"There was some word from agents who had contacted my family and me through e-mail, through telephone, through letters saying I could be a first-round pick," Jacobsen said. "And the definitive number I was getting was middle to late first round, or more specifically, 15 to 25."
Jacobsen, who didn't hire an agent, turned to one of the few people he could trust, Montgomery, for more specific advice. "Coach gave me this one piece of advice. He told me, 'The people that you want to talk to are the people who don't have anything to gain from telling you what to do about the draft. He said the people who have something to gain are just going to tell you what you want to hear. He said go to somebody who is just going to tell you the straight-up truth."
|  | | Casey Jacobsen is being cautious about who to believe. |
Jacobsen's draft range is a little lower than what he was told when he decided to declare. Most scouts and draft experts have him currently hovering more toward a borderline first-rounder, or upper to middle second-round pick. And the NCAA's crackdown on Chicago could force him to withdraw within a week from the draft if he doesn't get assurance that he would be a first-round pick.
But Jacobsen did his homework. He not only checked to see who the foreign players were in the draft to possibly push him further down in the draft, but he also sought out the advice of the NBA undergraduate advisory committee. Stu Jackson is the chairman of the committee comprising NBA player personnel men, general managers and scouts.The committee was formed with the goal to provide a true assessment of where any underclassman would be drafted at the time of the player's request. But, as Jackson says, the committee's projection is non-binding.
"What we see is a lot of players getting advice from people other than someone who is reliable," Jackson said. "My advice to a player would be that he listens to his collegiate or high school coach, and listens to the undergraduate advisory committee. He should make it his business to call every single team at some point, or his coach should call every single team at some point to get an assessment."
Arizona's Jason Gardner got the right advice at Chicago last year. He didn't impress scouts with his play, but more importantly, he was able to get first-hand knowledge from those same scouts by talking with them over three days. The same thing could occur for some lost soul next week. The Timberwolves' Rob Babcock sat down with Gardner and explained to him where he was in the draft -- which was, essentially out of it. Gardner took that advice and withdrew from the draft.
"We, as coaches, spend a lot of time trying to place phone calls to find out where someone is going to go and it's very, very difficult," Florida head coach Billy Donovan said. "The NBA season isn't over when the Final Four ends and there are still regular-season games left. Teams aren't worrying about the draft and kids are trying to find out where they are going. It's a tough situation that goes on for six weeks after the Final Four (before the early entry deadline and then beyond before the draft withdrawal deadline)."
But the players who decide to stay in the draft over the next three weeks better get a good read on their status. They have to determine if it's worth it to play in Chicago, pay for the trip there, participate in any post-Chicago workouts (between June 12-19) and then reimburse that money if they do decide to return to school. But more importantly, they need to get the right advice.
"It comes down to one word and that's 'Trust,' " Barnes said. "I would hope our players would trust us coaches that they are going to know they've got the right information. They have to trust us that we're doing what's best for them."
Andy Katz is a senior writer at ESPN.com. He covers the NBA draft for ESPN.com and ESPN.
|
|
|
|
