Heat have more time, but able to do less in situation
These typically would be frenetic times for the Miami Heat scouting staff. Draft prospects would be shuttling through AmericanAirlines Arena for workouts. The front office would be fanning across the country for agent-organized showcases. The team’s analysts would be deconstructing metrics from the Chicago draft combine.
Now?
“It’s a whole new path,” vice president of basketball operations Adam Simon told the Sun Sentinel.
With a whole new timetable.
The 2020 NBA draft originally had been scheduled for June 25 at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. Until Thursday, that still was the officially listed date by the league. Now, the plan, or at least the hope amid the coronavirus pandemic, is Oct. 15.
It’s as if the draft clock has stopped, amid the hope of first resuming the regular season on July 31.
While some teams had begun video interviews of prospects, with in-person interviews or workouts prohibited due to health concerns, the Heat have taken a more measured approach.
“We’ve decided to hold off,” Simon said. “Because a lot of the top players, where we’re picking, we’ve reached out and some haven’t let their players interview yet. I think the agents want to know where the order’s going to be. They want to know how this is shaking out. And some think it’s a little early if the draft is not going to be until late.”
The Heat currently stand with the No. 23 pick in the first round, based on the standings frozen at the league’s March 11 shutdown. But even with just eight additional games to close to the truncated regular season, the Heat could wind up selecting anywhere from No. 18 to No. 28.
“We are about to start doing some interviews, probably not the top guys, but guys throughout the draft, maybe some players who are still deciding whether to stay in, just to get some intel and get to know them a little bit,” Simon said, with the NCAA extending the deadline to August for early-entry candidates to return to school. “But we haven’t done the top.”
With the NBA landscape and protocols evolving, Simon said there remains hope of live workouts with prospects.
“Maybe there’ll be an opportunity to do face to face.
I’m not sure it will. Like everything else, we don’t know. We’re all trying to figure this out together,” he said.
For a scouting staff that has had a quarter century of continuity, from Heat president Pat Riley to general manager Andy Elisburg to Simon to senior advisor of basketball operations Chet Kammerer, this has been a draft process like no other.
“Extremely unusual,” Simon said. “This is something we’ve done the same way for as long as I’ve worked in the league, 25 years.
“Over the years, we’ve
done different things with group workouts and teams hosting workouts, and agent workouts have become more prevalent. And we’ve shifted the timing of the pre-draft camp. It used to be in June and they moved it to May. So those are all adjustments. Those are subtle compared to what’s going on here.”
While such scouting typically has been a yearround process, this essentially has turned into a seven-month period solely for evaluation.
“And, so, it’s a matter of we’re doing our usual process, but we’re just spreading it out a little longer, slower, and we’re being more creative to do different things that we wouldn’t really do,” Simon said. “Because during this time, we would have been traveling. In March, would have been the NCAA Tournament and high school all-star events and combines like Portsmouth. May would have been filled with the combine and agent workouts, and then we would have had some workouts in Miami. And so we haven’t done any of that.”
Instead, scouting at home.
“It took us off the road,” he said, “which gave us more time to be at home to do these things, and obviously doing everything on video.”
He paused, then continued, “like everybody else, on Zoom.”