Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Perusing the prospects
With No. 14 spot set, Heat setting up draft workouts.
MIAMI — The calculations that go into determining the Miami Heat’s direction with the No. 14 pick in the NBA draft are complex enough. But that’s hardly where the math ends.
Now locked into a draft slot after Tuesday’s lottery, the Heat are in the process of setting up draft workouts. They are allowed to work out up to six prospects in a single session, sessions that cannot include any veteran players.
The premise sounds benign but the process often is anything but, as the clock ticks toward the June 22 draft at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center.
“We already have an agent of a player that we think is right in our wheelhouse,” said Chet Kammerer, the Heat’s vice president of player personnel, “we think he’s somewhere between 10 and 15. We would like to be able to have either a 2-on-2 or a 3-on-3, for no other reason than our coaches, because our coaches haven’t seen these guys. It’s a chance for them to see them.
“Now the agent comes back to us and says, ‘We’ll come, but it has to be a one-onzero workout.’ That really is a disappointing, because now, all of a sudden, especially for Spo [coach Erik Spoelstra] and our coaches that are usually around to watch, it’s not very effective. Because all they’re going to watch a guy do is go one-on-zero.”
Still, it beats the alternative — none on
none.
The last two times the Heat drafted at No. 10 or higher they were unable to get their eventual selection in for a workout — Caron Butler in 2002 and Justise Winslow in 2015. That again could be the case with a prospect who gets sold on the idea he will go earlier than the Heat’s slot.
“I would say anybody in the top eight, if there is a break off there, if almost everybody has this kid in the top 10, then it’ll be very difficult to get him to come to us,” Kammerer said, “We have our list of players that we think we’ll probably give a call. But more than likely if they’re in the top eight or nine in the draft — we’ll try to get the seventh, eighth guy in that area — they won’t come.”
That doesn’t necessarily mean the Heat will be drafting blind with such prospects.
“Now the trend is all these large agencies have workout pro days now, the Bull Duffys, the Wasserman Group, or Priority Sports,” Kammerer said. “They are going to have a day and they’ll have all their clients there, in a workout. So if you really don’t know a player very well, you have another opportunity to take another look at those players.”
Unlike the Heat’s sessions at AmericanAirlines Arena, those sessions cannot be tailored to the Heat’s specific needs or, dare we say, culture.
“You go because you don’t know exactly what they’re going to do,” Kammerer said, “but sometimes you walk out of the gym and you really didn’t learn that much, you didn’t really gather that much information.”
As for the Heat’s tryouts at AmericanAirlines Arena, it is all about finessing those situations.
“If we can, we would try to match them with somebody at the same position that we think is comparable as far as skill level,” Kammerer said, with power forwards particularly abundant in the Heat’s draft range. “Because that’s very important, too. Because the agents, they don’t want a guy that’s projected in the middle of the second round going against a guy who is considered in the middle of the first round. That could lower his value. So they don’t want him to be outplayed by a player that’s considered not as valued.
“So it’s tricky. It really is. But you always try to get a combination of players, either big, perimeter-post combination, or have all perimeters. Or have a combination, where you can play a little pick-and-roll. So all that is important.”
Adam Simon, the Heat’s assistant general manager, said it is important not to necessarily value quantity of workouts over of the quality of such sessions and time management for the Heat evaluation staff.
“I think agents like getting their players in, but I think they also have to be mindful of wearing them out,”’ Simon said. “It’s funny, because I have agents that will send their players everywhere, 15-plus workouts. And then others that will say, ‘No, he needs a rest day in between and we only want to send him to five or 10 places.’ And so I think you have to know the agent, you have to understand what they want to do, their approach, how they want to handle their players.
“And then you have to look at it from your standpoint, how many picks you have and how many players and how many workouts you actually want to have. Because every day you have workouts, that takes up time, taking them to dinner, having interviews with them. And the time you’re spending with them, then you’re losing time doing roundtable discussions and doing your breakdowns.”