LOS ANGELES -- Every year the top prospects in the draft leave behind the comforts of college and head out to workout sites in Chicago, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Florida looking for an edge that might put them in a better draft position.
Some hire basketball coaches. Others hire personal trainers. A few hire former Navy SEALs.
The techniques from gym to gym may differ, but the goal is the same -- to fulfill a life-long dream of playing in the NBA.
For the last decade, I've taken a pre-draft tour to the top sites. I've seen the likes of Dwight Howard, Dwyane Wade, Greg Oden, Blake Griffin and a host of other, lesser-known prospects prepare for the NBA draft. This year is no different. Over the course of the next week I'll be traveling throughout the U.S. checking in on the pre-draft workouts for the top prospects in the draft.
The workouts, obviously, don't carry the same weight as the games a player plays. However, they are helpful in identifying a few things.
First, it's a great way to check a player's work ethic and conditioning. These workouts tend to be grueling, and not everyone can take them. It's a great way to judge how committed prospects are to the game. It often gives you a glimpse into a player's strengths and weaknesses in a very focused environment. Players who come into the gym and just do what they already do well tend to struggle in the NBA. It's also a great chance to get to know these kids personally. NBA teams put a lot of weight on personal interviews with the players. That gives me a sneak peek at what they're in for.
This year the focus is going to be on a number of intriguing sleeper prospects who's draft stock is all over the place depending on the team you talk to. I'll end the trip at the Chicago pre-draft combine, where the 60 top prospects in the draft compete in a number of skill and physical challenges in front of every GM in the league.
We started the tour in L.A. again this year, and here's what I learned at the first stop:
• On Wednesday, Michigan point guard Darius Morris announced that he had decided to stay in the 2011 NBA draft. About an hour later, I was in the gym with him and his family as he prepared for the upcoming draft.
Morris is one of the most intriguing names in the draft. Scouts have told him that with one more year under his belt, he would be a potential lottery pick.
But since Morris declared on Wednesday, their assessment has gotten rosier. Morris has improved dramatically since high school and may be the most improved player in college basketball. NBA executives tend to love big point guards, and Morris is the biggest true point guard in the draft.
That was noticeable the second we walked in the gym. Morris is a legit 6-foot-5 in shoes. He has broad shoulders and has a power game that's reminiscent of a young Andre Miller. Anyone who has watched Morris play knows he can make the spectacular pass and really knows how to run a team. The question marks are around his jump shot and his lateral quickness.
While Morris doesn't possess the shooting touch of Kyrie Irving or the speed of Kemba Walker, he showed on Wednesday that he's better at both than he's given credit for (video here). While he's not an elite athlete, he's quicker with the ball than you think and shows great control with his handle. Morris also showed off a terrific midrange jumper in drills. His NBA 3-point shot was solid but still needs work.
Morris has elite size and may have the best court vision of anyone in the draft. Add in his defensive abilities and a great, supportive family background, and I can see Morris sticking in the first round. We currently have him as the sixth point guard off the board and have him going to the Houston Rockets at the 23rd pick in our first full mock draft of the year.
• Last year my first visit was to the 360 Gym in Reseda to see Fresno State's Paul George. George, at the time, was projected as a late-first-round pick after an up-and-down sophomore season.
I was wowed by that workout and moved him up 10 spots on our Big Board. His rookie year at Indiana was a huge success. I spoke with a couple of GMs this week who told me that if there was a redo on the 2010 NBA draft George would go No. 3 behind John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins.
George was back in the gym on Wednesday, this time mentoring three prospects -- Florida's Chandler Parsons, Wisconsin's Jon Leuer and San Diego State's Malcolm Thomas. Their trainer, former NBA big man Don McLean, had them doing some 2-on-2 action for most of the workout. George and Parsons guarded each other and Leuer and Thomas matched up.
Parsons really surprised me. I knew he was skilled and athletic for a 6-foot-10 player. But he showed aggressiveness that I just hadn't seen at Florida (video here). He went head-to-head with George for an hour. George is better, but Parsons held his own. He showed the ability to take George off the dribble to the rim, rise up and hit jumpers over George's freakishly long arms and most importantly he made a number of spell-binding passes to Thomas. Parsons' decision-making in the sets was fantastic. So was his shooting. He was hitting just about every shot he took and showed range out to the NBA 3-point line.
Scouts have always been high on Parsons' tools. It's been his lack of results at Florida that have caused his draft stock to slide. I think Parsons will have a great shot at the first round if he plays like he did on Wednesday. It was really a wow performance against one of the better young defenders in the league.
Leuer was just off the plane from Madison, Wis., where he was finishing up school. He's been putting in some work in Chicago in his spare time, and this was his first workout in L.A. Scouts are interested in him because of his size and shooting ability -- a potential Andrea Bargnani/Troy Murphy big-man shooter. He showed off his shooting ability in the workouts and showed range all the way out to the NBA 3-point line. He also has a good handle and is more agile than you think. A number of NBA GMs are mentioning Leuer as a first-round pick.
Thomas is an intriguing second-round prospect. He has terrific length and explosive leaping ability and showed off his defensive chops in the workout by blocking a number of shots. He's still pretty raw offensively and can display an inconsistent motor at times. But he's a very intriguing prospect in the second round. He's a likely invite to the Chicago pre-draft camp, in which he should do really well in the athletic drills.
• I also got the chance to catch up briefly with Washington State's Klay Thompson, Pepperdine's Mychel Thompson, USC's Nikola Vucevic and Croatian big man Miro Bilan. They were working out with athletic trainer and former Navy SEAL Tom Vachet at USC's Galen Center.
The workout was strictly a conditioning workout. The four do their basketball drills in the evening. Vachet has a number of innovative drills for the players to do. You might remember that two years ago he had Hasheem Thabeet climbing sand dunes at Manhattan Beach.
The sand dunes are now closed to the public, but Vachet has them marching in sand, and in the workout we saw them doing a crab crawl around the gym to strengthen their core.
Klay is the highest-rated player of the group and a likely mid-first-round pick. He showed in the workout that he is more athletic than people give him credit for. He's not an elite athlete such as Alec Burks or Travis Leslie, but he's going to be quick enough to excel at the 2-spot. Given his elite shooting ability, ballhandling and basketball IQ, he's the most complete 2-guard prospect in the draft. Klay is still officially testing the waters but told me he's leaning toward staying in the draft.
His big brother, Mychel, hasn't gotten the publicity that Klay has, but he had a solid senior season at Pepperdine, has a reputation as an athletic defensive stopper and got an invite to the New Jersey workout this weekend. We didn't get to see much in the way of basketball skills, but he's a good athlete.
Vucevic is one of the more intriguing players in the draft. He's got a huge 7-foot-4 wingspan and moves pretty well. He's a legit 265 pounds, and Vachet has really gotten his body chiseled. While he's not going to be the most explosive big man in the draft, he's one of the toughest and most accomplished. A number of NBA GMs project him as a first-round pick. He's still on the bubble on our Big Board, but he's a guy who could really come in and blow up at the Chicago pre-draft camp if he continues to work on his explosiveness.
I had never seen Bilan play before Wednesday. He played for KK Zadar in Croatia last year and averaged 6.8 points and 4.4 rebounds per game in 19 minutes per game in the Adriatic League. Bilan is a legit 7-footer, who moves very well for a big man. He was surprisingly agile in the drills. I didn't get to see his basketball skills, but scouts say he's got a solid midrange game and is a good passer. He could be a second-round sleeper.
• The NBA will hold its first ever early workout for underclassmen who are testing the waters in New Jersey on May 7-8. ESPN.com has obtained an updated list of the players who have accepted or declined invitations to the workout.
The top players who have confirmed they're playing include:
Reggie Jackson, PG, Boston College
Tu Holloway, PG, Xavier
Cory Joseph, PG, Texas
Isaiah Thomas, PG, Washington
Andrew Goudelock, G, Charleston
Chris Wright, PG, Georgetown
Julyan Stone, PG, UTEP
Ashton Gibbs, SG, Pittsburgh
Orlando Johnson, SG, UC Santa Barbara
Scotty Hopson, SG, Tennessee
Kim English, SG, Missouri
Austin Freeman, SG, Georgetown
Jon Diebler, G, Ohio State
LaceDarius Dunn, SG, Baylor
DeAndre Liggins, SG, Kentucky
Damian Saunders, F, Duquesne
Jamine Peterson, SF, NBDL
Hollis Thompson, SF, Georgetown
John Shurna, SF, Northwestern
Troy Gillenwater, SF, New Mexico State
Ravern Johnson, SF, Mississippi State
Justin Holiday, SF, Washington
Olu Ashaolu, PF, Louisiana Tech
Carleton Scott, PF, Notre Dame
DeAngelo Casto, PF, Washington State
Terrence Jennings, PF, Louisville
Malcolm Thomas, PF, San Diego State
Kevin Jones, PF, West Virginia
Gary Flowers, PF, Southern Mississippi
Reggie Johnson, C, Miami
Josh Harrellson, C, Kentucky
Mamadou Diarra, C, Chaminade
Rick Jackson, F/C, Syracuse
Greg Smith, C, Fresno State
Ralph Sampson III, C, Minnesota
A number of notable players have already declined invites. They include:
Kawhi Leonard, F, San Diego State
Tobias Harris, F, Tennessee
Kenneth Faried, PF, Morehead State
Klay Thompson, G, Washington State
Chris Singleton, F, Florida State
Tyler Honeycutt, F, UCLA
Josh Selby, G, Kansas
Darius Morris, PG, Michigan
Justin Harper, F, Richmond
Travis Leslie, G, Georgia
Nolan Smith, G, Duke
JaJuan Johnson, PF, Purdue
Charles Jenkins, PG, Hofstra
Norris Cole, PG, Cleveland State
Jereme Richmond, F, Illinois
Kyle Singler, F, Duke
Malcolm Lee, G, UCLA
Keith Benson, C, Oakland
Jordan Williams, C, Maryland
Shelvin Mack, G, Butler
Demetri McCamey, PG, Illinois
Jimmy Butler, F, Marquette
Jeremy Tyler, F/C
Nikola Vucevic, PF, USC
Chandler Parsons, F, Florida
Ben Hansbrough, PG, Notre Dame
David Lighty, G, Ohio State
Marshon Brooks, SG, Providence
Iman Shumpert, SG, Georgia Tech
Vernon Macklin, F/C, Florida
The field continues to get weaker. Since we released the last list, a number of players -- including Tyler Honeycutt, Morris, Travis Leslie, Iman Shumpert, Shelvin Mack, Jereme Richmond, Marshon Brooks and Vernon Macklin -- have declined invites.
The only sure-fire first-rounder in the group is Reggie Jackson. As of Wednesday he was still confirmed, but I wonder if he will actually show.
As I said on Friday, you can likely blame agents for their clients' decisions. They want to control the process and minimize the risk of injury (the workouts will include a 5-on-5 element) and are likely worried their clients aren't in peak physical shape yet. Most of these players are working out with trainers and still need a few more weeks.