picture credit: Adam McGinnis

Sporting an oversized polo shirt and fuzzy facial hair, Anthony Bennett sheepishly strolled over to the gathered media for his interview at the Verizon Center last Thursday. The NBA prospect looked like a deer in headlights. Bennett immediately admitted to being shy, an unenviable characteristic when having to face a hoard of cameras and journalists. Washington, D.C. is not Chicago or New York in terms of sports media, but this is not the Mountain West, either. By the end of the 11-minute session, the 20-year-old gradually opened up about his fear of heights, poked fun at his own shooting stats, and told a funny story about a fan locating him in the lobby of his Chinatown hotel. A college player being green in these situations seems pretty routine, and Bennett didn’t have the benefit of working up a sweat beforehand. Due to surgery on his rotator cuff in mid-May, Bennett did not actually work out for the Wizards, but the UNLV star out of Ontario, Canada, revealed that his recovery was progressing on schedule.

“It is going pretty well. I spoke with Dr. Altchek—he is the one that did my surgery—I spoke with him yesterday and he said everything is going fine,” Bennett said. “The first week of August, I should be 100 percent, full contact, back into the game of working out.” Dr. David Altchek should also be noted because he helped determine the nature of John Wall’s stress injury  last September. CSN Washington’s Ben Standig previously reported that Bennett was about eight weeks out from full contact but has been cleared to do some basketball things.

“[Altchek] said light shooting. I can dribble and do all that but no contact. Nothing crazy. No dunking or anything,” Bennett confirmed.

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In June of 1992, the Chicago Bulls won their second straight NBA title, taking down the Portland Trail Blazers in six games. A month earlier in May, right in the middle of the championship hunt, soon-to-be Finals MVP Mike Jordan sat down for a candid interview with Playboy magazine’s Mark Vancil.

Vancil and Jordan talked about life on the road in the NBA, Magic Johnson and HIV, Isiah Thomas and the Detroit Bad Boys, autographs, Phil Jackson, and more. The entire interview is worth a read, but there are a few parts particularly relevant to the upcoming NBA Draft.

Like when Vancil halfway into the interview asked Jordan about his childhood. Read more »

No Porter, no problem?
/photo via US Presswire/

Depending on your level of interest and who you hoped the Wizards would select in last year’s NBA draft, the event may have induced a fair amount of anxiety. Not so for “Cool” Ernie Grunfeld, who had already taken his morning coffee, read the Lifestyle section, and dictated the 2012 third overall pick to his secretary who then telegraphed it to the entire NBA. After acquiring a defensive-minded small forward (Trevor Ariza) and a starting center (Emeka Okafor) in a trade with New Orleans about a week prior, Kentucky’s Michael Kidd-Gilchrist seemed like less of a smart pick. Likewise, Thomas Robinson of Kansas and Andre Drummond of Connecticut were, in an instant, judged considerably more redundant.

With Florida’s Bradley Beal a clear favorite and potentially filling a hopelessly glaring need—shooting—there was even talk that the Wizards could attempt to move up one spot, from No. 3 to No. 2, in order to prevent the Cleveland Cavaliers from performing a similar maneuver, leapfrogging Washington and taking Beal for use in their own macabre plans. We’ll never know what options were on the table at the end of the day for the Charlotte Bobcats. If there were potential trades to be made, none were. The Verizon Center, then host to a “Draft Party” (code for face paint and overpriced beers), was a temporarily joyful venue. Attendees cheered when Charlotte kept their pick and chose Michael Kidd-Gilchrist at No. 2, knowing full well that it meant Washington would get their guy.

This summer, certainty is in shorter supply than Lyme disease medication (seriously, comb for ticks). While Nerlens Noel was the “default” No. 1 for narrative purposes in the days preceding and immediately following the lottery, Cleveland’s first overall choice has become increasingly turbid. On June 11th, ESPN.com’s Chad Ford had this to say: Read more »

[Ed. Note: Below you will find A) a video from Wednesday's pre-draft workouts produced by Sholape Oriola for TAI; and B) brief capsules on who worked out for the Wizards today, June 6, by TAI's Conor Dirks. —KW]

June 5 Wizards Pre-Draft Workout Video

(featuring these guys)

[video via Sholape Oriola]

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[Bell High School, 16th St./Half St. NW DC - photo: K. Weidie]

In addition to their third overall pick, which will almost certainly be Otto Porter (unless Dan Gilbert gets all Comic Sans on us in Cleveland and takes Porter No. 1), the Wizards currently have two second round picks, their own at 38th overall and a pick via the New York Knicks at 54th overall.

But, as we are well aware, the Wizards don’t want any more kids, even if it’s been proven that second round picks can be solid contributors off the bench in their first season. Other franchises have found success; you just have to find the right players. But alas, youth does have a saturation point, but that doesn’t go to usurp the utility of such workouts.

Yes, most of these players aren’t close on Washington’s radar, but pre-draft workouts accomplish much more than trying to fill a roster spot. To workout players you like, you need competition. Workouts also provide exposure to players, and sometimes players catch the eyes of overseas teams. So, the Wizards are doing players (and their agents) a “solid” just by having them in. The final reason I’ll mention, even though there are likely more, is due diligence. Every window of observation counts, and if not this summer, the Wizards don’t know when they might cross paths with one of these players again.

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[Keene Rec. Center, NW Washington, D.C. - photo: K. Weidie]

• Will Clyburn, 6-foot-7 guard from Iowa State;
• Elijah Johnson, 6-foot-4 guard from Kansas;
• Nick Minnerath, 6-foot-9 forward from Detroit;
• Peyton Siva, 6-0 guard from Louisville;
• Adonis Thomas, 6-foot-7 forward from Memphis; and
• Christian Watford, 6-foot-9 forward from Indiana.

On Tuesday the Wizards brought in:

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So what does Rotnei Clarke have to do with the Wizards, Wale and the Redskins?

Well, for one, the sharp-shooting Clarke worked out for the Washington Wizards on Monday, along with five other players—Tyler Brown, Miguel Paul, Angelo Sharpless, Gregory Echenique, and Ehimen Orukpe. It was the first pre-NBA Draft workout the Wizards conducted this year at the Verizon Center.

Clarke, a 6-foot guard from Butler, said the workout “went really well,” his humble demeanor being sure to mention that he appreciated the opportunity. He doesn’t have any other workouts scheduled at the moment, but indicated that the Indiana Pacers and Atlanta Hawks were interested in taking a look. ESPN.com’s Chad Ford (Insider) ranks Clarke, who will turn 24 in July, 98 on his list of Top 100 2013 NBA Draft prospects.

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[The Washington Wizards are working out WHO? The dirt on the six players that the Wizards are bringing to the Verizon Center on Monday, June 3, for pre-2013 NBA Draft workouts.] 

Woodley Basketball Court – via instagram/truthaboutit

>> Tyler Brown                          

G – Illinois State
6’4″, 185 lbs.

The 23-year-old hails from Owensboro, KY. He is listed at 6’4″, but his height without shoes is listed at 6’1″ and his wingspan at 6’5″ (per DraftExpress).

He signed with Morehead State out of high school, red-shirted in 2008-09, then transferred at Marshalltown Community College in Normal, Illinois. At Marshalltown, he was named an NJCAA All-American twice, honorable mention in 2010 and second-team in 2011.

On January 9, Brown was suspended indefinitely by Illinois State Redbirds coach Dan Muller for conduct detrimental to the team. He only missed one game before returning to the court. Last season, Brown led the Redbirds in scoring with 18.1 points per game (third in the Missouri Valley Conference), shooting 44 percent from the field, 39 percent from the 3-point line, and 80.6 percent from the free throw line.

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The Wizards, on Tuesday, landed the third overall pick in the 2012-13 NBA Draft … and they will do with it what they please, your miseducated speculation and dime-store mock drafts be damned.

So Truth About It.net turned to online scouting regurgitations, mostly intuition, and a wing and a prayer to come up with a list of the most potentially #SoWizards players who could soon be given a fanny-pack embroidered with a scarlet Wizards logo, a spot on the roster, and a pain in our hearts.

A #SoWizards future for this guy, Ondrej Balvin? — via some website]

#1) Rudy Gobert

At some point in time, Ernie Grunfeld yelled, to no one in particular, “Well, why don’t you just calculate a player’s ability to calculate!!?”

He was being facetious, but some scientist got right on it. Well, at least the guy was wearing a lab coat. He was also wearing a G-Wiz mascot uniform under that.

Grunfeld then, himself, went on to measure Frenchman Rudy Gobert’s 7-foot-9 wingspan in Grunfeld head-lengths (hey, that’s just his system… the answer is 5.138, by the way—Ernie has a really long head). Grunfeld also calculated Gobert’s 238-pound weight in Grunfeld heads, and it just so happened to be the very same number.

So it was determined that Gobert would be the third overall pick, especially since he can exchange “je m’appelles” and “toute de suites” with Kevin Seraphin and Snakey all season long, much to the chagrin of Randy Wittman. Take that, analytics!

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Emperor Ernie Grunfeld, more formally known as Washington’s Team President of Basketball Operations, discusses the ever-evolving process, which is more NeverEnding Story (the movie) and less Law & Order (an episode). Grunfeld also reveals that the Cleveland Cavaliers actually won twice. After winning the first pick, Cleveland also won the third pick, so they had to re-draw and Washington’s combination came up.

Here is a secret of the NBA Draft Lottery, which, by revealing, will result in me being sequestered, along with the ping pong ball machine, for the next calendar year with only a representative from Ernst & Young for company. My general assumption was that the NBA took a commercial break before announcing the top three picks to build drama for the audience watching at home. This is true and effective to a large degree, but the real reason they take that commercial break is so that the assembled media hoard can descend three flights of stairs, run across the street under the escort of New York’s finest, and get cordoned off in the basement of the studio in which the show is taking place. It was there, surrounded by machinery lifts, cameras that have been put out to pasture, and around 100 sweating reporters, that I learned that the Wizards had won the third pick in the lottery. You are then escorted into a freight elevator and unleashed upon the stage where you push your way to your interviewee of choice. You see the weirdest sights on the draft floor, such as Flip Saunders having an extremely candid and friendly talk with Ernie Grunfeld, Damian Lillard looking for every possible escape route, and the spawn of Dan Gilbert lapping up the attention. (Other members of the Gilbert brood looked visibly annoyed that their youngest sibling has become the human horseshoe and the only thing worth talking about on draft night.)

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