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.

Read more »

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 »

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]

Read more »

For the third time in three days, the Washington Wizards yesterday brought in six prospects for pre-draft workouts. You have certainly asked yourself: ‘Who the eff are some of these dudes and why are the Wizards even working them out?’ Great question.

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.

Read more »

This afternoon the Washington Wizards will conduct pre-NBA draft workouts with the following players:

• 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:

Read more »

[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.] 

>> 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.

Read more »

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.)

Read more »

It’s commonplace for the fan to get entrenched in ‘what ifs’—it simply has to be ingrained into DNA by now.

What if the Wizards didn’t win the pre-lottery coin flip tie-breaker against the Los Angeles Clippers after the 2008-09 season? Both teams finished with identical 19-63 records, and even though the Wizards got a single extra combination in the ’09 lottery after winning that coin flip (so, a 17.8 percent chance of getting the top pick instead of LA’s 17.7 percent), the Clippers won the prize, i.e., Blake Griffin. Not only that, but two other teams, Memphis and Oklahoma City, jumped into the top three, bumping Washington to five.

But what if the Wizards, who sent Flip Saunders as their lottery representative in 2009, had been part of the winning combination? They likely would have elected to not trade the fifth overall pick (for Mike Miller, Randy Foye and a money-save) and would have instead drafted (and kept) Griffin.

[To note: Saunders was Minnesota’s rep at the 1995 lottery and also returned to his team with the fifth overall pick, but that turned out to be Kevin Garnett—the Timberwolves finished tied with the Wizards for the second-worst NBA record that season, 21-61. Washington, holding the tie-breaker in odds to win No. 1 (18.3 percent to 18.2), landed the fourth pick and took Rasheed Wallace. Both teams were jumped by Golden State (Joe Smith, No. 1), and Philadelphia (Jerry Stackhouse, No. 3).]

Surely, with Blake Griffin missing his entire first season with the Clippers due to a broken kneecap sustained during the preseason, the Wizards, being themselves, likely would have been bad enough to land a high pick again, i.e., John Wall in 2010.

The what ifs… Wall, Lob City-ing, or whatever, to Griffin in the Verizon Center—the return of “Fun Street.” Speaking of…

Read more »

The NBA Lottery drawing is perhaps the last informal event left in the NBA this season. The set-up consists of three floors of conference rooms in the Millenium Hotel in New York City—you have to continously run up and down the stairs in hopes of getting the person you want to interview to speak on the record. This is how I found myself pushing past Monty Williams, who was bemoaning the summer heat in New Orleans, and making my way over to Bradley Beal, who was passing up on eating dinner until us pesky reporters were done asking our questions.

Draft Lottery night is also an evening for dumb questions, such as the requisite “did you bring anything for good luck?” Beal did not bring anything for good luck, he says, but indicated he was wearing the same burnt umber tie that he wore the night 2012. He also didn’t voice an opinion on whether the Wizards should keep the pick, stating that “it was up to Ernie and the front office, but you can see that we were doing better at the end of the year.”

More interesting news is Beal’s injury status, which remains uncertain. Beal told me that he was going in for another x-ray next week, but wasn’t particularly worried about the timetable or how he was healing. After talking to the Washington Post‘s Michael Lee, the reality is that the original recovery schedule may have been a tad agressive; waiting another four weeks till Beal is back and engaged in basketball related activities would not be entirely surprising.

Beal, however, was incredibly candid when it came to the resigning of Martell Webster: “Gotta resign Martell. Love that guy. Hits down open shots, high energy, court and locker room leader … love him, you gotta resign him.” This should be music to the ears of Webster, who is positioned to eat up the Wizards’ MLE.

Read more »