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Milwaukee Bucks general manager John Hammond wouldn't go so faras to call it a source of frustration.
But would the Bucks, along with any number of other teams in theNational Basketball Association, like to see an improvement in thesystem in which draft prospects go from city to city to visitindividual teams for workouts in the days and weeks before thedraft?
Yes.
But for now, the Bucks have to play the hand that has been dealtto them. That means that, the way things are looking, the Bucks willgo into Thursday's draft without having had the opportunity to workout the top prospects at their training facility.
"You always want more people to come in and work out," saidHammond, whose team holds the eighth and 37th picks. "But it doesn'twork that way. It's the reality of where we're at in the processtoday."
The Bucks have conducted two workouts and had to cancel twoothers when things didn't come together for a number of reasons. TheBucks have worked out 12 players, but of that dozen, only Joe Alexander of West Virginia and Anthony Randolph of LSU have a chanceof being among the top 10 picks.
The Bucks have workouts scheduled for Monday and Tuesday, butHammond said those sessions would involve players who are projectedto go late in the first round down to the 37th spot in the secondround.
And so, barring any last-minute sessions, the Bucks won't see topprospects such as Brook Lopez of Stanford, Kevin Love and Russell Westbrook of UCLA, O.J. Mayo of USC, Eric Gordon of Indiana, Jerryd Bayless of Arizona and Danilo Gallinari of Italy.
Since Derrick Rose of Memphis and Michael Beasley of Kansas Stateare expected to be the top two picks, a couple of those otherplayers will be available to Milwaukee at No. 8.
Why haven't the Bucks been able to get the top players in town?
"It's part of the draft process today that agents, players andfamily members of the players are making decisions together as toexactly what teams they will visit," said Hammond. "And within thatcomes the maneuvering by the agents of trying to protect theirplayer's value.
"So if they have a guy slotted 1 through 5, they're going to holdtheir stance on saying that's where they're at. If they startvisiting teams at 8, 9 or 10, the word is going to be out that theplayer is slipping or something's wrong, or he had a bad workout,and now he's had to work out for teams out of his range. So it'sjust a big political maneuvering."
The Bucks dealt with more rejection Saturday when Leon Rose,Mayo's agent, conducted a workout for Mayo in Chicago but invitedonly the teams holding the top five picks in the draft. Hammond saidthat the Bucks would have attended had they been invited.
