Several players who either stood pretty firmly in second-round territory (Marquette’s Justin Lewis, Duke’s Wendell Moore) or had little to lose by playing five-on-five (G League Ignite’s Jaden Hardy, Milwaukee’s Patrick Baldwin, Michigan State’s Max Christie) nonetheless sat out that portion. With this year’s solid play of Santa Clara’s Jalen Williams and some others foreboding the same (more on that below), one wonders if agents will stop overplaying their hands.Several players moved up teams’ boards in 2021 partly as a result of playing in Chicago, including a few who vaulted into the first round (notably 12th pick Joshua Primo, 24th pick Josh Christopher and 25th pick Quentin Grimes). In a way, this mechanism could end up being self-correcting. A more maddening issue has been players’ unwillingness to participate in the five-on-five portion of the combine, even if they probably should to improve their draft stock.For instance, requiring players who want to enter the draft early to submit to health and medical exams at the combine would effectively eliminate the problem. The league can’t compel players who are not yet part of the NBA to participate in such tests, but one wonders if it could create a workaround in the next CBA. While no sane person thinks a potential top-five pick will actually play basketball here, the reluctance of many prospects to submit to health and medical examinations has been a sore spot. A continuing bug in the program is getting the top-ranked players to participate.
That said, what do you think is going to happen when a couple hundred people get together to talk shop? As ever, the gripes were abundant: To its credit, the league has made some progress, encouraging five-on-five participation, streamlining the “agent workouts” (more on these in a minute) and tweaking the event’s timing so that only four teams are still playing when it happens.
DAMIAN LILLARD WINGSPAN HOW TO
The first thing everyone talks about at the combine is how to make it better. Here’s what they learned: How do we make the combine more valuable for attendees? John Hollinger was on the ground in Chicago, and Sam Vecenie worked the phone lines from afar, each tirelessly drinking coffee and gaining intel from the event. The 2022 NBA Draft Combine has come and gone, with the event achieving its usual goal of kicking off the draft cycle in earnest. Follow our live coverage of NBA Draft 2022.
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