選秀策略
http://www.nba.com/bobcats/feature_050623.html
BOBCATS WORKOUTS CHALLENGE THE DRAFT'S BEST
Gerald Green had his hands on his knees, tugging at the bottom of
his shorts while sweat dripped from his forehead onto the court last
week at the Bobcats Basketball Center. Then he took the ball, bounced
it a few times while catching his breath, then slowly released and
connected from the free throw line.
That was it for Green’s first NBA workout. But it wasn’t the first
time the Bobcats coaching staff had seen a drained top prospect hit
his final shots with relief.
“That’s the way we play,” Bobcats General Manager and Head Coach
Bernie Bickerstaff said. “We want to see if we can break them.”
That’s done by a regimen of conditioning tests followed by skill
drills. This sequence tests how a player performs under the stress
of 48 minutes of NBA basketball.
“Some teams may do more skill-oriented things, but I think we have
a nice combination of skill-oriented things with conditioning,”
Assistant Coach John-Blair Bickerstaff said. “Basketball is not a
stationary game. You have to show your skill level while moving with
the speed of the game.”
The tests are done at a fast pace to resemble game speed. They consume
the first part of the 45-minute sessions to measure athleticism, strength
and stamina.
There’s a lot of jumping – vertical and horizontal – and foot-testing
running – sprints, laterals and back pedaling. The ball is also tossed
into the mix for court-length drives and a dunk-and-run drill.
Success is about more than just getting it done quickly. The instructions
for these drills have to be followed closely, giving a measure of a
player’s retention abilities.
The best advice a player can get is to fight through and show that he
doesn’t fold under stress.
“We just tell them no matter what, do your best,” Assistant Athletic
Trainer Mark Coffelt said. “There are a lot of eyes out there watching
what you do. If you’re not fit, it will be exposed eventually.”
But those tips can only go so far. Some, like Charlie Villanueva, have
done NBA workouts in previous years while others got their experience
from this year’s workout circuit. But nobody has said it was easy.
Almost without exception, players coming through the Bobcats’ routine
have said it’s the most grueling they’ve ever been through. Although
Bickerstaff said every team takes a look at fitness, national champion
Sean May said the Bobcats are uniquely demanding.
“A lot of teams do a lot of spot shooting,” the former North Carolina
star said. “(Here) you’re rarely standing still. They integrate
conditioning into their drills to see if when you get tired you can still
shoot the basketball. I think they do a great job of that.”
Duke’s Shavlik Randolph compared his workout to a job interview, which
isn’t far from the truth. The workouts test how a player would fit in
physically with the team’s philosophy.
“If you watched us throughout this season, our reputation around the
league was that we work hard every night,” the younger Bickerstaff said.
“If you have a reputation that that’s the team you’re going to be,
you’ve got to have players who are capable of doing that. The only way
to do that is to test them, challenge them, see what their effort is.”
Most prospects would agree that they are challenged, but the elder
Bickerstaff said he has yet to “break” anyone. But with the exception
of Bulls draft pick Ben Gordon last year, they’ve all left the floor a
lot more worn than they were when it started, he said.
The Bobcats’ boss has looked at lots of prospects in his rigorous workout
in his decades of NBA coaching. Bickerstaff, who has drafted talent from
Shawn Kemp to Emeka Okafor, has kept his notes throughout it all.
“We’ve been doing it for years, ever since we were in Denver and
Seattle,” he said. “We’ve got a book on every player that we’ve
worked out so we can do a comparison on all things that we do. We just
keep it over the years to see what’s happening.”
The workouts are more than just a boot camp. After all, the Bobcats
staff is familiar with most prospects just from watching the college
season, so this is a chance to go in-depth. Besides the physical tests,
there are interviews and dinners. As the younger Bickerstaff said, a good
player also has to be a good person.
“You’ve got to have talent, you’ve got to have skill, but what kind
of person you are says a lot about what you can bring to this team,”
he said. “One great player can’t do it by himself. Every great player,
(every) player that’s won a championship, has had great teammates.”
The whole package of evaluating everything from personality to post-ups
to push-ups makes the Bobcats run one of the toughest shows in the
league – even for the best prospects in the land.
“It was tough. I’m not going to lie,” Wake Forest’s Chris Paul
said. “If you haven’t worked out for the Bobcats yet, be ready for
it.”
By Kevin Hilgers, BobcatsBasketball.com
--
※ 發信站: 批踢踢實業坊(ptt.cc)
◆ From: 140.112.16.23
Hornets 近期熱門文章
PTT體育區 即時熱門文章
20
54
-156
299