Back to NEWS index

Taking Extreme Measures
June 25, 2002

By Shira Springer, Globe Staff, 6/25/2002

t Cypress Creek High School on the outskirts of Orlando, Fla., Celtics general manager Chris Wallace went unnoticed while watching an early-season basketball game. Wallace stood just inside the gym entrance, since he suffers from ''bleacher back,'' a condition that comes from a career of watching games far from the comforts of NBA arenas. From any vantage point, however, it was hard to miss senior Amare Stoudemire, who towered over the competition at 6 feet 10 inches and dominated at will.

But to the casual observer, Stoudemire's performance in one of his first contests after a year's absence because of eligibility issues, was less than awe-inspiring. Sure, he threw down a windmill dunk and a 360-degree reverse dunk in consecutive trips down the floor. He toyed with the opposing team, despite distractions from a group of friends sitting courtside. Still, while unquestionably tough, strong, and athletic, Stoudemire appeared indifferent and undisciplined for long stretches.

This was in late November, when professional scouts know standouts such as Stoudemire have become bored with high school competition. The general managers who followed Wallace to Cypress Creek were all doing due diligence. But elite summer camps, all-star games, and workouts with individual teams would be better indicators of potential, though far from the last word.

Then again, there are no certainties in the NBA draft business. Not when teams try to predict the future with a process that can involve everything from psychological tests to the study of facial expressions to rigorous predraft workouts to casual interviews over dinner to phone conversations with professors and teachers. This serious, strange, and sometimes crazy process has projected Stoudemire as a top 10 pick in tomorrow's draft, where he should join a collection of foreign players, college early entrants, and a junior college product as lottery picks.

''It's a little bit like going to Las Vegas and going gambling, because you bet on the future,'' said Wallace. ''Whether it's on people, the role of the dice, whatever, there's risk involved. It's also like you're the personnel director at a large corporation and you're rating the new applicants. There may be one test that they put more credence on than another, but I doubt if it always adds up and, at the end of several years, they look back and say, `We hired Mary, but too bad we didn't hire Beth.'

''You're dealing with human beings. So that adds an element to it that makes it impossible to be foolproof.''

Teams may track players for years before they are even eligible for the draft, but the months, weeks, even days leading up to it can sway opinions back and forth. The so-called human element - the unpredictable manner in which a person responds to the pressure of expectations, how he makes the mental and physical transition to the NBA - can skew everything. To further complicate the situation, there is an overabundance of information from coaches, consultants, and scouts.

''Around draft time, information is just flying by at the speed of sound and you just grab it out of the air,'' said Wallace. ''It can send you down a path which can be either positive or negative. Bad news especially travels at the speed of sound this time of year.

''We are bystanders, sitting here at No. 50. There's really not much information that can shock us. We're either going to take some guys or we're not. But up high, where the stakes are much larger, bad news travels even faster. The bad stuff just seems to be magnified. Players get painted in certain shades this time of year. And it's hard not to get caught up on those trains, where there are people jumping on and off bandwagons. Information is subjectively handled.''

Unusual tests

Teams cannot hope to completely uncover players' personalities and NBA aptitude with a series of tests, though that has not stopped them from trying. Consider a pair of questions from a psychological exam Wallace was once asked to administer:

If you have to eat off a dirty plate, does it bother you a) some of the time, b) all the time or c) none of the time?

If you are inside a house and lightning strikes, are you scared a) some of the time, b) all of the time or c) none of the time?

Interpreting the responses is more complicated than running a pick-and-roll. There seems to be just as much guesswork for players taking the tests as there is for general managers deciding on a second-round selection.

''No one gets drafted because they have the greatest psychological test and there are no other factors, but it's another piece of information,'' said Wallace. ''I've seen interviews shade things in a guy's favor and I've seen it go against them. But you factor in that a high school player is not the same as Shane Battier.

''You don't like to see criminal activity, particularly violent criminal activity. You prefer a player that's not saddled with substance abuse. Guys who are out of shape this time of year that end up having problems with some of the workouts, that gets magnified. You don't like to hear about players having workouts at other places where they're not into it.''

Atlanta general manager Pete Babcock has employed unusual physical and psychological exams as evaluative tools. One year he used the light reaction test. Three light bulbs were placed upon a wall above three footpads. The player was instructed to touch a certain pad in response to a certain combination of lights. Each time a mistake was made, the test administrator would shout, ''Miss.'' The test was supposed to measure to some extent how quickly players learned, what type of reaction time they had, and whether they were easily frustrated.

Babcock also remembered a balancing test, in which the top of a box was actually a tilt board impossible to keep still. Prospects were asked to keep the box top balanced for a minute. Some gave up, while others kept trying four or five times to complete the task. This was to gauge a player's balance, and presumably his mental toughness.

''We tried different tests for years and years, and we kept track over the last 20 years what the projections were from those tests and what the results were, and they're mixed,'' said Babcock. ''Here you have this professional guy telling you don't draft this guy because he's too intense or he needs professional counseling, then he goes on and becomes a 10-year All-Star.

''The two big elements for us are all our character checks and talent. But you can work like crazy, you can dig like crazy for information, you can scout a player over and over and over again, and there are still those areas that you cannot measure.''

Head games

In the neverending quest to find out as much as possible about players' mental makeup, teams continue to tap unusual sources. This year, the Timberwolves are consulting Jonathan Niednagel, who heads the Brain Type Institute of Notting Hill, Mo., and evaluates a player's potential based on how his brain works. Niednagel, nicknamed ''the brain doctor,'' will give Kevin McHale & Co. one more piece to fit into the personality puzzle. But such information invites skeptics, even in the Minnesota organization.

''He claims that everybody is one of 16 brain types and everybody is going to fall into one of those 16 and after that I get kind of confused by it all,'' said Jerry Sichting, the Timberwolves' assistant coach and director of scouting and player personnel. ''I think the thing he's got going for him is no one really understands it. Danny [Ainge] and Kevin swear by it, and I just don't understand it.

''There's no formula to figure it out exactly, obviously, if you look at the history of the draft and all the mistakes that are made. If you would sit in on a meeting of the average basketball staff, there's going to be some very muddy water because you're going to get four or five opinions one way and four or five opinions the other way.''

Sichting recalled the shock that greeted the Timberwolves when they took Kevin Garnett with the No. 5 pick in 1995, and the surprise that followed the slide of Paul Pierce to No. 10 in 1998. But perhaps the ultimate proof of how unpredictable the draft can be was 1996, when Vitaly Potapenko was selected one slot ahead of Kobe Bryant.

The fact that more players are coming out of high school and from overseas makes evaluating them that much trickier. And even after all sorts of information has been gathered, opinions will continue to change as draft day approaches.

''When I was in Portland, we decided basically that we weren't going to draft Shawn Kemp because there hadn't been any high school stuff,'' said Wallace. ''This kid was coming out of junior college, but he never played there. He went to Kentucky, but he had to leave at the beginning of the year.

''He was controversial. Why did he leave Kentucky? Why this? Why that? It wasn't something people could get their arms around and have the sense of security they would have with a college senior. So we decided we weren't going to do it. It just wasn't going to happen.

''Then, various people went out for lunch because the draft was in the evening, came back and said, `Why not?' We went from what I call below the Mason-Dixon Line on drafting Kemp to having him work his way up to third on the selection list in the course of three or four hours. No new information came in. It was just sort of the way the wind was blowing at the time.''

This story ran on page F6 of the Boston Globe on 6/25/2002.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.