Hospital employees and restaurant staff were among those working on Memorial Day. Also at work: aspiring NBA players.
Picture this: you’re about 20-years-old. You have a chance at the NBA. Teams bring you in for day-long workouts. Wouldn’t you be nervous?
“You can’t come in nervous, because that’s when you start tightening up and don’t play like yourself,” said 21-year-old guard Bruce Brown, Jr. “So I come in, try to be happy, be myself, and play loose.”
Brown and five other players spent Monday at a workout for the Phoenix Suns, the team’s second such workout with draft prospects. The team will host other players three or four times a week until the draft. The most high-profile players will likely work out privately.
Suns’ Assistant General Manager Pat Connelly said the team is looking for fitness and how a player communicates with new teammates.
But the visits include more than basketball, including "taking them out to dinner, hanging out with them,” Connelly said. The teams know about these players, but the team tries to get to know them as people.
The draft is on June 21. At the moment, the team has the number one pick, as well as numbers 16, 31, and 59.
